Ilanora Adephus(-Lightwood) :: D1 :: DONE

[/color][/font]

"Sometimes I feel like saying 'Oh Lord, what's the use?' But I know I can count on You.”[/color][/font]

[/center]
THE HISTORY.[/color][/font]

Oh, but it sounds like a fairy tale. The story is one that Ilanora herself has never heard, a story of love and summer and the Lake’s sand. Her mother had but one reaping left in front of her, one more year until she could settle down and make a family. It was what happened when a respectable girl, from a respectable family like her own, reached a respectable age. A respectable husband would be found for her, and they would marry in a whirlwind of cake and white dresses and produce a respectably small-but-select family. As a child, she had never much been looked after by her own mother: supervised by nurses, she had been mostly left to her own devices. The woman had held her perhaps once a year, for the family photo. But as her nineteenth birthday neared, more and more time was spent by the upper-class lady inspecting her habits- making sure she used her cutlery correctly, knew how to dance, knew how to embroider, knew her bible verses- respectable things, for a girl who was to make a very respectable wife.

And yet, in her eighteenth summer, it all changed. Her family, consisting of her elder and younger brothers, her mother and her father, a man she whose face she couldn’t even recall, as well as a cluster of maids and footmen, had taken a couple of weeks vacation at their lake house. There was some social function happening on the weekend, and both her mother and her seamstress, who had been driven up there especially to make a new dress for it, were fluffing over her. It was strange, because although the whole haste that surrounded her impeding marriage to some as-yet unknown boy annoyed her, she loved the way her mother flapped around her, like a hen inspecting her brood. She finally felt something of a connection between her and her mother, had something of the relationship that she read about in books. After a gunfire discussion of dress designs and colours, she decided to go for a walk along the shores of the lake. She slipped on her shoes, left a quick note on the dresser on the hallway, and left the house. She could hear the noise of the water immediately, a quiet church hymn. She closed her eyes and breathed the evening through the sound. Foot proceeded foot as she walked down to the water. She wouldn’t get wet, she was wearing stockings, after all, but from here she could imagine what it would be like to be a waterfowl, to dive and to soar and to be oh-so-free.

And her romantic story-book thoughts were interrupted by a ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!’ and then a splash and saturation and two brilliant blue eyes and a mop of brown hair and a name she forgot immediately and a kind smile. He noticed the shivers before she paid any attention to them, such was her interest in him. Bobbing further and further towards the center of the lake, the cricket ball he had been chasing was forgotten about as he offered her his jacket. They conversed, at first in the way that she had been taught to, and then in a way that she had never talked to any one before. He was interested, he cared about her. The next day, in their arranged meeting spot at the bottom of the pier, a kiss sealed her fate, like the lick of an envelope. And envelop they did, under the jetty, with sand as their mattress and the song of the lake as their blanket. In the hours in which she laid by his side, she shared more with him than she had shared with anyone in her life. When the mist shook her awake the next morning, sand scratched into her scalp, he was gone, as if he had been nothing but an apparition.


And yet, proof that at one stage he had been real was dividing inside of her. She didn’t suspect anything was wrong for a couple of months, when, as her body had not been functioning as it normally did, she took a visit to the doctors. The realisation that that lead to that was definitely an interesting one- of course these things were not discussed in her family, these things were not proper. And yet, interestingly, when her mother was informed she was not as surprised as she was frustrated- there had been such high hopes held for her daughter. A husband, a boy by the name of Obert who would do nothing to further the social status of the family but would also not drag them down, was found. The wedding was quick, in hopes that no one would realise that the succeeding protruding belly had come up perhaps a little too early. Of course they noticed, as was proven by the subsequent gossip, but no one commented to the family. No good would have come of that.

The couple, although united, were not harmonious. She craved his attention and affection, as she had been given under the pier for that one glorious night, but he could not bring himself to love someone that he so obviously had no emotion towards. They argued until the birth of the child, a little girl that was named Ilanora after some long-dead grandmother, at which point they spoke very infrequently. More and more of his time was spent away from home, claiming to be at work, or playing golf. She drowned herself in mothering the child, hoping that if she could not be a good wife, she could at the very least be a good parent.

