Regrets collect like old friends,

Here to relive your darkest moments.
I can see no way, I can see no way,

And all of the ghouls come out to play.

[justify]

a p p e a r a n c e » brown eyed girl

It is clear to anyone from District 12 that I am of the Seam. My olive skin and long, dark hair stands out distinctly - although I do not have typical grey Seam eyes. Instead, they are sad, brown like mud, concealing my secrets and searching out things my long, spindly hands itch to draw. My arms have a few straying freckles dotting my skin with prominent elbows that jut out from their joint, almost always resting against a surface, hands supporting my head by cupping my chin in my palms. I don't look a day over fifteen - many people think I'm lying when I tell them my age. I know I look a lot younger than 15, perhaps it's the way I hold myself - timid and quiet. My face is a mixture of an oval-heart shape, nose a little too long, eyes a little too small, dark eyelashes to match the hair on my head. I ain't the prettiest thing in the District, but I guess you've got to live with what you've got. Mirrors aren't something I particularly enjoy to look at, I'll give you that.

I am not skinny from starvation, more so from being passed down from my Mother a small, slight frame. A little too short for my liking, but I guess I cannot change that. My legs are long, apparently, but unfortunately the rest of my body cannot compare - short arms and torso which prevent me from being able to touch my toes. I've never been very flexible, really - envying my sisters who can bend over backwards on all fours and touch the ground without bending their knees.

I'm always a little scruffy-looking, wearing hand-me-down clothes and dirt on my bare skin. Shoes are worn if I feel like it, and by that I mean hardly ever. Over time, my soles became tough and dry from hours upon hours of trekking across the dirty, gravel pathways of Twelve, so now I hardly ever need to wear shoes. My nails are bitten down from nervousness and need to be scrubbed almost daily, but I've never really bothered about being squeaky-clean. Compared to the other filthy, mud-covered children that run around the Seam in fits and squabbles, I shape up quite nicely if I do say so myself. Or rather, think so myself.

I'm always biting my nails when I'm nervous. That, or I've got my fingers near my mouth. I'm not sure how I developed this habit, I just... did. When I'm mad, I purse my lips together, and when I'm scared I squeeze my eyes tightly shut - and if the voices return, my hands go straight to my ears. Other than these emotional quirks, I'm usually hiding away behind my brother or wandering around with wide eyes, absorbing everything I can. Someone once told me that because I can hardly hear, my other four senses are stimulated more. It's quite funny, being able to smell things others cannot - but to be completely honest, they don't know what they've got 'till it's gone.

[/justify]

And every demon wants his pound of flesh.

But I like to keep some things to myself,
I like to keep my issues strong.

It's always darkest before the dawn.

[justify]

p e r s o n a l i t y » quiet as a mouse

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. Apparently one of our ancestors before Panem, an inventor and a genius and a man of wisdom uttered those words a long, long time ago - and I have never before read a quote that had hit home with me more than that one. I am not special, nor talented, in any sense. If anything, I am the opposite. I am a girl lost in a forever-muffled world, longing to hear crickets at night and bees hum against the dandelions and the rumble of the mines. I want to find and create and be. I am not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself, or be the object of pity or unnecessary affection. I am scared, yes, but I will do everything in my power to fight it off. Just because I have a setback does not mean I will not try to push my boundaries until I am sure in myself that I can no longer stretch them any further.

I talk in whispers, only because I am afraid of saying the wrong thing. Perhaps that's why the voices began to haunt me - I thought I was doing the right thing, but I only hurt my family. My siblings are my rocks, Annello especially, and when I am around people I do not know without them I curl up into a terrified ball of shyness. Anxiety is no fun, always worrying that you've said something wrong or talked too loudly. My siblings answer for me in conversation, and I nod or shake my head to confirm their words. Sometimes I will draw out what I mean, or write it down on paper, if I must - but it's easier to just not say anything at all. Many people around the Seam, and the rest of 12, assume that I am both deaf and mute for lack of talking. When I do whisper, it is usually in cupped ears of my brothers and sister - my voices on conversation. They do put up with my accidental bursts of yelling when we are alone, but I try so very hard to talk normally when others are around.

