Pantalaimon Cabot, District Twelve
Apr 26, 2012 1:52:46 GMT -5
Post by Minty on Apr 26, 2012 1:52:46 GMT -5
NAME ` Pantalaimon "Pan" Cabot
GENDER ` Male
AGE ` In existence for sixteen years
DISTRICT ` Resident of District Twelve
APPEARANCE `
Different.
Pan was different. He knew it. Everyone knew it. It was unmistakable, and he hated it. Hated it with all that he was, yet he knew there was no escape.
He was born without a voice.
It was terrible, a terrible curse, for he was born into a family of singers and musicians, and his parents themselves were two of the best singers in the whole district. Oh, he was a disgrace, and what hope his parents had that their only son would be able to carry on their legacy vanished at the proclamation of this fact.
"I'm sorry," the doctor had said on that rainy evening when Pan came into the world. He came, shivering from the sudden cold of the outside world, taking his first shallow breaths. But he didn't cry. He gasped and gasped, the thin skin on his chest rising and falling, but no sound came, and his parents feared he was going to die. "but your son. . . You see, he seems to lack a voice box. It is. . . unlikely that he will ever be able to speak, yes, very unfortunate. . . Aside from that, though, he is perfectly healthy."
His parents, a young couple in their early twenties, were devastated. All their dreams of teaching their beloved son to sing went down the drain, and so they gave up hope.
Pan was an intelligent boy, and early in his life he realized that he could not make the same sounds with his mouth that everyone else did. He realized, and he understood. It saddened him, but he vowed to himself that he would find other ways to voice his feelings.
He observed and he thought long and hard about the things that would give him his own voice, through gentle touches and kind smiles. And so he learned.
He felt comfort when his grandmother would pat his head, caressing his reddish-brown locks, a variation from the usual brown and dark blond hair of the other district people.
This is how to make someone calm.
He felt embarrassed when people stared at him on his way to school, glancing at him and whispering, looking away when he looked. The boy who can't speak, they would whisper. The boy who can't sing. He felt their eyes on him, burning through him, judging his every move. He would duck his slender, lanky frame and rush past them, wishing he didn't have a height of five feet ten inches so he could hide better.
This is how to make someone feel out of place. I'll never look at anyone like the way they look at me.
He felt loved every time his mother would smile and sing to him, her voice so lovely that his full lips, chapped and slightly out of proportion with the rest of his angular face, would part in a grin as well, revealing his straight, white teeth. He would look up at her and find himself in her features. The shape of his eyes, the smooth planes of his cheeks, his pale skin.
This is how to make someone happy and at ease.
He felt encouragement when his father's gray eyes met his almond-shaped brown ones every time he played a chord correctly on the guitar. He would look for his features in his father's face as well: his gently sloping nose, not ideally tall but fitting in well with the rest of his face. His prominent jawline. The dark circles under his eyes that no amount of sleep could erase. His physique, however, was not well-built like that of his father's. The only similarity their bodies seemed to share were their hands and feet, a tad bit bigger than they would have liked.
The guitar. His real voice; the voice he knew he was meant to have: the voice of music. He would spend hours practicing on it every day, plucking at the strings until his once smooth hands became rough and callused, and grooves formed on his fingertips where they pressed on the strings. Pan had developed a habit of biting his fingernails, so they were always too short. It didn't matter to him in the least; after all, it only made playing easier.
Pan got up early every morning, while everyone else was asleep, and he would pull on an old white button-down shirt that belonged to his father, soft-faded jeans and a pair of worn sneakers. He would sneak out of the house with his guitar and sit down at the base of an old oak tree about half a mile away from the nearest house, and he would play his heart out.
This is how I sing.
PERSONALITY `
Pan would be what most people would describe as a perfect son. He did his chores, he studied hard, and he never answered back to his parents. Of course, he couldn't answer back even if he wanted to.
Even though he would never live up to his parents' expectations, they grew to love him. Singing wasn't the only talent a boy could have, after all. Pan worked hard to find other means of expressing himself.
First, he learned how to play the guitar. He practiced for hours and hours on end, sometimes late into the night, oblivious to the world around him. He wanted to sing, and this is how he sang. Sometimes, he played for so long after dusk that the next thing he knew, the sun was rising again, sending beams of light through his bedroom window. For such was his devotion and dedication to his craft. Never let it be said that he did not try to sing, because he sang in his own way, and it was the most lovely sound. The notes carried all his feelings: happiness, love, sorrow. The music he played carried his soul.
But he felt that it wasn't enough. He had so much bottled up inside, and if he could, he would have screamed and cried it all out a long time ago. But no, it was impossible. His feelings needed to escape, and so he tried painting.
Gorgeous landscapes bloomed on his sketchbook. He drew and he painted every day, every place and object that his nimble mind could conjure. Every few pages, the mood of his art would change drastically. A meadow filled with flowers, with butterflies and birds dancing on the air, bathed by sunlight, would morph into a gloomy cave with cold water running down its sides and a wolf at its mouth, blood dripping from its fur and howling at the luminescent moon.
Still it was not enough. He needed words. Words. Words he could not say and could only think, echoing in his brain, hungry for freedom.
