*lirit contessa murch - district ten - fin

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sixteen - district ten - cady groves - american pie - odair[/center][/size][/color]

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Once upon a time, a girl who wished she lived in a fairy tale lived. But because she wasn’t in a fairy tale, she was sentenced to playing piano for the person who seemed to be the princess in the said fairy tale. It was a fitting role, since Genevieve did indeed believe she was a princess above the commoners, and looked upon the girl who dreamed of fairytales as a servant. Lirit was the girls name, Genevieve believed. The person that accompanied her while she sang (quite horribly, if you asked the opinions of everybody who had even heard the mayors daughter croon a tune) was walking into the room, a minute later than usual. Genevieve looked at the girl with emotionless eyes and told Lirit to sit down at the piano bench so she could do her scales.

Genevieve sighs and looks at the girl with despair. As usual, her feet can just barely touch the pedals at the bottom of the piano, and while her posture is impeccable, she can obviously tell that she’s short. Not in the way that is “on the shorter side of things”, but in all honesty, she stands at about four foot nine inches, which is something that irritates Genevieve because no matter how much she likes her height, she absolutely despises looking so freakishly tall in comparison. But while Lirit is short, she’s not willowy or thin, which is usually something that goes along with it… She’s more on the side of average weight. Not over weight by any means, but she’s the average weight that somebody from district two might be, not because of being well-fed, but because her metabolism is slow. We could blame it on her ancestors for not being able to eat much, or we could simply blame it on herself because having little food means you save as much body fat as possible.

As Lirit settles into the piano bench some more, she rolls up her sleeves, which accompany a rather tasteful type of outfit. Nothing rich, but something that looks like she put time and effort into the clothing items that she selected. Today, for example, is a jacket in which is taken in at the cuffs and has little buttons as embellishments (found inside the piano, of all places) and a pair of jeans that are simply cut. All the while, tucked into the stereotypical boot-type of shoe that district ten is known for, though hers are a tad too small for her and pinch her toes when she wears socks with them. Genevive sighs and looks at Lirit with an encouraging nod, moving her hands frantically before stabbing a cigarette back into the ash tray and sits up straighter, waiting for Lirit to play the piano in the tune that she wants. Lirits strong, nimble fingers trapeze the keys with muscle memory, tapping each key with a delicacy that could only be obtained by years of practice. Her fingers are long and able to navigate the black and white ivories with accurate precision.

The curtains are open in the living room where the piano is located, so sun dances in and casts a sheen of light upon the piano and Lirit, who is still making sure that the scales are being practiced by Genevieve. Her hair when tainted by the sun is a chocolate brown, but in the darker parts of it, is more of a dark brown. Cut into choppy layers, it’s not the most neat hair, probably because Lirit can’t afford a decent haircut so she hacks it off herself, hoping the result comes out perfectly. And usually, it doesn’t, but still, she tries and Genevieve may scoff, but it’s still something she does. The hair frames a face that isn’t particularly beautiful but is something that could be considered… Quirkily pretty. Yes. A round-shaped face with cheeks that hasn’t quite fully melted away and may never, leaving a forever child-like appearance.

Genevieve finishes her scales and looks at Lirit with her cold, gray eyes and finds Lirit’s brown ones. It was probably the only feature that anybody would fully envy on Lirit. Not because Lirit’s eyes were impressive in color or size, just more so the fact that they were always so full of life and energy that you couldn’t help but wonder what the person behind them was thinking about. Sighing, Genevieve moved her hands to motion for the next song and Lirit complied, puckered lips pressing together. They were too large for her jawline, and a quality that was far from being enviable, no matter how many people wanted large lips. She crinkled her nose when her fingers touched the wrong key, making it appear even more mousy than it already was. While it was a small nose, which could be a good thing, it was oddly shaped and flared out dramatically after the middle, rounding out the bottom of the nose. She’d never liked it and it always made her believe that she did look like one of those pesky creatures that would get into the meal bags of her neighbors sheep and cows.

