Hellemine Cauchemar // District Seven

Name: Hellemine Cauchemar
Age: 16, 17
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 13 District 7
Appearance:

Helle is the unnatural one out of the twins. She does everything she can to separate herself, to make herself look different. Of course she is actually one and a half inches taller, and her left ear is pinched at the top, like an elf's. The most important and easiest way to distinguish them, though, is by eye color. Helle's are a glassy, pale sage while her twin's are brown, deep as a silhouette. That's how their parents used to tell them apart, until Helle grew into her body and gained that precious inch and a half. It makes the world of difference to her, when a twin's life is usually about being the same. But of course, that just wasn't enough. Unless someone was standing directly in front of them, people generally didn't notice the height difference, but generally, they suck.

So, Helle began to take things further, as much as she could afford to. She used peroxide to dye her hair blonde, stripped it of that lustrous natural brunette. She bargained away meals and school supplies for a bit of color from the outside world. And now that she goes there on her own, Helle is always looking for plants to dye her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. She works hard, day and night, just to be not identical.

And of course they aren't, but even as far as fraternal twins go, there isn't much to separate the Cauchemar sisters. They have the same scrawny build, with no shoulders, breasts, butt or hips to speak of. The same snowy white skin that would char in sunlight. The same pert nose, pressed lips and narrowed chin. It's Helle's eyes that have aided her most in her transformation. They glow of their own light, not her own, and help to separate the twins in others' minds.

Personality:

It is easiest to describe Helle before and after her possession, because she is truly two different people. In the soft teenage years leading up to her descent into witchcraft, she was... well, typical. Rebellious, whiny, rude. Her hormones mangled her, changed her emotions at the drop of a hat. You were just as likely to find Helle cracking up in class as you were to find her sobbing in the bathroom. Worse, she knew she was a pain, and she liked it. Helle always tended towards the dramatic, made sure that her fits got her what she wanted. And if she didn't get her way, well, next time she'd try something different.

The only person she wasn't difficult with was her twin. For all Helle's work to ensure that they looked different, she loves her sister more than life itself. Her twin is consistently the one who brings Helle back to center, who reminds her that it doesn't matter if she ran out of rouge, or if she'd missed an assignment or two. Perspective. That's what Helle needed and her twin provided.

Until witchcraft entered the picture. They'd started down that dark alley together, looking for a new hobby, something to enrich their lives. Helle can't remember who suggested it first, but they both dived in without a thought for the powers they were playing with. But the powers thought of them.

At first it was just Helle being Helle, trying to get a rise out of people by pretending to be possessed. But then slowly, over weeks if not several months, it became less about acting and something more insidious. Something had taken hold, planted itself in her soul. It was a long time before Helle noticed that she had lost control over those out-of-control moments, that her body did and said things she never would, even at her bitchiest. The true feeling of terror sliced through her, made her blood run cold.

And it's one thing that her twin can't comfort her through, because Helle opened the gates for the devil herself.

History:

Hellemine and her twin were born to Alonse and Miriam Cauchemar in District Thirteen on the last day of October, during an especially bitter autumn. Their parents ran away from District Seven, along with Miriam's sister, Gretchen. Three people is a lot to go missing at once in any district, and their absence was noted. But by the time the Capitol caught up with them, the Cauchemars and Gretchen had found refuge with District Thirteen. Six months later, Miriam gave birth to two fraternal twin girls, one with light eyes and a tweaked ear, and one with dark eyes. They named the girls for each of their grandmothers.

Thirteen was not the paradise the Cauchemars had been seeking. However, it was better than the constant threat of death, which the Peacekeepers had promised if they could not control Gretchen and her odd behaviors. They'd been called up in the middle of the night to collect her, naked and shivering, in the dark, or had to explain the presence of blood on their doors. Gretchen would babble something about safekeeping, and it was true in some respects - she was never hauled off to the Detention Centers, despite all her years of "pranks," as the authorities called them.

But of course they were not. Gretchen practiced witchcraft in her district, used her sister as shelter. And when it came time for Miriam to give birth, Gretchen was there with the midwives in Thirteen, mumbling in a corner. She marked the twins' spirit that day, ensured that they would follow in her footsteps. They were, of course, predisposed to such things in their blood, but perhaps it would have never have taken hold without Gretchen's encouragement.

As the twins grew up, Gretchen became a satellite figure in their lives. While the Peacekeepers had reacted to her strangeness, District Thirteen was proactive. They put her down in the store rooms to work, kept her out of the way of the general populace. And when she tried to work her witchcraft, they would throw her into the brig, far below the earth's surface. It is said that sometimes the Cauchemars hear her screams through their vents.

One full moon, when they were still young enough to see the veil in the twilight, they were taken. Bundled into a caravan, swaddled in blankets and carted off. They only stopped at night to refuel, and only briefly. If it felt like a dream, Helle reasoned, it was because it was true. Whatever life she'd lived before was forgotten, erased, nullified.

The girls were immediately enrolled in school in Seven, and as soon as they were old enough they were assigned "chores" in the underground in the district. Mostly they ran errands, dropping packages off, picking up supplies. They were good at it, because it was a game - who could run faster, who would find the missing inventory. They scavenged warehouses during the days, crept through the district at night. It was not so very different from her memory of the time before.

Helle has never seen the appeal of the outside world. She likes the temperature controlled environment of the warehouses, their familiar shades of grey. But there are things she needs now from outside, twigs and berries and small sacrifices to make her witchcraft work. Because even though Gretchen is sequestered, she has always found ways to reach out to her spirit kin, her nieces. Their skills are rudimentary, mostly flashes and bursts for show. But Helle is beginning to understand darker things, forbidden things.

She hadn't actually meant to call upon something. In many ways Helle is still playing at magic, unable to understand how things work but claiming victory nevertheless. And, when nothing tingles, Helle is a good enough actress to fake it. She'd gotten so use to faking possession that she almost didn't notice the tearing in her stomach, the clenching in her heart as her body made room for another. He's there now, though, lurking, provoking, waiting to make himself known, or maybe just to move hosts.

Codeword: Odair
Comments/Other:

Doneskies!