Della Dambe considers herself very, very lucky.

When she fails to take her first step, her parents know that she is going to die; when they graduate her from a stroller to a wheelchair, they expect her to get a few years out of use out of it, at most. They’re surprised and delighted when they discover her magical affinity for wheels, when she starts inventing little poems to go faster and manage difficult sidewalks, when she fixes a popped tire on the highway with a clever rhyme; they still do not expect her to live.

At the age of nine she tries on a pair of heelys; they don’t quite suffice. She moves on to rollerskates, and mutters over them for a while in pleading tones, and then she stands up for the first time in her life and glides around in them like she’s been practicing for years.

She laughs, giddily, until she loses her voice; her father weeps; her mother calculates.

Her parents, hoarding their remaining time with her, had failed to educate her beyond the very basics; she needs to do an unfathomable amount of work to catch up. But she’s brilliant, and desperate, and perpetually delighted by life, and by the time she’s fourteen her mother has secured her an invitation to the scholomance and she considers herself ready to attend. Her chances still aren’t good, really, without an enclave, but she has hope and ambition and enough happiness that it makes her head spin and that seems like more than enough to be getting along with.

Her head is shaved; she’s wearing rollerskates, as per usual, and she’s taking three spare pairs with her, and beyond that she can only carry basic utilities and clothing and a few little crystal wheels that work very, very well for mana storage, if she remembers to roll them around once in a while.

She’s whisked away, at the appropriate time, and she beams with absolute delight.