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A small amount of possessions lives in a crate in the corner of a shared bedroom between three sisters. The crate is approximately three feet by three feet and contains the average things that a district ten citizen would own: An extra flannel shirt, a textbook on the best way to raise livestock, two pairs of woolen socks, a few more select items of clothing and a thick winter jacket. At the bottom of the box, though, is a notebook filled to the brim with stories. Its tattered pages are ripped in some places, and the cover is so worn thin with fingerprints and pen marks that it seems like it’s transparent, despite the thick cardstock being the said cover. Scrawled in small, ornate letters on the front, it says “The Book Of Love.” And on the inside, the same small and patient handwriting tells stories. Not of the kind that seems fictionalized, but written in what some might interpret as non-fiction, if some of the theories weren’t so outrageous. Each page is filled margin to margin with ideas and musings, but also ideals and customs about life.

The whole book is a religion that is entirely non-existent to anybody but Lirit. The religion, with no official name to it outside “The Followers of The Book Of Love” is possibly one of the most irrational things that somebody could come up with, but in all good nature, Lirit wrote it, hunched over it from the ages of nine to currently, where she’s always following it’s past, current and future teachings. In “The Book Of Love” it teaches a story of a man named Acotas who passed away in an accident spreading the love of music across the North American plains of what is now Panem. When Hollen died, he was awarded eternal life from the Greek muse of music, Euterpe, who he ruled side-by-side with, giving music and love, creating all the places outside of North America from this love, the music thrived for generations to come. The world then thrived, giving eternal life ruling amongst Actoas and Euterpe to people who brought the life to the world by spreading the word of love and music. It was very rare for this to happen, and thus, only six other deities who deserved the recognition of being eternal. The King, The Queen, The Jester, The Good Ol’ Boy, The Angel Born In Hell and The Girl Who Sang The Blues. They serve as something of a jury to Actoas and Euterpe, filtering to see if people still do deserve eternal life, and if they don’t, they recycle their souls and put them into another cycle of life until they reach their full potential of spreading love with music.

But this only worked under perfect conditions until “The Day The Music Died”, the almost doomsday to the religion, in which the deities decided that human beings had no compassion towards other human life after a century of not finding another worthy soul of becoming eternal. They nearly commenced all of their operations and decided to send a horrible storm towards some of the most talented musicians traveling devices, hoping that they could honor one of them with the honor of being eternal and saving the human race from all punishment due to their disappointment. But, no. None of the people who died had the honor of being able to join the race of the eternal, and just as the deities were going to make the world stop by stopping supplying sun and happiness, they saw the grieving crowds of human beings who cared about these fallen musicians. Who mourned and cried over people who they had no relation to outside of to their music? The deities reluctantly started to believe that humans were compassionate about their music and love, so they continued to let the human race go on, just with the exception that compassion levels were greatly lowered to make it even more of a challenge for somebody to become eternal.

The morals of the religion, though, are honestly some of the simplest practices that anything could do. All it says is that people need to enjoy themselves believe in the deities of music and compassion and on every Saturday, you must drink one part whiskey and one part rye by a water source to honor the death of the musicians that the deities created and to honor the deities mercy on the human species themselves. The only holiday that is in honor of this day as well, February third, in which fasting on anything but the same alcoholic beverage is required. Outside of that, the religion is loose with all moral and tends to be very accepting of all the art forms, but believes that everybody should have some musical talent so they can spread the happiness of it to other people.

Outside of the obscure religion that is practiced by Lirit, she is indeed skilled at an art form that is musical. She plays piano, and honestly, does quite well. She finds it a good way to keep true to her religion and make sure that she’s going to be guaranteed an eternal life when she is dead and gone. So, by learning piano, at the same time, the district mayors daughter needed an accompanist to her (quite terrible singing), so reluctantly, she accepted pay to play music for Genevieve Reed and is now making money off of being an accompanist for somebody who she believes is cold and emotionless, but considering her family and their attempt to come out of debt, she does it because she wants to spread the love of music and because she needs to help keep her families head above water.

Sometimes, she’s a hopeless romantic. As in, she falls in love with everything, whether it be a tree or the kid who used to work in the ranch over. She’s one of those people who believes that love should spread itself, mostly due to her strange religious beliefs, but also partially because she’s obsessed with the idea that somebody would want to be with her and she’d want to be with somebody. She wants that kind of attention from somebody because she feels like she never really got it from her family. Sure, her parents loved enough, but when you had six kids and had to work five thirty in the morning to seven at night jobs, you’d probably not have much time to talk to your children and make them feel loved in every single way possible. Fixated on the idea that she wants to be loved more, she’s almost like a puppy, in that respect.

