Writing Down the Stars [FINISHED]

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

There was one other thing that was on Yuliya's list of things she loved to do other than spending time with animals and reading, and it was writing. It had started off with her first doctor and the only one she had ever liked, who had told her it might be good to start a journal. Yuliya had only been three at the time, but she was able to read and write and she had kept a journal for every day of her life since. She'd made sure to bring a few thick journals with her to the camp so she'd never run out of writing space for her journals, plus a few other notebooks for her poems and songs and stories.

She had snuck out of her camp in the early morning while Amri was still sleeping to watch the sunrise and then had decided to start writing, so she was sitting on the ground with a journal in her lap, scribbling quietly and not attracting much attention to herself. Ember was by her side keeping a close watch on everything since Yuliya's attention was elsewhere. There was also a new member to their crew, curled up on Yuliya's shoulder up against her neck and nuzzled into her hair, a squirrel named Coconut. She was not used to being up so early and was softly dozing. Yuliya and Ember had come upon her a few days before and Yuliya had insisted on befriending her and it turned out Coconut was always looking for a friend and had attached herself to them like glue, but Yuliya was happy. She was writing it in her journal.

[HENRY STARK]

--------Pre-dawn was the best time to do anything that Henry did not want his father to know about. The night guards were starting to get tired, the day guards were not awake yet. Practically everyone everywhere was asleep in the early early morning. Henry had taken to sneaking out into the camp at these times partially so that he would not be stopped by the guards but partially also so that he would not have contact with any of the inmates. He knew how dangerous some of them could be and did not care to be victim to a vampire.
--------He went near the recreation building. He rotated what gang he went to from day to day. The only ones he would not go near were the Pack and the Nightwalkers. No one in their right mind would step on their territory even if it were for a good cause. Kneeling on the ground, he swung his backpack off and unzipped it. "Let's see..." he murmured to himself. A few first aid kits, some aspirin, one water filter, some chemical packets for decontaminating water, and the rest was food, army MREs to be precise. He suddenly stopped unpacking his gifts to the inmates as he heard footsteps. Someone was coming near. He held perfectly still for a long while. The girl was writing and had animals around her. Probably some sort of elemental. 'Oh please please please please go away,' he silently pleaded.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Yuliya was enjoying her writing. It was calming and she wasn't scared about being near another gang's territory because everyone was asleep and this was one of the best places in the camp if you wanted to see the sunrise. Hopefully she would remember to look up when the sun rose, since she had a tendency to get lost in her writing. It was so easy to forget that the rest of the world existed, she could pretend she was back home with Black Jewel and Midnight Moon and Apollo and Luna and Willowfire and Streak...how she missed them all. Of course she'd have to bring Ember and Coconut with her if she ever went back, she couldn't imagine life without them either.

Coconut stirred her sleepy little head and popped up. Yuliya thought little of it, thinking she was just going to bounce around them, but then suddenly the squirrel lept off her and ran forward, widening Yuliya's eyes as she quickly jumped upwards and ran after her, only to see that Coconut had run at a boy and climbed up his leg and now bounced all around him. Yuliya could hear her saying, “Hi! Hi! Hi! My name is Coconut! Who are you?” Of course the boy wouldn't be able to hear her. Yuliya froze in front of him, dropping her journal and standing very still, though Ember had come to stand by her side and glared suspiciously at the boy. Yuliya didn't know what to do. Was the boy from the gang that was just inside those buildings? She didn't recognize him, but then again, there were few people she did recognize. She hunched her shoulders and looked downwards, summoning up the courage to mumble. “Do...do not hurt her...”

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------A small squirrel suddenly crawled up on Henry's leg and he jumped a bit before laughing just a bit. As he was about to say hello to the little animal his attention was drawn to the girl. He lost his hopes of being ignored when she turned to face him and then spoke. Her words confused him slightly but also brought him relief. She was non-hostile, at least for now, a that put him at ease. Relaxing slightly he gave her a somewhat awkward smile, somewhere between forced and friendly. "I wasn't going to," he clarified before turning back to unpacking the goods.
--------Everything was there. He spared another glance at the girl. She did not look very strong and, like most of the inmates, looked a bit on the thin side. In any case he was certain she could use the supplies. He had intended them for the Alliance and he was sure they were expecting it, but he figured they could spare a few things. Taking two MREs, one of the first aid kits, and two water decontaminates, he stood and took a few cautious steps towards her. "Do you need supplies?" he hesitantly asked. Talking to the inmates was far out of his comfort zone but he couldn't just leave her there.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

She stood petrified, watching him slowly unpack a lot of supplies. Why would he do that? Why would he bring supplies? He wasn't a guard, and if he wasn't a guard he was a supernatural and they didn't give supplies away. Amri had told her not to trust anyone. People would try to trick her, people would try to do things to her. He told her people would try to kill her just because she was his sister or they would try to kidnap her so that he would rescue her.

