A New Normal - Chapter 3

The next morning, Raiden met her at the workshop door. He held the door open as Cassandra followed him inside. He had been waiting for her when she arrived, coffee in hand, and had said only 'Come with me' before leading her down the corridor past Na'la's station." 

The fitting room was smaller than her office, with lower ceilings and warmer light. A single arched window let in the late morning sun, its amber glow settling across the tiled floor and the padded examination chair in the centre of the room. The walls had been painted a soft muted green, and against the far wall a wooden cabinet held rolls of linen, cleaning solutions, and a prosthetic leg standing upright on its display stand. Polished brass from the knee joint down, steel reinforced along the shin, and a leather-padded socket sat at the top with its straps hanging loose. In the window light the brass threw a warm flare across the ceiling.

Raiden wore a white coat over his collared shirt and slacks, buttoned neatly to the chest. 

“Just stay behind and follow along, if you have any questions feel free to ask them.” Raiden spoke as he read off his clipboard. 

Belle Hamer was young, perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four, with brown hair tied back from a narrow face and hands resting in her lap with careful stillness. Her right trouser leg was rolled above the knee, and below it there was nothing. She sat with her shoulders drawn in and her chin slightly lowered, as though she had learned to carry herself in the smallest shape the room would allow.

"Good morning, Belle," Raiden said warmly, pulling a stool from beneath the cabinet and sitting across from her. "How's the evening been?"

"Good, thank you," Belle said softly. Her voice barely carried past the examination chair. "I repotted the ferns. The ones I told you about last time. They're doing much better in the south window."

"The ones that were dropping leaves?" Raiden asked.

"Those ones, yes!" A small, careful smile crossed her face. "I think they just needed more light, just like you said."

"Im not a gardener, everything I know is from my mother." Raiden said, returning the smile. He opened the folder on his knee and glanced at the page inside, then closed it again. "Well, Belle, I have good news. This should be our final fitting. Can you believe it's been almost a year?"

Belle's fingers tightened in her lap. "Almost a year…" she repeated quietly, as though hearing the number aloud made it real in a way the months themselves had not.

"Almost a year," Raiden confirmed gently. "And you've done brilliantly throughout. Every session, every exercise." He gestured toward Cassandra, who stood near the door with her satchel held against her side. "Before we begin — this is Cassandra Hawthorne. She's a technician trainee and she'll be shadowing me today, if that's all right with you."

Belle glanced at Cassandra with quick, uncertain eyes. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the military boots beneath the civilian skirt before returning to Raiden.

"That's fine," she whispered.

Raiden nodded and rose from the stool. "Then let's get started," he said, lifting the prosthetic from its stand and cradling it across both arms. "Belle, if you could raise your leg for me."

Belle shifted in the chair, gripped the armrests, and lifted what remained of her right leg. The dress fabric fell back to reveal the residual limb — it was slightly darker than the rest of her leg where months of therapeutic wrapping had shaped and compressed it. It ended just above where the knee had been.

Cassandra looked at it. She was no stranger to open flesh—the war had made sure of that—but this was different. This was a wound that had run its course. The skin had closed, the body accepting its new shape around the loss, leaving only the remains of what was. 

"Miss Hamer," Cassandra said. "How did you lose your leg?"

Raiden turned to her. "Cassandra," he said firmly. "You don't ask a client that."

Her shoulders stiffened at the tone, and the correction settled into her before the embarrassment did.

But Belle laughed — a small sound, barely more than a breath, that broke the tension and left something lighter behind it. She waved a hand at Raiden.

"It's all right," Belle said, looking at Cassandra. "Really, I'm not insulted. Most people want to ask and don't, and I'd much rather they question than stare."

She settled her hands in her lap.

"I was in Alexandria for my birthday," she said. "It's a small city south of here, near the Kaelish border. My parents lived there with my sister, and we always spent birthdays together. I was supposed to stay for three days, and on the second evening the Kaelish began their advance into the kingdom. They bombed the city on their way through. I don't think Alexandria was even a priority for them, just something in the path. Our building collapsed and my sister pulled me out, but my parents were in the kitchen when the ceiling came down. The field hospital saved what they could, but the leg was too far gone."

She said it all in one steady breath, plainly, without ceremony, the words worn smooth by every previous telling.

"It's just me and my sister now," Belle added quietly. "She lives here in Ashenmere. She's the one who found Aethelgard for me."

Cassandra stood by the door and did not speak. 

Alexandria. 

She knew the name. Every soldier in the northern theater knew it — from briefings, from situation reports, from the codeword command used when a civilian population centre fell within an advancing army's operational corridor. The bombers that hit Alexandria had been Kaelish. But Valdren's own aerial corps had run identical operations along the same border, against cities just as small, with results just as devastating.

"I'm sorry," Cassandra said.

Belle shook her head gently. "You don't have to apologize," she said. "It wasn't your fault." She looked up, and the careful smile returned. "Besides, I'm here now. And after today, I can finally walk around my shop without the crutches. The plants need me upright; someone has to."

Raiden turned to Cassandra, and his expression shifted from the warmth he gave Belle to something more instructional.

"Watch closely," he said. He lifted the prosthetic and held it beside Belle's residual limb, aligning the socket opening with the shape of the stump. "The socket is custom-moulded to the individual. Every residual limb is different — shape, pressure points, nerve distribution. A socket that fits one person perfectly will cause agony in another. Getting this right is the most important part of our routine."

