.Iconoclasts and Heliotrope Tragedies. [Aya]

Alexander,
Older Brother,
Set out for
A Great Adventure.

Alexander Hood —

It was so rare — almost unheard of — for her to be out and about in the middle of the day that Alexander almost didn't know what to do with herself. She worked. Seven days a week, sometimes upwards of twelve or fourteen hours a day, Alexander Hood worked. Perhaps most wouldn't find it to be ideal, but she it was what she had to do. Her job at the sawmill kept food on the table for her much-too-large family, and even if it meant that she would be away from them for most of the day — for most of the week, for most of the month, for most of her siblings' childhoods — she wouldn't complain. After all, Elaine Cornwall's five bastard children (six, if you counted the real Alex, although he hadn't contributed to that total in two taxing years) were more than familiar with the long days spent without even a crust of bread to hold them over. So if it meant that she never saw them except for a handful of hasty minutes salvaged between work and the time Alexander was asleep of exhaustion, then she wouldn't be one to complain. After all, they were still fed, still alive — which meant that she could see them if she had the time to.

There were, of course, other drawbacks to her employment. Aside from the general strain of spending more than half the day moving logs and breathing in saw dust, the mill itself contained numerous industrial hazards in the form of machinery parts, pointed ends of poorly hacked-off branches, and, foremost, the numerous pointed saw blades capable of dividing a worker in two without a second thought. These were common dangers in the factory, ones that Alexander was always prepared for and cautious of. It was easy enough to not fall victim to the rotating buzz saws, so long as one was paying the slightest shred of attention to where they stuck their fingers.

More difficult to avoid, however, were the unexpected hazards, the ones that were completely impossible to foresee. It was one such random event that had afforded Alexander the day off — or, rather, forced Alexander to take the remainder of the workday outside of the factory. The anomaly was so peculiar that the old foreman asserted that he had never seen anything of the sort. So, naturally, said calamity would befall Alexander, by the simple way of the universe. "Tracker jackers, sure, 'course," he'd insisted, "but never one of them in a tree."

"One of them" in this case referred to the thick, pale brown serpent that had struck the unsuspecting worker on the arm as she'd bent down to strip the extraneous branches off of a new tree. Alexander, of course, failing to realize what had happened, had dropped her hand saw in alarm; the resulting clatter of metal on concrete startled the snake, which took its cue to slither off before it could be caught. The bemused foreman had been quite reasonable, and, noticing the wound on her arm, sent Hood to go see someone about the wound, especially in case the creature had been venomous.

Alexander left as she had been told, as the foreman had reassured her several times that she would receive the rest of her daily wages; however, had no intention of seeing a healer about the snakebite. The wound didn't look too bad to her, so she'd simply pulled off one sawdust-covered sock (hastily cramming her thin, plainly feminine foot back into her work boot before anyone could get a second look,) rinsed it off, and tied it tightly around the bite. There was no reason to lose the equivalent of four days worth of food to have someone take a look at it and do exactly the same thing; her much-too-large family had absolutely zero money to spare. There were too many mouths to feed for Alexander to even think about diverting any of their funds — her wages — for her own use.

Perhaps the typical sixteen-year-old District Seven girl would find herself resenting the four younger siblings that prevented her from ever behaving selfishly, but Alexander was far from typical, and seldom felt anything besides deep love for her little brothers and sister. Even when she was younger, when she was Phoebe, she'd had a soft spot for kids. It was natural for her to look after them, even though she never had the time or energy to actually come off as overbearing; she poured her entire life into making sure there was food on the table, and left the duty of fussing over the younger kids to the second oldest of their clan.

Therefore, it was only natural for Alexander to jump in when she'd turned down a side street to find what seemed to be the sort of schoolyard taunting that she herself had occasionally been the recipient of, only amplified, with the number of assailants multiplied by several and the severity increased exponentially. Most of the people she knew — millworkers, the lot of them — would've brushed the scene off with a chuckle or a head shake and a remark: "boys will be boys, eh?" But the scene in front of her made Alexander's blood boil, sibling instinct kicking in.

For a moment, she actually forgot that she was just sixteen — likely only two or so years older than the swarm of bullies — and not to mention a girl. For a moment, she was Alexander Hood, through and through, and the target boy was any one of her little siblings: Owen or Jason or Ellie or little Orville. She could not resist. Her family was all that she had, and even if this kid did not belong to her, she still felt the strong urge to take action.

"Hey!" she barked, voice low and gruff from all of her practice at concealing it, aided by the years of sawdust she'd inhaled since. Whether they bolted or not was of no consequence; Alexander would take them on if it were necessary. She was brimming with energy from the break from work and the renewed vigor from her burst of rage, and if the pack of bullies was too stupid to scatter, then so be it.