The first time Leia used her ability in front of someone else, she didn't mean to.
It was a simple thing. She was stitching a torn cloth sack for an old baker who paid her and Selene in scraps. The baker's son, maybe fifteen, watched her with mild boredom — until the needle lifted on its own.
Leia hadn't even noticed she was guiding it without touch.
The boy gasped. "Wait. Was that… your ability?"
Leia's fingers froze. She hesitated too long.
"Thread?" he said, blinking. Then came the laughter — loud, sharp, careless.
"You awakened thread control? That's your big ability?"
She tried to smile it off, but her cheeks burned.
"No offense," he added, chuckling as he took the sack, "but you might as well have stayed powerless."
---
Word spread quickly. It always did in the outer district.
"Hey, Seamstress!" one of the welders called the next day as she passed. "Can you sew me a cape that'll make me fly?" Another chimed in, "Or maybe some socks that shoot lightning?"
Laughter followed her down the alley.
Leia kept her head down and said nothing.
The mark on her wrist pulsed gently under her sleeve — a reminder that she had awakened. Even if no one thought it mattered.
---
In secret, she practiced harder.
Late at night, while Selene slept, Leia sat near the single candle they could afford to light, floating thread like it was silk caught in water. She tied knots mid-air, stitched scraps together without a single touch, and even suspended a cloth pouch from the ceiling using only thread woven in delicate tension.
She discovered new techniques slowly — ways to reinforce seams, twist strands into thin needles, even fold thread to create springlike tension in fabric.
But none of it could stop the laughter outside.
To them, she was still weak.
Powerless in all but name.
---
One afternoon, she passed a gathering in the market square. A crowd had formed around a boy her age — lean, confident, sparks dancing across his palms like fireflies.
"Just awakened," someone whispered behind her. "A-Class already. Fire blood."
The boy smiled as he sent flames spinning in a ring around him, heat rolling off his skin.
The people cheered.
Leia turned away quietly.
No one cheered for silent thread.
No one ever would.
---
That night, she sat alone and whispered to the thread between her fingers:
"They'll never believe in me."
The thread curled, as if to say: then believe in yourself.
She smiled faintly.
It wasn't much.
But it was enough to keep going.