Sheletta 'Shetty' Ferde :: D5 :: DONE

Name: Sheletta 'Shetty' Ferde
Age: 11
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 5
Appearance:

My looks? They're nothing special. I'm shorter than average, quite a bit shorter. On the side of the truck, there's marks all up it with dates to show how everyone's grown. I'm shorter than any of my brothers and sisters were when they were my age. I'm pretty skinny too. I can touch my thumb and my pinky around my wrist, but I still eat heaps. Not as much as Criolo, perhaps, but then I don't nearly run around like a lunatic as much as he does.

My hair's a light brown underneath, but it's sun bleached blonde on top. It looks a bit like Friesia's, actually, but she dyes hers. I don't have to do anything to mine. It's sort of curly naturally; I tie it back in the mornings so it doesn't get in the way, but when I'm inside it's easier just to wear it out. My eyes are big and brown and, well, eyes. My nose and mouth are both pretty little, but my teeth at the moment are big and gappy. They make me look a bit like a jack-o-lantern, but I've still got two more to loose at the back. During the summer I burn pretty bad, but I get freckles once the burn's subsided. I like them, actually.

Personality:

The only way I can really describe my personality is- well, I'm just Shetty. Short for Sheletta. It's a stupid name, isn't it? A stupid long name with too many syllables for my baby tongue to grasp, so I called myself Shetty, and the nickname stuck. Criolo thought it was hilarious when he thought of 'Shitty,' but ha ha, buddy, I don't find it funny, hear me? And if you're reading this- This is my diary, you little pig poop! Ripred, go find something more constructive to do with your time than snooping through MY stuff.

I guess that shows some of my personality. I can get aggressive, although mostly it's only to my haha-thinks-he's-funny brother. Oh, and to my big big sister, but she deserves it. I like to be passive-aggressive (good word, huh?) because I don't believe violence is the solution to problems, but some people just need to be put back in their place. My siblings do it to me all the time, so why can't I do it to everyone else?

I'm pretty down to earth. If people ask me for my opinion, I give it to them honestly. i'm not going to beat around the bush, flatter them- 'Yes Friesia, your make-up does look good!' or 'Yes Haff, that is how you write your name'- but I also don't give them my opinion if they don't want it. I've learnt from living with so many annoying people that relationships take work, and if you tell people things that they don't like to hear, no matter how true they are, they generally end up not liking you as well.

Most of the time I'm pretty patient. I spend a lot of time helping Haff, and believe me, that takes a lot of patience. The horses learn faster than him, even the foals do, but I like him. I think I'm the only one who sees that he's not really stupid, just in a far off land. But I have no patience when it comes to my siblings, especially the twins, being immature and silly. I know I'm only eleven, but I like to think of myself as being pretty mature. I don't get the giggles often, and I don't appreciate stupid jokes. I see things for their face value, and take them as they are. You can't change people, and you can't change the world. Heck, I can't even get listened to around here. So I guess the way that I've learned to live is to take things the way they come into my life, and appreciate them that way.

History:

i was the last born of my family. I guess Mam took one look at me and went, ew, no, that'll be it thanks. Or perhaps by then she was too busy with the rest of her crazy children, both human and equine, to bother with any more. Perhaps I was an unplanned mistake, perhaps I was just a heat of the moment thing. I often feel like that, actually. Like I shouldn't really be around. I'm a placeless child. The show would go on without me. If Friesia or Andal were to go missing before a performance then there would be great panic. The whole show revolves around them, after all. If it were Haff, we'd all worry that the great oaf would be doing something that he didn't even know was about to kill him. The twins, the worry would be that they'd been beaten by peacekeepers for some stupid, but quite funny, prank. But me? There'd be no worry about me. "Oh, she's a smart girl, she knows what she's doing," Mam would say. I doubt Pa would notice that I was gone at all. It's a struggle for him to remember my name. it's never a struggle for him to remember Friesia's.

Friesia often shows off about how she's been in the show since it first started. I could say that I've been in the show since I first started, as I've seen pictures of Mam performing whilst pregnant with me, but I don't like to get involved in her petty little competitions. For someone with all this great life experience, Frie really isn't very mature.

And then one day I was born. And I was shoved in to unisex baby clothes that had belonged to all six of my siblings before me, and put in the stroller, and left in the stables while the family did all their chores. I've been told that I was a sickly child, but surely the fact that I pretty much grew up outside, in the cold oil-tainted air, didn't help matters. I grew up darting around the legs of the horses, trying to find something to do in a system that had been planned not to involve me. IN the end, I took over from my mother doing the plaiting. Her fingers had already started to become arthritic, and my young hands with their bitten back fingernails were nimble. It was, and still is, a job that I really loved. Each horse is as close to spotless as it gets when I'm finished with them.

Coming from family that runs a horse show, I think it's pretty funny that I never learnt to ride. I can handle the horses on the ground, lunge them, tack them up, that sort of thing, but I cannot remember once getting on one. Whenever I'd ask for a riding lesson when I was younger, the reply would be that there wasn't time now, maybe later. Now, I've lost all hope. It's something I'd like to be able to do, because I like spending time with the horses, and it looks like fun, but Friesia or the twins would tease me if I learnt to ride now, and taunt me with the stories of all the things that they were doing on horse-back when they were my age.

I'd like to say that the show wouldn't go on without me, but I'd be lying. Mam can still plait, as her fingers aren't that bad, and even if they were Arden knows how to do it, but she hates being within fifty foot of any of the horses. Honestly, her and her stupid fear. I can remember the fall that started it. It wasn't even that bad. So you see, I'm not vital the the Ferde family and their oh-so-amazing horse show. I'm the least vital ingredient in the family batter, the one that adds a little bit of flavour, but can easily be done without. I'm just me, I guess.

Codeword: odair
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