★ SIERRA BIRDBROOK . D12 .

( N A M E ) Sierra Hazel Birdbrook
( N I C K N A M E S ) Little Bird
( A G E ) Seventeen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Twelve

( A P P E A R A N C E )

They say when I was born, I was beautiful. They're lying, because in the books I've looked through, none of the babies like me are ever beautiful. They are small and twisted and sick, with bones that jut out at the wrong angle and a sickly blue in place of whites in their eyes. They usually don't live, these children. I did, despite the four breaks in my legs and the three cracked ribs I suffered being born. It didn't take long before my infant body was cracked like a jigsaw puzzle - twelve breaks in the first week left my mother clawing for answers.

These days, my frame is not so different to the others. I'm tiny, fragile - unable to play with the others or run through the district for fear of sending jagged bones through the surface of my skin. My hair is dark, my eyes the same shade of hazel as my elder sister. My cheeks are pale, as though I am in a perpetual state of shock. The sun hasn't had much of a chance to dapple my skin with telltale freckles - signs of a life I will never life. My sclera still flash blue when I break.

Sickness is something that haunts our house in the form of injury - bandages are commonplace, bound around my limbs like parasites who never leave my flesh. Meela says it doesn't matter that I keep breaking, that we'll always be able to fix me back up and move on, but when I look in the mirror I see something so terribly, perpetually breakable and I know this will never go away. This is me - chestnut curls and a shining smile and a habit of crumbling into far too many pieces.

( H I S T O R Y )

Meela says I shouldn't be so happy all the time - constantly smiling and laughing, finding joy in almost everything. I think she's wrong - Children laugh about 400 times a day. Adults laugh an average of 15 times a day. This, I find sad. It scares me that as time passes the world begins to press down upon you until you cannot smile as you once did. Pressure builds, and when it does, things snap. Mama wants to keep me as safe as she can. I know it hurts her when I cry, so I don't, not anymore. I can't really manage to go without hurting, though - it's unavoidable. She wants me to stay inside all day, but the wind calls to me and the District begs to be explored.

I don't like to think of myself as a liar, but I lie to her. Everything is far too wonderful to miss, and when I take a fall by the mines and drag myself home, I let her believe I tumbled from the bed onto the floor. If they let me fly, I would. They say I'm clever - intelligent and bright even when I was young. Meela likes to say that my mind works twice as fast as everybody else to make up for my body being so useless. It's a nice thought, but really I just burn for information and knowledge - Father provides book after book of useless facts that I cling to as though they provide support to my weak limbs.

Mama said she's proud - that despite everything, my willpower is strong and my resolve fierce. It's true, in a way. If I want something done, I try to make sure that I don't let myself forget I'm human. It would be easily to fall into a pattern of letting people help me. As long as I resist it and continue fighting my own battles, I'm still me. If I give in, I'll lose everything and Mama will bundle me up and I will probably never break again. Breaking, it seems, is what makes me different to everybody else. It's also what reminds me I'm just the same.

I'm not usually jealous. I try to be fair and kind, to brighten people's day with things they never knew before. Perhaps if I can impart enough knowledge on those around me, they'll know enough to understand that what I want more than anything is to run and jump and skip and fly. I want to work in the mines - not because coal appeals to me greatly (they began using coal in the Broze age, it takes a million years to form, it's classified into four types) but because they are things I've never done. We have a habit of wanting what we can never have. Ever since I was little, I've wanted to be perfect.

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

Mama and Father grew up together - they spend days playing in the treehouse by the creek and running through the Hob at each other's side. They were inseparable, the children of two miners from the Seam, and when they married everybody said they knew it was going to happen. They were perfect, and when Mama fell pregnant with a baby girl and gave birth to Meela their family was complete. Father got a job directing work in the mines and Mama went out to sell what she could at the markets. When she gave birth again, everything changed.

Within my first year, I'd suffered countless breaks and endless nights of crying. (Babies are born with three hundred to three hundred and fifty bones.) Mama dropped everything to rush to my side each time, and Meela was left alone frequently as I was carried to the healer for yet another bandage or splint. There wasn't much they could do for me other than piece me back together each time I feel apart. I found the diagnosis of Osteogenesis Imperfecta in one of Father's old books when I was five years old. Everything was different - no perfect house with roses down the walls greeted my father when he returned home at night.

Instead, he would more often than not find the house deserted for hours on end before we returned. He loves me, I know that from the way he worries each time I snap or splinter or split. When I was four years old, the money ran out. Mama went back to work, filled with reluctance, and left me to read. I did read - filled my mind with every morsel of information I could manage, scanning page after page of text until I could almost quote the dictionary.

Meela waited home with me, instructed to care for me and make sure I wasn't hurt. I didn't want her to fail - but staying still hurt me almost as much as a break, and I begged her to let me play. When she did, the inevitable happened and we lied together - it didn't take a lot to convince our parents that a fractured arm was the result of a slightly overzealous collision with the furniture rather than a tree. I hated myself for tearing apart their happy family, for intruding with my illness and sickness. Mama and Father promised it wasn't my fault, that they loved me regardless. Meela didn't look so sure.


( C O D E W O R D ) ODAIR.
( F A C E C L A I M ) Sarah Stewart

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

The sister of Meela.

( O T H E R ) C59483
( S P E A K I N G ) EBE6C6
( T E X T ) 603A45
( T H I N K I N G ) 362748