^FELICITAS SIMOND^ D3 FIN

^A G E~ 15
^D I S T R I C T~ 3
^G E N D E R~ FEMALE

I’m gonna walk a hundred miles
I’m gonna whistle all the while
If that’s what it takes to make me smile
I’m gonna walk a hundred miles

^A P P E A R A N C E

A gentle wind trickles across the town, pushing the giant wall of smog through the alleyways and through the girls tweed coat. Her brown hair shimmers and tosses is aside. The girl is thin and bare of very little extra weight. Her eyes are hollow, she is the girl who people aren't surprised to see walking past her with eyes that glance over them almost sick with boredom. But at this moment the misty blue eyes are alive, glinting with excitement as she ducks from alley to alley. With her binoculars hanging around her neck, she jumps up and grabs a fire escape. With surprising strength the girl lifts her 100 pound frame onto the latter and climbs to the first landing. Once again she feels the wind press down on her, and pulls the jacket tighter around herself. She covers her face as the haze of the night attacks her flaring nostrils. When the worst pushes past she continues on her journey to the roof.

Once there she stands on the edge, at 5' 3" feeling this tall is a rare experience for her. It makes her feel powerful, a strange feeling that stirs something within her; but her real power comes in the form of the binoculars perched upon the bridge of her slightly oversized nose. With those powerful binoculars she watches the secrets of the night unfold beneath the waves of fog. She sees the women prance around in extremely short dresses, wearing more makeup then a cake wheres icing. The girl never understood what the big deal was, perhaps it was her luck of being fair skinned without too many blemishes. She never had to worry about looking pretty for anyone, in fact she never wanted to be pretty. Her hair remained frizzled and her cheeks free of blush or foundation. It wasn't like she couldn't afford the maquillage, rather she didn't want it. Many people do not realize how powerful one can be with the secrets of others, but she knows. Her thin lips purse as she realizes how little she can see beneath the smoke.

She turns back and proceeds to head back down the fire escapes. Slightly angry about not gaining anything from the trip, the girl tucks her hair behind her large ears, it barely reaches her shoulders. The girl heads home and shrugs off her coat. Once in her room she washes her face, and stares at her reflection. Her ears stick out aggressively, her nose points out a little to far, and her teeth are crooked. She notices everyone of the flaws, and doesn't notice anything that people might find attractive, like her eyes or large cheek bones. A small patch of freckles are the only blemish on her skin. She stares at her small frame, a thin layer of muscle lies over her bones; however, it is the only thing between her bones and her pale skin. Changing quietly, she heads to her room and lays down beneath the itchy blankets. Within seconds she was asleep.

I’m gonna run right up this hill
Summer sky or winter chill
If I gotta take a break I will
But I’m gonna run right up this hill

^H I S T O R Y

Within minutes she begins to dream, a dream of remembrance. The first memory she has is staring up to her mother's blue eyes. So similar to hers. Mother holds her close and whispers her name "Felicitas Simond, always remember how important you are to me." Felicitas would never see her again. Suddenly its three years later, she is six asking her father about her mother. With a quick smack he stops her curiosity, and flares a small fire within her. Tears run down her face as she runs away crying for her older brothers "ARIIII! TOMMMMY! ARCHYY!" She dashes around the corner into her brothers room. They sit up and look at her with uncaring eyes. "Daddy hit me!" "So what? You aren't special to him and you aren't special to us. Dad'll hit you, he'll hit us. He hit mom when she was alive. You don't matter to him, you're just his punching bag. We all are."the oldest, Aristides, replies. More tears stream down her face, she doesn't know exactly what all of that means, but his tone tells her that they dont't care and they won't help her. She goes into her room and stays there all night sobbing.

