[WIP] Coriander Stromstatt [D10]

{ Coriander Stromstatt

{ District 10
{ Sixteen
{ Female

{ appearance

Dark hair, sort of curly, short bang. Big brown almond eyes. Pale skin. Skinny, a little on the short side. Big lips, long tongue. Low-set eyebrows, long and thin.

{ personality

Dark sense of humor, but not altogether a nasty person to other people. Dislikes animals immensely when they're alive, particularly horses. Sick fascination with animal carcasses to disguise her fear of them. Except horses. Doesn't even like the dead ones.

{ history

The earliest memory she has is her father taking her to a barn on the other side of the district. She's three. He leans in so close she can feel his stubble, so close the vodka on his breath makes her eyes water. He says they're going to play hide-and-seek, but the boundaries are the barn, so she can't leave, no matter what. Obediently, she climbs in between several bushels of hay, stifling a sneeze because he said if she can stay hidden for long enough, she'll win, and he'll let her pick out a little piece of candy back in town.

An hour passes, then another. She's giddy, excited to be winning, practically drooling over the caramel she's going to pick out. Night falls before Coriander realizes anything is wrong. Tentatively, she sticks her head out of the hay, and slowly the rest of her toddler body follows. No one spots her, so she continues out into the large hallway that divides the stalls into two sides. Something scurries across a rafter in her peripheral vision, but as she wheels around to see it, something from behind her flutters and squawks. A colony of bats bursts out of the tiny window on the second level, the barn cat hisses and spits at a dairy cow that gives an angry, bellowing moo in return.

Terrified, the little girl tries to scramble up the ladder to the second level, but it was built for full-sized farmers and her little toddler hands and feet struggle with the gaps between the rungs. She gets stuck once, twice, her feet dangling, kicking with all their might to find a foothold. This momentum was her undoing. Down tumbled Coriander, landing somewhat uncomfortably on a stack of hay — a stack of hay that was currently a massive black stallion's dessert. The horse, startled at the sudden presence of a toddler where his meal had just been, snorts and jumps around in his stall, causing the shocked toddler to abandon her silence and begin shrieking. The whole barn is in uproar.

Luckily, the bedlam is enough to attract the attention of the farmer who owned it, who rescues the screaming girl and takes her in for the night, until she can be dropped off at the community home in the morning. The farmer's wife gives the distraught toddler a caramel to quiet her, and, in the moment, Coriander is content with that.