Writing Down the Stars [FINISHED]

[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry was not sure quite what to do. She acted as if the request of a name was a foreign concept, the last thing he would have asked. She intrigued him. She was gentle, sweet, and kind but timid, cautious, and seemingly scared of the world. He could not help but wonder what had happened in her past to make her such a person.
--------When she told him her name his eyes widened in surprise and then he grinned broadly. "That's a mouthful. I wish my name was that long. I only have one middle name, Ezra. Which one should I call you?" In his eyes it was fantastic. He would love to have so many middle names just to see the reactions on people's faces when he said every one of them every time his named was asked.

ooc|| Sorry for my posts being so short lately.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

This was starting to get trying. At least if he was mean she would expect it and she'd know how to react, she liked knowing what would happen, she was a big fan of routine and things being in order, but she had no idea what to expect from him...what was his name? Henry. The constant worry about when he would turn mean was worse than the actual words he would speak when he decided she was a freak, because the longer he waited, the more used she would get to kindness, which would make it all the worse when it disappeared.

But maybe...maybe she could just enjoy it and pretend it would last, like a lovely little short story in one of her notebooks or a dream where the things that came naturally to her were normal in the world. Maybe she could even picture him as some sort of animal...somehow she got the image of an elk for him, or maybe some sort of bird. But the moment she started trying to picture him as an animal she became more relaxed, he was just a strangely shaped elk and she didn't have to worry about when he would decide to not be nice anymore because elk were usually kind and dignified. “Just...just Yuliya...it is a yellow name but I am not yellow.” Well she could be yellow, but she didn't know, she never knew her own color.

She looked at him closely. He was unlike any other male she'd ever seen. It seemed like back in Ukraine all boys were tall and muscular with big square jaws and square hands...whereas he...he seemed closer to her height than Amri's, with a thinner face and skinnier body. But she found she preferred it, it was less intimidating, more gentle. “Henry is a purple name,” she said suddenly, though she looked down quickly. She wasn't supposed to look at people.

[/color]

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

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------Colors associated with people and names. Henry began to feel a touch of nostalgia come over him. He could remember a warm Sunday afternoon, sitting on a bench outside their sizable house with his mother. She spoke the depth of colors, how there was so much meaning behind the bluest of blues or the reddest of reds, but even within those colors there were variations, endless possibilities and that every person had a color which could define them, though it was not always easy to see.
--------Turning his eyes up to the sky, he could see a few wisps of cloud against the brightening sky. The sun was almost risen and the soft blue of morning covered the expanse. Yuliya. A yellow name she said, and Henry a purple one. "Definitely not yellow," he mused. "I wonder what color then..." He was speaking almost to himself. Turning his eyes back to her, he smiled again and then sat down on the grassy ground. "Well, Yuliya, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance." For a moment he was silent. "You mentioned Ukraine. Is that your home? I mean, where you came from before..." he trailed off, not wanting to blatantly talk about being brought to Sangvene. It could not have been a happy experience for her.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

He didn't change his composure when she talked about colors, the thought of someone not freaking out about that made her cock her head to the side. People thought her synesthesia was weird. They said people were people and colors were colors and smells were smells and that none of the senses could cross over. She had been reprimanded at school because she told the teacher her voice tasted like brown sugar, but it did, she couldn't help what came to her. But he didn't seem too off guard...he agreed with her. She was beginning to wonder if he saw the world the same way she did, after all, if her diseases had names it meant she wasn't the only one with them, it was just rare that one person should have so many different mental disorders at the same time.

When he sat down she realized it was probably safe to pick up her journal, which she did, though she was not comfortable enough to sit down as well. Ember did so with a watchful eye on Henry, and Coconut was perfectly content to hop all around them. “Yes...Ukraine was my home, де я міг би говорити.” She missed her language. Although she was also just not very good at speaking in general, much of her stuttering and hesitancy to speak and robotic language came from the fact that English was not her first language. Learning English was the one thing Amri had done better than her at school, and he'd also had a private tutor whereas she'd had to listen in from the door. “Where I had horses and dogs and cats and all my books.” She should stop talking about home, it was giving her a heartache. “But you had a home too.”

