Jan 11, 2018 5:51:51 GMT
maddox rothscus ✨, Aeliana D. N. Constantine, and 4 more like this
Post by kaelin ó'coileáin on Jan 11, 2018 5:51:51 GMT
[nospaces][/PTab={tab-background-color:#fff;}][/PTabbedContent={tabvalign:top}]
[attr="class","jdappbg"]
[/PTab={tab-background-color:#fff;}][PTab=BIOGRAPHY][attr="class","appbg3"]
[PTabbedContent][PTab=BASIC][attr="class","appicon"]  | [attr="class","jdappname"] KAELIN Ó'COILEÁIN [attr="class","appdivider"] [attr="class","appname2"]jester's den |
[attr="class","appbg2"]
[attr="class","jdappbody2"]
[attr="class","apppersonality"] [attr="class","jdappheading"]personality
| [attr="class","appseperator2"] | [attr="class","appbasic"]
| ||||||||||||
[attr="class","appbg2"]
[/PTab={tab-background-color:#fff;}][PTab=OOC][attr="class","appbody2"]
[attr="class","jdappbody3"]
she is born a winter's child;[break][break]
she is born wreathed with a laurel of glittering ice, snowflakes settled on her lashes and a brumous kiss on her brow; she is born with silver filigree braided into her hair and the light of a thousand million dying stars cradling her beneath a chasmic night;[break][break]
she is born when the moon is at its brightest and the season of snow at its coldest and death lays its cloak over the land in a merciless-merciful spell; she dies too with her history of a single month written out on a scroll of parchment paper that cracks and smears and warps into illegibility with a touch of winter's breath;[break][break]
then she is born anew to gentle hands, warm hands, and a childless womb;[break][break]
( the truth is, she was born an autumn child under a sky of fire, eyes dripping honey and liquid gold as the sun dies across the horizon and sets ablaze the treetops where empty nests perch, once so carefully crafted by the bluebirds and now so woefully abandoned;[break][break]
she was named for the bluebirds once, so perhaps it was fate that saw her left out for the winter's frost to claim like it had claimed her once-mother's favourite pets )[break][break]
winter claimed her and winter saved her; and so she is reborn with a soul of frost swirls and snow and light refracting off crystalline glaciers, and if winter were a corporeal being she would give it her heart for that is where it belongs.[break][break]
how do you build a dream? [break]
first:[break]
her mother’s excitement lighting her eyes with something brighter than even stars, two years old and being twirled, tossed and caught, tossed and caught
then:[break]
she sets foot on the ice herself, three years old with pretty white shoes half a size too big, carefully laced and tied by her mother before she takes her first wobbling steps out onto the expanse that will later become her second home. she wears a billowing blue skirt like her favourite idol and a thick fluffy scarf because she doesn’t want to be cold, and manages to tear both of them with her first fall.[break]
a dash of:[break]
her brother is a dancer; he leads her by the hand and shows her how to manoeuvre her limbs in a rhythm to the beat that thrums through her bones, but it isn’t until she is on the ice and flying that she understands what he means about throwing her heart and soul into her movements. [break][break][break]
and:[break]
she makes her first costume at five, she and her mother both, sitting side by side lit by a flickering mana-light as they measure and cut and sew and emboss a blue-white fabric that looks as if it were woven by the ice itself; they carefully place each one of the five hundred and sixty seven faux crystals on by hand ( even though they can easily afford a tailor and her father shakes his head in fond exasperation )[break]
and when she puts it on and jumps with the skirt flaring out from her legs, she catches the light in five hundred and sixty seven different ways and her mother races out to hug her and twirl her and call her ‘my little scintillating star’ with tears in her eyes and asks her to do another jump.[break][break]
‘that will be you, one day,’ her mother says, pointing down at the beautiful, elegant dancers pouring their soul out into the winter-cold air, seeming more ethereal spirit than anything human as they glide across the ice, gilded swans crowned in frost and grace;[break][break]
she watches with wide-eyed awe and her breath catches in her ivory ribs and she thinks, ‘that will be me, one day,’ and it is not so much a hope as it is a promise, a vow, an oath.[break][break]
five years old and she sits down with serious eyes and makes herself a list:[break][break]
five items, she thinks, nodding decisively, is enough. five is a big number. she’s five, after all.[break][break]
( the list, amended:
)[break][break]
the years go as such:[break][break]
