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Name|| Aychemes Briton Fletcher
Gender|| Female
Age|| 18
Nationality|| Pitcairn Islander
Reason(s) for joining LOTUS|| Escape from societal obligations and sexual abuse, desire to find her father.
Pertinent skills|| Good at deception, stealth manouevers, and can climb, jump, and swim very well. Knows basics about farming and plant life. Able to hide both physically and emotionally. And, as she proudly tells almost everyone, she can write.

Aychemes||

Name|| Aychemes Briton Fletcher
Personality|| Aychemes is a cautious girl, and because of the somewhat lecherous attitude of some of the men on the island, grew up learning to kick first and ask questions later. She became very good at hiding and deception, both physically and emotionally, and she has trouble trusting others. She loves her island with a passion, but hates the community that is ensconced within it, considering them hypocrites for how they can read the words of the Bible so loudly and say they believe in strict morals, while at the same time overlooking the breaking of moral codes when it happens for the sake of their precious reputation. However, she displays the same hypocrisy when idealizing her father, the same urge to keep an image unblemished by facts. She wants to be stronger, better than other people because it helps her feel safe, so she does things like read the Bible over and over again, read the sea charts and any other thing they might have written down, any books passing ships bring, and learn to write. She doesn't know how many other people in the world know how to write but she reckons since it's so tricky it can't be a lot, so she's fiercely proud that she can. She knows hardly anything of the outside world, and what she thinks she knows from the stories her mother told her about her father's seafaring adventures are half exaggerated and half fantasy. She has never met her father, but considers him to be the ideal man, always doing the right thing and fighting off evil on the seas. She overlooks the fact he got her mother pregnant with her and left. Aychemes is also proud of her name, because it represents freedom to her, and paradise, it represents the unknown lands she imagines the HMS Briton travels to. She is scornful of her last name since it's her mother's maiden name and therefore not her proper last name at all. She is a resourceful girl, but she is stubborn and thinks because she is resourceful she is also almost always right.
Likes|| Sunrise, the forest, her father, reading, writing, swimming, the colour blue, birds singing, and red guavas.
Dislikes|| Company, night, helping with crops, other girls, men, and too much chattering.
Fears|| Small spaces, feeling trapped, forgetting what her name means, and being forced to do things.
Wants|| To make her own decisions and to find her father one day.

The Decision||

She had felt his hands travel down her leg one night, when no one had been watching but the sea, and she had never felt safe again. "Bou yo gwen, girlie?" he had rasped. His breath was foul in her ear. "Bou yo gwen?"

She hadn't heard her voice shake until she remembered it the next morning, the quavery answer she had tried so hard to force derision into. "I nor gwen wit yorely!" Wherever she was going, never with him. He had laughed at her, clutching his belly and dragging it out until it became fake, showing her just how weak she had really sounded. "Little Sullen," he had said, and at that moment that was more infuriating even than the hand which was forcefully stroking her, climbing higher and higher up her leg. "Little Sullen, you're coming with me tonight whether you think you are or not." he whispered, wiping away a hysterical tear.

And she took a step back in the sand and felt her feet sink. Soft sand, bad for running, and worse for escape. But maybe, just maybe...

She threw it into his eyes and didn't turn back to hear the swearing. She didn't want to look back, to see which of the men she had known since her birth had put his callused hand up her tatty skirt and breathed the rough Pitkern question into her ear, a threat and a promise. Run towards the forest. No one could find her in the trees' leafy shelter. Don't go home, don't bring that demon to mum and the family. Just. Keep. Running.

And tomorrow morning if she saw a man with reddened eyes... She'd figure out what to do from there.

And now it was sunrise and Aychemes Fletcher was watching the horizon grow pinker. In the crisp morning air she could hear the islanders awaken, going to farm and fish and swim in the warm surf, and she still didn't know what her next move would be. The rough hands still haunted her dreams, and she sat with her legs closed tightly together, made uncomfortable by the memory. The sand would not stop the man. It would only make him angry. The sand could not give her time to escape forever either. He would catch up to her, whether it was today or tomorrow, and then... And then...

Bou yo gwen, girlie?

She shuddered and felt her legs squeeze together more tightly. No matter what she did next, she was already ruined. The man's hands had not found their destination, but his voice had for him, and now the slimy feeling was lodged in her soul. She wished she could do something, anything. Even talking to someone would make the feeling ease a bit, make it feel safer to relax her legs.

