I Want To Give You My Characters.

To my lovely Lalia,
I’ve had Rio stuck in my head all day, so I sat with my exercise book on my lap on the bus and this came out. It started as a post and ended as some form of freeform bio. Don’t even ask. But anyhow, I know she is not very like your Rio, so I completely understand if she is too far off the track for you to let her out. I very much enjoyed writing this, anyhow!

Character you would like: Rio Lyons

Why you want them: Because this family is quite simply, amazing. Your writing really comes into its own when you write about strange people because you have such a knack for emotions, and I want to work with that so bad! Rio especially because I love younger characters, because they see the world with so much beauty in it and it’s so full of promises that are whole and they’re not sick of seeing the world yet.

What you think would be fun to RP about them: Two for the price of one with this little lady! I love the idea of Effy sort of controlling her, and she sort of has this idea that Effy is her, but because Effy shows her the world she can’t see the way in which Effy is effecting her world. Also the Zion!Relationship because of the whole dark colours thing and so many good lines are coming into my head right now.

Any changes you might want to make:
As you can see from the sample, Effy is the reason that Rio is so emotions, only they’re not really emotions at all, rather colours painted like a portrait. Urgh, sort of hard to explain, just read ☺

Anything else: Sorry for stealing your colours but they are beautiful.

Do you agree to the Terms and Conditions of my sketchy adoption agency?: Of course! Here goes ^^

I am what I am not, for I am not what I am.

They all say that I am too young, that I cannot yet know how the world works. Yet, I say that they have outgrown the earth, have left behind the innocence needed to see every colour in its true light. And Effy says that their so-called maturity is the reason that no one but I can see her.

Effy teaches me how to see the colours in people. We share a common language, one I was not taught but was born speaking. She tells me that someone is burnt sugar, stick to the roof of her mouth and scratching her throat. I immediately understand that they are far too proud of their achievements, far too interested in what everybody else thinks of their hues. She whispers into mu ear that such-and-such looks awfully Venetian, and so I know to stay out of their way, for their anger. Effy and I. we are together. I am her, and she is me. Like Peregrine and Tallulah, it is my blood that reds her veins, and her air that blues my lungs. As I am the flesh and blood of the earth, so she is of the air.

She came to me in my first breath of air, as my tender body had been expelled from its slate sanctuary, a fleck of colour in a grey world. Every minute she is with me, screaming about the umbers of my father when outside blows a gale, and about the baby blue of my mother in the spring breeze. If only you could hear her colours. She uses the most poetic, incomprehensible words, only I understand them perfectly. And yet, when it comes to my sister Seville she is muted, silent, her train of thought lost in the whispering branches. At first, I thought it was because even Ephraim has her flaws, but then I realised that Seville does not contain any colours. She is a painter’s nightmare, all black and white, except not really either of those. Sometimes she is my nightmare too.

They see me talking to Effy sometimes. Because they are too big and dull to look for her, they think I am talk to myself and they call me a nutter and hurt me. Effy tells me their colours before they even talk to me, but she wants me to stay and fight for her. For someone made of nothing, she sure likes to be protected. But I don’t mind getting hurt for her, because she shows me the colours, and without the colours my world would hurt too. It would be gashed, and bleed until the grey shrivels. And although I would try to bandage it, without Effy the wound would eventually kill me. She’s the something between my sisters and myself.

My siblings mean a great deal to me. Effy describes them in such vibrant colours, which is how I know I love them. Those that mean the most shine brightest in my mind. Peregrine and Tallulah are a carmine and a flax respectively, ‘Lullah a much lighter colour, only they blur somewhere in the middle so that you can’t tell when one colour starts and the other begins. Denali is a plum, the word overripe and heavy in my mouth. Zion is a Persia, exotic and special and the only one in the family who listens to my colours, only the dark consumes him and he drowns in it. If only he could understand the black needs to be added to his shade, and that his shade cannot, should not, be added to the black. And Seville, although her name is a mandarin and her skin is a pearl and her lips are a rosso, Seville is nothing. Lastly, we come to me. When before I said that Seville was the only one that Effy could not describe, I was not entirely truthful. I ask her each night before I sleep what colour I am, and each night she gives me a different answer. Perhaps one day I will find a colour that Effy can paint in her wind across my back, but until then I like to think of myself as a spectrum.

No one laughed at Effy when I was little. Back then, she spoke slowly, used simple colours like orange and pink. Now she knows that I can understand Princeton and cerise, so she lets them ensnare her tongue and tumble through my body. Then, they thought my little “friend” was cute. But then I got older and even Zion doubts her sometimes. I never doubt her. She is far too bright in my mind to doubt.

I realise that this was supposed to be about me, but it has mostly been about Effy. That’s ok. As I said, Effy is me; she is my Sangria and my pumpkin and my periwinkle and my colour in dark places. I don’t really remember my history in words, I can remember a hundred thousand colours that Effy painted in my mind, and thumbtacked there so it can last an awful long time. I can’t describe what she looks like to you, because she doesn’t look, she just is.