[/color]

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

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------The golden light of sunrise faded into the clear bright of day and the girl's, Yuliya's, hair took on a lighter tone, still catching the light, flowing about her unruly yet somehow elegant. 'That must be why her English is shaky,' Henry thought as she spoke in her native tongue. It was a beautiful language and her voice sounded so natural when she spoke in it. He looked to her eyes but then quickly looked away, remembering how she had averted her gaze when their eyes met. He did not want her to feel uncomfortable and in any case, it just was not right for him to be staring at her like that.
--------His attention was caught when she spoke of his home. Home. Where was his home? Sangvene was a place he lived, his grandparent's house was closer to home but still not right. The more he thought about it, the more Henry began to realize that he had not truly felt at home since his mother passed away. That thought made his heart heart. He did not wish to remember that day and quickly moved his thoughts to the days before that, those happy Sunday afternoons when he would join her in the garden and they would sing together, laughing, smiling, happy. Turning his eyes back to the sky Henry sighed, "I suppose I did. We lived in Washington, right along the Oregon border in Vancouver. It was rainy three fourths of the year but late Spring through early Autumn we had some sun." He began to smile. "We had a big house, a big white house with a green door and a beautiful garden which my mother liked to keep. Sometimes on the warmer days we would sit outside, me beside her and my sister on her lap, and she would sing to us. She had the most beautiful voice and she was as lovely as a flower, She..." He stopped as he realized he had begun rambling. "Sorry," he blushed a bit, he had been doing that a lot around this girl, "I'm talking a bit too much, aren't I."

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Yuliya shook her head when he suggested he was talking too much, “I like listening better...it is easier than talking,” she said quietly. She had always been much more of a listener, though even more than that she was a writer, she wrote everything down in the journal she held close to her now, so that maybe one day some person who had the same feelings as she did would be able to find it and read her words and maybe it would help them make a little bit of sense of something, just maybe. She wished there was some way to leave written records for animals, but her powers didn't work that way, there was no universal written language. Even her own journal had more than one language in it.

“Everyone in my family sings,” she said with the very slightest of smiles, “my father plays violin and my mother plays piano and my brother plays guitar and I play banjo and we all sang together and it was the only time my parents were allowed to love me.” She said this as if it were quite a normal thing for parents to only love you during certain times, but they had to love Yuliya during their music times because with her they covered all of the four basic voices types, her father baritone, her brother tenor, her mother alto, and her soprano, they sang all sorts of songs. He talked about being right beside his mother and listening to her sing...that would be nice, she hadn't been allowed to sit right by her mother. His house sounded nice, more like a home. There were only four rooms in her house that felt like home to her, the music room, the library, and her and her brother's room, but most of of the manor felt big and empty, full of servants that didn't seem to like being there.

With a bit of hesitancy, she squatted down, reaching out a hand to gently stroke Ember's fur. This was...okay for now, she was just talking to a person, no need to freak out, people did this everyday. She breathed deeply to try and settle her nerves.

[/color]

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

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry's eyes widened at her statement of her parent's love. The only time they could love her? He felt a slight bitterness towards her mother and father despite the fact he had not met them. All he knew was they caused her to feel as if their love was conditional and given out in rations. Unable to bite his tongue he blurted out, "What kind of dysfunctional family is that?!" The moment the words escaped his lips he brought up his hand to cover his mouth, realizing he had just said something which she might not take too well.
--------His eyes downcast, he lowered his hand. "S-sorry. That just kind of... came out." He fumbled awkwardly. "I just... I mean..." He bit his lip, thinking of how to be polite. "Your parent's love was temporary like that? Aren't parents supposed to love their children all the time and unconditionally?" He hoped he was not prying too closely into her private life.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Yuliya didn't really know what to say...she was shocked by his words...they were...so different than all of the things she had been told her whole life. She remembered Amri saying something similar once, except he didn't know she'd been listening, he'd been fighting with their parents. She didn't quite get the idea of unconditional love...you could only love a person if they did things right...wasn't that how it worked? Then again, she didn't really get how any type of love worked. She loved reading about the old Cossack romantic tragedies and she'd seen her brother with a couple of girls but she didn't get how you were supposed to trust a person and tell them everything. Everyone had secrets.