Coconut finally leaped off the boy and landed on the ground near his feet, and looked at Yuliya as if she was confused as to why she was so scared. “Sugarcube, you dun need to be scared,” she said in her Southern accent. Yuliya wasn't so sure. Coconut loved everyone, and plus, people had less reason to harm a squirrel than they had to harm Yuliya. As if he was thinking the same thought, Ember stepped forward between them and growled at the boy, sticking up his fur, pretending to be bigger than he was, since he wasn't even a full-grown fox.

She eyed the supplies he was offering her nervousing, lingering on the first aid kit. That would be useful. She could treat Amri's wounds and the wounds of animals she found much better. She gulped at the possibility of having a first aid kit. She wanted it. She knew it was probably a trick but she wanted it and she wanted it badly. Her eyes started tearing up at the stress of the decision and she nodded her head viciously and then faced her head downwards, wringing her hands together.

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry took a step hurriedly back when the fox, though small, began to growl ferally at him as if defending the girl against some great danger. He bit his bottom lip nervously and looked back over to the girl who was... crying? He frowned in confusion and then his eyes widened. She really was crying. What was she crying. Had he done something to upset her. He was suddenly overcome with worries. "Uh... oh crap... uh here," Quickly leaning over he dropped the supplies gently on the ground and stepped back to a safe distance.
--------Henry realized by her reactions that she was as afraid of him as he was of her, if not more so... definitely more so. He lifted up his hands, open palmed. "I'm unarmed," he stumbled with his words. "Uh... Really. I don't mean to hurt you or anything." He bit his lip again. At least she wasn't going to hurt him, or at least he hoped as much.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

She breathed a deep breath in, trying to calm herself down. What would Amri do? Her eyes flashed upwards for only a second before facing down again. Amri would kill him, and quickly. She couldn't do that. She had never killed a person. She had only ever managed to evade people who tried to kill her. What would Amri do if he couldn't kill him? He would take the supplies...and then tell him to never come around again. Yuliya couldn't do that either. She didn't have enough confidence in her voice. She'd never be able to do anything that Amri would do. Why did she even try? She'd never make him or her parents proud because she was just so broken and did everything wrong.

She took a few steps forward to gingerly pick up the supplies to put them in the bag that was around her shoulder. She would have just left then but Coconut was still by him, trying to convince Yuliya there was no danger. Yuliya supposed she should find comfort in his words saying he wasn't going to hurt her, but it just made her wonder who he was. She kept looking downwards, eyes flicking to her journal still on the ground though it was too much in front of her for her to even attempt picking it up. She wrapped her arms around herself before looking at him with an accusatory but still wide-eyed stare, trying to figure out what he was, but she couldn't tell at all. The words. “Who are you?” slipped out of her mouth as Ember returned to weave himself among her feet.

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry gave a weak smile and nodd as she cautiously picked up the supplies and packed them away. She needed them. He could tell just by looking at her state and attitude. His eyes followed her gaze to the journal which she, for some reason, was leaving untouched. Was he too close to it? Considering moving forward to pick it up, he quickly banished the idea, realizing it might seem hostile if he took any steps towards her. At the same time he did not want to back up because he might look as if he were afraid of her. She did not seem like the type who needed people to be afraid of her.
--------At the asking of his name, Henry smiled, "I'm Henry Sta-" he stomped short of his last name. The Stark name was known across the camp and if she knew he was the son of the warden, the man who was responsible for their horrible state, even if she appeared innocent he might find a more hostile side to her emerging. "Stanton," He said, filling in the first replacement name that came to mind. "I uh..." he scratched the back of his head, blushing slightly. "I'm human." He felt a bit embarrassed about it at the moment, knowing how much the non-humans hated his kind. "Son of a guard. No one of consequence." He bit his lip again nervously. He really needed t break that habit.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

She cocked her head when he said he was human. She didn't think humans who weren't guards were allowed to come here, since the whole purpose of the camp was to keep the supernaturals away from humans, because they were dangerous. Yuliya was about as dangerous as a duck though and would've been killed long ago if it wasn't for her brother....her brother who told her people would try to trick her. He could be lying about being humans so that she would feel safe. But she had a way of knowing. “Ember...he says he is human, would you mind double-checking?” The fox looked at her and then took a few steps forward to the boy and extended his elongated nose towards him to sniff deeply. “Seems human to me,” he said.