the next decade of her life, she knows, will be spent dedicated to her first three goals. ice skating is not a sport she can give any less than all she has to devote, not when there is a time limit ticking within the very make up of their flesh and blood bodies; ten years, she thinks, and then she can live for the rest of the world.[break][break]
( at heart, all she is is a little girl who loves to skate and wants to make her family proud )[break][break]
she is eleven at her first competition, eleven and facing far bigger a crowd than anything she has ever seen before, eleven with thousands of eyes staring down at her with the detached curiosity of strangers ready to casually judge what she has bled and sweated and cried over for years; she wins gold at the competition by a not-insignificant margin and it is the best she has ever skated in her life, but that is not what she remembers.[break][break]
death seeks and it finds; no amount of gold or accolades or awards can offer even a modicum of comfort to the harsh-edged words: [break][break]
passed away, dead; she stands there with skates on her feet and flowers in her arms and wearing a pretty dress made of starlight and silver that her mother had handsown and woven, eleven and a victor and trying to comprehend that her mother is no longer written in the fluid changeability of present tense but now cosigned to the static past. [break][break]
her mother is dead - it doesn’t compute, it doesn’t make any sense because she was alive and healthy the even just this morning and she was in the stands cheering kaelin on and this is as much her dream as it is kaelin’s and she can’t be dead.[break][break]
but denial does not change reality even when reality makes no sense; and that is how she is eleven and newly established as one of the best junior skaters in her year and crying her heart out at podium to the bewilderment of the entire crowd.[break][break]
her dream is not just her own, now, nor is it merely a tribute to the goddess of ice. ‘in memoriam’ she whispers before every session she skates, and presses a hand over her heart in silent prayer.[break][break]
her brother becomes an entirely different person after their mother’s death. there is always rage in his eyes now, rage and helplessness and something colder than even the ice she skates on. ‘conspiracy,’ she hears him snarl one night, facing her father with grief and anger twisting his normally kind expression. ‘it was no accident, it was murder. i swear-‘[break][break]
and her father goes to reply but they see her hovering in the shadows of the doorway and there are words no more; instead, her father stands to enfold her in a trembling hug and leads her to bed, tears threading his lips silent no matter what she attempts to ask. her brother stands in the study, statue-still, and the look in his eyes shatters her heart almost as much as her mother’s death did.[break][break]
if she had known then that it would be the last time she would ever see him in years, she would have clung and never let him go.[break][break]
but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t know, because she is just a little girl in a world too big for her, and she is born from ice but still too fragile for her brother to handle with more than gentle hands;[break][break]
he leaves late that night and she only learns about it two days later when she finally confronts her father about where he has been.[break][break]
her world breaks, and her world breaks again, but the wider world continues spinning like nothing has changed so she has to change her gravitational pull and readjust to a new reality. and her new normal is:[break]
normality becomes a cycle of skating and dancing and pushing all her feelings into her arms and legs and feet because words are too clumsy and fragile to contain a broken heart, and she refuses to cry because it’s just her and her father left and a dream she needs to be strong to fulfil. [break][break]
kaelin makes a new list, for a new normal.[break][break]
( there is no title, because lists written in blood and tears cannot be summed up with mere words )[break][break]
this time, it is not a list of goals. it is a list of promises. [break][break]
she skates and skates and skates, and wins and loses and wins again; she fumbles and falls and gets up to try it again seven hundred and eighty five more times because dedication is inscribed into her bones and she has a dream and she will fight to fulfil that dream with every fibre of her being because it is all she has left. she loses herself to the ice, loses herself to the rhythm of jump-spin-glide-turn, and she tries to dedicate time to her best friends too but slowly, slowly they seem to need her less and less and she promises herself she will not stand in the way of their success even if it tears apart her heart. [break][break]
she skates her way to the top of the top, and ironically it is her voiceless grief and regret and love and solemnity channeled through her limbs and movements that takes her there; they praise her technical skill and grace and emotion and maturity on ice, and she thinks, ‘this is for you, mother.’ [break][break]
