Europa Wie :||: District 5 :||: FIN {rewrite}

{AGE} :||: 23

{GENDER} :||: female

{DISTRICT} :||: district 5


---
{APPEARANCE}
Starting to leave her teens, Europa is leaving her child-like
features behind and looking less like her older sister and brother.
It’s a shame. I remember loving that about my features when I
was younger. I wanted to be them so much. Her face still
holds the same innocence that she grew up with, but her face is
now more defined with the family pointed chin and cheekbones
that show when she smiles which hasn’t been much lately, but I
am still better than Mother.. Her jaw is more pronounced and
often clenched tight as she goes about the day. Only once she
relaxes does the lower half of her face smooth out. But I can
still feel the bluntness of my chin, just like Father’s.

Her dark eyes are no longer as big and wide as they once were
when she was becoming a teenager. Storm went through this
too, that’s what he said. The loss of wonder and excitement
disappeared after those once virginal eyes witnessed the death
of her brother and sister. Now she can only look at her family with
a sense of sadness and despair as she realizes that she will still
be living and breathing a luxury Storm and Sundra can’t
have. Her small eyes see her younger sister, watching her
grow up, and hoping that she will be able to grow old like Europa.

Below her eyes are dark circles that remind everyone of how little
sleep she gets now that she has filled in Sundra’s shoes and
takes care of the house whenever she gets off work late at night.
The short, dark eyelashes cannot mask the obvious sign of fatigue
and often do nothing for her appearance. But everyone has
small eyelashes so I guess nothing can really be changed.
Above her eyes are the same eyebrows she’s had since she was
really little, never changing shape. They have grown a little thicker
as she aged, but they are for the most part the same.

Her long hair that she vowed she would never cut once she
turned twelve was cropped short after Sundra’s death. When she
was younger, many people mostly Mother and Father’s
friends would comment on how her hair was so much like
Sundra’s. In a state of grief, she had her hair cut into an almost
boyish hairstyle, causing her father to look at her with disapproval
but Mother cried much less when she saw me because I looked
less like Sundra. She continues to keep her hair short—never
far past her shoulders—and ties it up with an elastic band
whenever she has to work. The light brown color cannot be
changed, but the curls that had been out of control through
puberty have been tamed.

The shape of her nose continues to bother her as it does not
resemble either Mother’s or Father’s. The flat nose cannot
serve as a reminder of her siblings for they had nice noses, very
small and defined. Unlike my broad, flat nose, but she has
realized that her nose is not necessarily a defect. As long as it
works properly, it could never be labeled as a defect. Just like
how each individual animal is different, but we do not consider
one bad or another good.

She reached her full height when she turned 15, two inches short
of her sister’s height. Sundra was always the tall one. If she
had been a boy, she would have been taller than Storm. With
the growth in height, she began to look skinnier as her body
thinned out from the family’s inability to match her fast metabolism
during her growing years. Her thin frame lacks muscle despite the
chores she has to do at home when not at work, but there are
no more animals left to take care of. She tries to eat as Sundra
would have wanted her to—balanced portions of whatever they
could afford—but she is often too tired to think about it.

Her clothes continue to remain simple, and she dresses for hard
work on the farm even though there is no farm left to take care of
and it kills Father that we have nothing left. Her skin has
gotten coarser with age, but it remains pale as she finds herself
throughout the day and outside only at night, a contrast to what
her elder siblings had to go through as they were growing up.
Around her right wrist is the string of eighteen beads handed
down to her by her older brother that she swears will never
lose it, never take it off for any reason.



{PERSONALITY}
The young jokester from her early teen years has long
disappeared since she became the oldest child in her family.
Europa tries to be like her older brother but with each year, she is
slowly forgetting how to be relaxed. Storm is fading too. It’s
hard to remember him sometimes. Still, she will resort to jokes
as a way to not confront the situation, believing it relieves the
tension in the atmosphere, and follow them with a nervous
chuckle. She also still loves to chat, but finds it difficult as it gets
harder to find people she can be comfortable with.

She has grown both closer and further away from her parents. In
a smaller household, she cannot avoid confrontations with them,
especially her father. But Mother, she stays in her room most of
the days. She does not work for she is too sad to even eat.
Europa is convinced her mother is still in grief despite it being four
years since Sundra was killed in that arctic wasteland, and she
gives her mother whatever space she needs because she knows
all too well the pain Mother must be feeling. Her father, on
the other hand, has finally accepted that Europa is the oldest child
and spends more time with her, despite the limited ranching
knowledge he is allowed to give her.

Europa is fiercely protective of her younger sister and remaining
sibling, Io. She knows she could never be the pseudo-parents
Sundra and Storm were for her little sister, but she has tried to fill
in their shoes as much as possible. As she watches Io grow older,
she realizes that the responsibilities she thought she would have
to take on alone could be shared. She is a teenager, fast
approaching adulthood. She knows how to cook better than I
ever could. However, her instincts fully kick in during times of
danger, including the Reaping. When she had once been
frightened for herself, her fear now extends to the only sibling she
has left before she too is gone, gone, gone.

