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Vulnerability is my only armour.
I, the color of fire, of blazing sun,
A blare of yellow and gold, and not a murmur
Of feathers grey or brown, how can I run
From friend or foe? How could I ever hide?
I fly freely across the threatening sky
And I shall sing. Call it, if you like, pride.
I call it joy. Perhaps it’s love.
– Madeleine L’Engle, The Phoenix
***
She is a girl wrapped in mystery with a face like an open book.
She wears her emotions like her long beige trench coat, unbuttoned and wide open, a visible accessory to all her many layers, a suit of vulnerable armor. Heart on her sleeve, as the saying goes.
She is a mess of self-contradictions: equal parts dark and light, inner fire that shows itself in flashes, with each twist of her smile, twitch of her eyebrow, tilt of her chin. Naïve, brown-eyed gaze; shoulders that have already carried a multitude of burdens. A little bit of her broken down, a large part of her still innocent and fresh. Somehow, she ended up with a name almost perfect for Hollywood screens: catchy, rolling neatly off the tongue — Ember James. Almost perfect. Almost.
(How many times has she had to say it? “It's not Amber, it’s Ember. it’s a little weird, I know,” and if she feels particularly bold, she’ll add, “it’s actually a nickname for September — my parents named me after that famous song. You know, the one by Earth Wind & Fire? It was a favorite of theirs.”
One thing she never says out loud: it was the song her parents fell in love to, until one day, they weren’t in love anymore, and now their eldest daughter is stuck with a name that functions like her very own scarlet letter, a permanent tie to her two divorced parents.)
So now she is simply known as Ember. Like smoldering fire, like the hurts that simmer beneath her skin.
She is a girl wrapped in mystery with a face like an open book, and for all her internal anger and restless drive, her edges are soft. She keeps her tears and laughter close to the surface. She has an air of seriousness, but she laughs easily and often, someone with plenty of practice at recognizing the inherent irony of life. In many ways, she’s a mess: still young at the age of nineteen, still trying to pull her life together.
She rages at life and childhood regrets. but Life is a frustratingly incorporeal target, and she could never truly hate God, so in some part of her unconscious mind she realized that people are the easiest causes on which to lay blame, the easiest offenses to catalog, the easiest targets to aim at. This is what gets her in trouble most easily, and most often.
At times, it is almost as if she lives to purposefully stir up waves. It's in the way she chases after an acting career, or what her parents might call a disaster bound to happen, stubbornly refusing to even consider a backup plan, because to hell with expectations, it’s her life. It’s in the way she moves through the world: as if the fates and the laws of physics will bend to fit her own agenda if she simply wishes hard enough; the way she argues with a passion, lights up at the possibility of controversy, keeps a running tally of comebacks and explanations for the next round of punches. but really, she is walking on eggshells (her family has always was unsteady) waiting for the next explosion to hit, already stocking up on ammunition. no one would expect her capable of dealing a low blow, but she has, many times over.
Perhaps this makes her self-centered. Perhaps it makes her self-sufficient. Perhaps there was never a difference.