phillipa arden - d4 - fin

[gem]

Name: Phillipa "Pippa" Lynn Arden
Age: 16
Gender: Female
District/Area: District Four
Appearance:

seems approachable, right? lmao wrong

Personality:

kind of an asshole

History:

"i never take anything seriously because i never learned how to process my emotions properly "

Other: i don't have an opening to reserve her fc and if you steal her i will cry

also bear with me i'm a bit rusty

[gem]

PHILLIPA ARDEN

Her hands were capable of many things. They could speak. They could deliver blow after blow after blow. They could kill a man.

And now? Now they held moons.

Phillipa let her slim fingers loosen from the fists that they had formed, staring down at them with a dissipating frustration. Eight angry crescents glared back up at her. Despite her neatly trimmed nails, the indents were unforgiving, marring into the calluses of her palms. She let her hands fall to her sides. The ocean timidly lapped against her bare calves as if it could sense her irritation slowly deflating from her chest. Slowly, surely, her breathing fell into the rhythm of the steadfast waves. A small part of her wished to scream out into the horizon, to dig her aching hands into her unkept hair, anything to release the tension in her bones, but she didn't let herself.

She was above a few sneers and snide remarks. Let them bathe in their money, she thought bitterly. The spoiled always mistake wealth for armor.

She used to destroy herself whenever she was angry. She used to kick at the ground until her feet pleaded her to stop. She used to beat the nearest unfortunate training dummy shitless until her knuckles blossomed into bruises. It was always her against the world, it seemed. But it was awfully convenient to destroy herself, wasn't it? She was doing all of the world's work for it. Not to say that it hadn't been busy long before she inflicted cuts and bruises and scrapes upon herself.

One dead sister, one deaf mother, one distant father, one small brother.

When she was little, she thought she was normal. Thought that everyone could speak with their hands, thought that one missing meal a day was trivial, thought that everyone only had enough to scrape by. Her world was a small, rickety old house built dangerously close to the unreliable sand of the beach. Most of her days were filled with the ocean and the thick, salty air that hovered above it. It wasn't too bad, really, kneeling with her sparrow bone legs in the sand while she searched in vain for unbroken shells. The sea gulls crooned above her in an incessant chorus, the waves crashed diligently against the shore, the sparse fronds of grass waved solemnly in the gentle breeze. When she was small, the only thing that accompanied her was the subtle rumble in her stomach and the memory of her sister, who had died when Phillipa was a mere five years of age. Life was just okay back then.

It was before the world opened up to her. There was more than a small house and the sea, more than a piece of bread for dinner, more to the world than she could ever fathom.

With a new job came new money and with that came a new house and a new diet and a new sibling. When Phillipa's father had landed a better job in the fisheries, they were still irrefutably in the lower middle class of District Four, but it was better than nothing. She missed her the sea and her old house, despite the constant draft and the brittle, creaking wooden floors, but she certainly didn't miss the dull hunger that had gnawed in her stomach. She didn't miss being alone, either. She was six when James had been born. There wasn't to remember of the night, other than the whine of the wind against their roof and the rain gently tapping against the windows. Unlike her old house, neither air nor water found their way inside, not through a leak in the ceiling or a poorly placed slat in the walls. If she had been old enough, she might have had the conscious to be grateful.

James was not quite what Phillipa had in mind. Younger siblings were for bossing around, weren't they? Their sole purpose was doing your chores and bowing to your every command. To say the least, she was disappointed. Unfortunately, they seemed to both inherit their mother's stubbornness. Phillipa would give an order, James would ignore it. She had grown to be quite the independent child with no other siblings to entertain her when she was younger. James learned to play by himself with no qualms once he had been told "no" enough by his older sister. Phillipa almost saw her younger self in her brother. Small and thin, discovering the streets that surrounded their house. There was no longer the ocean, just the dew-laden cobblestone streets and crumbling alleyways. They had moved deeper into the district, deeper into the bustle of life, and James was fascinated by all of it. As she watched him from her schoolwork, she saw seashells. She saw waves and seagulls and grass that cut her when she walked through it. Later in life, maybe they'd appreciate their similarities, but at the point, their mutual short fuses and affinities for holding impossibly long grudges was a nuisance.

