holly rosario || district seven || cbd1 || fin

"Chopping wood is a man's job, sweetie," Mama always used to say whenever Papa went out into the woods for his day job. And okay, maybe that explained why Mama herself always stayed around the house and cared for you and your sisters, why they had eventually grown up and married men who went out and did the same thing while they followed Mama's path, but that sort of stuff didn't appeal to you. Staying at home, having a family, caring for a house - that wasn't you.

You were a child of the woods, a child of the outdoors. Mud would stain your clothes more often than not, bumps and cuts and bruises marking your skin as some sort of mischief or another would end up gripping hold of you and stifling your progress into a "proper young lady."

You didn't want to be a proper young lady. If that was what your sisters and your mama had turned into, it sounded like a truly boring way of life. Not that you ever verbally shared those thoughts - you weren't that stupid.

But persistence won out, and soon it was Papa that you were spending your days with instead, learning the tricks of the axe and the tools of the trade. And it was hard. Harder than anything that Mama had ever tried to put you through, which was saying something. But it was fun, too. And no matter how often the men he works with go from playfully teasing to downright insulting, you find you really don't care.

This was what you were meant to do. And there's no turning back now.