Episode 1: The Coal Layer

“I was looking for a doll or a book, and I found a baptismal certificate. A piece of paper that, in one second, changed the chemical composition of my world. Mother’s name: Inka. Father’s name: A slash (/). Emptiness.”

— Magma Star

In geology, coal is formed under immense pressure, deep underground, waiting centuries for someone to bring it to the light. My childhood was that kind of coal. Black, solid, and full of energy waiting to ignite, but lacking the transparency of a diamond.

I was lucky. Not that paper, bureaucratic luck, but human, tangible luck. I was adopted by my mom and dad when I was only six months old. They didn’t take me for money, as sometimes happens in cold tales of soul-trading. They took me because they were the most loving couple I had ever known. Their love was my first home, my first solid massif. But coal always hides a secret.

When I was ten years old, in that childish impatience before a birthday, I started digging through drawers looking for a hidden gift. Instead of a gift, I found the truth. That was when my great game of adaptation began. I became the finest sediment, the one that seeps into every crack to please. I was afraid—if I wasn’t the perfect daughter, would they reject me? If I spoke my true mind, would that baptismal certificate become a wall between us?

For a long time, I didn’t know who I was. I was “indebted” for all that love, education, and attention they gave me. Only much later, when they grew old and I became the one holding their hands, did I realize: coal is not just a black stone. It is concentrated heat. My adoption was not my weakness, but my first great tectonic victory.

Today, in Paris, as I write these lines, I am no longer afraid of empty spaces on paper. Because I know—a rock is not defined by who created it, but by what it has survived.