Patience is one of the few factors about myself that I take pride in. I wonder how my family has the strength to put up with me, and for so long - and in return, I make sure to understand that waiting is just part of life. You wait for everything, if you think about it. You wait to go to school, you wait for Parcel Day, you wait for your next meal, or the night when the sun disappears and replaces the bright blue with thousands of twinkling stars. If you can wait all the years that you have lived, then why not wait a few more minutes, hours, days? I want to be like my siblings, helping. Protecting. Curing. When I am older, I want to use that patience to help others. I want to learn about healing, and maybe medicine, and practise to cure others. If I can use my life to help others in their own, then that would be the greatest gift that Ripred himself could give me.

Though I live in a country full of dictatorialness and unjustness, I believe that being fair is important. Especially in District 12, and the Seam, where you fight for your own survival before others, many often forget to be courteous and free of bias. Now I'm not saying that I'm perfect - it's human nature to be selfish, especially if it's what it takes to survive, but it upsets me to see theft and crime so adamant in Twelve. This is my home, where I belong and live, and it's not nice to have to worry about being safe or having enough food to last the week. But I guess it's not just food you have to share, and I find that people forget this. I have a strange knack of being able to spot things other people can't - considering hearing is out of the question, so if you're missing something, I'll try and help find it. If I can't share my main food resources, because family comes first and I need to help them in every way I can, I'll at least help in another way.

I am scared of reapings, of things that lurk in the shadows, of ghosts and anxiety and the faceless that screech in my head. But I go about in my silent way, because it is all I have ever known, and I will try and be the best I can be. Because I cannot loose my family. Without them, I am nothing. I am floating away, lost without their hold on me. I am Dakoda Zanelli and I am a silent wallflower - nothing more, nothing less.

[/justify]

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back so shake him off.

It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat.

Looking for heaven, found the devil in me.

h i s t o r y » the sound of silence

[justify]My whole life has been but a murmured ringing, muffled voices from the outside and clear, raging ones from within. I was born with what the doctors said was called a 'Hearing Impediment'. I cannot hear the birds sing, or when people talk in a funny, mocking Capitol accent, or the notes played from a piano. It is all I have ever known in my 15 years, and all that I ever will. Mother says I cannot miss what I never had, but I long to be able to hear music. My oldest brother Annello says it's the most beautiful thing you could imagine, but that's all I can do, really. Imagine.

I did not speak until I was three years old. The ringing was prominent, but since I could not hear voices, I only saw lips moving. I swam in silence, faces moving like underwater creatures that I could not understand. When I was upset I cried, and cried, and cried, but to me it was only a low buzzing that translated from my throat to my ears. When my limited hearing finally began to kick in, it came and went in whispers and mutters until it finally rested on muffled murmurs. Then I could hear my own voice when I cried, and I finally learnt to speak after months of desperately listening to my siblings, trying to pick up every single word and syllable they pronounced, replicating them with my own vibrational voice. It was hard, and I always tried to speak quietly - but pressing fingers to pursed lips became a repetitive symbol of my existence. Too loud, they'd say, and I'd try again and again and again. "Shh, Dakoda. You're yelling." they'd warn, and my body would shrink back into it's corner. It's hard, to speak quietly without knowing I'm speaking at all. The louder my voice gets, the easier it is to hear, and small vibrations in my throat tell me I'm succeeding. Now, when I do open my mouth, small syllables escape my lips that are hardly whispers at all. I am so afraid of speaking out of line, or pronouncing my words too loudly, or seeing that dreaded hushing expression which tells me that I am wrong that I barely open my mouth at all.