Unlike other supernaturals, Yuliya didn't hate humans. After all, her parents were human, her uncle was human. Sure, she didn't get along with them, but that was her fault, for being broken and wrong. Nor was she sent here because she was a supernatural, she was sent here because she was broken and her parents had hoped they would find something that could be used as an excuse to say she was a supernatural, they still didn't know she actually was though. The unnatural levels of fear slipped away with her thinking that he might kill her, and it was replaced with her normal fear that there was another person she she would have to talk.

“Oh...” she said simply, as she looked at him more closely. He did seem quite normal, a phrase she'd learned she never fit. She also got a sense of green from him, one of the rarer kinds in this place. In fact, the only other person she'd ever met who was green was her mother. It was odd. It swirled around her in a mess where she couldn't tell the directions and when she looked up she saw the floor instead of the stars. What was even odder was that he seemed nervous around her...like she might hurt him. She'd never hurt anything though. The only times she'd ever even wanted to hurt something was when it hurt either animals or her brother. He hadn't done either of those. He hadn't done anything. And he could do anything he wanted, he could be outside where the sunflowers and horses were.

“Why are you here...instead of out there?” she asked in a soft but questioning voice. She understood why she was here but she knew she would leave if she could. She wanted to see her animals, she wanted to watch the sun rise over the sunflowers again...the sun rise. It was starting to happen. She took a few steps to the side to where she could see the sun best, and indeed she could see it just start to come over the horizon off in the distance, painting the sky with pink and yellow. Her mouth hung open slightly as she watched, not paying attention to much else.

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry resisted the urge to take a step back when another of the girl's animal friends came up and began sniffing him suspiciously. After doing so both the creature and the girl seemed to relax. Telepathic or empathic connection perhaps. He would have to ask about it later. One of things Henry always marveled at about the world was vast differentiation in people, even the varieties within a certain race's traits. The downside was that it made it practically impossible to determine what species anyone was on first sight.
--------Despite the slight positive change in her level of comfort, the girl seemed to still be a bit on edge, wary of him. Her question brought several answers to mind. 'Because I have nowhere else to call home? Because I feel obligated to be with my family? Because I can do a lot more good for your people here than out there? Because I'm weak and unable to help anyone in any other way than bringing you all supplies?' What he ended up quietly saying was, "I... I don't really know." He looked down at the ground as he spoke and when he turned his gaze back up he quickly turned to face the east. The sliver of gold on the tips of the trees was the sign. His breath caught as he saw the clouds quickly turning to their brilliant colors of pink and purple and gold. The soft colors of sunrise. Slowly, amongst the painted clouds, the queen of the show, the sun herself, began to make her appearance, coming up over the edge of the wall. He could never grow tired of that. "Sunrise is one of my favorite times of day," he said, his eyes never leaving the sky.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

He didn't know why he was here? It was...strange to her, the thought that someone could be kept here not because they were dangerous but because of some other reason. She didn't know what that reason was, but she could see it in his eyes, the way the color in a person's eyes would dim slightly when they were thinking of something. And one thing she knew about green people is they hardly did anything without thinking it over first, they were not the wild oranges or blues. It also hadn't occurred to her that the guards here would have family. Did every guard have a family sitting at home in the wall, not being able to go to the outside world? They were as trapped as the supernaturals in this place...yet somehow...with less freedom.

But she stopped thinking about green and freedom when he said that sunrise was one of his favorite times of day. She also thought so, dawn and dusk being the best times of day for her. Dawn was when the scary night ended and she came out to see the sunrise with her animals and she brought her journal. Dusk was when Amri came back for searching for food and he would light a fire and they would sing songs together. It seemed strange that she could have anything in common with a normal human boy, she was supposedly different in every single way. She stayed quiet, but unfortunately the words she was thinking slipped out of her mouth without her knowing or realizing she was speaking them. What with the fact that she had the capability of thinking, telepathically talking to animals, and actually speaking, it wasn't an uncommon thing that she mixed them up. “When the sun rises in Ukraine the sunflowers become alive and strain themselves towards the sun and get kissed by its golden rays and all day they follow it, hoping once more to be wrapped in its warm embrace.”