Fast forward another three years and Felicitas is nine. Now able to comprehend the abuse upon her and the indifference her brothers feel towards it. She feels small and pointless, beneath her brothers and father, a little girl who can't do anything correctly. All of that changes the day after her tenth birthday. She walks into her brothers room to see Aristides "playing" with his male friend. His immediate reaction was to beg her not to tell anyone. She stood there and watched as tears formed in his eyes and a feeling new to her burned within. Power. She liked it. She agreed not to say anything, but ever since then Aristides looked at her with a sense of fear. Felicitas knew something that would destroy everyone's image of her masculine brother and she used it to her benefit. Aristides was never cruel again, but when he managed to stand up for her it wasn't out of love rather fear. Felicitas never cared though, because she realized she was now powerful.

Another four years and she was thirteen, with a slew of information about everyone who had power in her life. Her brothers feared any information about her father, who presented himself as a sound minded man with the reasonable job of a factory supervisor. No one outside of his four children ever saw him in a drunken stupor with a fire burning in his eyes. No one ever saw him strike his child, and no one saw the marks on them afterwards. Felicitas feared her father as much as her brothers, only she never let it show. It passed her mind to tell his secret to the authorities, but she has seen the house of orphans and figured it was better to be beaten by strangers than to be beaten by strangers. Felicitas finally got her binoculars by stealing a few dollars from her father everyday for a year. For the first time she ventured to the roof, and watched the mysteries of the night.

With the binoculars she learned a lot. The next door neighbor was cheating on his wife with his son's teacher. The town butcher was involved in the black market. Her brother, Thomas, had a girlfriend that he snuck out to. The peacekeepers met every night at a strip club. It wasn't like she would ever tell anyone anything, but just having the information gave her a rush. The only time she used the information was when she was 14 and was caught stealing test answers from her teacher. The teacher threatened to have her whipped by peacekeepers when Felicitas panicked and replied with a threat to leak her information about her affair. The teacher quickly grew furious, but her eyes made it clear she was debating whether or not to face the public humiliation over a test. With her eyes burning with hatred and yet defeat, she let Felicitas go and whispered "Don't tell anyone." Felicitas nodded and scampered away with a smirk on her face and test answers in her pocket. She knew that she was powerful, and she would do anything to remain this way forever.

I wanna hold the whole wide world
Right here in my open hands
Maybe I’m just a little girl
A little girl with great big plans

^P E R S O N A L I T Y

It is clear to Felicitas that she is quiet simply a control freak. She feels the need to have power over the others around her, this likely derives from her abusive father. She gains the upper hand over everyone using the information she gains from her nightly visits to the roofs around her. She understands the basics of human emotion and knows how to pull and yank on them to ensure her safety. She uses these mechanisms to make sure no one can harm her, but the thing she fears most is her father. No one can protect her from him, and this causes her to be cross and rash. Her fear of her dad causes an aura of dreads that lurks about her heart.

Secrets are power to Felicitas and the worst thing she can do to herself is not having secrets. The secrets of others are what drive Felicitas to do everything she does. It can be viewed as an obsession of hers; when she isn't hunting secrets she seems indifferent, much like her older brothers who did the same to her. In fact, she has ended up a lot like her brothers, indifferent. This leads to the issue of loyalty, which she lacks in because, when it come down to it, Felicitas will tell a secret in a heartbeat to get out of a sticky situation. Her inner desire is to never be hurt again and she will do anything to prevent it. This fear leads to her disregard of beauty that many girls desire. She feels that by making herself pretty will lead to romance and that romance will naturally lead to heartbreak and hurt. Sometime she can see that that is unusual thinking, but most of the time she has this irrational feeling. Felicitas is a power hungry girl, but inside all of it she is just insecure.

No one knows the inner Felicitas, who is scared and insecure. No one knows that girl because no one has ever gotten close enough to her. In reality Felicitas is extremely curious, she wonders what her mother would have thought of her. The curiosity within her is another thing that drives her obsession about others and their secrets. It is an extremely rare thing that Felicitas will show her real emotions because of the huge wall that she has built. The years of abuse make her extremely tough skinned and lost interest in anything that was publicly known. Being abused has both helped and damaged Felicitas in so many ways and left scars in her heart that she needs someone to help.