Post by Kulvar on May 15, 2013 18:42:24 GMT -5
Anice Rehling,District Seven Female: The Blind Enchantress
[/u]“I know what you want to do and you shouldn’t. Don’t pity me. I don’t feel sorry for myself and you shouldn’t either.”[/color][/center][/i]
"Where do you think you're going?" my mother asks. There isn't a drop of concern, or the hint of love, in her voice. There never has been when it comes to me. Contempt, sure, but never caring or concern. These concepts, I know, aren't foreign to my mother, or father for that matter, though he's never said a kind word to me, as I've heard her to my sister and brother. I've heard the love in the voice of my mother when she's spoken to my father. I've heard the concern when she's told my brother to be careful with his axe. I've heard the caring whisper in her voice when she's cooed over my sister's twins.
But not for me. I nearly killed my mother when I came into this world, and I don't think she's ever quite forgiven me for it. I know my father hasn't. He thinks I'm entirely useless. If only he knew what my silvered tongue had done for him.
I know these things, but have never felt them directed at me. I am thought of as nothing more than a burden by my parents. Someone that they are required to tolerate and care for simply because I am their daughter.
If the community of District Seven wouldn't shun them for it, I'm certain they'd have turned me out of the house long ago. I am their inescapable burden. The tiny, runt of a girl who nearly killed her mother and had the audacity to be born with sightless eyes.
"I'm going out to watch the sunset," I say. I count the steps as I move through the house. I'd call it home, but you have to like a place to turn it from a house to a home. And I'm tolerated, not liked, here and the feelings are just a mutual.
My mother scoffs. I hear her growl. It is a low, guttural noise and something entirely not befitting a woman. Apparently my comment struck a nerve. Knowing that drive a smile onto my face.
"We both know you can't see the nose on your tiny face. Where are you going?" my mother snaps.
Her distress pushes a larger smile onto my face. Her barbed comments and insults once cut me deep, but no longer. I know I don't need her. I know what buttons to push to get what I want.
My father has called me useless before. He just doesn't understand the way my silver and glib is as useful, or more useful than, as his axe. In his eyes, his smallest, youngest, blind daughter won't ever win a credit for her family. What he doesn't know is that I could crumble his world to sawdust with but a few words. There have been nights where he has gone to bed hungry and I with a full stomach because I talked my way into a meal.
"I'm going nowhere far," I say. It's the truth. I'm not going to go far, just somewhere I'm appreciated. Liked even. I stop by the door and feel for the smooth wooden walking stick. It was made for me by Chase, the kind-hearted son of the doctor. It's meant to help me get around. Most of the I don't need it. "And don't you worry, I'll be near a set."
"You know I do worry about you," my mother says.
What she means is that she worries about the negative attention I'll bring to the Rehling household by being out when everyone should be in front of a video screen watching the Twenty-Seventh Hunger Games unfold.
I've already talked my way into an agreement with most of the Peace Keepers here. Even the new ones from the Capitol won't pester me. Most of them seem to pity the little girl with the dead eyes. The others... Well, let's just say that listening is almost as important as talking. It's never ceased to amaze me what people will say with the right sequence of questions, and what lengths they'll go to to avoid having things repeated. With the right words, I'm everyone's best friend, or subtlest enemy. With the right information, anyone will fold to gilded and honeyed words.
I know there's no whipping post in my future.
"I know you do. And it touches me," I lie. I find my walking stick and pick it up. "I'll be careful."
And I'm out through the door before my mother can get another biting retort in. I do so love getting the last word in.
I move with careful, quick, and measured steps away from the house. I know the count and direction for anywhere I want to go in District Seven. It's taken a lot of memorization, but I think it's worth it. I swipe the tip of my walking stick ahead of me. While I can navigate with little to no trouble, it's the unseen, mobile obstacles that can cause me trouble and trip me up. So I either knock them away with the stick, or know they're there and can navigate around them.
While my steps are quick by my standards, it still takes me a fair amount of time to get out into the woods. I pause as my feet leave the hard packed dirt and stone of the 'city' behind and I know I've entered the forest. I take a few deep breaths.
I love the way the trees smell. The shock of pine around me, the tint of earth below me, the fading wild flowers that persist despite the Peace Keeper's every attempt to stamp them out. They are sort of like District Seven in that regard. Stamp on us and we just get back up, hardier and stronger. The thought twists my mouth into a genuine smile.
I wait, listening. It's quiet here, the quiet of the forest though. Not the quiet of the settlement. Here, the quiet is accompanied by the sounds of nature. From afar I hear the call of a bird, the rustle of leaves as some critter moves about. The silence of the 'city' is just that.
Silence dead enough to make the ears ring.
I wait and listen and enjoy for a ten count. I then focus in on where I am wanting to go and start my walk further into the woods. I continue to count my steps as I go along, though I know that navigating the man made structures is far easier than moving through the trees.
Even someone with eyesight can get turned around and lost in the forest. But this hardly deters me. It isn't my first time out among the trees that I imagine stretching into the sky. The sound of rustling branches in the wind so high up that I imagine they stretch all the way to space.
Before long, and only two trips over a raised root, I catch their voices on the wind. I smile. These are people I would call friends. I do call friends. People who don't shun me because I can't reliably run among the trees. People who don't mind that I'm so much smaller than them.
These are people I like. People who like me, and hearing their voices on the wind helps to direct my steps to our own little meeting place. A few minutes later and I'm pushing aside the low hanging branches to our own little sanctum.
"Hey guys," I say generically. I stop just past the branches, listening to their response, waiting to hear someone I may have missed in my approach.