Rye//D4//FIN
Jan 17, 2018 16:10:30 GMT -5
Post by Sleepy Fluttershy on Jan 17, 2018 16:10:30 GMT -5
Name: Rye
Age: 18
Gender: female
District: 4
Once upon a time, there was a lonely half-deaf fisherman. He didn't care much about anyone because he never had a family. He was long past his reaping age, therefore there wasn't anything left for him to be afraid of. His only joy was his boat and the ocean was his sanctuary.
Every morning he would come out of his house and breathe in the smell of the ocean, then board his boat and sail into the unknown. Every evening he came back with a sack full of fish. He only sold a small part of it to his neighbour to pay his taxes and buy fresh water. Everything else he needed was provided by the ocean. Nobody needed old Harp that much as to try and make friends with him - and Harper Gulf had never felt any need in a sympathetic human being.
This scenario went on and on, like clockwork, the same thing happened every day... Until it didn't.
One day he went outside to see that a strange basket had washed up on a shore. And what he saw inside it was hard to believe. There was a little child - a one-year-old girl gnawing on her thumb like it wasn't at all unusual for her to float across the water alone for who knows how much time. The old man picked her up and brought her home. When he took a closer look at the child, there was a small wooden handmade medallion on her chest with two letters scratched on it: "R. Y. E." So that was what he named her. It was a name just as good as any other, after all. He didn't bother to look for the girl's parents for more than a month, then made a decision to keep her. The old man had no idea that on this very morning when he fished a basket out of the water, a young girl was standing by the ocean miles away, running back and forth, crying for Rina Yvonne Ember.
For a few weeks the girl responded to her mother's tears with a cry, like she could hear her over the distance, but then got used to the old Harp who raised her as his own granddaughter. Years passed and the child grew up to be a living copy of her mother whom she didn't know. Her beautiful half-brown, half-blonde hair was long and straight, usually wet, her body covered in sand due to the fact that when she wasn't studying or helping around the household, she was swimming circles in the ocean. Her hands were always covered in calluses from mending fishing nets and cleaning Harp's boat. The man didn't give the girl his last name - she just drew an indistinct flower when she was asked to sign something.
The grumpy fisherman was the only father, friend and teacher she had ever known because he preferred to keep her at home all the time and didn't let her go to school. They read books, sang songs and wrote funny stories together when the sun was setting. Those quiet evenings after a long day of work were the best time of Rye's life. When she was eight, she found a tiny kitten on a road and brought her home. Since then, there were three of them - Grandpa, Kit and her, sitting by the table, laughing, talking, just being together - like a real family. The old man told her stories about the orphanage he had grown up in, about the day when he found her in the water. And when he taught her songs about the sea and they sang in unison with the kitten, a hint of a sparkle appeared in the child's huge deep brown eyes.
However, everything changed when she turned eleven. Her "grandfather" became more distant and gloomy than he had ever been, his attitude towards the girl started to change. At first, he was just obsessively doing the laundry every single night instead of talking to her. Then he began having his meals separately from her - swimming away to the sea in his boat with a couple of sandwiches, returning when she was already sleeping. Then he sent her to the training centre to learn to protect herself. She had never been the career type and in her social habits she took after the only person she was close with - so everyone knew better than to start a conversation with the odd tomboy kid who spent hours and hours exercising with a knife or an axe. She hated violence, hated the games, hated the idea of murder, but this was the only way to let her anger out when she suffered from her "grandfather's" attitude. He didn't want to see her - she didn't understand why, but then one day it became crystal clear.
He accused her of poisoning his soup, claimed to be choking on something... She told him it wasn't her but all she got in return was a cold stare. It was getting worse every day - he found poisoned glitter in his food and clothes, told her he was allergic to fish and only chewed on stale bread in the corner. One day he started complaining about Kit's meowing, blaming her for bringing the pet into his home, and when the girl came back from training two weeks after it began, the cat was gone. She spent hours wandering around the district, but couldn't find her pet anywhere. The girl almost stopped talking - and when she did speak, only a quiet whisper would come out of her pale mouth.
Rye turned thirteen and her second reaping was nearing. No sign of worry crossed her grandfather's face when she woke up and headed to the square, unlike the year when she first reached the reaping age. No "good luck", not even a formal "may the odds...". Just silence.
The moment she was back, she knew something was wrong. The whole cabin was turned over, and the boat was gone. Not even a note on the table, not a clue about where he could have disappeared to. He wasn't coming back, she could sense it, and time confirmed her guesses. She stopped going to the training centre three months later - he would have wanted her there, but he wasn't around to tell her what to do anymore. He was gone and so she went fishing on a rock by herself, silently selling half of what she caught and eating the rest, putting price tags on every fish to avoid talking. She forgot what a smile was, her lips were frozen in the moment when she lost the family she had been so lucky to find. Every morning started with a feeling of pain - and guilt because she kept thinking that she was the reason for his disappearance. Why would she feel any different? Nobody ever told her what paranoia was.
The old man was everything she had held dear and now when it all was gone, she didn't know who she was anymore. Her whole life was about being with him, helping, talking. Even the fights over the last few years gave her something to think about. Like him, she was friendless, grumpy, and her loss added serious trust issues to the pile of insecurities in her head. She had never known any other way to live - the one her grandfather preferred felt right before so she didn't bother to study other people and their social habits. They were weird. Loud. Silly. Laughing at things that weren't funny. Chasing crushes that weren't worth their time. Why would she follow their example? Nevertheless, they were happy while she was grieving.
The future was a cloud of nonexistent fog in her mind - dim and frightening. Every word came out with a struggle because she couldn't stop thinking something was terribly wrong with the way she had led her life. No goal, no dreams except for a desperate wish to return the old times. She found herself in him and now when he was gone, she felt like a part of her soul was torn away and lost at sea with him.
Days of endless routine came and went, and the only thing to hold on to were those old nets and a ruin of a house, in which she felt the warm presence of his true self, screeching lullabies to her worn out mind. Rotten wood and torn rope held the glitter of hope that she couldn't see in anything else.