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry closed his eyes for a moment as the warmth of the sun graces them with its presence. He could never grow tired of the crisp freshness of the air, the feel of that first warmth, and the beautiful pastels painting the sky. The girl was calmed by it as well. When she spoke he turned to face her, taken by surprise by her poetic words. They were so eloquent and... he didn't know quite how to put it. She painted a picture with her words and it was a masterpiece.
--------The light of dawn touched her light blonde hair drawing out the gold in it, making her almost shine like an angel. Her bright eyes staring with wonder at the beauty of nature. Henry noticed himself staring and quickly looked back towards the sunrise, blushing just a bit and hoping she did not notice. It was not right for a guy to stare at a girl like that, at least not when they had just met. Never the less, he could not help but want to admire her. She was delicate like a flower and something about the distance and wonder of her voice caught him off guard. The only girl he had seen for several years was his sister, his loud, bold, and boy-obsessed sister and he had somewhat forgotten how lovely women could be.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Suddenly she realized she'd said that out loud, like the stupid person she was. No one wanted to hear things like that, it was weird and boring. She was supposed to talk about the weather and celebrities and popular movies, that's what her socialization classes had said. But she hadn't seen movies save for a few animal documentaries, and her idea of celebrities was a list of mostly dead people who'd made great contributions to the world, when it seemed to be a requirement of contemporary celebrities to be completely useless to society...other than to be something to talk about other than the strange, fantastical thoughts that flowed through her mind like a backwards current.

Her eyes dropped downward, wondering if she should say something to try and pretend she hadn't said something so weird, but humans were the hardest to convince she was not a freak, because to them she was crazy and a supernatural, to supernaturals she was just crazy. He was probably speechless at her lack of any control over the kind of things she would say, and he would go home and tell his friends about the crazy supernatural girl he saw and she would be the butt of yet another joke, as she was to so many people. Only Amri hadn't made jokes about her, and he was the only person to laugh at her jokes, which she rarely made because they were the hardest kind of speech. But it was all hard, and it was all her fault. “I am sorry...” she said softly and she would've left had she not still needed to retrieve her journal, she couldn't leave it there. She knew if you left a journal around it meant people would read it, he would pick it up and read it and then make even more jokes about her. She wrung her hands together and kicked her foot on the ground, finding comfort in the gentle pressure of Ember's fur against her leg.

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry frowned at her sudden change of attitude after she spoke. She became downcast and almost ashamed. His confusion turned to worry and then guilt. What on earth did she have to be sorry about? Had he done something wrong? Did she feel as if she had upset him? Hurriedly he fumbled out, "No no no, you don't have anything to be sorry about, Miss..." He paused and then scratched the back of his head, a bit embarrassed, blushing a bit again. "Heh, I don't even know your name."
--------With proper composure of a gentleman, he bowed and smiled kindly. "Might I inquire of your name, my lady?" Exaggerated chivalry, yes, but Henry was in the mood for a bit of light-hearted conversation. There was also the fact that he was beginning to find himself a bit taken with her, but he was trying desperately not to let that rule his mind.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

She didn't understand, she didn't comprehend. Humans were perfect. The only non-human who was perfect was her brother, and he was a special case. But her whole life she'd been taught that regular humans were everything she should strive to be. If she ever made a mistake, she was to be punished and she was to apologize, because she'd made a perfectly good person have to deal with someone as broken as her. And he was saying she didn't have anything to be sorry about? What did that mean? She had done something weird, right? She knew it had to be weird, because if she'd said something like that to someone else they'd be giving her that look and they'd say 'what?' and slowly start to edge away from her.

She blinked her big eyes when he bowed and asked her her name. That was the sort of things boys would do to other girls, she knew that from watching parties her parents had from the upstairs window in the library, so she wasn't sure what to do. “M-My name?” Should she try to respond? Or should she just break down now before things got harder so he'd know this wouldn't be the easiest of roads? Maybe he thought her previous offenses were just odd quirks about her rather than regular traumas that held her back from holding regular conversations. It was dizzying, her head spun, she found herself wishing Amri was here just so she could ask him what she was supposed to do. She choked on her words but accidentally let out a waterfall instead of the drip that was supposed to come out, how she wished she had better control of her speech, “My name is...Yuliya Venera Dusha Krylo Bihaty Povitria Pryroda Miasiats Svitanok Nebo Dukhkin'.” No, that was wrong, she wasn't supposed to give out all nine of her middle names as well, but she couldn't take her words back. She could just keep her head down and hope she didn't get punished.

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OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Unwell - Matchbox 20
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules because she is so totally awesome and stuff

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