Hi, I'm Sage. Well, of course you know that's my name. You've been following —my story—since I was just a kid who moved to Smallville eight years ago, wide-eyed and glowing blue in the backseat of our wood-paneled station wagon while the cornfields stretched out like an endless golden sea. Lately, ever since Grandmother Pandora handed me that massive book, the one that's basically the Anodite Bible, my life hasn't just been about learning to be a person; it's been about learning to be a force of nature. I still remember the weight of it in my small hands that afternoon in the library, the crystal pages humming under my fingertips like living stars, and the way her voice filled the room with that quiet, absolute command when she told me this was no longer training—this was becoming.
It's been five years since that day in the library. Five years of growth, glowing lights that danced behind my eyelids when I closed them at night, and keeping secrets in a town that loves to gossip over coffee at the Beanery or across the counter at the hardware store. I'm here to tell you what went down during that jump from point A to point B, from the wide-eyed spark who could barely hold a blue disk steady to the fifteen-year-old with a twenty-year-old mind who now walks through the world knowing exactly what he is. So sit back, because a lot has changed since 1998, and every single change still echoes in my bones when the Kansas wind blows just right.
After I mastered the Three Pillars, I didn't jump straight into reality warping or throwing mountains around like some cosmic child throwing tantrums. I wanted to start slow, to build something solid inside myself before I ever tried to bend the universe. I focused heavily on Mana Construct Tampering and Mana Telekinesis, spending long afternoons in the backyard where the cottonwood leaves whispered overhead and the distant hum of tractors carried on the breeze. Grandmother Pandora was a strict teacher—she speaks with total authority and weight, her voice commanding the room like a final sentence being delivered in some ancient court of stars. She taught me that if you can't dismantle a lock with your mind, you have no business trying to dismantle a star. I still remember the first time she made me take apart a simple wooden door in the workshop, my blue light trembling as I pulled each nail free one by one without touching them, sweat beading on my forehead while she watched with those violet eyes that seemed to see every flicker of doubt.
While she was drilling me on the mechanics of our race, the way our Mana could reshape matter or slip through dimensions if we only understood the rules, I made a request to my mother, Rashandra. I didn't want to be the mysterious kid in the mansion forever, hidden behind wrought-iron gates while Clark navigated the ordinary chaos of Smallville Elementary. I asked to go to school with him. And so, for five years, that's what I've been doing—walking the same hallways, sitting in the same classrooms, all while carrying a mind that had already lived sixteen years inside an eight-year-old body that slowly, carefully, let itself grow alongside him.
I became part of Clark's inner circle alongside Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan. Now, Pete and Chloe? They don't have a clue. They don't know Clark can outrun a bullet if he really lets himself go, and they definitely don't know I'm a being of pure energy wrapped in caramel skin and a quiet smile. When I first showed up in homeroom, they were skeptical. I was the new kid who already knew Clark, the one who didn't flinch when the fire alarm went off and the sound hit Clark like a physical blow. Back then I had a sixteen-year-old mind on the inside, but on the outside I looked eight, small and unassuming. But that has stopped now. As Clark grew taller and broader with every passing season, I let myself grow right along beside him, hitting our growth spurts together so that by the time we reached middle school the gap between us felt natural, like two friends who had simply always been there for each other.
It was actually nice to meet another Black kid in a small town where the mirror in the hallway sometimes felt like the only familiar face. Pete and I had a tight connection from day one, trading quiet jokes in the cafeteria about cafeteria food that tasted like it had been cooked by someone who hated joy. Between the four of us, we became a really tight group, the kind that stuck together through awkward school dances and late-night study sessions that mostly involved Chloe talking and the rest of us pretending to listen. Chloe… well, she talks a lot. A little too much, honestly, her voice filling every silence like she was afraid the quiet might swallow her whole. But she can talk the way she wants to talk. I'm fine with it. I've learned to let her words wash over me the same way I learned to let the world's noise pass through the Blue.
While I was navigating middle school, the family business was exploding in ways that made even Grandmother Pandora raise an eyebrow in quiet approval. My Aunt Rose—bless her ambitious heart—opened up a Luminous Magazine House right there in Metropolis. It wasn't just a catalog anymore; it was a headquarters where other people's jewelry and designer clothes were featured alongside our own pieces, glossy pages filled with models who looked like they had stepped out of dreams we had woven from light itself. Her dream came true. We are officially the talk of the fashion world now, and sometimes when I flip through one of those magazines in the quiet of my room, I still feel a small spark of pride that the hands that once struggled to hold a simple blue disk are now part of something that makes the whole planet pause and look twice.
Middle school was a whole different ball game than elementary. I became popular because of the family empire, and people tried to please me through those years, offering invitations to parties or asking for favors like I could somehow get them a discount on something from Luminous. But I never sat with the cool kids. I always sat with Clark and the others. Those are my friends, the ones who knew me before the magazine covers and the whispered rumors about the mysterious family on the hill. During those years, my sexuality awakened. I'm gay. One night, I sat down with Grandmother Pandora, my mother, and my aunts around the big oak table in the kitchen, the same one where we had eaten breakfast the morning the meteors fell, and told them everything that had been stirring inside me like a quiet blue storm.
My mom, Rashandra, just smiled, her red Mana flickering softly around her fingers the way it always does when she's feeling something deep. "Honey, you forgot who we are. Our race is free-spirited. We've lived among humans for a few years now, but we don't care about that. You don't have to be in the closet. You can be open if you choose." The words landed in my chest like a warm anchor, and I remember the way the kitchen light caught the gold rim of her coffee cup as she reached over and squeezed my hand.
So I decided to be open. In eighth grade, I told the group one afternoon behind the school bleachers where the grass was always a little too long and the wind carried the distant sound of the football team practicing. Chloe wasn't surprised. She said whenever girls tried to ask me out, I always turned them down with that same polite smile, like I already knew the answer before the question was asked. Pete came from a different kind of Black household and said, "Man, if I told my parents that, they'd probably take me to church!" I told him I understood, but my mother was fine with it, and for a moment he just looked at me with something like awe mixed with relief.
Then there was Clark. He was quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that stretched out like the Kansas sky above us, then he gave me a bone-crunching hug—the kind no human could do without thinking twice. "It's alright, Sage," he said, voice low and steady. "You'll always be my best friend."
Throughout the years, Clark and I have had this bond I really couldn't understand at first. He has been glued to me for five years, like two pieces of the same strange puzzle that the universe dropped into Smallville at the same time. Sometimes he sleeps over at my place, the two of us lying on the floor of my room with the window open so the night air could cool the blue hum that sometimes still leaked from my hands. Sometimes I sleep over at his, the old farmhouse creaking around us while we talked about everything and nothing until the stars came out. He still has that crush on the girl down the street, the one with the ponytail and the kind smile, but he stays close to me anyway, like he knows I'm the only one who can hear the same kind of silence he does.
So that's the update. It's 2003 now. I've got a twenty-year-old mind in a fifteen-year-old body. We were in middle school together, and the world is getting a lot more interesting.