she does not dedicate any programs to her brother. he is not dead; he needs no dedication. she will find him one day.[break][break]
and slowly, slowly slowly her father begins to come to her competitions, her shows, eventually even turning up to watch her practice and the day he does so she buries her head into his arms and cries for the first time in years. still, every competition she’s in, kaelin buys an extra ticket, an unfilled seat, regardless of how expensive it is.[break][break]
whether it is for her mother, or for her wayward brother, she cannot say.[break][break]
kaelin falls and she breaks her arm but what is worse, what is far worse than a mere splintering of limb is the news that comes after; why she fell:[break][break]
‘three years to live,’ they tell her, the sympathy in their eyes doing nothing to lessen the impact of their diagnosis. ‘three years to live, maybe four if you’re able to support your body through magic.’[break][break]
terminal. [break][break]
one word. [break][break]
one word with the ability to shatter her world all over again.[break][break]
terminal; eventual loss of mobility, loss of ability to talk, to function, to breathe, to live - and there’s no known cure. no known cure, and the only thing that has been proven to reduce the effects and prolong lifespan is through application of certain spells. she’s never really looked into her magic, never developed it save for her element simply because ice skating at the more junior levels forbids magic use in any way and she has no need for it, but now, but now[break][break]
it’s the only thing that could possibly keep her dream alive long enough to be fulfilled.[break][break]
she makes a plan. makes a list, because if she can’t afford to break down, can’t afford to cry, now even more so than ever because she’s on limited time now; kaelin begs the doctors not to tell her father, not yet, and digs her old lists and reads every single one of them before she sits down with a pen and paper and shaking hands.[break][break]
the first four points are professionally oriented, are things she knows she has even more limited time for than even the end date of her shortened lifespan. there is only so much she can do as an athlete before her body breaks down, and she is determined to see them through to the end. [break][break]
the following items on her list, though…. they are more personal, less professional, because kaelin has accepted that eventually she will no longer be able to skate no matter how much it is her life; ( perhaps it is because she has given so much to the goddess of ice, and received so much in return, that it must be cut short; a compromise, if one will )[break][break]
she finds a new coach. she moves to sundial. she joins the jester's den. she does not tell her father of her diagnosis.[break][break]
she has approximately a year before she has to tell anyone. this year? this year is hers.
she is born a winter's child;[break][break]
she is born wreathed with a laurel of glittering ice, snowflakes settled on her lashes and a brumous kiss on her brow; she is born with silver filigree braided into her hair and the light of a thousand million dying stars cradling her beneath a chasmic night;[break][break]
she is born when the moon is at its brightest and the season of snow at its coldest and death lays its cloak over the land in a merciless-merciful spell; she dies too with her history of a single month written out on a scroll of parchment paper that cracks and smears and warps into illegibility with a touch of winter's breath;[break][break]
then she is born anew to gentle hands, warm hands, and a childless womb;[break][break]
( the truth is, she was born an autumn child under a sky of fire, eyes dripping honey and liquid gold as the sun dies across the horizon and sets ablaze the treetops where empty nests perch, once so carefully crafted by the bluebirds and now so woefully abandoned;[break][break]
she was named for the bluebirds once, so perhaps it was fate that saw her left out for the winter's frost to claim like it had claimed her once-mother's favourite pets )[break][break]
winter claimed her and winter saved her; and so she is reborn with a soul of frost swirls and snow and light refracting off crystalline glaciers, and if winter were a corporeal being she would give it her heart for that is where it belongs.[break][break]
once, i was seven years old
i always had that dream
how do you build a dream? [break]
kaelin builds hers piece by piece:
[break][break]first:[break]
her mother’s excitement lighting her eyes with something brighter than even stars, two years old and being twirled, tossed and caught, tossed and caught
up down up down up down
all as the shimmering, glittering figures out on the ice below sweep a flourishing curtsy.
