Azalea Iyveia -- D11 (finished)
Apr 6, 2012 19:07:14 GMT -5
Post by мυтт on Apr 6, 2012 19:07:14 GMT -5
»---› x.
Name:
Azalea Iyveia
Age:
15
Gender:
Female
District:
11
Appearance:
Wear your sins.
In the house, beyond the door slammed shut forevermore, is a lone cracked mirror. There is stays, gathering dust, until Azalea wishes to take a glimpse of herself, only to regret it in the long run. For you to understand what Azalea look like, you must first understand that her exterior is a wasteland. It is home to the scars she’d rather hide, the pattern of cuts that trace her delicate skin. It is an insecurity that Azalea carries around to remind her of the day her life was ruined. A mirror, Azalea believes, is used to admire one’s beauty. Thus, there is no need for a mirror in her house.
Let’s begin with her face, shall we? It is as round as an apple, with narrow, almond-hued eyes and flushed cheeks and light caramel skin, which looks more tan than anything. The complexion Azalea has is clear as day. Her nose looks as if someone slapped it on with clay and then neglected to mold it; shapeless and sticking straight upwards. She has naturally pink-tinted lips that are often cracked from lack of water intake, with a bottom lip that is smaller than the top and thin yet unruly eyebrows. Her hair is the hue of dark cherry wood, long and in tumbling layers down to her shoulder. It is relatively straight at the top, yet as you look downward her hair gets curlier and curlier. So far, so good. You’d never guess about her scars, which go across her cheeks, and the other one on her chin. The scars on her arms, on her chest, grotesquely altering her face. You wouldn’t assume that Azalea has about ten tiny cuts on her forehead, or one on her ugly nose. You have to go up close to see the cuts, but with her scars you can see Azalea coming from a mile away. Every day of the year, they ache. There are bags under her curious eyes. Engraved into her skin, they will remain until Azalea can find a night where she doesn’t awake screaming. They will remain until she can dismiss her past and finally find the heart to look forth toward the future.
She doesn’t know her weight. Azalea has never been told. She doesn’t need to be told. All she knows is that she is 5’4 and slender. Azalea has long legs, built for speed, and a short torso. She knows that her stomach does not go beyond her legs when she glances downward, and she is proportioned fairly evenly. Azalea is not muscular and strong, but she is not weak. The blend is somewhere in the middle; average. For her to hold a knife and strike with force would result in a mediocre outcome. Fueled by anger and determination, however, she can strike with surprising force. Her teeth are crooked, so she does not smile. Automatically, instinctively, Azalea’s palms curl, making it simple for her to climb trees and find a grip on them. If not for the scars and the cuts, she may be considered pretty looking rather than intimidating. On her stomach, on her back, the only places they have spared are her baby-smooth legs and feet.
The clothing she wears reflects her income—unfortunately. A tear here, a rip there, no one will know it is because she can’t afford anything better. To scavenge for fallen cloth would be to admit that they were of use to her, when to everyone else it was so clearly a piece of trash. Azalea, however, is accustomed to trash life. Food from the trash, so long as it isn’t soiled or dirtied, is acceptable in her household. Items of use that came from the trash could be cleaned and fixed and placed in the house amongst the store bought furniture and appliances. It is only a matter of time, Azalea thinks, before people will begin to smell the rubbish on her flesh.
Personality:
Sentiment is toxic.
Azalea is impulsive. She cannot stay still. Working in the fields, her feet never stop moving. If she's stooped down to plant something, Azalea will tap a toe. If she's shoving a wheelbarrow anywhere, she'll speed walk just to continue movement. At home, she paces or cartwheels and if all else fails, talks, just to keep her mouth moving, to hear a noise beside her own lonesome breath. That being said, one may assume Azalea is talkative, or even friendly. If one were to assume such, they would be dead wrong.
Her tongue is sharp as a knife, and that’s only when she’s talking. It isn’t as if she doesn’t enjoy conversation, but Azalea dislikes it it. She takes on silence, finding it a much more loyal companion than any friend she can ever make. She is trustworthy, to say the least, but does not think so of everybody else. Her phobia of fire is well-earned, but goes to an irrational extent. Everything she has to cook that involves fire, she ruins. Understandably yet inconveniently, Azalea cannot be around any type flame or she'll fly into a fit of hysterics.