With both hands he guided the prosthetic onto Belle's limb. The socket slid over the rounded end and seated against the skin with a soft compression sound, the leather padding conforming to the contours beneath.

"The locking mechanism secures it here," he said, indicating a brass clasp at the socket's upper rim. It clicked into a recessed groove with a clean, precise sound. "Below that is the vacuum seal." He pressed a small lever at the side of the socket. "This valve draws air out from between the socket wall and the skin, which creates negative pressure. That's what holds it in place — no straps needed for standing or walking. The straps are backup, for heavy activity or rough terrain."

Belle's breath caught as the vacuum engaged. Her fingers gripped the armrests and her jaw tightened.

"How does that feel?" Raiden asked gently.

"Strange," Belle said, her voice thinning. "Tight. Like someone's sitting on my leg."

"That's normal," Raiden said. "Your body needs time to adjust. For the first few weeks, limit your wear to a few hours at a time, and if you feel any sharp pain along the socket rim, come back in and we'll adjust the fit." He looked at Cassandra. "Too much pressure and the client is in pain. Too little and the prosthetic shifts during movement. The technician finds the line between the two and holds it."

He turned back to Belle and rested his hand on the brass knee joint.

"Now, the part you've been training for," he said. "The prosthetic responds to contractions in the muscles of your residual limb. When you flex, the hydraulics engage. During our therapy sessions you've been building those pathways — teaching your brain to send signals to muscles that now control the joint instead of the knee. The prosthetic doesn't move on its own. It moves because you tell it to."

Belle nodded. Her jaw was set, her hands white on the armrests.

"Whenever you're ready," Raiden said softly. "Take your time."

Belle closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed. Beneath the dress fabric, the muscles of her thigh tensed — a concentrated effort, visible in the cords of her neck and the set of her shoulders. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, with a faint hiss of hydraulics, the brass knee joint flexed.

Belle's eyes opened.

"Good," Raiden said, his voice carrying quiet encouragement. "That's very good. Again."

The joint flexed a second time, smoother now, and a third, each repetition more fluid than the last. The mechanical rhythm was beginning to match the intent behind it, the hiss of the pistons falling into pace with Belle's breathing. Raiden watched with focused attention, his eyes tracking the joint angle and the piston response and the alignment of the socket under load.

"Good," he said again. "You're ready. Let's try standing."

Raiden offered Belle his hand. She took it, her grip fierce, her knuckles bloodless, and eased herself forward in the chair until her left foot was flat on the floor and the brass foot of the prosthetic rested beside it. For a moment she sat there, balanced between the chair and the ground, her breathing shallow and quick.

Then she pushed herself up.

Her weight shifted onto the prosthetic and her face tightened — a flash of discomfort, quickly controlled — as the socket took the load and the knee joint locked into its weight-bearing position. Her left leg trembled. Her right, the brass one, held steady. She stood with Raiden's hand in hers, her body rigid, leaning slightly forward.

"Straighten up," Raiden said gently. "Trust it. It will hold you."

Slowly, Belle straightened. Her spine lengthened. Her shoulders drew back. Her chin lifted. For the first time since Cassandra had entered the room, Belle Hamer was standing at her full height, on two legs, one of flesh and one of brass, in the morning sunlight from the arched window.

"Oh," Belle said.

The word was barely audible, released on a breath that seemed to empty her completely.

"Try a step," Raiden said softly. "Just one. Whenever you're ready."

Belle released his hand. She shifted her weight to the prosthetic, lifted her left foot, and set it down a pace ahead. Then the right — the brass knee bending with a soft hydraulic whisper, the foot rising, swinging forward, planting on the tile with a faint click.

One step.

She took another. Then another. Each one steadier than the last, accompanied by the quiet hiss of the hydraulics and the small tap of brass on tile. She walked across the fitting room with her arms held slightly out from her sides for balance, her eyes fixed on the window ahead.

At the window she stopped. Both palms pressed flat against the window rest. She stood there, on her own, without crutches or a chair or anyone's hand, and the morning light fell across her face, her fingers and the polished brass of the leg that Raiden had spent a year building for her.

She began to cry. Her forehead touched the glass and her shoulders shook. The sound that came out of her was something Cassandra had never heard — laughter and weeping at the same time, tangled together, inseparable, neither one winning.

"Thank you," Belle whispered against the glass. "Thank you."

Raiden stood by the examination chair with his hands at his sides. His face held a quiet steadiness, the expression of a man who had seen this moment before and understood that repetition did not diminish it. His eyes were bright, and he did not speak.

Cassandra had not moved since Belle stood up. Her satchel hung at her side. Her hands were still. Behind her face, which held the careful blankness she wore when she did not know what expression was appropriate, something was building — a pressure in her chest, an ache behind her sternum that was not pain and not illness and not the hollow emptiness she had felt on the tram.

Belle Hamer was standing at a window, crying because she could walk. A man with steady hands had spent a year building her a leg and teaching her body to use it, and now she could stand in her shop among her ferns, and this was enough to make her weep. 

Love.

Jean's word, arriving uninvited, settling into the ache in her chest beside everything else she carried and could not name.

Belle turned from the window, wiping her face with her sleeve, and smiled at Raiden through the tears —it was a smile Cassandra had only ever seen on people returning from somewhere they did not expect to survive.

"The ferns are going to be so happy," Belle said, and laughed, and the laugh filled the room.