It would be tempting to give a "Once Upon A Time…" introduction to Irisa's life story, but that would be too pretty and typical. While she was your average Irathient families kid, there was something different, something dark even in the beginning.
Irisa kicked and screamed her way throughout most of her early childhood, and perhaps in to her teenage years as well. Her family, was not wholesome and loving as a family should have been, at least not in the beginning. She began to build walls to keep pain and people out, and to keep herself in. The walls she began to protect herself from the world and all its ugliness, and all of the ugly people in it. She began to taste its ugliness at a very young age.
Her life could be broken down in to a few basic things: Foundation, running, destruction, and most importantly love. The foundation, so to speak, was Nolan. He was there for her to return to every day, the one who cared for her, loved her. He was her rock.
Running was a thing Irisa was extremely good at. She threw herself wholeheartedly in to things to distract herself from her past, so she could keep running. Anything to distract herself from the pain of events passed. If she never had to sit in silence, all the noises she had been running from could never catch up to her.
Destruction was a thing that most commonly followed her around. When most people think of eight, they think of carefree days and goofy behaviors. But Irisa's eight, was isolation and an introduction to an unimaginable amount of harm and repressed memories. It was an unsuspecting dance in to shame, dirt, sweeping and rugs. The pain she suffered now crucified unwillingly on to her wrists.
Love was Nolan. Her savoir in a military uniform. Her angel without wings. Love was also Tommy, the boy who had unexpectedly stolen her heart and locked it away in a box for safe keeping - the only one who had the key. Sukar, her first real connection to the Irathients. And love was the town of Defiance, the place she could finally call home. Irisa was surrounded by love she never knew she would have.
Today though, Irisa chooses to feel the pain of sitting through a feeling, the terror of knowing that she is powerless over so many things and the joy in knowing she does not experience these things alone. No matter how much she tries to deny it. She fights her feet when they beg her to run and battles her mind when it tries to remember the things she worked so hard to forget.
Today, she chooses to fight. Today is a constant war for healing, and today is filled with promise and potential.
But the beautiful thing about this was being saved. It is Nolan who carries her when she is too weak, he always has been, he always was, she just wouldn't let him. She had hope in Nolan. He was the rope that she clung to through the darkest of days.
And now there were others too. Irisa would fight harder, harder than she had ever fought for anything.