Despite her puppy-like manner, she’s somebody who rambles. Too much. She doesn’t know when to shut up, and just keeps on babbling, using metaphors and adding little stories and words where they don’t need to be. She embellishes the little things and believes that detail is key when explaining things to people, despite if they’re completely uninterested in what she’s saying. She’s known for being a little bit annoying around town and some people just ignore her now because they don’t want to put up with her rambles that are half witty and well thought out, half unintelligible and unable to be understood by most human beings. And even when people retort back to her with sarcastic remarks about how it was “So interesting, Lirit.” She takes them literally since she doesn’t know how to take sarcasm. She’s that good natured, but at the same time, it’s a bit strange to think about.

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If you could’ve described a Romeo and Juliet in district ten, it’d most likely be the story that you’d hear about Tylalia Skenne and Jacob Murch. Minus the fact that there was wealth involved. In fact, both families were rather poor and low-ranking, run of the mill workers in the stables and fields. Which, quite honestly, was the reason that the two met. They ran into each other as they were hauling hay barrels and began to talk to each other before knowing who the other was. As legend had it, two generations previous, the Skeene family had been starving and stole the Murch’s only pig from it’s post outside. The Skeene family had then been looked down upon as moochers and people who betrayed trust, and the Murch’s were forever deemed stingy and immature, the type of people that were not to be associated with unless under desperate need. The endless bickering between the two families went on for two generations until finally, the two looked at each other and decided that the families differences were over. They were the obvious sweethearts and got married in the same place where they had met each other. All in all, they had dreams to own a ranch and not work as farmhands. They had the idea of asking the wealthier ranches in town for a loan so they could start their own. Since they had been dedicated workers, they gave them money with a very high interest rate, but still.

With this money, the two created a ranch that was fairly successful. By the time that they felt comfortable with their income, over the span of six years, they had six children. Jagger, Kiah, Lirit, Ichabod, Terran, Philyra. In that order they were aged, about a year apart. All in all, the family was the showcase of the healthy district ten lifestyle that went in capitol brochures about where their cheese and milk and beef came from. Yeah, it really did happen, a capitol photographer came and took pictures of their farm just so they could plaster it on their milk cartons that it was perfect quality and came from good, wholesome families. Not like it mattered to the capitolites, but it was a good marketing ploy, you have to admit it. The income that they were receiving was enough to pay off debts and pay for everything without having to have their lives tipped upside down, and everything was fine. The children went to school or stayed at home, coloring. But only until Lirit was six years old. At that point in time, things went horribly. A storm was sent in the way of the barn and pretty much took out everything. The barn, the cows died and pretty much every piece of equipment they had was lost in that storm, which made the whole scenario go downhill. No more idealistic district ten life. Instead they were back to square one: Having to pay off debts by working.

Four years later, the family had the older children and parents working, with Lirit going to school and helping out with goats after school because she was too young to milk cows or kill them or feed them adequately. So she had to suffice as a goat watcher. But whenever she had the day off from attending goats, she went back to the school and wandered around the music room, mindlessly talking to the music teacher. The music teacher, a woman in her early twenties who had a slight capitol accent and a disposition to dye her hair a light blonde color, had led her to the piano in which she had told her to play the anthem of Panem. Somehow, using her ear and learning the different notes on the piano, she learned to play by ear and pretty soon could read the sheet music. Burning through it, she soon became preoccupied with the idea that it could be magic or a higher deity….

That’s when she began to write in the notebook. She’d gotten it for her birthday and steamed through it, using the leftover ink from school in it, always writing something down in the journal, eyes bright and full of promise and optimistic thoughts and feelings about what she had written. This continued for another two years, of playing the piano with writing about a religion that was nonexistent to everybody but herself. By the time she was fifteen years old, the teacher alerted her that the district mayors daughter needed an accompanist and was offering a good sum of money to whomever would fill the position. And that’s where she came into the picture of her current life.

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