Rum Tum Tugger, Wanderer [Done]

(Name) RUM TUM TUGGER

(Age) 17 Summers

(Gender) Boy Parts

(District) Wherever and Whenever

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'Cause I want to live like animals
Careless and free like animals
I want to live
I want to run through the jungle
The wind in my hair and the sand at my feet
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(Love you for your inner parts, baby boy)

She’d tell me that, ‘cause when I got scared or was hungry or sad, it’d make me feel better. There’s something better knowing you got love for the inner, and not anything else. Makes worrying about where you’re going to get a scrap of food or sleep at night a little less stressful. She showed me better than anyone else that I’m a tiger when it comes to protecting what needs protecting, or an eagle that can soar up and into the sky when I need to run away. Or that I’m a little fish in a great big sea, swimming upstream toward where I need to be. I know it sounds like a lot of fancy, empty talk—you know the type, right? The type of people that swirl words around for the fact that they know them, but they don’t actually mean anything—the worst kind of people, completely false no matter how beautiful a speech they could make. Because all the festooning you can do won’t hide the fact you don’t understand beauty—written, drawn, painted, whatever you love—until you break it down to the simplest form.

Like—the way a bird’s wings can just lift it up off the ground and spread across the sky. That sure is something. Or the way after a rainstorm, there’s a flash of different colors. What’s that called? Rainbows. Even just saying it makes me happy. But you know—there’s nothing complicated about what’s beautiful, nothing too difficult to see that there’s something special about the littlest pieces and the big ginormous ones. Not that everything can be—or ever needs to be—pretty. Not at all, you misunderstand if that’s what you think I’m about. I just… sincerity, genuineness—that’s the only thing real, that makes it beautiful.

(

[/color]Your inner parts, boy. The ones that make you go pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum. And from the tips of your toes, to the top of your head, love you)[/center]

We wandering wanderers have made our way up and down the lands, seeing sights you never did see. Outside the fences, you can crawl through the dirt and climb trees, and see birds flap their wings off the horizon. And the ocean—the great, barreling throw of foam and waves and all sorts of shells—gosh[/color]. The smell alone makes you never want to leave, that fresh, beautiful stench that fills your mouth and clings to your skin. I didn’t ever want to go away, not when I was little and my arms and legs weren’t yet grown, my head too big and my knees too knobby and my nose—oh my nose—too big for my face. But I grew into it. I grew into all of it (this is the part where you blush and fan yourselves, ladies and gentleman[/color]). And she always reminded me that my goodliness wasn’t premeditated on my ability to be handsome.

As you may or may not have noticed, I consider myself a learned chap. The squirrely sort of gentleman that selects his words with utmost sensitivity. Honey—I can call you honey, or dearie, or sweetie, I’m guessing by your blush[/color]—you like the sound of my voice as much as I do. Don’t let my predilection for loquaciousness turn you upside down—I get to the point when it’s necessary. But people that are succinct are imminently boring [/color] and there is nothing worse than people that are boring. I would rather jump from the top of a bridge and into the murky black water below than for the world to think me boring. It’s a side-effect of living on the land too long. Maybe there’s some freakish mutation inside of me—from radiation or pollution or whatever is supposed[/color] to threaten us in the great beyond—that has me spewing my words faster than a humming bird flaps his wings. If you have difficulties keeping up, just tell me to slow down, I’ll go twice as fast to teach you a lesson.[/color]



Take my hand, and I’ll show you what treasures are out there. Just beyond the wall, where the weeds grow up trees and deer—[/color]did you see that?! —they prance around like they own the place. And you can shout to the heavens, your voice bouncing off rocks, oh, how, how, how does it do that? Are you telling me you’re not the least bit interested in staring up at the stars on a cloudless night, with the whole world chirping behind you, all of civilization gone and just you, the only soul to take it in? If that’s the case then you’ve got the wrong boy—did I say boy? Man. I’m all of seventeen and better than that—man amongst men, with the fur on my face and fuzz growing down my neck. Touch it and it’s all prickly, careful you don’t brush too hard.

You might ask why I would even go inside the districts at all. It’s the curious curiosity that I have for curios what brings me through the gates and between alleyways. The shards of colored glass, a broken clock, three fourths of a crutch, hand drawn coal sketchings—the list goes on. You might call it garbage, but to me it’s a feast of fancy. Art is everything in this world, it’s an expression of life and humanity in a world that’s gone to piss. Maybe you’ve been inside the district too long to recognize just how bad things are, but I know the truth. You’ll be a slave to tessera-ra-ratae, whatever it’s called, until the day that you die, or your children die. And then what do you have, but a mess of a life built up in a tiny little shell. Nope, not for me. Not the way that I was raised, not one bit. [/color]



I was born, birthed, and christened outside one of the lower districts (Ten? Eleven? Twelve?). They named me for the sound of the drum my father had taken to playing—Rum Tum, Rum Tum, Rum Tum—before the rest of the group would go to bed at night, all of them would play music like you’ve never heard. Some kind of tradition—not a savage thing, but a real, powerful, mystically mysterious thing. And so they wanted something that would be strong, that would resonate off of caverns and over mountains. [/color] Rum Tum[/color]. Rum Tum Tugger, of the Tuggers, the best little band of gypsy-folk from beyond the walls. That’s why my mother used to tell me, when I was old enough to understand.