If Phillipa had to be honest, her brother and her were scarily similar, stretching past even their dispositions. Same wide, dark eyes and thick brows. Their skin tanned in the summer and lightened in the winter, freckles fading when the sun did. Bright cheeked smiles, square jaws, broad foreheads, downturned noses. They strikingly resembled both each other and their mother. It was always amusing to her. Neither of them had inherited their father's narrowed face or hawkish sneer, or the way his chin jutted out from his profile. Their resemblance to their mothers seemed to further his absence even more. It was enough to even spark unsavory rumors about her mother, but she refused to hear a word of any of it; her mother was too good for that. Still, Phillipa couldn't see herself in him, not physically. His hair was a shock of blonde, hers a mousy brown. Eyes heavy lidded and blue, but hers where clear and brown. She liked to think of herself as attractive, despite her uneven skin and a nose that seemed to widen instead of taper. She had certainly seen worse. She didn't necessarily fancy how childish most of her features made her, but she did take pride in looking so similar to James and her mother.

There was one thing, however, that James inherited from their mother that Phillipa didn't. She knew it was hereditary, she knew it might even come to haunt her some day. But James... well. On his first day of school, their teacher noticed he wasn't following as well as the others. When their mother had been called to be spoken to, she knew. Phillipa knew. Everyone but poor James knew the kind of road he was walking now.

Phillipa did her best to learn what she could from her mother as James slowly, slowly lost his hearing. She remembered learning 'hello', a small salute from her temple. 'Brother' bringing one L-shaped hand into another. Her mother had deafened considerably even in the amount of time that Phillipa had been alive. Phillipa was twelve when she started leaning. It was a good a time as ever with half of her family deafening. She didn't mind the extra work; though she would never say it aloud, she loved her family to death. By the time she was 16, her mother could barely hear a thing and James, now ten, was losing the little he still had left. Phillipa could speak well to them with her hands, but it didn't stop any of the guilt she felt. Every noise she heard that her family couldn't left her lips pursed. Every note of music was a betrayal.

Not that she would admit any of it. Phillipa did not create a very caring reputation for herself, but she had stopped caring about that long ago.

School wasn't so terrible in her earlier years. She was constantly what some might call the "trouble child" in her classes. She couldn't seem to hold her tongue, she couldn't seem to get along with anyone, couldn't seem to listen well even with two functioning ears. By the time she was fourteen, she had thrown a lot of her decency out the window. A small, silenced part of herself wanted to shed the veneer of reckless flippancy and silver-tongued responses, but it had grown on her. It was a part of her whether she liked it her not, and she couldn't very well just let go of it all. Even in academy, she couldn't swallow her pride far enough to not earn her punishment drills. She cursed herself for it, but at the same time, she didn't know how to ease into the few real poster children that were scattered among her classes.

Phillipa kicked absently into the ground, the wet sand squelching between her toes. The water embracing her legs was cool, sending ripples of goosebumps along her skin. She was usually cold, even without the water. She blamed it on her thinness. Despite the reliable, full meals placed on the table by her ever absent father, she couldn't seem to pack anything onto her bones. Maybe her metabolism was just too fast, maybe she trained too hard, but regardless, she was too light for her own good. She blamed her height on her short parents and her poor diets from when she was younger. It wasn't fair that James already seemed to be gaining on her, both in weight and height. She was supposed to the the bigger sister, for Ripred's sake. Despite the relentless teasing, both good natured and not, she shrugged it off. She was nothing if not fueled by spite.

You can't do this, you can't do that, well, Phillipa didn't much care for what she was told. She had too much pride to back down from anything that sounded vaguely like a challenge. It would get her killed some day. She liked to pretend that she could flip off competitive remarks, but she never seemed to be able to. It didn't matter if it was a race or reaching for something on the top shelf. For some reason, she always felt like she had to prove herself. She had to train harder, she had to prove her strengths, she had to be more than a small, lower class girl who had more bark than bite. Weaknesses were something she did her best to shrug away from herself. She was not weak. She was not. She could do anything she set her mind to. The thought made her square up her narrow shoulders.

Anything.

Phillipa had a knack for being underestimated. Small, wiry, a girl who's family could afford food and training academy but not much else. But she always liked to surprise people, whether it be by sharp words or sharp blades. She wasn't strong, but she was quick. Knives were her best friend, the weapon she showed an immediate affinity to the moment she started training. She wasn't exactly a bloodthirsty killer, but she did admire the grace of the weapon. The simplicity yet the danger. She didn't have skill for much else, except for note tying thanks to her highly coordinated fingers, but it was enough to get by without too much ridicule. Knives were respectable. It's just her lack of competence for other things and her economic class where she fell short.

