Heather Elliot | District 11 | Hunger Games: The RPG

Heather Elliot | District 11 Jan 16, 2012 14:45:36 GMT -5

Quote

Post by chelsey on Jan 16, 2012 14:45:36 GMT -5

the closet adventurer.

f i r s t a n d l a s t // Heather Elliot

a g e o f s o n g s // sixteen

a n a t o m y o f ~~d a u g h t e r s~~ n i e c e s // female

f i e l d s a r e h o m e // District Eleven

t h e m e s o n g // Youth by Daughter

f a c e c l a i m // Amanda Seyfried

A P P E A R A N C E

They always tell me that I look like my mother.

Sometimes I catch Aunt Meryl’s familiar gaze, her eyes watching carefully as I slip through the corridors of our home. A tiny smile lingers on her lips as she brings her hands to her waist and shakes her head, tsktsktsk’s under her breath. “What? What is it?” “You’re the spitting image of Illyse.”

We have no photos of her, but sometimes Auntie will sit me down in front of the iron speckled mirror, pointing out the features that belong to my mother. Her bony finger trails the rusted, glassy surface of the mirror, tracing across the doe shape of my hazel eyes and the slant of my nose. “You have her eyes, Heather. When I see you, Illyse stares back at me.” In the dead of night, when my eyelids give in to the weight of a gravitating sleepiness, my subconscious sees a woman sheltered with an image that reflects myself. The laugh lines embedded on the corners of her eyes are deeper, though, and her hair is pinned up to the sides instead of being let loose. But, our blonde curls, hazel eyes, lanky frame, and freckled skin mirror each other. Her smile is wider than the cautious one I possess, for her smile stretches with no limits and no boundaries - but my lips strain when I try to imitate that illusion of happiness. She takes a pale hand of mine in her equally pale one, and pushes back a wavy strand of golden hair behind my ear. We look the same, but I know my mother is infinitely brighter than me - she radiates with the luminance of thousands of Suns, and I am only the moon in her orbit that only shines while she does.

“What’s your name, sweet heart?”

She doesn’t know who I am, yet, but I know who she is. So my arms reach out for her - trying to grasp onto the last shreds of the lost identity I have left. “I’m your daughter, I’m Heather,” I tell her, as my arms wrap around her. “I’m your daughter.” And for an infinite moment, the gears in the clock are merciful enough to freeze for at least a heartbeat, but in that heartbeat I feel more complete than I ever felt before.

The morning comes, and she is gone.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

There’s a compelling swell lodged inside my throat that fails to dissipate. It ripples inside of me like the jagged and broken surface of an ocean, and floods my mouth with satin symphonies and silky verses. Auntie tells me I’m half human half bird, and Uncle says music pumps through my veins. The songs pulse with my feather heartbeat, and it’s voices flow through my glassy aortas, and melodies build under my tissues, and arias press at my skull. And it’s only when I sing does the swelling in my throat relieve itself.

Cloaks of patience and timidity masks my insecurities. Everyday I am told that I am loved, loved, loved - so much heartbreaking words professed without anyone ever truly realizing what it means. I’ve known the warmth and comfort Auntie and Uncle have provided me - but that does not disguise the fact that I am still an orphan. Orphans are piteous creatures who are hardly spared a second’s glance. Everyday, Auntie and Uncle try to shield me away from this harsh reality - try to blind me with blissful ignorance - but no measure of refuge will pacify the flood raging behind innocence. For years, they’ve blocked me from the truth, but curiosity bubbles beneath my skin and so I climbed, and climbed, and climbed until I was over their barricade and watched with tear-blurred visions as reality hurtled towards me - I was unwanted.

But, I am gullible, and I fool myself into thinking that I am wanted. I am naïve and childish, a sixteen year old girl who still believes in fairytales - but true despair gives way to false bliss, so I allow myself to succumb to the seas of my fantasies. My existence is built off of thin optimism, and I’d much rather drown happily in blind mirages than sink in dead seas.

My hands, though, reach for tree tops and limbs and branches of the infinite sky. Adventures swim in the breezes that sway the branches I perch upon, choirs of voices whispering stories to me of a world beyond. Still, iron chains wound around the bones of my wrists and keep me bounded to this earth even while my wings are ready to take flight. So, for now, I allow myself the painful leisure of watching the world nestled in between thick leaves - but, one day, I will emerge from my chains and watch as the ground below me fades into a thick nothingness, flying straight to the horizon bordering confinement and freedom.

H I S T O R Y

The moment I took my first breath of life was the moment my mother took her last one.

The minute of my birth - a moment of “should’ve been” beauty tarnished by agonized cries and an already forgotten infant - decided the fate for my father. Aunt Meryl tells me her brother loves me, that he left not out of hatred but out of a broken heart, but the melancholy and regretful gleam in her eyes proves otherwise. One mere week alone with me (and the fading imprint of his dead wife’s corpse on the empty space next to his on their mattress), and Ryle Elliot decided to give up his hard shipped life in Eleven for one free of burdens beyond it. One morning, Meryl and Dorian Hale opened the door to their home to find their niece nestled in a bundle of blankets placed upon the cemented steps - a pathetic, and crumpled paper note tacked to the inside of it; “Take care of her.” He left me so he wouldn’t be reminded of the murder I committed every single day.

“He loves you, Heather, he does.”

Aunt Meryl’s lies, sweet with good and protective intentions, are still fabricated out of the weakest of evidence to convince even the greatest fool on earth that Ryle Elliot ever loved his daughter.

“Take care of her,” he asked, heaving his heavy responsibilities onto their own weightless and ~~once youthful~~ shoulders. Still, Aunt Meryl and Uncle Dorian stuck to their word, and - in every way pure, right, and just - they took far better care of me than anyone else ever could. (One day, I will pay them back for the roof they have sheltered me with.)

The doctors in white coats and wiry glasses told Aunt Meryl she couldn’t have children. She wept into the palms of her creased hands until the tears irrigated the cracks in her skin, her bony fingers wholly curtaining her ashamed face from the world. And when the tears evaporated and her eyes grew dry, she laid in beds for days staring at the ceiling and drifting away. “What’s wrong with Auntie?” “Nothin’, sweet heart.” And for weeks the same question poured from my mouth, constantly received with the same answer. One day, my tiny fists balled up with stubborn irritation as I stalked towards Aunt Meryl with all the thundering might a three year old possesses.

“What’s wrong, Aunt Meryl?”

Listlessly, her eyes flickered to mine, and back up to the ceiling.

“Auntie,” I say, annoyance thick in my voice. “I can help fix you. Are you sick?”

She nods, the slightly bob of her chin quivering up and down as her unwavering eyes never leave the ceiling.

“Does it hurt?”

She nods.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

She bites her lip, nods.

I climb onto the bed, kiss her cheek, and pat away at her frizzled hair. “I’ll take care of you, Auntie, I’ll always take care of you.”

For the first time in weeks, she smiles.

For a long time, I think life can always be like this for us. Three broken souls - never quite complete - clinging onto each other for a sense of fulfillment. A formulaic problem composed itself in my head - orphaned girl plus depressed woman plus broken man equals a fami -

When I am eight years old, Ava and Atimia are born.

Again, I am still a hundred piece puzzle with only ninety nine pieces to spare. I am lost, I am alone, I am afraid - but they always tell me if I keep running I'll eventually find a way home. Well, my sneaker's've teared at the seams while the sounds of my labored breathing grew into a soundtrack of my life and I can taste the salt on my lips as my legs beg to give out under me - but I still run. I still run, but the people pass me with confidence in each of their strides, because they know where they are heading. Envy beats through the crumbling cadences of my skull, and floats in the air tight spaces between those ivory blank walls and intricate pink labyrinth of my brain.

I am still the pariah.