[break][break]then:[break]
she sets foot on the ice herself, three years old with pretty white shoes half a size too big, carefully laced and tied by her mother before she takes her first wobbling steps out onto the expanse that will later become her second home. she wears a billowing blue skirt like her favourite idol and a thick fluffy scarf because she doesn’t want to be cold, and manages to tear both of them with her first fall.[break]
kaelin falls in love at three years old and never looks back.
[break][break]a dash of:[break]
her brother is a dancer; he leads her by the hand and shows her how to manoeuvre her limbs in a rhythm to the beat that thrums through her bones, but it isn’t until she is on the ice and flying that she understands what he means about throwing her heart and soul into her movements. [break][break][break]
and:[break]
she makes her first costume at five, she and her mother both, sitting side by side lit by a flickering mana-light as they measure and cut and sew and emboss a blue-white fabric that looks as if it were woven by the ice itself; they carefully place each one of the five hundred and sixty seven faux crystals on by hand ( even though they can easily afford a tailor and her father shakes his head in fond exasperation )[break]
and when she puts it on and jumps with the skirt flaring out from her legs, she catches the light in five hundred and sixty seven different ways and her mother races out to hug her and twirl her and call her ‘my little scintillating star’ with tears in her eyes and asks her to do another jump.[break][break]
-
[break]‘that will be you, one day,’ her mother says, pointing down at the beautiful, elegant dancers pouring their soul out into the winter-cold air, seeming more ethereal spirit than anything human as they glide across the ice, gilded swans crowned in frost and grace;[break][break]
she watches with wide-eyed awe and her breath catches in her ivory ribs and she thinks, ‘that will be me, one day,’ and it is not so much a hope as it is a promise, a vow, an oath.[break][break]
the smallest voices, they can make it major
five years old and she sits down with serious eyes and makes herself a list:[break][break]
Things I Want To Do
- be the best ice skater in the world
- learn to dance
- travel the world with my best friends
- be the best witch like daddy
- get a dragon
five items, she thinks, nodding decisively, is enough. five is a big number. she’s five, after all.[break][break]
( the list, amended:
- make mother proud
- be like big brother
- be best friends with friends, forever
- make daddy proud
- get a dragon
)[break][break]
only those i really love will ever really know me
the years go as such:[break][break]
- she spends her mornings and afternoons forging ice into her bones, tracing swirling patterns of frostflowers and winter’s grace with languid strokes of her skates; she learns to jump and spin and dance as if the bell-chime song of liquid starlight lights her veins and her body were merely the conduit to something bigger, brighter, far more luminescent that she could ever dream of[break][break]
- she spends her evenings pressed skin to skin with her best friends, blurring together in fluid motion as they laugh and whirl and ambush her brother to beg him to show them how to dance; it is difference to her homage to ice, different to the disciplines her friends have chosen, but with the passage of the seasons she finds that the dynamic, rhythmic movements of this far more explosive style has also an irrevocable place in her heart[break][break]
- school, unfortunately, becomes a mere afterthought, an obligation to attend to and endure until the bell rings and she may once again breathe in the rink’s cool, crisp air[break][break]
- her coach likes to say that she was born on skates, that the way her muscles and ligaments and nerves wire together in one fragile compendium of self is perfect for the devotion to the ice goddess’ shrine, that even the stars will one day be within her reach if she works hard, if she commits herself; and she, with all the force of a supernova blazing behind her eyes, swears herself to the beautiful, merciless goddess of ice[break][break]
- thus kaelin, determined and fierce with a steel-strong conviction and a sky-high dream to reach for, makes herself a colour-coded schedule for each of her days, complete with tiny handdrawn hearts and snowflakes bordering her allocated skating periods; she makes herself a list for the rest of her life, too - goals that she promises herself she will accomplish[break][break]
- make history as one of the best
- win gold at the biggest ice skating competition of salem
- inspire others to skate as others have inspired her
- watch her friends reach their dreams
- watch her brother reach his
- dance professionally in a group with her best friends
- climb the tallest mountain in the world
- travel the world
- meet dmitri wisbane
- get a pet dragon
the next decade of her life, she knows, will be spent dedicated to her first three goals. ice skating is not a sport she can give any less than all she has to devote, not when there is a time limit ticking within the very make up of their flesh and blood bodies; ten years, she thinks, and then she can live for the rest of the world.[break][break]
( at heart, all she is is a little girl who loves to skate and wants to make her family proud )[break][break]
you shoot me down
she is eleven at her first competition, eleven and facing far bigger a crowd than anything she has ever seen before, eleven with thousands of eyes staring down at her with the detached curiosity of strangers ready to casually judge what she has bled and sweated and cried over for years; she wins gold at the competition by a not-insignificant margin and it is the best she has ever skated in her life, but that is not what she remembers.[break][break]
death seeks and it finds; no amount of gold or accolades or awards can offer even a modicum of comfort to the harsh-edged words: [break][break]
“kaelin…. i’m sorry, but your mother has passed away.”
