Preface: Firecracker
I grew up on the Quileute reservation, but I was always an oddity. My multi-colored hair made me stick out like a sore thumb, combined with my multiple piercing and tattoos, I was considered a freak. I was an outcast in a small reservation where everyone looked marginally the same. We all generally had russet colored skin, black hair, and brown eyes. I was half Quileute and half French. My skin was lighter than anyone on the reservation; I inherited my mother's deep blue eyes and freckles. My waist length hair was more brown than black, though you couldn't tell because I had it dyed rainbow colors in a vertical pattern blended from top to bottom. I had a reverse eyebrow piercing under my left eye, a tongue ring, a gold hoop in my nose, and dermals on both my hips. I had a feather anklet tattooed on my right ankle, 'love' inked on my left ring finger, a giant dream catcher covering my left side, and the Quileute word for 'brave' on the inside of my right wrist, then 'keep it strange' behind my left ear in cursive. My last tattoo was by far my favorite, wolf paw prints started on my right thigh and curled around to go up my spine. Quileute's were said to descend from wolves after all. I embraced my weird, I was comfortable with who I was. I was a spitfire, a firecracker. When I met Paul LaHote, it was sparks. In him, I had met my match. After all, what happens when you light fireworks together? You get an explosion. Our story is fire from start to finish, but because I am one of those people who believe everything happens for a reason, I wouldn't change a single thing.