Shards of Us

Chapter 3 – Exile with a Heartbeat

“Pick up the pace, new girl. Customers want clean mugs, not water stains," barked the diner manager.

“Yes, sorry!" Jiang Ci scrubbed harder, sleeves soaked in dishwater. Her belly, just beginning to show, pressed uncomfortably against the counter edge.

The lunch rush roared around her—clinking plates, shouted orders, and the constant ache in her spine. Still, it was better than pity. Or gossip. Or cameras.

“Here, honey." An older waitress passed her a glass of water. “You're too pale."

“I'm fine. Just tired."

“You're what, twenty?"

“Twenty-one," Jiang Ci lied.

The woman squinted at her. “Ever think about school?"

“Can't afford it."

A pause. “Well… there's this lady who runs a lapidary school downtown. Teaches stonework, cameos, all that. Maybe you'd be good at it."

Jiang Ci blinked. “Stonework?"

“You've got those fingers." She gestured. “Quick, steady. Like a jeweler."

Jiang Ci's mind flashed to the sketchbook under her hostel pillow. “Do you… have the address?"

---

The building looked like it belonged in a sepia photograph—wrought-iron balconies, chipped windowpanes, and a faded sign: *Adrienne Laurent Atelier*.

Jiang Ci hesitated at the threshold. A bell chimed as she entered.

The interior smelled of varnish and time. Gemstones twinkled under old display lamps. Behind the counter stood a silver-haired woman in a linen apron, adjusting a loupe over one eye.

“You lost?" she asked without looking up.

“No," Jiang Ci replied, voice clear. “Someone said you teach."

“I don't take amateurs."

“I'm not."

That made the woman pause. “Name?"

“Jiang… Ci."

“Sketchbook?"

Jiang Ci reached into her coat and pulled out a bundle of pages.

The woman flipped through. “Minimalist. You like negative space. And silver."

“It's what I can afford."

“Hmph. Sit." She waved toward a workbench.

Jiang Ci perched cautiously.

“Reset this." The woman handed her a chipped brooch with a loose garnet.

Jiang Ci's fingers moved instinctively—testing the tension, adjusting the claw setting, steady under pressure.

The woman watched in silence. Then: “I'm Adrienne Laurent. You clean well, speak little, and don't touch my whiskey. We'll see how long you last."

---

Weeks passed.

Jiang Ci worked mornings at the diner, afternoons in the atelier. She swept floors, polished stones, and learned how to coax fire from lab diamonds and shadows from sapphire.

“Don't fight the stone," Adrienne would say. “Guide it."

Jiang Ci nodded, stomach swelling under her apron.

One afternoon, Adrienne found her sketching a cage-like pendant design on a napkin.

“What's that?"

“Starlight," Jiang Ci said. “Trapped inside silver."

The older woman studied it. “You named it?"

“'JC.' My initials."

Adrienne grunted approval. “Keep that one."

---

When labor started, it was six weeks early.

Jiang Ci gasped, collapsing beside the workbench. Adrienne didn't panic. She called a cab, barked orders at the ER staff, and refused to leave the waiting room.

Hours later, Jiang Ci held a tiny, pinkish child against her chest.

“He's early," the nurse warned, “but breathing on his own."

Jiang Ci touched his fingers. “Glaze," she whispered. “Like the sheen between glass and morning."

Adrienne stood in the doorway, arms folded. “Fragile things need strong names."

“Then Glaze it is."

---

A month passed. Adrienne returned from the pawn shop with an incubator receipt and a small, secondhand cradle.

Jiang Ci tried to protest.

“You'll repay me with work," Adrienne snapped. “No one lives here for free."

That night, Jiang Ci rocked Glaze to sleep on the atelier's rooftop, city lights flickering in the haze.

“I don't know who you'll become," she whispered, voice thick with emotion, “but you were never a mistake."

She clutched him tighter.

“You're the reason I'll never let the past find us."