Judith Lancer || District 2 || Career || FIN

She hadn’t spent a whole lot of time socializing with the people she lived with, mostly because she has always been pushed into things that she never wanted to do.

When it came to her family, it was never a want to do something, but a need to do something.

They needed her to go into the career academy, they needed her to succeed in life, they needed her to be the flagship that he brother couldn’t be.

They needed her to be the rock.

But Judith was never that growing up. She was a quiet child that spent most of her time chasing fireflies and catching them in her hands. There was something cathartic about trapping things between her fingers, and she always had a proclivity for keeping what she captured.

Rarely did she let things go, and that would follow her into her teenage years, but as a child, she didn’t understand the concept of being civil with something.

She was brash and in your face when you got her started. Most of the time, the children teased her because she would rather chase bugs then chase a fake mutt around. She found solace in the loneliness because she knew that she offered enough to be herself. Sure, she was a little socially awkward, but she still performed better than most of the class.

Even when they tried to catch her off guard, she performed above expectations. Sometimes people would talk behind her back for it, claiming that she was doing something on the side in order to win favor with the instructors, and she would just shrug it off.

She didn’t have to prove her worth to the other students, its why she preferred staying to herself and her collection of bugs. They didn’t judge her like other people had.

---

As she grew, so did her tastes, and she went from collecting random bugs to collecting butterflies.

There weren’t many in district two, but there were enough for her to at least try to catch what she could. She usually got lost when she would spot one, sometimes finding herself near the district bounds.

She was a risk taker, at least, that is what people called her, but she even knew that it wouldn’t be wise to sneak out of bounds just to catch something that could easily fly back in. That was just stupid, and Judith prided herself on her intellect.

Sometimes she caught butterflies in front of others, and when people asked her what she had intended to do with them, she would look at them dead in the eye and tell them that she was planning on eating them.

As shocking as that was to most people, it got her point across that she did not want to be bothered. She didn’t have to explain herself to anyone, and she knew that if she went for the shock factor, people would be less likely to ask her more questions.

Most of the time, she spent her days alone, and that was how she preferred most of it. Even working with people became cumbersome because she felt like she could do the work on her own, and the scary part was that she could. She was a lion under all of that skin, and she did not need her pride to help her.

Even if someone wanted to offer it to her.

---

She enrolled into the Academy because she wanted to better herself. Someone told her that she would regret that decision, as its one of the hardest learning facilities in two. However, Judith always rose to the challenge, even if it seemed impossible.

She had a yearning to learn that could not be quenched by the regular mundane activities that two had to offer, and it was clear that her family was still pushing her to be the best that she could be.

If she had an opportunity to flex on the rest of the inhabitants of two, then her parents wanted her to take that chance.

Maybe she should have not done what her parents wanted, maybe she should have tried to differentiate herself from her family and try to start making a name for herself. After all, she only had one life, and what would have that life been if she didn’t try to be the best at everything?

A life that wasn’t worth living in her mind at the least.

She was known as the girl with a butterfly necklace around her neck, but it wasn’t any normal butterfly, one that was as unique as her.

She brought her collection with her, different types of butterflies pressed against two pieces of glass and preserved in wax. She placed them all over her side of the room, and spent hours admiring each one of them because they all had something in common with her.

Each one of them was unique.

---

”Judith, why do you have such a fascination with butterflies?” someone asked her as they stumbled into her room.

”Because each one is different, just like each one of us is. Why?” she asked back to the person standing in her dorm room. ”Wanna fight about it?” she was hot headed and strong, and that would never change about her.

Amongst the bugs, books were scattered around the room, each one having different bookmarks in different spots of the books. Judith didn’t know how to finish one thing before moving on to the other.

She liked to live in the fast lane, because the thrill of it all excited her to keep going.

Hopefully she wouldn’t crash and burn.