izzy. / three fin

CONSTANCE

hayward

You find solace in words.

Figuring out the idyllic combination of letters and stringing together syllables to craft stories that have the power to transport you to another place. Like a princess high in a tower of cobblestone, clad in the finest silk dress from across the land and awaiting the day a beguiling prince comes to make her his bride. Or a fierce warrior who takes destiny into her own hands, with an iron greatsword clasped to her hip and an emerald-scaled dragon at her side on her journey to saving her war torn kingdom.

You live in the stories you create. Pen to paper, your heart lies in these fantastical worlds you conjure in your mind.

Your parents aren't too fond of it. They'd tell you that it's a waste of time, that you should put more effort into your studies than a fantasy. Your parents were in all senses of the word: traditionalists. Practical people with practical dreams. Hayward's were never much of dreamers - it was all about control for them. Equations, statistics, and variables. You can't substitute fantasy into an equation, it won't compute. Those intangible things that crawl around your mind, thoughts and memories and dreams, they don't fit within one bracket. That scares people who can't think with the whole picture in mind. Father used to say that hopes and dreams were for the weak, for the lost, for the ones who had nothing to their name. He said that hope was the light at the end of the tunnel for them, the end of the line. You never believed that though.

Ever since you were a girl, you've let your creativity run amok. Much to the dismay of your mother, you used to pile up books to stand on so you could scribble vivid drawings of worlds that only existed inside your head on the walls. And there were a lot of walls inside that house. When you were small, just a toddler with pudgy legs and nebulae for eyes, you used to believe that the house was a world on its own. The flagstone fireplace loomed over you, back then you thought it could touch the skies like beanstalk from one of the old fairy tale books that Edwin used to slip under your door at night. Even now, standing a few feet taller, that hearth feels like a giant.

When you first began to write, unloading each and every thought that bounced around your imaginative brain onto paper, the fireplace inspired colossal castles and towers. You used things you saw in your life as details in your stories - the bird that landed on the ledge outside your window was a mighty eagle greeting the heroine, the woman selling a myriad of flowers off the street was a witch with a caravan of potions and spells that promised a beguiling future.

Mother said you had an overactive imagination. In some ways, maybe she was right. Most of your life is spent musing on fantasies, the fake, as Father would sneer. You would let your studies fade to the background, grades falling because it wasn't as important as writing down your next great idea. Sometimes an idea would strike you out of nowhere, it would ponder around your mind for hours, and the second you had a chance, you would pull out your notebook and jot it down.

Being a Hayward means you could do anything in Three, the name held power within its tangled syllables, but you never fancied the life your siblings did. They went to gauche balls and aspired to be something great, to follow in the family legacy or to create their own. You never wanted to make a name for yourself. Rather you liked staying out of the spotlight, finding comfort in silence and an empty room.

Just plain-old Connie.