;; i walked a thousand miles

[eugenia faith williford]

sprawled across the flower-covered yellow bedspread of her bunk, ginny furrowed her brow as she stared intensely at her world history textbook, trying to follow what the book even said. truth be told, she hated the class with a passion only three weeks into it. the teacher's monotone voice made class itself utterly miserable, but the humiliation she had subjected herself to by trying to participate just made everything worse. apparently, and the girl could have lived a full and complete life without ever coming to this understanding, everything she'd ever been taught in history class on the compound had been lies. or, rather, altered to suit the needs of their leader, eli. and honestly, the whole matter freaked her out a bit. over the past few weeks she had not only referred to barack obama as "the great leader" which she genuinely thought was his title, but also around a week later had remarked over an african man having the mark of cain. she had been accused of being racist, but she genuinely knew no better. all her life she'd always been told that dark-skinned people were descendants of cain. she truly, genuinely, had no idea. this past week, though, she had given up on saying anything in class, participation grade be darned. it was better than humiliating herself.

looking across at one of her many roommates who was apparently passed out with exhaustion considering the way she had flopped unceremoniously in a heap with all her clothes still on, ginny wiggled her toes, itching to get out of the stuffy, cramped room. as a kid, her room had been small and crowded like this one, but after becoming a wife she had had plenty of space, so the adjustment was a weird one. rolling onto her back, she fingered a lock of her soft blond hair, flowing freely over her shoulders. for ginny, it was a luxury she'd never known except in the quiet of her own room, late at night. having her hair plaited was a rule of modesty she'd always lived by since what she would guess had been the age of eight. not that she really had any idea on age. shutting her history book, she slid off the bed, crossing to her half of one of the chest of drawers, sliding open the bottom drawer to remove a book, a copy of the book of mormon her father had given her. oddly, her religion, the religion that had quite nearly destroyed her, was the only thing that kept her together. sliding on a pair of red slip on shoes, she headed out into the main hallway and down the stairs. at the foot of the stairs she glanced around, pondering just where she wanted to be, before heading for the back door, hoping the house would be a bit quieter outside. being eleven am on a saturday, many were in the barns, a few were studying, plenty filled the student lounge, and a good number still were back asleep.

eyeing the rain pelting the ground beyond the expanse of the little porch and then observing the lack of people there to bother her. she wanted silence, just to listen to the rain. it was the first rain they had had there since she has arrived, a brief from the overly dry climate she had experienced so far. settling down on the hanging white porch swing, she tucked her legs up beside her, comfortable in the jeans like she'd never been in a dress before. she loved that freedom. opening her little black book with the gold print across the front, she thumbed through the pages, stopping when her eyes caught on a verse she had underlined. the second half of helaman 5:12. quietly, she read the verse aloud to herself, unaware anyone was listening to her, "that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless woe." it brought her comfort.

tagged , blaine
words , 694
lyrics , autobiography - ashlee simpson
notes , ---
outfit , here

[blaine starling thompson]

so understanding but so far from the truth
IT'S WHAT I HAVE TO LIVE WITH, NOT ALL I WANNA BE

Blaine Thompson was in an excessively good mood. Then again, the kid almost always seemed to be in an excessively good mood. Even when he was in a terrible mood, he tended to put of an even more excessively good mood. That mostly had to do with the fact that he didn't like people knowing that he wasn't in a good mood. When you were in a bad mood, people tended to pry and want to know what was wrong, and Blaine didn't deal very well with that. It tended to bring out his rather nasty temper, and so it was just easier to seem happy, because that made other people happy too, and kept them out of your business, which was all Blaine really cared about because, for all his rather friendly and talkative demeanor, he really didn't like most people that much, and, frankly, didn't give a damn about whether or not they were happy. There were exceptions, of course, as there are exceptions to every rule. He actually did have a heart when it came to the people he cared about, and he could be a good one to have on your side when you got into a pinch.

Today, though, he might've been prone to just leaving you by the way side. You see, today was an even more excessively good mood day, which meant that really, he was in a terrible mood, and, a little like Alexander, so far he'd had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He'd overslept and managed to burn half the taste buds off his tongue on his coffee this morning in his haste to get to the barn on time.Then he'd fallen off his horse in the riding lesson, because the damn thing had spooked at something, and, being a rather novice rider, Blaine had just slipped right off over his shoulder, so he hurt like a mo-fo, even more than he usually did just from riding, as apparently you had to get in a certain kind of shape in order to avoid getting sore after sitting on a horse for an hour and a half. Then he had stepped in crap, which, normally he probably could have, and would have, just laughed off, except that it had happened today, when he was already in a rather bad mood, and in his favorite pair of shoes, which he had then had to go and try and clean off. And his rather pessimistic little self noted that it was only 11 am. The day wasn't even half over.

Who puts on a riding lesson at 9 a.m. on a Saturday? he thought pessimistically to himself, even as he whistled a cheerful, rather catchy tune, successfully masking the black cloud hanging over his head as a great big ball of sunshine. Ha. Ha. Yeah, right. If only people knew. If only people had any idea what went on inside his head. Not that he could really complain, because he really genuinely was in a pretty good mood most of the time. And he liked being around people, he just didn't like them prying into his life, didn't like getting too personal or friendly, at least with most of them, unless it was a girl getting ready to hop into his bed, but he didn't consider that being particularly friendly or personal. It was just sex.