One night, he didn’t come home.

For a year or so, nothing much changed in the household. A maid made the meals and did the cleaning, and her mother, who now saw nothing of the outside world, dotingly cared for Ilanora. Aunts, cousins, and other more distant relatives dropped by now and then to pinch cheeks and cluck, but they always left in a hurry, as if the departure of husbands and the proceeding social exorcism was contagious.

Then there is the acrid smell of burnt rubber and the constant scream of sirens. A cot drenched in regurgitated baby food, a drip, drip, drip and a soothing voice. “She’s going to make it, ma’am.”

And here was kindled a childhood spend in lino hallways and sterile paper sheets.

The hospitalizations were frequent. Causes were nonspecific to a particular illness- vomiting, difficulty breathing, seizures. Stamped in red ink that said ‘INVALID,’ Ilanora was resigned to travel between beds- hers, and that of the hospital’s. As most children fell out of trees and made mud pies, Ilanora, carefully wrapped in a pile of blankets and always supervised by her mother, was perhaps allowed to venture onto her bedroom floor to play with her neat doll’s house. When most are being fed a mixture of bugs and leftovers, Ilanora’s mother fed her a specially tailored diet to accommodate for her multiple allergies. When most children are overlooked in the flurry of germs and loud noises that is kindegarden, the ‘C-A-T S-A-T on the M-A-T” was carefully taught to her with perfect enunciation by her mother. The rumors about the “sad little woman stuck at home with a lost husband and a sickly child” had rather changed their tunes since her vaguely scandalous pregnancy. She loved it when there were reports of her being “Oh, such a devoted mother.” She was the mother that she had never had.

Each Sunday, propped in a wheelchair with breathing apparatus always nearby, the two girls visited Church. Nora liked the idea of Church, loved the vivid imagery in the stories told, loved the fact that there was, had to be, reason behind all the illness she was suffering. Each night, she would pray. Not for healing, not for a miracle, but to say thanks. She was not hungry, alive, and she had a doting, caring mother. She held something of an affinity with Jesus. Just like her, he had to suffer physical pain, but mentally, he was rock solid.

As she grew older, she became sicker and sicker. For her tenth birthday, she was allowed to have a small party- too much of a fuss would not be good for her weak heart, the doctors said, but she had a handful of friends through the hospital and through church, and they came for a quaint afternoon tea. Halfway through a game of pass-the-parcel, Ilanora began convulsing worse than ever. She was in a coma for two weeks, and none of the medical personel knew whether she would wake up. And even if she did, surely there was a great change that she would have brain damage? But by some miracle- by the grace of God, perhaps- she awoke asking for her mother. When she attended her first church service after her coma- some months later- her health, and her mother’s strength during ‘these testing times’ was mentioned in the prayers. Was that a glimmer of a smile she noticed touching her mother’s face? A smile of the luck that she was still alive, perhaps.

However, the next two years were spent almost entirely in hospital. She needed to be constantly on a drip, because she couldn’t keep down food. Her mother’s time was divided between her bedside vigil and quick trips home to make sure the maid was still looking after the place as she should. During these moths, days that repeated each other over and over like a stuck CD player, the only way that Nora could differentiate between the passage of time was through which book she as currently reading. Literature was the only thing she could devour without vomiting up again. She did, however, regurgitate tales from her current book to her mother, usually when her Ma was sticking her with a needle. She didn’t see why the nurses couldn’t do the needles for themselves, but her mother did a better job than most of them. Her mother was the one who coaxed endless tablets down her throat too, and who held her head while she vomited. She always thought that her mother was the best nurse- because she didn’t have to do any of these things, but did anyhow.

One night, after saying her prayers with her mother, Nora found a spec of her hospital dinner on her night dress. Dirt was the devil to her- cleanliness is next to Godliness, after all. Tears began to stream down towards an upturned mouth in the manner of a much younger child, not one that was almost twelve. Clothes streamed across the room as her mother, quite out of character, searched frantically through their suitcases to find a clean gown. “There isn’t one!” she said, voice exasperated, above Nora’s wails. “I want one!” was the immature reply, stretching out the vowels. And so her mother left the bed that she had sat by for days to return home, to fetch a nightgown.