Once she left her school, she became less social and relied less on
her friends. It is not that she does not like having friends with
her; she can hardly find the time to be with them as she still feels
the need to be responsible in the household. She knows her
father is busy working on a job he knows nothing about and
her mother often spends half the day staring at old photographs
even if it has been four years. She knows Io is capable of
taking care of herself, but she does not want her to be
overburden with schoolwork on top of everything. So she spends
her days tired and weary and wishing life had been the way it
was before she turned thirteen.

Late at night, she will often sit on her bed and look at the empty
spaces in the room where Sundra and Storm come back to
life. Her mind is aware that they are not really there, but for
four years, her mind plays tricks on her and she pretends that she
is watching them act as they would if they were really there. An
unhealthy habit, her best friend calls it, but a necessary one for
her as she immortalizes her siblings every night. They sit on the
beds, laughing, always eighteen even as she grows older. Her
greatest fear that is already happening with Storm is the blurring
of features, the forgetting of how exactly he would smile when Io
tripped over his big body. And when they leave each night, it’s
like a part of me is gone. But they are always there, every
single night.


{HISTORY}
Born the second youngest in the family, Europa’s childhood
revolved around the care provided by her two older siblings,
despite their ages being not that far apart. Her parents had
prayed for a boy since her conception and when she was born a
girl, they could not help feel a little bit disappointed. Her birth also
made them resolved that the next child would be a boy, so they
accepted her and named her. But I can’t remember if they ever
held me to their selves. After she turned two, she was handed
to her 7-year-old brother to be taken care of and somehow
managed to rope in her 5-year-old sister.

Her favoritism for Storm began when she realized at 3 years how
to differentiate between her older siblings. She knew that Sundra
was the one she could depend on if there was something serious
for Storm was always so busy with what Mother and Father
wanted him to do, but Storm was always the fun “parent”, the
one Europa would go to if she wanted a mood lift. He always
knew how to make me happy by cracking a joke about the
situation. She realized they were not her parents around the
age of 5, when Io was born, but her preference for them over her
parents had already been set.

Europa accepted Io into the family easily, happy that there was
going to be someone she could help take care of. While she
did try to help around, the responsibility mainly rested on Storm
and Sundra, so her relationship with Io was a little distant. As she
continued to grow up, there was a clear separation between
Storm/Europa and Sundra/Io, despite how close-knit they all
were. But it was only because I wanted to be just like Storm
and Io preferred Sundra’s tender care. However, as always,
there were moments when each pairing would have their issues,
such as when Europa tried to bring a cow into the house and
Storm had to convince her that the cow would be okay. I
remember hating him for it, thinking he was so mean for not
caring about her.

The day Europa was introduced to animals was one of her favorite
days. As per most of the Wie children, being able to work on the
farm was a great day for several reasons. Storm always told me
that it was the only time he felt that Mother and Father were
there in his life, and Sundra always loved being with the animals.
For Europa, she loved the idea of being introduced into the
world that had held her parents so tightly. She finally felt like she
was a part of the family and would try to tag along as much as
her parents would let her. She had an extreme fondness for the
cows on the ranch and their deaths impacted her the most with
the industry change because Storm could no longer watch over
them like he promised he would.

When the industry changed in District 5, Europa found herself
having a more difficult time in school. The material she was
learning reflected none of the experience she had on the family
ranch; the textbooks no longer mentioned ranching in District 5
but called District 10 the ranching district. It caused her to ask a
lot of questions until her father, scared that the Capitol or the
Peacekeepers might do something, finally shut her up. He was
really scary that day, enough for me to stop asking him questions.
I think he was really scared then too. She then turned to
Sundra for help, when she realized that her parents wouldn’t
know how to respond to the homework.

In her thirteenth year, her older brother, Storm, was reaped and
became a tribute in the 57th Hunger Games. She had never liked
the Hunger Games and tried to watch it as little as possible, so
that was the first year she had the experience of being so
connected to the Games. She spent the whole time praying and
asking for Storm to come back, and when he did not, Europa
didn’t know what to do anymore. She noticed that Sundra had
taken over the once two-part role of older sibling and she still
tried to help out as much as possible, but it was difficult to accept
the loss of the joker in the family. As a result, she grew more
serious.

Two years later, Sundra was reaped for the 59th Hunger Games,
and the whole family was catapulted to the same situation that
they were in not too long ago. At that point, Europa was a little
more accustomed to the fighting and death that was linked to the
Hunger Games, but she was still afraid for what could happen.
When Sundra was killed, the whole family broke apart and Europa
had to accept the fact that she could no longer depend on
Storm and Sundra and would have to be the oldest child in the
family.


{CODE}
odair

{OTHER}
Text: 086FA1
Dialogue: 3F8FD2
Thought: 048C8C
Other: FF7400
FC: Shin-Hye Park