VIOLET SAIRSURROW : D.9 : FINISHED

The fingers point as I walk through town, my small feet skipping on the hitting the cobblestones, a smirk

lighting up on my snow-kissed face. Billows of frost raise into the air from my parted lips, my narrowed eyes staring straight ahead; right into the light that reaches up over the horizon. The widened eyes of a small child gaze at me with fascination, she has probably lived here her whole life, in the middle of the worn-down village. I have never gotten the chance to look at one of the small shacks as I grew up, I was an outsider. "The Sairsurrows," the older ones gossip about us often. "Especially that strange daughter of theirs, do you see how bright and evil her eyes are. And she paints them! What a disgrace to such a large family. I grieve for her dear mother, she seems like a nice lady." I pass them and don't say a word, I know better than to do such a foolish thing. I only stare at the older woman, their fingers wrinkled and bent with old age, a surprised look in their small eyes as they see me walking past. I pretend to not pay attention, clenching my fists in my pockets and gritting my teeth. I don't let on that I know what they are saying about me, it would only provoke them more. I wouldn't want that, would I?

After such a show, I usually continue to just walk home. I keep my hands balled up and a lead-like gait in my step. Are my eyes evil? Do they shine like death? Is it wrong to paint them? A slow, dull ache begins in my temples, continuing out to the rest of my head, thinking takes energy. Too much apparently for the time being. Thinking is unnecessary when I am sitting in the fields, blonde hair let down at my sides as the wind tentatively blows it around my sky-blue eyes. Electrifying, that's what I could describe them as, bright as a spark. Winnie told me once that my eyes are the color of the flash of a camera, a bright pit to look into and lose yourself in. Complete behind my thin eyelids and high cheekbones, Winnie says I am beautiful.

My drawings are beautiful, if that is what she is always referring to. Whenever I draw a face, it has some expression on it that defines true beauty. The fingernails smooth and perfectly colored, full lips that have the right amount of shine to them. My thin, chapped lips couldn't compare to such drawings, I don't know what Winnie sees. She is a doll herself, cute cheeks and bright eyes that reflect happiness where she walks. The older woman adore her. "She's the sweetest of them all," they say, dull eyes lighting up for once. "They saved the best for one of the last, now didn't they." The ladies would laugh and continue on, not seeing me hidden so cleverly in the shadows. I hate them with a passion. I hope to never see my skin turn grey with age, wrinkles covering my soft face and turning me into a hideous gossip machine like I'm not already lol. It will never come, I forbid it.

Many times after I come home from my errands I play the piano. There's an old one that sits in the corner

of one of our rooms, its uneven ivory keys calling out to me. The black smaller keys play in harmony with the others, music is my friend. Every time I place my fingers on the keys, faeries come out and play music for me. I close my eyes sometimes and see them there, little violins clutched between minuscule hands and their jet-black hair flying in all directions. The sound that comes out is not one of the small, wooden thing but more like the magnificent beast which take up the place before me. The faeries are obviously skilled, they can take instruments and make them sound as though they are really other things, I wish I could do such. A violin is an expensive instrument though, to buy one new. The piano is as old as Panem itself and slowly beginning to fall apart, a key at the end just fell off the other day, its been loose forever. Anyways, my fingers would never be able to touch the vibrating stings without crimson liquid dotting the pale flesh of my hands. Mum keeps telling me to stop washing my hands so much, stop going out in winter. How can I resist, germs are everywhere?

How can I play the piano with impurities residing on my delicate fingers, its disgusting really. Until I wash my hands under the small faucet, I feel dirty, unclean. After though I am an angel, only soft skin allowed to come near to me. The only downfall is the blisters and dry skin that come, they hurt for a little while but they are also a reminder of the bad things that I was able to scrape off my hands in the process. The fingers that I braid with, that touch the edges of the walls as I pass by, they must be sparkling with purity. It is something that has always bothered me, ever since they told me about the invisible monsters that sit on your skin, I have worked hard to remove them thoroughly. No one can understand really, until they feel the same way. Its all in my mind, maybe? Or its the perfect way of doing things, the greatest way to go on to being a faerie.

The fields that I go to to draw carry none of this, I never feel the need to run water over my delicate skin after visiting there. Sitting down and drawing the sun and grasses is like residing in a faerie land, small pinpricks of light dancing around you in unheard rhythms. When I first discovered the place, I immediately thing built a crown for myself. Stalks of wheat lining my hands, I wove them together into something fit only for a queen, her majesty of loneliness. I sat there for hours, my new creation perched on my mop of blonde hair while I clutched a pencil between my fingers, drawing the sun as it fell from the sky.

I asked my mum once if the sun would ever hit the earth as it fell, every night it looked like the world with end in a furious storm of heat and the color red.

"No, dear it will never happen," She answered me quickly, a smile on her face.

"Why?" I asked.

"Its never happened before Violet, for all the years I've been alive. It won't happen, dear, I promise." Her thin-lipped smile filled the room with a light of its own.

She told the truth that day, I can only assume of course. Never has the sun truly hit the earth, it only sits there and looks down at us humans with a threatening glare. I have learned to see the ball of red as beautiful, it accompanies all of my art with true precision; something that will never fall nor go away. It is a being of immortality, it watches over us with power more than I can fathom.

It was that very same day that I received my first slap across the face, given ever so generously by my loving father. To this day I can remember the calluses of the edge of his sharply shaped fingers adding an extra bought of pain to the entire thing. Through it all, I would see the blank look in his eyes through the waterfall of tears on my face, he would stare at me, clouds in the irises. I didn't know what drinking was at the time, after being hit though, mum explained the entire thing to me. I remember how mad I was to think that someone would drink all kinds of stuff to feel numbed, the easy way out is never the way. It was something dad had taught me, one of the first things I remember, about a month after that he would walk around staring at things, he wouldn't move for hours sometimes. Mum only told me that his job was making him tired, she never said anything about alcohol. I felt betrayed at the time, now my relationship has healed and I have returned to simply a girl who screams at dad every time he walks into a room with fading eyes.

"Daddy, why won't you stay sober?" I scream, "I hate you dad, i really do. Why can't you control what you drink, please it hurts all of us daddy." I hardly recognized the look that he gave me as he walked over and slapped me across the face, his words slurred as he began to talk.

"Do you know who you're talkin' to kid?" he asked me, walking out the door with a grunt. Tears stung at my eyes, I wanted my dad back, I needed a plan to get him back to me. There was never anything I could do to return him to his formal self. One minute, the perfect father and the next a monster, ripping apart the seams of the entire household. After a while, I tried harder to get dad back. Maybe, I figured, if I were to snap him out of the fog, or to release him from the cloud of fantasies hanging over his head, he would be my father again.

"Daddy, I know your there. Please, come back to me Daddy, I know the true you. "

I just kept getting slapped, but I would still try. Still attempt to bring my dad out of his false security and return to the real would where we would all accept him with open arms. I still try today, I am not a quitter.

Violet Sairsurrow goes till the end, no matter what. I refuse to give in.