There was no way to answer his questions while being true to her emotions about the matter, so she just locked them away for the moment, hiding the frustration and sadness that always came up whenever the subject of her parents came up. “They...they cannot love me because I am broken,” she said with a bit of strain in her voice as her eyes flickered downwards, “once I can get fixed then they can love me.” That was how she had always thought of it, her doctors had always told her she needed to be fixed, and she knew that if she got fixed her brother and her parents would be so proud of her and they could love her the way she loved them. It would happen some day, she just had to work hard at it and practice being a person. He just didn't understand it because he'd never been broken.

[/color]

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

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------For a moment he saw surprise on her face, mixed with sadness and pain and confusion, before it settled into the same shy quietness she had before. Her eyes were downcast and when she spoke, Henry felt two things. The first was compassion and a need to comfort her. The second was anger, anger at the people who had told her she was worthless, told her she could not be loved in her current state.
--------Looking at her eyes and wishing for her to look up at him, he said in a confident voice, "That's a lie." He hardly knew this girl but even he, a stranger, could tell that she was hurt. "There's no such thing as a person who is born broken. The only way you are broken is by the wounds inflicted on you by those who spoke those words." His voice softened a little and a bit of a smile came onto his lips. "Different isn't bad. It's just different. You're not broken; you're unique, and unique is a wonderful, wonderful thing."

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Oh. This was why he had been so nice. He didn't understand. He thought she was just a little bit shy and anxious and she was going to open up at any moment and start chatting away. He thought all she had to do was get comfortable...but that wasn't the case. She always spoke softly, quietly, and fearfully. She always heard tastes and felt smells. She always obsessed over small details of her life that no one else would care about like the symmetry of the world around her. She would always imagine that people always thought the worst. It wasn't like some romanticized work of fiction where a girl was crazy but acted like a normal person and was played by Angelina Jolie. Real crazy people caused problems and hurt the people who tried to help them.

“No, I am broken!” she shouted, causing Ember and Coconut to flock toward her, as if to make sure she was alright. She didn't want to think about this, it was all too much. She didn't want to have to prove she was broken but all of her memories came flooding back. Sitting in a chair and being shown blobs of pictures and being asked what they were. Being asked why she never approached people. Being asked why she started screaming in the middle of class. Men in white coats forcing her into an MRI machine. Having to sleep with wires attached to her head. Needles. Blood pricks. Weighing. Measuring. Probes. Paper gowns. Drugs. Tears started flowing heavily from her eyes when she remembered trying to tell the doctor that she didn't like it when people she didn't know touched her and they screamed at her. Because she was wrong. She had to do all of those things because she was wrong, everything she did was wrong. “The doctors tried all the medications but they told my parents I was a lost cause...” She remembered those words clearer than anything. Lost cause. It meant people should give up on her. It meant she would never have the opportunity to be loved by her parents.

[/color]

OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Missing - Evanescence
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules the super awesome person

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------Henry was at a loss. He was no psychologist and though he could see a problem, he hadn't the faintest idea of how to fix it. He wanted so desperately to help her, to show her her own worth, but she was trapped by the years of lies told to her by those who were supposed to love her, to help her, to encourage her. It hurt him inside to think that people were capable of doing such a thing to any person. Rubbish parents. Rubbish doctors. They had managed to destroy this girl's heart through their hurtful words and actions.
--------Looking down at the ground he sighed, unsure of what to do next. "I... I don't know what to say," he admitted. After a moment of silence he turned his eyes back up to look at her. "I'm not them," he finally said. "I know I just met you, but you have to trust me when I say I don't think you're worthless. If you are a broken person who needs to be 'fixed', then I would take rather live amongst the broken than their twisted image of 'normality."

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Yuliya wished that she had some sort of skill in being able to tell whether people were telling the truth of not, but she was miserable at it. She wanted to believe that she wasn't worthless. She wanted to believe that maybe one day she and Amri could get out of this place and she could make a difference by studying animals and one day working to give them the same rights as humans. Then again, not even she had the same rights as humans. But she wanted to have a life where she didn't live in a prison or a hospital...she just...she just wanted to live at home again, with the animals, with Amri, with her parents. And maybe without a doctor for once in her life.