But no one talked about things on Pitcairn. Sure, they had amiable conversation and talked about dinner and the weather and how there was a ship on the horizon that probably wouldn't stop there since the island was a place not to come from or go to, but to be trapped on forever. But no one talked about anything serious, especially not since all of a sudden ships HAD started stopping at the island in the past few years, enchanted by the 'moral, simple way of life' bringing guns, mirrors, and cloth with them. Suddenly it became even more imperative to look good. If it wasn't pleasant or would upset the community, they gently avoided it, and it left the islanders each trapped in their own cocoon of secrets, frustrated emotions, and silence. She could not talk about it to anybody. It wasn't What We Did.

She could go back down to the village today, she could help tend the crops and prepare dinner with the other older girls, and then when night fell she could run, run as fast as she could to she didn't know where. And she could keep doing that until her assailant caught up to her one day. Or...

Or she could try to escape, to get away from the community and its secrets and its silence. After all, her father was a sailor, if she could believe her mother. Somewhere out there, in a distant land or on the HMS Briton she had family. And until she could find them, there was that thing that the magistrate had left out for people who could read and write. She had been careful to learn to read as a girl, poring over the Bible, and just recently the flood of other books that had come with the island's 'rediscovery'. Reading made her better. And she could write, so if she got some ink and filled out the letter, it did say it would reach the organization. She could give it to the next ship that was passing by. And until she got a response, she could hide in the forest, because if there was one thing she could do, it was hide.

The magistrate looked up as Aychemes Fletcher padded softly past him and picked up a form. "Bou yo gwen?" he asked her amiably, and he was surprised to see the girl give a convulsive shudder. She didn't answer his question but looked out towards the sea. "See da ship come to een?" she asked instead, looking at a distant silhouette that had been causing excitement among the villagers. Her ship was coming in, and it would take her to safer waters.

But the last thing she felt as she saw the villagers crowd around the landing merchant ship was the slimy voice stuck in her soul, the man's whispers. No matter where she went now, the foul creature was coming with her.

Pitkern phrases:
Bou yo gwen- Where are you going?
I nor gwen wit yorely- I'm not going with you.
Little Sullen- Child
See da ship come to een- See the ship come close to land.

Note- Pitcairn islanders can speak both Pitkern and English.

What happened?||

When time shattered, the Pitcairn islands didn't feel it much. As the islands have never had more than a few people living on them, and hardly anything happens there anyway, the most that happened were a few strange people appeared and a strange pole materialized. No one understood it because John Adams was still alive and very few of the places it mentioned actually existed. So they chopped it down and used it as firewood but it burned weirdly.

When they first heard of Janus from merchant ships coming in, they all agreed that that was an interesting way to spell 'Janice' and then more or less forgot. The only thing that changed was that some ships that came into port were strange looking and moved very quickly. The island is of no real political, social, or economic importance, and is not strategically placed for military operations. It's difficult to get into, and thus, it was mostly left alone. However, it did experience a small boost in visitors, charmed by the antique lifestyle the islanders led in a world full of strange new challenges.

An Islander! :3 *ish an Caribbean Islander*


On that note, where exactly does one find the Pitcairn Island? I for one never heard of it before, and I think a map would be good for people like me xDD;;

Also! The link for the strange pole doesn't work OOO : That, and that part was sorta funny. Also, the Reserved for England = classic.

Now one of the basic 'rules' per se, is that "They follow strict moral codes on the island, forbidding dancing, public displays of affection, and consumption of alcohol." But the man who tried to *ahem* rape her clearly doesn't follow that code. This is part of the sorta "pretend nothing happened" way that the Islanders seem to have, right? ("It wasn't What We Did")


Otherwise, it's a really deep, almost adult, concept. And by 'adult' I mean really...realistic. It almost brings that air to LOTUS : o


Oh, and do you know Pitkern? Where did you get the phrases from, and all that if you don't know it? smile

Near Australia biggrin Thanks! And now that pole post is even funnier with that picture 8D

Oh, wow, that's really extensive -- and kinda shocking in a way-bring-you-down-Earth kind of way @_@; It also makes sense now D:

I hope you don't mind me asking more questions, but when you say "sexually assaulted but not so openly or boldly", what do you mean by that? The man got to touch her but he didn't get to physically do anything to her...right? O :


Also, coolness on the Pitkern! I liked that you were able to form phrases of your onw just by having those ones on the site as a reference *would have also done it that way*


*thumbsup*
You're welcome <3