Long ago, Azalea formulated the notion in her mind that humans (or at least those she knew of) were fickle, unreasonable beings, and that they were irreparable. She came to this conclusion by conducting a study of behavior, and quickly decided upon such. The workers in the orchards, it wasn’t as if they enjoyed plucking fruit mechanically, under the watchful eye of unforgiving Peacekeepers. They wanted approval, acceptance, and could not afford to find such any other way. And it wasn’t as if they were content other the Capitol either. Azalea had heard the whispers in town. She’d seen the hate in their eyes. And she’d evaluated them all as weaklings. They didn’t know how to stand up for their rights. And the Capitol? They were the precise reason why she had classified all humans so cruelly. They were the sharks in the water, and the districts, excluding the Career ones and especially the poorest ones, were the goldfish and the guppies.
Evidently, Azalea is quick-witted yet cold. Logic is the theme of her life. There is no room for emotion, no time to let her guard down. Azalea has created a wall of protection, and thus, eliminated human elements such as emotion from her system. Or at least, attempted to.
Azalea is intelligent, to say the least. Her mind was seemingly engineered for quick solutions to most problems, and her body is tolerant of the most excruciating circumstances. If you were to build a robot of steel and program it to act as if it were a fifteen year old girl void of life yet filled with creativity, the end result would be Azalea. Because her thoughts are too dangerous to be spoken aloud, and Azalea is not one to cherish company, she is most often alone. It doesn’t bother her; Azalea relishes solitude. She knows what is expected of her, and being a determined spirit, Azalea never fails to complete a task.
It isn’t easy to anger her. It isn’t easy to upset her. It isn’t easy to work a reaction out of Azalea at all. She knows not to trust anyone, not even the people who you are entitled to love and who supposedly care for you in return. Azalea doesn’t make friends, she recruits allies. Everyday life, she says, is a Game. With such in mind, it would not surprise you that the Hunger Games are of little importance to Azalea. Another way to kill off twenty-three people who would have died anyway; it is another way to murder innocent souls to show the strength of the Capitol and the weakness of the Districts. Azalea thinks it would just be easier to just quickly execute all the tributes one-by-one and have the Districts watch the bloodshed.
History:
It was the day her whole family died; she died along with them.
Poppy reeked of lost children. The dead came back to haunt her in her sleep, the five who could have been. By law, Poppy Iyveia has six children. Only one of them, Azalea, is still alive. Each child, all except the first, was planned. The first four after Azalea were to please her husband, the last for her own pleasure. And she would have made more, if not for her demise. Why, you ask, do we explore the past of Poppy, Azalea’s mother? It is to get a better understanding of Azalea and what makes her the ghost of a girl she is today.
Azalea was born to a young mother and a drunken father. She was the unexpected baby. When she came, the father didn’t want her. He was a handsome man with devilish ice blue eyes and cold heart to match. He left Azalea and her mother to fend for themselves when Azalea was only three weeks old. Soon after this, Poppy went back to work in the fields, burying her grief in her work and calling in helpful neighbors to watch baby Azalea. However the money was slowly running out and the two were starving. Azalea had even stopped growing momentarily. And so Poppy set out to find herself a partner purely for financial stability. In that way, she and Azalea are alike; efficient and calculating with no need for true feelings.
Poppy found Root Birdman. He was short and bald and plump, and she was ten years his junior with timeless good looks. He was well-to-do, but just enough to keep them all alive, but no one would have him. Poppy took him to get by, and got pregnant within twelve months. To their dismay, she suffered a miscarriage. Poppy continued to work, secretly relieved that there was not another baby to burden them. The cycle was vicious. Poppy would become pregnant with Root's child, and then it would die in the womb. Root was frustrated. By the time Azalea was seven, Poppy had carried four children in her stomach, excluding her. She was the only one who had emerged living. Azalea was accustomed to the routine. She'd notice the swollen belly, pretend to get excited for the brother or sister that would never come, and then put on a shocked facade when Poppy, sadly, announced time after time that there wouldn't be a baby after all.
And then came Angel. Angel was a sweet baby with an addictive cry and a plain face that may very well mold itself into something beautiful. She was the sixth baby Poppy had carried, and the second to emerge alive. Azalea adored Angel. She had been named for an ancient myth that people who had died generations before had believed in, a complicated story that involved a place called heaven and a man called God.
Azalea had always been proficient in school and in the gardens, but after Angel's birth she was absolutely stellar. When the teachers instructed students to write about the one thing they cherished most in the world, Azalea wrote paragraphs upon paragraphs about Angel. In the orchards, as the Peacekeepers watched over them to make sure they were working quickly and efficiently, Azalea's hands traveled at warp speed beneath her, hurriedly planting flowers and dragging wheelbarrows so that she could go home and return to Angel. Azalea loved that baby more than she'd ever loved anyone before.