And like the man Nora should have grown to call ‘Dad,’ like her real dad- she never came back.

The shaking came from below. Nora remembers it like the feeling before a sneeze- the bottling up on pressure and then a quick, destructive blow. It lasted for no more than two minute, violent shudders, like the earth was having one of her seizures, and once again, there was nothing she could do to control it. And then it stopped. Her heart rate monitor had stopped it’s bass-beeping, and for a second she thought that she was dead. There was this silence, as she had never heard before, as everything just settled, just for a moment. And then the scream of a baby, and the whirr of a generator pouncing on this opportunity to show the Mayor that it was worth purchasing.

Except for the loss of electricity, the hospital remained undamaged. Whispers of ‘earthquake,’ ‘devastation,’ ‘collapse’ flew through the nurses hushed conversations, but all Nora could think about was sharing the exciting story with her mother. It was infrequent that something like this happened in Nora’s life, and she wanted to gossip about it with her best, and only friend. But as the night drew longer and longer, and both her drips were changed- for that was the ay that Nora calculated time in the hospital- her mother still did not return. She told herself not to worry about it too much, that probably the shaking had caused traffic delays. Some sort of shrouding sleep finally game to her, although she was easy, and tossed and turned with worry. Although, perhaps that was just the side effect of one of her numerous medications.

When a Peacekeeper, hat in one hand, entered her room the following morning, the only thing she could think of until his mouth opened was the fact that her nightgown was dirty. And then there was another earthquake, one much bigger than the night before.

“Your mother… Quake… the house collapsed… They rescued her but she died in the hospital this morning… I’m sorry.”

The words were splinters, pricking but not hurting too much. There was this strange dull ache that sauntered over to the area between her two flat breasts, and sat there like a thousand kilos of dust. The fact that her mother was dead was not a problem, and it was completely true that, with her request for a fresh nightgown, Nora had killed the only person who truly loved her. But her mother had died alone, just floors below her. All those nights that her mother held her hand through her pain. Nora could remember times when her mother hadn’t slept for weeks, just so she could be awake when her daughter screamed out through her sleep. All that dedication, and she hadn’t been able to repay the favour. What kind of daughter was she? One that took her mother’s whole life away, and then let her die alone. She was a sad excuse for a child really.

In some sort of strange-seeming repentance, she healed quite quickly from that bout of whatever malady was afflicting her. Normally she would have gone home, but there was no home for her to return too. No mother shovelling pills down her throat, followed by a warm desert that the maid had just taken out of the oven. No dollhouse. No perfectly pressed sheets. She was sent to a Home, the sort with a capital H. Nora had always liked how in the bible, when God was referred to as He, the H would be capitalized. It showed the He was a different sort of He. And the H in Home did the same thing- it was a different sort of home. She did not feel welcome here. She was a polite, shy girl. The children here were burly and rude, the sort of kids that no one wanted. They teased her for all the medications that she had to take. She found that strange, because the medications from the hospital’s prescription list seemed to be a lot less than what she was used to taking.

Three weeks after being released, Nora made a trip to the hospital for a check-up. It was the biggest stretch of time she had managed for a long time without being admitted, and she was quite proud of that. She didn’t know if she could face hospitalization without the care of her mother. But the puzzling thing was that, besides a lack of muscle and a vitamin D deficiency, her doctor, who had been the main one on her case for years, pronounced her as fit as the next child. For Nora, this was nothing- a nice change perhaps, but a momentary relapse, the calm before the storm. But the doctor was perplexed, and spent his night at work, reading through the girl’s medical files. The symptoms, when looked at all together, over a life time of sickness, gave him a conclusion that he was embarrassed that he had not come to before.

When her Carer- another capital- spoke in hushed tones on the phone the following morning, Ilanora knew it was about her. She presumed that some other dreadful illness had come up in her blood tests, and that she was going to die. She didn’t mind. She’s been dying from one thing or another for as long as she could remember.

The reality was far worse.

Munchausen's syndrome by proxy
noun Psychiatry
a mental disorder in which a person seeks attention by inducing or feigning illness in another person, typically a child.

