tulip barrow / district 10 / fin

[andromache s. ⚔️ [d1b] sucy]

   

🌷 

tulip barrow, 16

district 10

[andromache s. ⚔️ [d1b] sucy]

1. 

Sprouted from the ground, a child with no mother or father to be found, left on the steps of a chapel. Tulip Barrow was taken in by a spinster, a Mizzy Barrow, who raised and slaughtered lambs for a living. Mizzy wasn't her real name. It was a nickname that came from being called Ms for so many years. To Tulip, she was Mom. She was seventy-two when she adopted Tulip. She spoiled her rotten during those first few years. Whatever she wanted from the shops were hers. Every dress, every doll. Never, however, did Mizzy Barrow shield Tulip from the facts of life in District Ten. In the spring, when her namesake bloomed, Tulip was drafted to work alongside her mom and the farmhands throughout lambing season. 

Tulip's first lamb had its tail bitten off by its mother. The ewe, with coffin shaped pupils and backwards bending legs, looked at her as dumbly as ever while she fixed up the lamb. Tulip named her Boo. The lamb was a girl, and her mother never liked her. She'd bitten off her tail that first day while cleaning her, and never got the iron taste of blood out of her mouth. They couldn't sell her. She was the first lamb Tulip ever brought to slaughter. Such a pity, that there was no Mizzy Barrow ewe to take her in like there had been for Tulip. 

They ate Boo on New Year's Eve the year that Tulip turned ten. Slaughtering the animal was one thing, eating her themselves was another. Mizzy Barrow consoled her daughter by reassuring her that this way, Boo's life wasn't wasted. A life should never, ever be wasted. 


2.

Twelve was a big year for Tulip. She got her first period that year. She woke up, like she often did during the night, and went to the bathroom. When she got there, she found blood in her underwear. Tulip thought she was dying. She knew about procreation. She knew about breeding the ewes. She didn't know a thing about humans or how any of that worked, and so she hid it. Mizzy found out the next day on a quest for forgotten socks to add to the washing machine. She peeled back the blankets and saw the blood.

That night they had a big long talk. To find out they were so like the animals they raised made Tulip ill. The lamb from the freezer didn't taste so good anymore. Eventually, Tulip stopped eating it. She stopped eating lamb, then mutton, then every other red meat. By the end of the year she didn't eat poultry or fish either. Mizzy tried arguing with her at first, but eventually gave in. 

Mom, as long as someone's eating them, it doesn't matter that I'm not. 

It was her first year entering the Reaping too. Mom, she wanted to know, after she was home, afrer she was safe again, what happens to the bodies of the kids that lose? Mizzy had no answer for her, but she did have a hot chocolate with whiskey stirred through it. That became the drink of choice every year after a successfully dodged Reaping. 

At various points through the years, supplies of vegetables and grains from Ten waxed and waned, but Tulip stubbornly refused to give in no matter what, choosing to live off the milk and cheese Mizzy started making after Tulip swore off meat. And every spring, her namesake bloomed, and she birthed new lambs. Delicate little things. How lucky they were to never grow into full sheep, to stay less than twelve forever.


3.

Tulip Barrow is sixteen, and a land owner already, making her one of District Ten’s most eligible bachelorettes, even if she’s shorter than most, if not all, of her classmates. Mizzy Barrow died one year ago, closing in on her nineties and always shivering regardless of the temperature. No more lambs are slaughtered on Tulip Barrow’s farm; she’s setting herself up to become a top supplier of sheep milk and cheese, building onto the infrastructure Mizzy lovingly, if reluctantly, invested in for her daughter’s sake.

And besides, these days,  Tulip couldn’t slaughter them if she tried. As she’s gotten older she’s become more and more gentle. The hardy child is long gone, replaced by a delicate yet vibrant young woman, staunch in her opinions and beliefs whether they’re right or not. Further and further she grows from the dirt she was born in, for better or worse; it doesn’t matter to Tulip, because living without a creed is living wastefully. 

[andromache s. ⚔️ [d1b] sucy]

ripred_bot 

i got to the end of writing this bio and i can’t help thinking that tulip is low-key like john “jigsaw” kramer with this whole “grateful to be alive” thing 

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]