She brushed away a stray strand of her brown hair. She did her best to take care off, but most days, she slacked. If she didn't brush her coarse waves, she'd just pull them up into a bun and call it good and done. Her nails were uneven and broken, packed with day old sand. Most of her clothes were ill fitting, wearing her much stouter mother's in an effort to save money. Fortunately, with all of the extra room, she could fit in a lot of extra layers to warm her cold body. It had its perks. She might not physically present herself in the best light, but actions spoke louder than any expensive jewelry or tailored outfit.

As Phillipa stared out at the waves, she felt the last of the irritation fading from her bones. She hated that she took so much personally, that behind her sarcasm and sharp witted words was a girl too sensitive for her own good. She always dealt with her emotions, her weakness, if you asked her, standing out in the water. There was something about the ocean that soothed her, whether it reminded her of her far off childhood, or if it was just the constant, strong rhythm that splashed against her skin. So open, so genuine. She almost wished to be like it, but every time she said something remotely serious, she thinly veiled it with some sly joke. Hearing the words 'I love you' made her visibly cringe. She was often rude to strangers and ruder still to people she had actually gotten to know, her blunt manor something to a defense mechanism for the affection. She dealt with what she felt, she tossed it aside, and returned to her comfort behind the careless, sardonic front she so masterfully put on. No one, except for maybe her mother and James, questioned it.

Phillipa let out one final breath, clutching the hem of her oversized shirt, and started to retreat back to shore. The air whisked away the water that had beaded up against her skin, drawing coolness into her short but slim legs. Why did it take so long for her to recover from a few well worded insults? Even now, the witty comebacks flooded into her mind all to late. Couldn't she just let things go? She had plenty of friends. She was not lonely or scared of speaking. Sure, she might ramble, she might feel embarrassment that she'd never admit to having, but she was never scared. She even dared to say that she had a decent sense of humor, albeit not very refined.

She took the chance to speak whenever she could, seeing as there wasn't a lot of verbal communication that happened in the house. Some pitied her for her deafened family, but she just brushed it off. She was not "poor little Pippa" who had to "deal with" her mother and brother's disabilities. They were the best thing that could have ever happened to her. She never said it, but she would fight to the ends of the earth for them. Sure, people might call her a snappy, stubborn asshole, but there was no arguing that she was loyal to a T when she wanted to be. Love didn't come easily to Phillipa; she liked to throw it out with the rest of those slippery, annoying emotions, but when it did come, it was fierce and almost too heavy to bear.

The breeze caressed the smooth planes of her face, bringing the smell of salt and fish into her dry mouth. Things weren't all that bad. Phillipa liked to pretend to be cynical, but there was always a vicious part of her that always looked up towards the light. For her own sake, she wished she would just pick one or the other: happy or sad, fake or real, rude or nice. But not everything was black and white, was it?

Her legs brought her all the way back into town, to their narrow but tall house that stood, one among money, on the damp streets of District Four. James must have felt the draft of cool air when Phillipa entered, because he turned just seconds after she had arrived from the table where he did his homework. He signed 'hi' to her quickly before returning to his work. Her chapped lips almost pressed into a smile. He was more diligent than she ever was with schoolwork. She ruffled his hair playfully, which earned her an annoyed look and a stuck out tongue. Of the two, he was considerably neater and more meticulous about himself and his things than Phillipa could ever fathom being. But it suited him. She let him resume what he was doing and settled next to the window.

Overcast clouds clung to the sky, but she didn't mind too much. All she cared for was the quiet song of waves in the distance. Somewhere, far away, her father worked. She knew it would be dark for a long time before he came home again. Despite his almost complete absence, she couldn't help but miss him. She missed a lot of things. Shells, gulls, grass. The presence of an older sister that had died from something Phillipa couldn't even remember the name of. The way her mother used to sing, but now, out of fear of sounding horrible and not knowing, it was no more. She sighed and drew her nobby knees to her chin, glad that James was too deep into his papers to notice the uncharacteristic sobriety of her mood.

To nearly everyone she knew, she was a fierce girl with firebrand eyes and a blazing spirit, but to be honest? She didn't know how long she could keep it up.

[gem]

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm done

[Deleted]

"There was something about the ocean that soothed her, whether it reminded her of her far off childhood, or if it was just the constant, strong rhythm that splashed against her skin. So open, so genuine. She almost wished to be like it..."

in love! with all my heart: