Shelby Leviane {D8/FIN}

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shelby {♔} leviane My mother always brightened my crippling bouts of self-depreciation by telling me that my unseemly height was only an attempt to bring me closer to the sun, and for a while I believed her. It seemed as if I could graze my fingertips across the clouds if I stood on my tiptoes, and eyes that matched the clear sky could lose themselves in the rays of sun that shone down upon the yard of our home, and the hammock in which Cha spent her nights would be occupied by my own soul during the hours of early afternoon, lanky legs hanging over the side as the gentle momentum tossed me side to side. I’d twist my blonde hair around my finger, fiddling with the end as I held it up to the sun itself, shutting one eye in an attempt to match the two shades of gold. I’m interrupted by a dark head of unkempt hair making its way towards our shared room, and I swing myself ungracefully from the hammock only to be met by the firmness of the ground, and it takes me a maximum of three seconds to pull myself from the ground and make it through the door, my bare feet making contact with the creaking, wooden floors as I tiptoe down to the slightly ajar door that closed off our room from the rest of the world. “Cha?” But there’s no response so I poke my head around the door, and my eyes are met by the vision of my older sister sitting at the desk, hands gripping at the strands of night that frame her face, her vision held from mine by the sight of her shivering back, but I know that one glance upon them would reveal the stars, the ones that have fallen to the earth by some forms of desperation and hopelessness and they litter my feet like broken glass, and I step carefully over them in the same way I dodge my sister’s words, for they both cut deep enough to draw blood. I pick my way through the room carefully, wincing at every creak that floor makes known, and I exhale in relief as I crawl onto the bed, pulling my knees to my chest as I watch her intently, making note of her swinging feet and lack of awareness to the world around her, from the intrusion of my presence to the sun beginning to dip down into the sky, the bright rays that warmed the world giving way to the chilling breeze of the moon, with only the colors of orange and pink to paint the time in between. There were days when Cha would tell me about the mysteries that engulfed every second of her thought, and those days were considered neither good nor bad, only different than the others. This seemed to be a day in which the enigma of her universe was destined to be hidden from my view, and I suppose it didn’t matter, for I wouldn’t be able to wrap my mind around the full caliber of her thoughts even if they were revealed to me. On occasion I understood bits and pieces of the life she had once lived, but most of the time the fine details that were so valuable to her slipped my mind in terms of importance and more often than not I was left scraping the edges for more information on the few miniscule scenes I clung desperately to. I needed to know more about the radiance of colored lights sweeping across the dark sky and the sounds of people who simply didn’t care, because that’s what I longed to be. I wanted to be light. Because light carries radiance and warmth and hope and it’s all I long to bring to the dark that shields my sister. I long for the previous nights of our childhood in which she pulled the covers up to my chin and told me stories of travelers who wandered during the night, tracing the stars in the sky until their journey brought them to the moon, for it was their final destination in the long run. She continued by saying that when the dust of the land gave way, when their time had ticked away and they breathed their last that everything they believed in, every hope and aspiration became encapsulated in one of the millions of stars that dotted the sky and shone down upon us. They were shielding us from the monsters that hid under our bed and the ones that stood in plain sight. And it was then that I realized my sister’s vision had not always been clouded by a blanket of night, and that she’d rather write her name in the stars than be protected by them, and every past memory and haunted thought could be left behind by the sudden observance of a single name that remained just out of her reach. I suppose I wanted to write my name somewhere too, but the stars didn’t seem to be the right place for a girl who was scared of the dark and the uncertainty it brought. It fit my sister well, almost to the degree of being unsettling, for her faltering steps and stuttering words were shown in the open during the hours of day, when people only wanted to know the facts of Cha Leviane, and not the person she was striving to find. (So maybe I won’t write my name in the stars, but I might just scrawl it upon the clear slate of the afternoon sky). She told me about her thoughts once, and I had never been more terrified yet enthralled in my life. I hung eagerly on every word she spoke, unknowingly leaning closer and closer into her as I longed to be in the life she once led, no matter how much of an unknown reality it was for either of us. If she had never really lived it, how could I expect to as well? She asked me what I thought of it all once her story had wrapped up, and I had only sat and stared, eventually bringing myself to shake my head in confusion as I was left with no coherent thoughts on the meaning of anything she had just laid out in front of me. She spoke of our parent’s disbelief and the uncertainty it left lingering behind and I could only nod in response, because I believed her. There was never a doubt in my mind that every flashback and bad memory was only something of another reality, for there was absolutely no reason for her to purposely lead me astray. So I clung to the last remaining bits of sanity my sister left behind in her search for her soul as she fell to the stars, and eventually our nights were spent apart, and I began to pull the covers up to my chin myself and repeat the same old story she told me night after night in an attempt to make the dark more comforting. I could see her through the window, swaying in the night’s breeze as she stared faithfully at the stars, and a part of me wondered just how much of her was really left. {o t h e r} Shelby Leviane Age: 16 17 District 8 Gender: Female Face Claim: Signe Rasmussen Codeword: oDair

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Finished! Huge thanks to Pogue for letting me write the sister to the absolutely brilliant Cha <3

[cass]

Beautiful! You're writing is wonderful and this character is lovely <3

Accepted!~