Leoradarci Burnett - D4 - done

I am both light and dark. Good and bad. Not evil and evil. I yearn for days of healing, compassion, and adoration of all lives beyond our island. Yet I crave days of strength, battle, and domination. My dreams call me to the sea, and throw the sheer fibers of faded will-versus-instinct into hurricanes. I am Irma, Katrina, Andrew, Harvey. Ancient storms of our distant past, struck only into the present through myths and murmurs. I am the eye of Jupiter. I am the sun, beating down upon the scorched earth, caressing and melting all in my path. I rage, rage, rage until there's nothing left but evaporated water. I suck the ocean dry, then sing to it in the night. I destroy, I heal.

I can not claim this power for my own. It comes from legacy, from past. My mother, who is dark and beautiful, whose shade of maroon hair does not reflect my crow's black, is shadows itself. There is no indecision, no second-guessing. There is only action, and I admire her for it. She's abrasive, rude, and self-assured. I received the rudeness, but the self-assured trait was lost among the waves of personality. I am conflicted, I am unstable. My mother embodies the night. Instead of healing whispers, she lights fires and encourages desolation. I both admire her and feel afraid of her.

I suppose I take after my father. We rarely meet, every year for Reaping day, and once a month for healing-practice, but I can tell that he is kind-hearted and fair. The embodiment of the heavens and all things good. He works as a medic in the district. Of course, we aren't much for hospitals, but we still have healers. During our monthly sessions, he teaches me to identify healing plants, and shows me how to stitch wounds or quench the red-hot-snares of my mother's flame. They met this way, light and dark, as he healed her from her own stupidity and she fell in love with his willingness to listen. My mother loves to talk, more than anyone I know, and my father only listens.

Yet they can't live together, no, that would be unacceptable on the island. Instead, my father lives in the district and we live in an underground cavern. It's full of peculiarities, flame, and metal. My mother lives for violence and helps train the women on the island in the physical arts. She trains me too, but I only enjoy it on my shadow-days. I am strong, like her, but tiny. Where she towers, I shrink. I am done growing, we both know this, even though I have only sprouted to the height of sixty inches. I can control a blade well enough, but I prefer things I can throw. Javelins or knives or anything with range. The closer people get to me, the easier they'd be able to overpower me.

My mother taught me the art of fire-and-song. She whispers to it, coaxes it to dance with her long, limber form. Eats it likes pie then blows it through the air like bubblegum-kisses. It grazes her tongue, her cheeks, her hair with a gentle touch, yet it never seems to bite. When I try to swallow such a partner, I taste ash and feel fear, but still the flame may come once or twice on dreary dawns. I don't prefer this monster, but I entertain it for her sake. We breathe fire together, this is our bond, and I accept it because I have to.

My mother has amber eyes, almost red in dim light. Mine are black and distant, uncertain. Her features are carved and strong, like stone on a mountain. Mine are soft and unordinary. I would not call myself beautiful, only plain. My face and arms and fingers and toes are all covered in light and slivered scars. Remments of our playtime gone ary, or a sword just a bit too sharp. I accept these imperfections, embrace them. I am a hurricane, after all, and not every part of my soul is an eye. My heart, perhaps, beats pure, but my fingers have a mind of their own, and so do my thoughts. I rage, rage, rage, around my own flesh. I am ying-yang, I am a spinning top.

I am Leoradarci. Both light and dark. I am one, yet I am two. I hope to discover balance.

My mother raised me for the shadow-dance.
Not long after my father began to teach me to heal, my mother taught me to fight. "You're not good enough, Darci!" She would hiss, her tongue barbed-wire upon my skin as she muttered only the second-half of my combined name. Leora from father, Darci from mother. Combined to pull my very fibers apart thread-by-thread, limb-by-limb until I felt the burning-bitter-bite of blood. I bit the inside of my cheeks raw, and screamed and screamed and screamed until she declared me merely adequate.

This routine went on five days a week, but I was never strong enough, never good enough for her. My heart grew bitter roots, and my rage roared rogue whenever we were together. I love my mom, in the way you can love the thought of death. She pushed me "for your own good, Darci", but it felt like punishment with each insult she screamed. Together with darkness, I forget all but myself and her.

The others think she's strong, but I know the truth. I know the truth of both my parents. My mother is evil, my father is pure. I am a conglomeration of both, always being pulled from side to side.

I hope, one day, I can find myself.