She looked down at her knees, staring at them to make the tears in her eyes dry up. She hated crying but she did it all the time. People stared at her even more if she was crying. She had to make sure she got rid of any evidence she'd been crying before she went back to the camp, otherwise Amri would question her and ask her why'd she been crying and she didn't want to talk about any of it. Ember and Coconut were looking at her worriedly, as if they were wondering if the cause of her distress was the human and if they should take care of it. She shook her head just the very slightest at them. It was not him who had distressed her. In fact...he had given her a little bit of hope. If he was telling the truth...then that meant one human in the world thought that maybe she could be a person, and that was a jump between 0% and .00000001%, which was the biggest jump to make.

She lifted her face upwards, towards him, to actually look at him. “Really?” she asked in a quiet voice.

[/color]

OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Missing - Evanescence
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules the super awesome person

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------In that moment, as her eyes at last turned to his and she spoke that word, Henry felt a glimmer of hope. There was hope that for this broken girl, scarred by wounds inflicted in the past, who saw herself as worthless, who thought she was unmendable, could feel loved. That small hope was enough to lift Henry's spirits.
--------A gentle smile came over his features and he nodded. "Yes," he said softly. "Yes, really." For a moment the only sound which met their ears was the gentle summer breeze rustling the leaves, then Henry's eyes suddenly widened. "Oh!" He looked down at his wrist watch and quickly leaped to his feet, grabbing his now empty backpack. "I-I have to go. I need to get back before anyone notices I was gone." For a moment he paused before asking, a bit awkwardly, "Uh... will I... I will I be able to meet you again some time?" The moment he said it he half regretted the words. The last thing he wanted to seem was imposing and he was continually worried that his words and actions would come across as such, despite being told on multiple occasions that he was quite the opposite.

[YULIYA DUKHKIN']

xx

Yuliya had never had a very strong opinion of humans, but she knew she didn't belong with them, and not just because she was supernatural. So was Amri yet he got along with them fine, he could be friends with whoever he wanted. There was something about them that was always untouchable, their community was a gated one that she'd never had a key to, but this one seemed willing to at least let her take a peek. He sort of reminded her of the first doctor she'd ever had, when she was three years old. The doctor who spent most of their time together playing games with her. She'd never told Yuliya no and would let her read some of the psychology books when she did something right and she would bring her dog to her sessions. But she couldn't keep going to that doctor cause her parents said they weren't getting results fast enough.

But she was startled by his sudden realization that he had to go, not as much as she was startled when he asked if he could see her again. “Y-You want to?” she asked awkwardly. He wanted to see her again? Why would he want that? It was such an odd thing for a person to ask that she wasn't quite sure how to respond. Would he be able to see her again? There weren't many places she was on a regular basis besides the camp, and that was where Amri was so it wasn't a good idea. She usually just wandered around the woods or hung around at camp. But there was one place she'd visit everyday, because it was the best place to see her favorite event. “I...I come here at sunrise everyday.” She quickly looked downwards again, hoping that's what he'd meant by his question. But maybe he'd meant something different, maybe she'd embarrassed herself.

[/color]

OOC:: ooc notes here
LYRICS:: Missing - Evanescence
CREDIT:: by Goldy for Yules the super awesome person

[/size][/color][/size]

[HENRY STARK]

--------Yuliya seemed as surprised by his request as he himself was, but she still answered, and a positive answer at that. Henry grinned broadly. "Okay, great. I'll try to bring some more supplies for you too." He glanced down at his watch and frowned. "I really really really have to go now," he said, a bit of worry in his voice before he turned and started running back towards the guard's quarters. He managed to make it back just as the night guards were heading inside and just before the day guards went on duty. Timing perfect. Getting out was always easier than getting back in. The last thing he wanted was his father finding out about his subtle disobedience and putting a stop to it.
--------In any case, he was happy, happier than he had been in a long time. He made a friend. A beautiful, wonderful, amazing friend. Even though it meant getting up earlier to drop of the other supplies before sunrise, even if it meant a higher risk on his part concerning his father, he was willing to put up with the difficulties because Yuliya... Yuliya was something special.

ooc|| Sorry for the really lame post.