Then he took to writing. He created beautiful poems and stories, often with characters who, like him, were handicapped. He had a notebook simply bursting with his words, and if one were to read his writings, they would understand the pain he was in.
For in truth, Pan had a deep loathing for the world. Under that sweet, innocent, loving facade was a monster. A beast. He hated how cruel life had been to him. He hated the stares people gave him. He hated being beat up at school because he couldn't defend himself. He hated being different.
Why me? What did I do to deserve this?
Those were a few of the many questions that constantly plagued him. He asked himself why he was born without a voice, when there were so many bad people out there who deserved it more than he did. He asked himself why he was doomed to music and art and writing because he couldn't utter a single sound.
Pan wasn't a terrible person. He was considerate and well-mannered, intelligent and selfless. He knew how to love, and he loved with all he was.
But he hated with all he was, too. He could not help holding grudges on the people who were free to speak, but said such vulgar and hurtful things. People who spoke lies. People who used words to lure others into danger.
He knew what he was born with, but he didn't know why. It was a curse.
The curse of silence.
HISTORY `
"I knew they were disappointed when I was born. I can imagine the looks on their faces: my mother with her eyebrows arched and eyes wide, mouth slightly open; my father with his eyebrows bunched together in the middle, nostrils flaring, his thin lips in a hard line.
"They weren't disappointed because they didn't want me, no, they wanted a son more than anything else in the world. Well, they got a son, but it wasn't the son they wanted. They wanted a son who would cry when he was born, and for the first time, they would hear their rich voices molded into one and coming from the mouth of their beloved offspring. They wanted a son who they could teach to sing, and who would sing for them in a voice so lovely that all the animals and even the wind would stop to listen.
"Instead, they got me. A boy with no voice. So yes, they were indeed disappointed.
"I'm not saying they didn't love me; they did. But it took them a while. A long while. You know how most parents love their children from the moment the baby comes out into the world and takes its first breath? That wasn't the case with me. I guess you could say they had to learn to love me.
"My mother was the first. She would sing to me every night, and I suppose I must have stared up at her with my tiny baby eyes in admiration, because she started to smile as she sang. It was probably then, I think, that she realized that I would never be there to sing for her, or even with her, but I would always be there to listen.
"Listen. That's all anyone expects me to do. They think that just because I can't talk it means that I love to listen. Truth be told, I despise listening. I hate it when people rant about their problems and expect me to hang on to every word. I don't like listening any more than they do. People with voices don't know how to listen. I do, but it doesn't mean I like to.
"My father learned to love me when he started teaching me how to play the guitar. That was the only way I could sing, and he seemed content with it. I picked it up easily, and he was pleased. He probably realized that I inherited some of the family's musical talent after all.
"I played until my fingers bled. But I didn't feel the pain. I was just happy to be accepted.
"Soon after that, I learned that just because your family has accepted you, doesn't mean the rest of the world has, too. I started school, and my parents did inform my teacher about my handicap. Problem was, she didn't inform the rest of my classmates.
"Isn't that a teacher's job? You know, to say 'Class, this is Pan Cabot. He's a bit different from the rest of you. He can't talk. So help him along as much as you can, alright?'
"Anyway, she didn't. And after roll call, one of my classmates, a brutish boy whose name I forgot, raised his hand and said, 'Teacher, how come he didn't say "here" when you called his name?'
"Do you know what she said? She said to him,'Oh, it's because he's special, dear.'
"Special. Well, you can imagine that the kids in my class took it all the wrong way. That was when they started picking on me.
"At recess, I spotted a big old tree outside the school and carried my snacks there. A couple of boys (including, of course, the brutish boy from earlier) ganged up on me and took my cookies.
"I didn't cry. I didn't want to show weakness. My will and my pride were all I had left at that moment. I wanted then to know that they could take my cookies, but they couldn't take my pride.
"They must have been expecting me to cry or say something, because when I did neither, they labeled me as a 'snotty kid who thinks he's better than everyone else.'
"I knew then, that the world was a cruel place.
"For years I endured this torment. Even after my schoolmates grew up enough to understand that I was handicapped, they bullied me still. People around town whispered about me, and even about my parents. I used to hold my mother's hand and draw close to her when they did. I would look up at her to see how she was taking it, but she held her chin high as always. When I grew up, I did too.
"It was during those years that I grew to hate the world and the people in it. I wondered why it was so easy for them to judge others but not themselves, so easy for them to deceive and lie and spread rumors.
"Maybe it was an intention to keep me pure that made God make me like this.
"Instead, however, it turned my heart cold. Everything I couldn't say gathered up inside me. So much hate. Nothing anyone said could make me change my opinion of the world. I knew in my heart that everyone, even the lowliest person in my district, was like the Capitol. Judging. Pushing people down to get to the top.
"It was unfair.
"I escaped to my guitar, to my sketchpad and pencils, to my notebook, trying to cleanse myself of the hate I felt.
"The hate that never left."
OTHER `
Face Claim ` LEE CHI HOON
(I know face claims are closed for now, but I plan to claim him as soon as they're open. I hope it's okay~)
CODE WORD `
odair
