clara nadin / d6. ( fin )

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

fifteen | pisces | district six

- a dreamer with nowhere to go -

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

clara.

dad collects banned books.

that probably shouldn't be the first thing that i tell you about myself, right? but i feel like it's the most important thing about me, like it's the one thing in this entire world that has shaped the person that i turned into. and i know, i know, you're going to tell me that i'm only fifteen, just barely turned it last moon cycle, but i don't know what to tell you. my dad collects banned books, and i've lived my entire life in their fictional worlds. that's it. that's all you need to know.

i think, to be honest, that it helps that we're here in six and not somewhere like twelve, where everything is hard to find, much less luxuries like the lives that exist between the pages of books from another lifetime. and they're just, ripred they're so much better than any of the books that the capitol lets us read, the ones that have been read through and checked and double checked for anything that might make us want to rise up against them, or for anything that would make us feel independent, make us feel alive. i think that's super unfair—i think plenty of people would be able to read them and still realize that the capitol is in charge, that they have all the weapons and the manpower and just, the power. i think that people would be able to think for themselves! is that naive? dad tells me that it is all the time, that i haven't seen enough of the world to really know how anyone would react.

maybe he's right. i'm only fifteen.

i haven't been to eleven, haven't roamed the wide open spaces or felt the pangs of hunger that so many people all across the lower districts suffer from every day. i've never stared wide eyes at the eyes, just praying for it to rain so that i would have some extra water. my life has been a long series of happy moments, moments of content and carefree living. sure, mom disappeared when i was little, walked out the front door to get milk and then just never came back, but that was so long ago that i can't even hardly remember her. sometimes, when i'm dreaming, i think that i can hear her voice, singing me a lullaby, but mostly i only have memories of pa and i.

and i like it like that.

he's always been kind.

i think it's possible that he misses her, a lot, probably all the time, but he's always done a good job of making sure that i don't need to. sometimes, when people ask, i wish that i had stories about her that i could tell, that i could bury my nose in a book all about her just so that i could know where i come from, but pa always got a little sad look in his eyes when i came home from school and asked about her because the other kids couldn't believe i didn't have a mom, that i only had him, so i stopped asking one day and i don't think i'll ever ask again. i don't like it when he's sad. i'd do anything to make sure he stays happy for the rest of his days.

he started collecting the books before she left though. he's been collecting them his entire life, he told me once. he explained how they'd been handed down by his father, and his father before him. there hasn't been that many generations since the dark days, but all of ours have collected the things that they shouldn't have, probably because they had them protected and hidden away since before they were banned, which makes sense to me. i still don't understand why they got banned, but dad tells me that i'll get it one day, that for now i should just enjoy the stories and make sure i don't tell anyone that i have them. so for now, i just read them in the house, curl up on the big window seat that overlooks the cobblestone street in front of our brownstone steps and drown myself in words.

i think my favorites are the love stories.

is that cliche?

i think i don't care, even if it is. they make me happy. dad is a teacher, but he's also a book-binder as a hobby, and he re-bound so many of the books he's collected, given them all beautiful marbled covers and embossed their titles in gold or silver. i love them like that, as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside. hanging on his office door is this sign that i made him when i was still really little. i don't remember anymore where i got the piece of wood, but i painted in cursive letters 'book doctor' onto it. pa had to help me with the string i wanted to attach to it to he could hang it on his door, but that's okay. even today, i'm proud of my work, proud that he's never taken it down.

do you see now? how the books surround me?

dad collects banned books, and they are my life-blood, the things that have made me who i am. i've traversed across wild and over-grown moors, swung through a jungle on a vine. i've breathed in the salt air of the sea, felt the wind and waves whip through my hair and across my cheeks. i have fallen in and out of love so many times that i cannot keep track.

i am made of ink and bone. i am a banned story. and i will not apologize for it.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

.  fin .
ripred_bot

[Python]

"my life has been a long series of happy moments, moments of content and carefree living"

but what if - hear me out - we ruin her life? just a suggestion ( °꒳° )

accepted ✔