𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐫

chapter one

punisher - phoebe bridgers

azure

Azure looked over the sheet in her hands, her eyes tired. She sighed, pushing her hair away from her face and preparing to go up five flights of stairs with two suitcases. Gosh, she wished she had parents to help her. Well, she technically did. But it wasn't her fault that her foster parents were complete assholes and only adopted her for the money. Kicking the door open, she dragged her suitcases up the stairs, the sound not only irritating but giving her the biggest headache of her life. But eventually, she made it to her dorm room, which had been graciously provided to her through her academic scholarship. Being a massive nerd had its perks.

The dorm room was spacious, far larger than Azure had ever lived in before. One of the rooms seemed to already be furnished, and with a wide-eyed look inside to find it empty, she ran away into the room that she presumed to be hers. Fuck. Of course she had to have a roommate. What a shitty day it had been; first she spilt her drink on some absolutely jaw-dropping looking person, and then she had a roommate.

Sparing no time to leave herself to her thoughts, because Azure liked to think that thinking was a disease of the mind, even if it was the most hypocritical statement she'd ever make. So what? She was an avoidant person and liked to make that clear to those who bothered to approach her.

Nope. Here to make friends, you loser. No self deprecation. New state, new life. That never worked. But Azure could foolishly hope, after all, she'd been doing it her entire life. A little more couldn't hurt.

After an excruciatingly long time of unpacking and making her room look pretty (forty-five minutes) Azure sat down on her bed, kicking her Doc Martens off and curling up. Summer waited on nature's bated breath in the air, and a cold hostility that she had never placed with the season welcomed her. Tasmania was nice, she decided. She didn't know anyone, therefore, nobody knew her. What an idealistic life.

Her room was spacious, definitely not standard student accommodation with the way a normal single bed, desk and set of cabinets could fit with space to spare. Scholarships definitely had their benefits. With a few plants that Azure had invested in, dark green bed sheets and posters on the walls, it was the closest thing to a home. Of course, she was a stranger to that term, abandonment a constant state of living and survival being the only thing that mattered. The system was rough, especially for abandoned Black children. Azure had to learn to cope with that in rougher ways.

Music curled through the air, Phoebe Bridgers singing her heart out, the beat aligning with Azure's relaxed heart rate. Cold air was uncommon and not known to her; her origins in Western Australia falling prey to fevered heat and humidity. So she curled up in her cardigan, her skirt a silky embrace around her legs as she relaxed.

Her peace was disturbed by the creaking of the door and the sound of a familiar and raspy voice. Shooting up from her bed, Azure switched off the music and hid behind the door.

"Maisie, I know! But my witch of a mother insisted. And you know how she is," the voice sighed. Azure closed her eyes. Okay, so she did have a roommate. How fucking fantastic.

"At least the dorm is decent. How gracious of the head of school to give me a good room. Knowing my mother, I thought she'd give me a sewer. I miss my flat, though. Did you know that she took the keys to my flat? Insane."

Ah. So Azure's roommate was rich. Of course. That's why her voice sounded familiar; entitlement coated her words and silver lined them to make them seem sweeter.

"Oh, and guess what? I've been overtaken in the fucking scholar's leaderboard," remarked the voice, laced with bitterness. Azure raised her eyebrows. She'd have to venture towards this leaderboard as to find out who this person was. Of course, she could just leave her room and talk to her, but that meant confrontation! Her biggest fear. Well, not really, but it was frightening enough to force Azure to stay in her room until the front door clicked again and the voice could no longer be heard.

Okay, so she now very much did not like her roommate. But the terms of her scholarship implied that if she applied to change rooms, there would be consequences. Because friendship apparently fucking mattered. Bullshit, thought Azure as she paced around the entire apartment in a panic.

She was panicking. Great. So, like any normal person, she did the reasonable thing. She painted.

Azure loved art, in the way that it moved through stillness, in the way that many words could be said in a medium where no words were used, the way that one could learn everything about the artist if they looked hard enough. Most of all, Azure loved the thrill of creation. She was an Art major, minoring in Fashion because almost everything had an artistic thrall to it, if one looked at it right.

It had been two hours, and Azure had already gone through the entirety of Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers, so she took it as a sign to stop and look at her work. A wooden frame painted on canvas stared back at her. She had a vision for what she wanted to complete, but Azure was scared that if she stopped now, the vision would be lost under a murky haze of lost memory. But just so she could be sure, she sketched her plan out in a small notebook, writing her plans for the painting.

After crying about her insignificance for a good while, (five minutes) Azure got up from her bed, stretched her back and tied her hair up, before setting her mind on going into town. She'd heard about the Salamanca Markets before moving to Tasmania, and upon lacing her boots up, and throwing a coat on, she braved the fierce winds and walked to where Google Maps led her.

The markets were bustling, with people and stalls everywhere. It was a type of busyness that comforted Azure, like the apple pie with a gin and raspberry glaze that she ate as she roamed the markets.

The stalls were versatile, and because Azure had practically no money - she had only just found a job the day before - she resisted the pull of secondhand books and records. But it was the glimpse of choppy and rough brown hair that caught her eye.

But as glimpses went, she was there, and then she wasn't. To hold herself to her previous promise to herself, Azure headed back to campus to look at this leaderboard that her roommate had been so obviously complaining about.

Her name stood at top, as expected. Azure didn't study horrendously hard for nothing. But rather than hers being at the top, it was placed next to someone else's name. The name of someone that Azure now knew was her roommate, a person who she already knew she hated.

Mars Flammia, her name was. 

oh my god!? a rare appearance of me??? and an UPDATE?

okay the parallels ate + everything from the Salamanca markets is based off when i went there 

i only wrote this because i wanted to prove to my boyfriend that i can actually write something that isn't horribly tragic. i mean, we never know what can happen with this...

(my boyfriend will probably believe anything i tell him because he's a silly little goober)

but yeah! this was really short so hopefully the next chapter (that will be posted in 8 more months) will be longer. 

love you all <3