Friesia Ferde :: D5 :: DONE

She's quite pretty. Not naturally, of course, but then again, who is? Naturally, baby pimples pockmark her forehead, the reminders that she is still, at best, a stroppy teenager. Foundation covers that problem, hides them, like every other problem, from the world. Naturally, her lank hair dangles in a grey-brown hue around her face. Perioxide in large doses and copious amounts of blowdrying and styling fixes that for twelve hours at least. Of course, the family can't really afford all the product that is injected into each strand of hair, but Freisia claims that it's necessary for her to do a good performance, and besides, Daddy wouldn't bear to disappoint his little big girl. Her eyes are understated and pale grey when not outlined boldly in kohl, and don't like to stay in one place for too long, as if something might climb in through them.

She's never been stick thin. Her curves are rather over-curvy, really, and that's the way she likes it. Showing them off through low set, tight cut tops that make her mother's upper lip curl in distaste, she likes all of the gentlemen to see that there's plenty of her to go around. Muscles are permanently chiseled into her legs due to all of her riding, something that she hates. The boys tease her, mostly out of their own insecurities, because she can lift just as well as them, if not better. She hides her strength, getting out of lifting work wherever possible, because being butch just isn't attractive.

It’s effortless, breathing- unless you’re Friesia. She’s the girl who has to perfect even that, when she’s in the middle of a show. Each breath has to emit enough air to prevent her from fainting, and yet it cannot be visible. No one wants to see her belly protruding any more than it should through her curve-hugging, -suffocating leotards. It’s like every part of the shows, her shows. Her nails need to be chiplessly painted, her hair perfectly blonde and flowing, her makeup flawless. And Ripred forbid if her horses aren’t spotless, especially when she has to ride one of the white-grey Andalusians. If there’s so much as a spot of sawdust on a fetlock, a hair out of place in their tail plaits, someone will pay. She’s a perfectionist, to say the least.

But her perfection is what’s kept her alive for all these years. The seemingly-effortlessness of the shows is what people pay to watch, and that’s what has put the food on the table for so many years now. It’s kept her in Daddy’s good books, and let him get furious at her siblings instead. It’s what’s allowed her to keep her pretty little face treated the way it should. But the pressure to keep the perfection up has become to great, and now fault lines are beginning to show. She’s beginning to make mistakes in the shows, because she frankly can’t be bothered. She’s rather be out the back with whichever boy is doing the tickets that night, or smoking some designed drug with her Capitolite friends, or getting drunk by herself. Frankly, she’d rather be somewhere else.

To her family, she doesn’t let anything show. She’s rude and abrupt, because she doesn’t want to get attached to any of them. Getting out of here is something she plans to do sooner rather than later, but her honest belief is that the show won’t survive without her. And although she doesn’t feel indebted to any part of her family, she couldn’t let them starve. In fact, they should be indebted to her! She’s the one whose been the headline act year after year, the one that people come to see from all over Panem. Or rather, she goes all over Panem to see them. Naïve teenage that she is, she’s sure that when she announces her departure the family will be bowing at her feet, begging her not to go.

To the boys, she’s allusive. She tries to be, anyhow. Playing hard to get, although really she’s quite easy to get, is her speciality. Exotic is her word for herself. The gymnast, the horse rider, the district girl. They flatter her with compliments and the occasional gift and although she knows what they’re trying she goes along with it anyhow.

In terms of her friends- well, what friends? That involves people getting close to her, seeing her emotions without their make up on, and that is just far too close for comfort. Sure, she has buddies, people she’ll party with, but they don’t know her. Nor does anyone. She’s the elusive, mysterious district girl who all they know about her is her first name.

The first thought is of a pony and a buck and a scream and the fact that she still stayed on. It began long before that, of course. It began with a girl who was older that she should have been and a boy who was really a man but didn’t understand what marriage meant, and therefore was titled a child. It began with a gallop and a kiss and a sigh and a ring and a bent knee and before one could blink a wedding on horseback and then a ripe-plum belly and a screaming strong-boned child that they named Friesia. It really began even earlier, with grandparents and their grandparents and the dark days and even earlier that that, but that was long ago, and although their stories are vital to Freisia, their stories aren’t really relevant to Friesia’s story.

But anyway, the first thought is of a pony and a buck. It’s hazy, and there’s no sound, but that’s as far away from the present as she can remember. The memories come in dribs and drabs after that- her brother’s birth, a film of a kid and a rose on the screen in the district square, empty boxes of a new house with open-sky ceilings and rattily windows. Then there’s a screaming Andal in the fog of a three-year-olds recollections and after that the pony memories really start to kick in. She can remember feeding out, the first morning of school. Silly things, like hiding peas in a pile of mashed potatoes, and ducklings in the water trough. Having a good old cry because she has to share a room with Haff now that Arden is dancing in their mother’s belly. A cupcake from the mayor’s daughter, the first book that she ever read by herself, a waiting room with Haff and her mother’s tears.

It seems that the first thoughts of the show shocked her mind into remembering in a way somewhat similar to the way she remembers last year, or last night. She is seven and over the summer her father bought a truck and spend days and nights converting it. When it is finished, there is a fall of fold-out bunk beds and red-and-gold stitched costumes packed into the wardrobe. There must have been hours of conversation going into this, but no recollection of this is apparent to the girl, now. All she can remember is the first time she opened that wardrobe, and the excitement of the possibility of being a star.

The real show did not happen for almost a year after that. There was much to do- riders to be hired, stables to be constructed, tack to be bought, licences to travel to be obtained. That year was the first that Friesia can remember smiling in, smiling with her heart. But, on winter’s night where the all of the performing rider’s nervous breaths were visible in the air, the first show was performed. And she loved it.

She didn’t have the leading role then, of course, as she does today. That was awarded to her mother, who at the stage was not so worn out by her children, by her husband, by her life. Watching the hot stage lights stroking beads of sweat onto her mum’s face, Friesia can remember thinking that she was the most amazing woman in the world. It’s a thought that she wishes she could truly believe nowadays, but today she’s lost respect for the woman who was once the only person she ever wanted to be like.

The show rolled on like that for years, and somewhere along the way, Friesia grew up. She realised her dad was a prick who liked to abuse all the power he had, and her mother was weak for not standing up for herself. She realised that she could see the scars that he’d caused in her siblings, scars that she wished she could prevent. She realised that the only thing she had any control over was the boys who came to grab a lockful of her hair, to put a hand where they shouldn’t, to exchange saliva and then run away before she ever got their name. But she could taunt them, bend their words, make them work for a little bit of Friesia, and that’s the way she liked it. Being powerful burnt a fire in her, and the only thing that could dampen it was the fact that she knew, deep down, that she was being just like the father that she had grown to hate.

Now, she’s extracted herself from her family in preparation to leave home. For many years now, she’s been the lead act in the show. The whole two hours of horsey tricks involves her, now, and if she leaves there will be no one to fill that role. She isn’t close to her family, by any means, but she isn’t willing to let them starve. So for now, she’s bit by bit trying to be in less of the acts, so that she can bugger off without having sole responsibility of killing her family on her conscious.