She had never been sick. Her illness had been caused by her nurse. Deprived of the attention that she wanted, her mother had forced toxins into her which made her sick. Through caring for a ‘sick’ daughter, she gained the respect of those around her, because she was oh-such-a-good-mother. As one might imagine, this was shattering for Nora. How could her best friend, her nurse, her mother cause her so much pain? The Carer had made the out-of-place comment that by sending her mother to get that nightgown, she had inadvertently saved her own life. But was it worth it? She still loved her mother, but loathed her know also. The confusion ran rife through her now-healthy body.

This was another factor that lead to even more confusion. She was now allowed to go out and taste the world as any normal kid would, but she had no idea how to do it. She stayed in her room at the Home, reading Bible stories over and over until Lazarus rode a lion through the Red sea and into the garden of Eden. Oh, the days merged as she endlessly prayed for a saviour, for some way of making truth of her short life- until one day, she decided it made no truth, so she hopped out of bed and went for a lovely walk around the neighbour hood. She climbed a tree and stole an apple off an overhanging branch and peered into a birds nest, and decided she was simply blessed to be alive. And so she was, still puzzled and willing to think over what had happened to her, but not wanting to dwell on it, wanting to lead a life. She met a woman by the name of Willow at the Home, had a lovely conversation with her, and accompanied her for a walk in the park, once. Willow offered to adopt Nora, should she so wish, and Nora accepted her offer, seeing no better option for herself.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Brothers Grimm fairy story that makes up Ilanora Adephus-soon-to-be-hyphenated-Lightwood’s life.

[/color][/font]
[/color][/font]

To be free. Such a basic human desire, one that everyone either desires or appreciates. Until but a year ago, the maudlin fingers of illness had restricted her. When she discovered that this restriction of her freedom had actually been due to her mother, it was the second earthquake in her life. She had loved her mother with all her heart, and persecuted herself for being in someway responsible for her death. But the fact that by ‘killing’ her mother, she had saved herself- she doesn’t know what to think.

Communicating with children is a skill that she has never really learnt. The year that she has spent in the community Home is the only time she has had to speak to kids, really- other than that, it was doctors, nurses and her mother that she spoke too. The odd child at church would inquire as to her state of health, but the conversations would last for a mere handful of lines of dialoge before they fizzled into silence. She didn’t have anything in common with these kids, anything that they could talk about.

Sometimes, she wishes that she could be friends with the children in her books. Especially in those written in the Dark ages, she seems to connect much better with these kids, who spoke in strange old tongues but had no desire to cause trouble. When she gets caught doing something she shouldn’t- very infrequently, and normally by accident- she becomes very flusters, and feels like she has let herself down. Late at night, after she’s said her prayers, she’ll dwell over the mistakes she’s made, often working herself into a panicked frenzy. She won’t make any noise, she doesn’t like that, but if you look at her eyes you’ll notice them dart and glint, two small silver fishes in a too-small tank.

When she was sick, her days were mostly spent in a bed, thinking. She was tired- physically and mentally, her body that of an old ladies. Her short years had dragged on for a million more. But with her newfound health, with the loss of drugs from her system, she has awoken. She truly wants to taste adventure, as she has never been able to in the past, but is afraid to cause any worry. She still feels guilty for her mother’s death, because she sent her to the house, after all, but she still cannot quite believe that she caused her so much suffering. In Nora’s mind, she has two mothers- the kind, nursing soul that she remembers looking after her, even though she didn’t have too, and the woman that fed her drugs that kept her from experiencing what should have been the most carefree years of her life. Not that she blames her mother, exactly- the poor woman was lonely, and that too was Nora’s fault. Had she not been conceived, had her cells not divided, her mother would have married someone else, had a normal loving relationship, and would not have had the need to mutilate her own daughter just to get attention. She craved what she gave Nora, and try as she might to loathe the woman for the years of sickness, Nora can’t help but remember how much she loved the woman.

The tantrums that had once ruined her sweet-little-girl demeanour have disappeared since her mother death. Perhaps she’s grown out of them, but she believes that there is now no one that she feels close enough to throw a tantrum too. Plus, the repercussions of her last one, in her health and in the absences of her mother, are felt every day. Now, if she is going to say something, it is churned over and over again in her head, until it goes sour. Some sort of spontaneity would be nice, so she thinks, but she’s grown into a thinker and not a doer.