He made his way up to the big house and into the front door, down the hall and to his bedroom, where he grabbed his guitar and then paused, wondering where, exactly, he was going to play. One of his roommates was glaring at him like if you even THINK about playing that guitar in here I will knock your face in. Come to think of it, though, did that kid ever stop glaring? What the fuck ever. He shrugged a little and made his way out the back door, onto the porch. It was mostly deserted and he sat on the ground as far from the other girl as possible, so as not to disturb her with his playing. With his back leaned against the railing of the porch, he leaned over his guitar a little to tune it. It wasn't a great deal off--most people probably wouldn't even have noticed. Out of tune instruments drove Blaine up the wall, though, regardless of how out of tune they were. He paused a little bit as his ear caught a random bit of what the girl was reading, though, tuning in just in time to catch the last bit. “…it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless woe.” What. The. Fuck?

Curious, he got to his feet, holding his guitar by the neck, and wandered over. “Sorry to interrupt, but…well, what the fuck are you reading?” he asked with a slight sideways smirk that suggesting he really honestly wasn’t trying to be rude, and he was genuinely curious…but then, Blaine had never been one for using a lot of tact.

CONSCIOUSLY TAKING AND OVERLY FAKING
i can't believe all that you're saying

count; eight hundred and forty-six
clothes; click
tag; ginny williford
notes; i'm rather excited about these two. hehe
lyrics; What I Believe--Sum 41

[eugenia faith williford]

ginny was a bit of a sullen thing; always had been and always would be, she supposed. even as a child she hadn't been much one for smiling, at least if she had nothing to smile about. she'd smiled when she was playing with her brothers and sisters, playmates never a thing in short supply for the girl, or perhaps when, a bit older, she had taken to following her mothers and some of her sisters around when they did chores and one had launched into song. always, they had sang something catchy with a religious undertone. but otherwise she didn't smile often, her smiles becoming less and less frequent the older she got. she had smiled some on her wedding day, and that had been one of her last smiles. with the loss of her innocence came the loss of her happiness and since then she'd been labeled sullen and moody. even now, in her unrequested freedom, she was not grinning and happy, not the way the social worker had said she would be. she missed home and her baby and her life. this was not the dream life she had been promised. she was just lonely and scared. not that anyone would know. all she did was sulk with some frequency and few people approached her because of it.

the creak of the screen door distracted the girl from staring at the rain. darting her eyes away from the falling drops she gazed as a boy came through the door. he had a nice enough face, somewhat angelic she would venture to say, and short blond hair that seemed rather suiting given his facial shape. she knew him from her natural horsemanship class, one of the two boys in that class with her. well, not really. she recognized him more than she knew him. kane or shane or something was his name.... other than that though she hadn't really seen him much, just that one hour a week. he seemed to sort of annoy their trainer, adelle, but that could just be ginny's way of seeing things, not reality. he just seemed to have, well, something of an attitude. then again, the same thing could be said about her, so who was she to judge? it wasn't like anyone ended up here by choice or for some reason that would not illicit an attitude problem. ginny was just more tame than others.

for just a minute, ginny watched the boy as he tuned his guitar, briefly thinking it might be best if she just left and practiced her cello, before remembering her roommate who was still in bed. usually she did not even bring the bulky thing home, but with the mid-fall concert coming up she had needed the extra practice. perhaps it might seem odd to some that ginny was so musically inclined, but her father had played violin and on one of the few occasions she got to actually see him he had tried to teach her a bit of it, learning quickly she took to it. from then on she had taken classes at the school there in the community, learning violin, viola, and ultimately cello, her personal favorite, as well as a bit of guitar. when she'd moved here, her guidance counselor, who had about as much personality as a brick wall, had asked her about her interests and she had mentioned she liked cello, landing her an audition she easily passed. for her, the instrument had always been an outlet and especially now it remained so. it was one of the little bits of culture she'd ever had access to.

thumbing through the pages of her book, she looked for something to stave off the sudden feeling of homesickness that came over her as she thought about papa and the cello and home. reading the verse aloud, thinking kane or shane or whatever his name was was too engrossed with his guitar to pay her any mind, she sought comfort in the words, in the soothing promises they left her with. she needed those sort of words right now, trapped in this horrible place unlike anything she'd ever known, a world that was supposedly better than the one she had been raised in. kane or shane or whatever his name was's words, cutting into her thoughts, made her jump just a bit, not even having noticed he had approached her and she stared at him wide-eyed for a moment. realizing what she was doing, staring at a man straight on, by reflex she ducked her head back down, her cheeks a bright red. one just didn't do the kind of thing where she was from, not if one was a woman. "uh, the, uh, book of mormon... helaman," he'd probably heard the rumors, she would imagine, of where she came from. not that they were all really true, some even completely fabricated, but around here there was little else to do with oneself than to speculate about how others got here, making up rather fictitious tales. ginny had heard sex addiction in reference to herself. hardly, was all she could say to that. shifting uncomfortably, she took a quick look up at the boy before looking back down just as quickly, so fast one wouldn't notice if they had blinked. from her red cheeks and downcast eyes it was easy to see that try as she might not to be, the girl was still very much scared of men for the power she was used to them having over her and "knew better" than to socialize like they were equals.

tagged , blaine
words , 937
lyrics , autobiography - ashlee simpson
notes , bring on the tears! lol.
outfit , here