The voices began to speak when I was a child. I had never heard a clear voice in my existence before, so in a childlike way, I had thought my hearing had miraculously fixed itself. They, the faceless ones; scared me, at first - but they tricked me into trusting them. They told me to yell as loud as I wanted, scream at the top of my lungs, and I obeyed. To me, I thought that because they were the only sounds I could hear perfectly that I was meant to follow their every word. No-one could fix me, and no-one believed me when I whispered about the voices and their toxic ways until I almost became too much of a burden to my parents. It took a final - and literal - shaking from brother Annello who had to scream "THEY ARE NOT REAL, DAKODA! THEY ARE NOT REAL!" just so I could hear. That was the closest I'd ever heard to a clear voice - a real voice - and the ones in my head hid for a while. They were scared, as was I, and now I cling to my brother for support when they come crawling back. He taught me to block them out, to banish them from my head. Whenever I hear their eerie voices polluting my mind I stop where I am and find a corner, curl up into a fetal position and cover my ears to block them out. I plunge back into complete silence and wait until all I can hear is the ever-familiar ringing echoing through my head. I am the spaces between my fingers as the sun sets in the sky, daylight shining through - but the demons in my head are the silhouettes that block out the sunlight, prevent it from breaking free. Muteness fell like my baby teeth as I grew older, but a new sort grew in it's place. I am in a prison of almost silence and toxic whispers and I cannot escape.


I was born in the morning of May the 8th, the third of four children, in a shack of a house in District 12's Seam. I am a Seam child and always will be until the day I die. It has been my home for as long as I can remember, sharing a bed with my sister in our run-down house as I grew. The will to keep on living was fed to me in my baby food, hunger a prominent part in my day-to-day living. My parents try to give us the best life they can, oh Ripred, do they try - but we all know they've made sacrifices to keep us here, and for that I will be forever in debt.

Because of my... condition, I couldn't go to normal school. Instead I stayed at home and had Mother teach me to write. It was a slow, stretched process - shaky hands attempting to form jagged lines and awkward curves - but eventually I was able to write my name. That progressed on to 3 more names, one for each of my siblings, and afterwards sentences strung together with lopsided words and geometrical diagrams. From writing, I moved onto reading, but I never stopped drawing. It was hard to explain to mother than my drawings where my expression of what I could hear; cursive, loopy lines the volume of words and criss-crossing marks the vibrations I felt through the floors. As I grew, so did my skills: random lines became trees and rivers and roads, buildings and birds and body parts. Pencils became my voice that I strained to use, eyes my second set of ears.

When I was old enough, Mother would let me head outside to play with my siblings and other Seam kids alike. She was very strict on where I could go and who I was with - but only because she was extra worried about me. I do not like to be reminded of it, but I am disabled after all, and she only wants the best of me. Julo and Annello and McKenzy all made sure I was kept safe. No-one was allowed to touch me, no-one was allowed to sneak up on me when I wasn't looking, and it was made extremely clear that it was certainly forbidden to mock me. If the voices came back, they'd shoo everyone else off and huddle around me, keeping me calm, Annello holding my hands tightly to my ears. He'd hum words that I felt through the ground, tingly vibrations rocketing through me, until they were sure that I was safe again. They have always protected me, even though McKenzy is two years younger than me: but in their eyes, I was always the littlest. A few little whimpers later and I'd have one hand in Anello's, the other in Julo's and McKenzy out ahead in front, skipping back to the comforts of home. We did not speak of the incidents around Mother and Father, as we don't like to upset them. I am a handful enough already - scared stiff that one day I will break them to irreparable damage. But the others will keep me safe, I am sure of it. They are my own 3 sets of ears I never had the chance to listen through.

Timid as I am, my family does not mention the Games when I am around. As if being deaf was not a nightmare in itself, going to what they would whisper as hell is enough to send me into an array of fear. Being a deaf tribute - sorry, corpse, as they call it in Twelve - would leave me at a huge disadvantage. You don't see any glimmer of sympathy for a deaf girl in those Career Tributes eyes, oh no. My eyes have picked up thousands of emotions from all the looking that I do, but they'd kill me in a heartbeat, I am sure of it. I may be submerged into an eternal silence for the rest of my years, but I do not want to die. Year after treturous, nerve-wracking year, I can only clench my fists tight and squeeze my eyes shut and hope, pray that I do not feel their eyes turn towards me in mourning. I never hear the names being called, I only breathe in, and out, and in, and out....

and their eyes are turned to someone else.
[/justify]