[break]passed away, dead; she stands there with skates on her feet and flowers in her arms and wearing a pretty dress made of starlight and silver that her mother had handsown and woven, eleven and a victor and trying to comprehend that her mother is no longer written in the fluid changeability of present tense but now cosigned to the static past. [break][break]
her mother is dead - it doesn’t compute, it doesn’t make any sense because she was alive and healthy the even just this morning and she was in the stands cheering kaelin on and this is as much her dream as it is kaelin’s and she can’t be dead.[break][break]
but denial does not change reality even when reality makes no sense; and that is how she is eleven and newly established as one of the best junior skaters in her year and crying her heart out at podium to the bewilderment of the entire crowd.[break][break]
-
[break]her dream is not just her own, now, nor is it merely a tribute to the goddess of ice. ‘in memoriam’ she whispers before every session she skates, and presses a hand over her heart in silent prayer.[break][break]
you shoot me down
but i won't fall
her brother becomes an entirely different person after their mother’s death. there is always rage in his eyes now, rage and helplessness and something colder than even the ice she skates on. ‘conspiracy,’ she hears him snarl one night, facing her father with grief and anger twisting his normally kind expression. ‘it was no accident, it was murder. i swear-‘[break][break]
and her father goes to reply but they see her hovering in the shadows of the doorway and there are words no more; instead, her father stands to enfold her in a trembling hug and leads her to bed, tears threading his lips silent no matter what she attempts to ask. her brother stands in the study, statue-still, and the look in his eyes shatters her heart almost as much as her mother’s death did.[break][break]
if she had known then that it would be the last time she would ever see him in years, she would have clung and never let him go.[break][break]
but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t know, because she is just a little girl in a world too big for her, and she is born from ice but still too fragile for her brother to handle with more than gentle hands;[break][break]
he leaves late that night and she only learns about it two days later when she finally confronts her father about where he has been.[break][break]
( two down, two to go )
[break]her world breaks, and her world breaks again, but the wider world continues spinning like nothing has changed so she has to change her gravitational pull and readjust to a new reality. and her new normal is:[break]
- getting up early to skate
- trudging to practice sessions alone because neither her mother nor her brother are here any longer
- facing down schoolwork with steel-born determination because her mother would have wanted this for her
- trying not to cry as she flows through her new routines
- making her costumes by herself now
- sitting down with a mana-light and a broken needle and not crying as she doesn’t know who to go to for help
- seeking solace in her friends and her coach and in the constant movement of her limbs because here she can express all her emotions without exploding or shattering or crumbling into dust
normality becomes a cycle of skating and dancing and pushing all her feelings into her arms and legs and feet because words are too clumsy and fragile to contain a broken heart, and she refuses to cry because it’s just her and her father left and a dream she needs to be strong to fulfil. [break][break]
i am titanium
kaelin makes a new list, for a new normal.[break][break]
( there is no title, because lists written in blood and tears cannot be summed up with mere words )[break][break]
- go down in history as one of the best female ice skaters
- find her brother and demand answers
- become closer to her father
- never abandon her friends
- inspire others
this time, it is not a list of goals. it is a list of promises. [break][break]
i'm bulletproof
nothing to lose
she skates and skates and skates, and wins and loses and wins again; she fumbles and falls and gets up to try it again seven hundred and eighty five more times because dedication is inscribed into her bones and she has a dream and she will fight to fulfil that dream with every fibre of her being because it is all she has left. she loses herself to the ice, loses herself to the rhythm of jump-spin-glide-turn, and she tries to dedicate time to her best friends too but slowly, slowly they seem to need her less and less and she promises herself she will not stand in the way of their success even if it tears apart her heart. [break][break]
she skates her way to the top of the top, and ironically it is her voiceless grief and regret and love and solemnity channeled through her limbs and movements that takes her there; they praise her technical skill and grace and emotion and maturity on ice, and she thinks, ‘this is for you, mother.’ [break][break]
she does not dedicate any programs to her brother. he is not dead; he needs no dedication. she will find him one day.[break][break]
and slowly, slowly slowly her father begins to come to her competitions, her shows, eventually even turning up to watch her practice and the day he does so she buries her head into his arms and cries for the first time in years. still, every competition she’s in, kaelin buys an extra ticket, an unfilled seat, regardless of how expensive it is.[break][break]
it is never filled.