Root and Poppy's marriage had grown strained. The loving bond he and Azalea had formed in the beginning was severed. Root didn't want Angel. He didn't even want Azalea. He certainly didn't want Poppy. Poppy had never loved him to begin with, but he had become obsessed with her. Now, behind the obsession was rage. This wasn't passion-fueled obsession, it was obsession by hatred. Being a reckless, impulsive, almost senile man, Root concocted a plan to kill her.
Azalea, oblivious, went about daily activity. She was a happy, bubbly child, and it was easy for her to miss all the signs, back when she was naive. One day, she came home to flames. High, intimidating flames that lashed at her body. Despite the danger, she raced inside, concerned only about Angel and Poppy. In that attempt, as she was clumsy, she fell face-first, searing her face and part of her upper body with a tattoo of burns (that would later become scars and cuts) on contact. The pain was nothing compared to what was to come. Root came home to find her trying to save Angel the baby and her mother. So he laughed, and dragged their bodies out to the desolate fields. He came to the fence that gated the district in, and tossed Angel's body over it-- she was beyond saving. While Azalea cried, he morbidly tied her to Poppy, who was dying, keeping their bodies together with thick rope.
Azalea watched her mother die literally right before her eyes. There was nothing she could do. She watched those dark brown eyes go from watery to still, and then finally saw them become glassy. Azalea felt Poppy's body go cold against hers. She heard her mother's last words, thick with the taste of regret. A piece of Azalea died alongside her mother and the dead baby she'd loved so tenderly. Root stood and watched, with a kitchen knife at his feet, waiting to kill Azalea with it. The symphony of his laughter drove Azalea over the edge.
She broke free. It went against all that Root's plan had called for, but Azalea wiggled herself free off of her dead mother and charged for the knife, with the speed of an animal. Her quick fingers snatched the knife before Root had time to react. And in that instant, she understood the meaning of murder. The knife across his leg was quick, but not painless. From there, Root collapsed, the spray of blood from his leg violent and sudden. He could have killed Azalea with his bare hands. He could have fought and then crushed her. He was strong, and Azalea was barely eleven years old. She could hear his throaty laugh go from celebratory to surprised in under a minute. And then he reclined against the soil.
Calmly, Root instructed Azalea to kill him. It was a command. Either she killed him, or he would kill her slowly and then commit suicide himself. To her horror, Azalea agreed. She wanted Root to die. She had felt as if he deserved it. He walked her through the process, telling her to pick up the knife and how exactly to hold it when she slit his throat. Root touched Azalea's hand gently with his own bloodied ones, and brought it to his chest. The other one of her hands contained the knife. Azalea could feel his heartbeat as she killed him.
The scenario back at Azalea's house was under control. The flames had been subdued, now a pile of rubble that was once a home filled with memories. Officials had put out the fire, and would soon interrogate Azalea to hear her story, one filled with lies. That her step-father and mother and baby sister had all died in that fire, turn to ash, that she had escaped and saved herself, sparing her family. Nobody would find the bodies, anyway. They were out by the fence, where nobody ventured. The lone surviving item of the fire was a dusty mirror. Azalea kept it so that she may look at her scars at any time and remind herself of the day that her spirit and her family perished.
Poppy's sister, Leilani, quickly came to Azalea's aid. She took the orphan into her family, yet that was the end of her kindness. Leilani didn't really want a child, and neither did her husband, Sir. Leilani and Sir were both financially strained, but she was legally obligated to care for her dead sister's kid, so she did just that. To this day, Azalea lives with Leilani and her husband, a lonely existence, for she does not like them and they openly detest her. Leilani, in a rare gesture of kindness, reserved a room for Azalea that contains only the cracked, dusty mirror-- a room for Azalea to mourn. It is a room with a door that is never opened, except for by Azalea. It is a room filled with memories of her mother, her little sister, and the step-father she loved, before his personality transformation-- she has always regretted killing him, and it has haunted her in her nightmares. It wasn't too late for him to change. Everyone else in District 11 believed that the fire was a freak accident that killed Azalea's family and spared only her. But she knows the truth.
The quality of her work in school dropped, but her work in the orchards remained of high skill level. It was the one thing she could be proud of, her green thumb. Her past halted most friendships and relationships that she'd managed to maintain; people now viewed her as not only undesirable due to her scarring, but cruel, since it was then she developed her notion about humans and decided to, outwardly, become void of nearly all emotion. It was much easier than trying to pretend she was not broken.
Codeword: Odair
Comments/Other: N/A
