terry araragi d7 | fin

{be brave, be strong, be honest 

and to yourself be true}

Cobalt has always been the responsible older sister of our family. Two years older than me, she's the one Ma turns to to take care of the rest of us when she's workin' long hours in the mill, and I don't begrudge her or anythin' for it, not when it puts food on the table. Viri, on the other hand, has always been the graceful younger sibling, and that left me, the loudmouthed one, square in the middle.

For a long time, it was the four of us, Ma, Cobalt, me, and Virian. Pa died before I could remember much of him, but Cobalt tells me things sometimes, of how he used to carry us on his shoulders or sing stories or us or caress us with his thick, strong hands. Loggin' accident, or so everyone claims. Viri still says sometimes that he misses him, but that must just be wishful thinking. He was barely an infant then, he wouldn't remember anything of him either.

I'd gotten into a lot of mischief, when I was younger. I'd sneak off to the trees, to the outskirts of the town and explore the forest outside, comin' home with dirty clothes and scuffed-up shoes and Ma would cluck at me, "Teresa, what on earth have you been doing?!"

To this day she insists on callin' me by the old-fashioned name I hate, says that Terry is a boy's name unsuitable for a young lady, but since when have I ever been a young lady?

My hair sticks out in odd angles from my attempts to keep it short and out of the way of my round and pudgy face. I can't seem to lose the fat from my cheeks no matter how hard I work at the lumber yard or how many of my other muscles have built up since I've started there. I've got thick eyebrows and a flat nose, with thin lips. I don't smile nearly enough, or so Ma says.

My body is short and stocky, with thick limbs and stout waist, and my right arm hangs crookedly, a relic from a fight I'd gotten into many years ago. It wasn't my fault - the boy had been makin' some nasty accusations about Ma so I'd gone and beaten him up in the schoolyard. But when I was walkin' home that day one of that boy's buddies jumped me from the bushes and tried to bash my head in with a cinder block. Of course the dirty coward would turn tail and run as soon as he'd smashed it into my arm. Ma says the scar makes me look like some sorta ruffian, but 'long as I can still swing an axe I don't much care.

I'm pretty thick-skinned, after all, there's not much you can say that could really hurt me. But nobody better get the wrong idea and think that means they can pick on us and insult us. Cobalt says that if I weren't so hotheaded all the time I wouldn't get into so many scuffles, but that don't change the fact that sometimes you gotta beat someone up before they're gonna listen. It's kinda about dignity, you know? Besides, soon as a couple boys at the lumber yard learned that the hard way, the rest figured to quit messin' with us.

I was thirteen when I first started workin' as a lumberjack, during a time when District Seven was plagued by misfortunes. Not three weeks after I started workin' there, we had a huge forest fire. Half the grove burned down, and quite a few workers were killed. Everyone suspected someone'd set it on purpose but the investigation didn't go nowhere. Maybe some Peacekeeper went and did it, and that's why nothing's come up.

Soon as they'd put the fire out though we all had to get back to work just as usual, and that was when I'd found him. I'd heard someone cryin' in the forest so I'd wandered a little way off and there was a little boy sittin' in the ashes of the burnt part of the forest. He was eight and weak and hungry, and he'd tried runnin' away because his Ma'd died in the fire and he didn't have any family left.

It was the end of the workday so Viri was the first person we'd run into and he'd taken one look before runnin' off to find Cobalt, who'd decided on the spot that we could make room for one more in our house. 'Course, we'd all agreed on it, really, she just happened to be the leader and the one Ma would listen to.

So after we adopted Kelley as one of our own, our family of four turned into a family of five. There's never a quiet moment in the house, but that's how I like it. Mostly, it's been the three of us showin' him the ropes around this house; we've always had each other, after all, and I want Kelley to feel loved here, to know what havin' real siblings is like. Well, Cobalt's better at teachin' stuff than I am, but really it's like we're all raisin' him in our own way.

I've continued workin' at the lumber yard, after that day, and we haven't had any other problems like that happenin' since. Kelley's grown stronger, and he's nearly eleven now, bright and innocent despite all he's been through. Sometimes when people hear the story of how we found him they'll say we made the right choice, but I've never really thought of it as a choice, just something that had to happen.

When you got down to it, after all, life was about playin' fair, stickin' up for others, and stayin' together. And really, isn't that enough to go by?