It was always just her and me, for as far back as I could remember. She said that there was a day we all got separated, at the top of a pass overlooking on of the middle districts. It was out in one of the forests—District Seven, is that it? She had me on her back, and we were walking along, when one of the trees came smash crashing down, bumbling and tumbling over my Aunt and Uncle. They didn’t even get a chance to scream. And my cousins ran the opposite way, off into a creek where some strange mutt slit right through their throats so the river ran red with their blood—just squirt squirt squirting out into the mud and grime. And my father, brave as he was, pushed my mother back behind him. Imagine. This guy, probably wasn’t more than a half head taller than I am now, standing up to this—mangled, mongoloid creature. And just throwing himself at the thing, letting her run and get away. And just like that, my whole family was wiped out.

(

Life is a precious little bit, that a single blow can snuff out the flame)[/center]

We lit fires for them. A patch of burning grass would do, though a real rip roaring fire was a good omen. We’d sprinkle some sand and whatever herbs we have to bless them. It was a good way to never forget—to have bits and pieces of all of them, forever. That’s what she used to tell me—[/color]don’t you ever forget[/color]—it was what she’d say before she kissed my forehead at night. I get a good bit of storytelling from her, I figure, all the words swimming around in my head and spewing out my mouth like some great big soup for the ears. You like it, right? Talking so much that you can’t get a word in edgewise, has a way of clearing out the silence. Makes the moments when there’s nothing to say last longer, on account of how much you treasure them. I am sorry sometimes, talking so much. It’s just I spend so much time by myself, I have to burst—BLAM—out the seams when I get to talk to someone.

(

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a beautiful story)[/center]

I used to think we were the luckiest in the world. Coming and going as we please, even though our stomachs would grumble moan through the night, [/color]we were still free[/color] . And I could clean myself in the river or wander wherever I wanted, without no one to tell me where to go. And we discovered things—things that were left behind, like, before the world had broken into pieces and put back together again. Have you ever seen a place made out of metal, covered in vines, out in the middle of nowhere? With little cars on tracks, and faces of clowns, and all sorts of things? Carnival. I think that’s what it was called when we found it. The thing looked like it would rust into a pile of nothing, but boy was a good place to stay and gather food and play games. Like hide and seek.[/color] We spent a whole month there when I was seven, before we had to head south for the winter. I still dream about fining it again, pushing my face against the heaping hunks of metal and wandering through the flimsy hall of broken mirrors.

We got lost in a bad way—the fifteenth summer for me, her forty-second. Out by District 11, where the fence is electrified and there’s a whole lot of peacekeepers. Told her that we should have gone in at night, not in the morning when there might be people around. But she had someone she knew there, that’s what she told me, that she needed to see. She wanted me to wait outside, away from all of it, just keep camp clean and keep to myself. Except when she wasn’t back by noon, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t like her to take so long—no matter what she was doing. I disappeared into the depth of the District—in the spot she showed me, saying that it was safe. People seemed to not even notice me, some of them even waved like they knew who I was. But then the lower districts are always full of people saying pardon and minding their business.

There was a moment when my feet took to the ground like thunder. I walloped across the earth when I could hear the screams—her screams[/color]—in the square. But I—couldn’t stop them. Not before they beat her… and crushed her skull like it was an overripe fruit.

I should’ve done something to stop them, but in the moment they threw me to the ground and had me torn away. And my life was a swirl of black and white and all sorts of colors, commingling together. One good crack against the head and I thought they’d broken me open too. I dreamt of a thousand things, of clocks without numbers and sand spilling out of hour glasses. Of Tumbling down into nothingness and disappearing into the mouth of a terrible beast. But I woke up from the dreams, in a little bed, inside a little shack, on a little piece of land. And some older gentleman rubbing a cool cloth against my forehead. He whispered about my mother and gave me some oatmeal, but said I couldn’t stay another night. He was may father—or so I’m supposed to believe. Not the one that died out in the forest, but the real, breathing man that was with my mother until she ran away.

We spoke of the outside—of the world, and what I’d seen. And how long it had been the two of us, dipping in and out of districts when we could. My mother had built up quite a reputation across the place, thinking she could sneak in and out of his district without people knowing. And from time to time he would see her and he him, and the two of them would stay together for an afternoon. But one time was too many. In broad daylight she flaunted her freedom, and they’d had just about enough of her. But it made me wonder about—everything, of what it all meant that the memories weren’t real. That the adventures before me had all been illusions, or exaggerations, prestidigitations—fakery. He didn’t rightly know, and told me he didn’t rightly care.

I resolved then and there that I wasn’t spending my life in a washed up hell hole. I wasn’t about to… commit my life to not believing in miracles or adventures or anything unreal. I will be a collector of all things beautiful, of fantastic, beautiful things. Real things.[/color] Of shards of glass, bits of twine, hen’s teeth, porcupine quills, aluminum cans—whatever I can make beautiful. Whatever is art and freedom and beautiful, that’s what I want to be, too. Not some lie of safety and promise of nothing. I’ll be free to be… you and me. And if you can’t keep up… if this whole world can’t keep up, well then, that will be there lose.

(codeword) Odair

(Notes) Rum Tum Tugger was the child of a runaway that told him fantastic stories about how they came to be wanderers. In his mind he’s a fantastic adventurer, despite the lies about his birth and his clan, and will believe them until his dying day. [/justify][/blockquote][/size]