Loneliness, despite the obvious lack of people in her life, is something that Nora has never really experienced in her life. She is always perfectly happy in her own company, well versed in debating with herself, playing imaginary games, creating worlds for her to disappear into. People scare her a bit. She has something of trust issues, ever since she found out about her mother’s illness, and the truth about her own. Not that she’s had to trust anyone since her mother died, but in her mind she’s not sure if she will be able to bring herself too. She’s scared that this may be a problem in her new home. Willow, a nice-seeming lady, is the sort of person that she doesn’t want to disappoint, but she’s afraid that by not being able to treat her like a mother, she will. And she’s never experienced having siblings before, as there apparently are in the Lightwood household. Really, she’s scared that she’s not going to understand the concept of family.
[/color][/font][/right]

[/color][/font][/left]

Tongues of soft flesh poked out from behind half-moon chewed fingernails. “A dirty habit,” her mother had scolded, afraid of germs making her sicker than she already was. But subconsciously, she would chip the corners of her nails against her teeth, revelling in the sharp pain it caused, so different from the dull contusions that made her ill body convulse with objection. Purple veins spidered along the tops of her hands, easily seen through her opaque skin. Her fingers had not lost their air of pudginess yet, they were short and stubby, not elegant, as they should be by her age. They rifled through the pages of the leather-bound book, until they found the one they were looking for. Each move was precise, well calculated, and would not waste any energy. It was not that long ago that she didn’t have any excess energy to waste. It was a habit that she had not yet shaken the shackles of.

A weak winter sun shone on unblemished legs. They matched the bare twigs of the tree on which she lent- only as thick as they could possibly be. They held none of the scars that one emerging from childhood usually has- she had been far too well supervised to fall over, even when she was healthy enough to run and walk. Compared to the rest of her body, they were long, indicating that she was about to start growing much more quickly, but compared to those of her peers, they were short. Her body had never managed to push itself to more than a hundred and thirty five centimetres, leaving her a head and a half shorter than anyone of her age that she had met- in the ninety-first percentile, to be exact. Her hips showed none of a woman’s curve, nothing to display her gender. Her breasts were the same- that of a girl much younger than herself. She could touch her thumb and ring finger around her slender wrists with ease. Like a scarecrow in rags, her clothes, although of good quality, hung off her. Although they fitted her length–wise, she was always much to skinny for their width.

Absorbed in the adventure of her book, her eyes traced the sentences. They were a silver-blue, like the sky reflecting off a silver ring, like fish-scales in the ocean. For many years, they had been encircled in faint bruises that signified the poor state of her health. Now, her skin, though porcelain-pale, was healthy, and some variety of freckles had started to appear, a peppering of sun. The faintest glimmer of a smile hinted at the corner of her mouth as a line was deemed to be funny. She didn’t like to open her mouth when she smiled- her white teeth, two neat rows of soldiers, were slightly too small compared to the rest of her features. No cavities or fillings did they hold- of course her mother had not allowed excess sugar in her diet! A curtain of straight, lank hair sat down her back- a dirty blonde. It was one thing that had not healed, as the rest of her body had. Her ribs had become much less visible, and the star-prick scars of countless needles had vanished from the crooks of her elbows. But as a reminder of her previous state, her hair still appeared as dead as ever.

A faint call wafted from the house. “Ilanora!” It said, turning the ‘Il-‘ into an ‘Eeel-‘ in just the way she hated. Her full name, in all of its four-sylablled glory, rather than the ‘Norie’ or ‘Nor-Nor’ that her mother had called her. Standing with care not to become tangled in any of the low hanging branches of the tree, she took a deep breath of the crisp air, and then walked over to the Home that would never be her home. It was not long ago that she could barely walk, let alone spend time outside. With each step she took, she said a little thank you.

Soon she would be a Lightwood. Knowing nothing of the family, she was taking her first step of adventure, her first step out of the known. But whatever happened, she knew would that it would always have been a blessing to be alive.
[/color][/font]

---

[/color][/font][/center]