[break]whether it is for her mother, or for her wayward brother, she cannot say.[break][break]
fire away
[break][break]kaelin… falls.
[break][break][break][break]fire away
kaelin falls and she breaks her arm but what is worse, what is far worse than a mere splintering of limb is the news that comes after; why she fell:[break][break]
‘three years to live,’ they tell her, the sympathy in their eyes doing nothing to lessen the impact of their diagnosis. ‘three years to live, maybe four if you’re able to support your body through magic.’[break][break]
terminal. [break][break]
one word. [break][break]
one word with the ability to shatter her world all over again.[break][break]
terminal; eventual loss of mobility, loss of ability to talk, to function, to breathe, to live - and there’s no known cure. no known cure, and the only thing that has been proven to reduce the effects and prolong lifespan is through application of certain spells. she’s never really looked into her magic, never developed it save for her element simply because ice skating at the more junior levels forbids magic use in any way and she has no need for it, but now, but now[break][break]
it’s the only thing that could possibly keep her dream alive long enough to be fulfilled.[break][break]
but little do you know
she makes a plan. makes a list, because if she can’t afford to break down, can’t afford to cry, now even more so than ever because she’s on limited time now; kaelin begs the doctors not to tell her father, not yet, and digs her old lists and reads every single one of them before she sits down with a pen and paper and shaking hands.[break][break]
Things To Accomplish Before I Die
[break]- win gold at next season’s international ice skating competition held in sundial city - end her career such that no one can doubt she is one of the best female figure skaters of her age[break][break]
- learn enough of ice magic and augmentation that she can compete in and medal in the magic-enabled ice skating competitions - this would have been the next step of her career anyway and she was looking forwards to it, she will not give up on her dreams simply because her body has given up on her[break][break]
- inspire others to start ice skating; touch people with her performance[break][break]
- reconnect with her best friends and persuade them to dance with her again, at least one time on a stage with a legitimate audience before she is no longer able to dance[break][break]
the first four points are professionally oriented, are things she knows she has even more limited time for than even the end date of her shortened lifespan. there is only so much she can do as an athlete before her body breaks down, and she is determined to see them through to the end. [break][break]
the following items on her list, though…. they are more personal, less professional, because kaelin has accepted that eventually she will no longer be able to skate no matter how much it is her life; ( perhaps it is because she has given so much to the goddess of ice, and received so much in return, that it must be cut short; a compromise, if one will )[break][break]
- find her older brother and dance with him one more time
- travel with her family and friends and experience the spontaneity of life
- climb a mountain
- go camping
- find a summoner or wind witch to take her flying
- meet cain delacour
- eat as much junk food as she likes
- meet lunacea joyheart
- take risks
- fall in love
- live
the girl they thought was unbreakable
broke
she finds a new coach. she moves to sundial. she joins the jester's den. she does not tell her father of her diagnosis.[break][break]
( she's not crying. she's not crying. )
[break]she has approximately a year before she has to tell anyone. this year? this year is hers.
[attr="class","appbg2"]
[attr="class","jdappbody2"]
| |||||
[attr="class","jdappoocbasic"] ageage is relative pronounsshe/her time zoneaest (gmt+10 unless daylight savings) where did you come from?i was born from angst | [attr="class","appbasic4"]
| ||||
