ST FLEUR, Boheme Reverie

[boheme reverie st fleur]

BOHEME REVERIE ST FLEUR

FULL NAME: Boheme Reverie St Fleur.
NICKNAMES: Bo.
AGE: 25
GENDER: Female
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single.
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: Industrial Ecologist.

HAIR: Dyed blonde and curly. Naturally she’s a light brunette, but it’s been dyed since Bo was in her teens.
EYES: Green.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: None.
TATTOOS: None.
PIERCINGS: Ears once. But she might wear fake pieces if the mood takes her.
PLAY-BY: Stephanie Rose Bertram.

LIKES: House plants, herbal tea, veganism, controlled protests, goats, upcycling, craft markets, big dogs, archery, oat milk, fluffy socks, spin classes, mauve, men’s shirts, Proust, rice, a good 90’s mixtape, cooking with fresh food, binge watching documentaries on Netflix, raspberries, being by fresh water, music, cracking her back, camping.
DISLIKES: mumblers, people who litter, wasting food, riots, hives, CEO’s who think they know everything, dental appointments, hot mustard, department stores, being delayed, getting obscenely drunk, sad songs, heatwaves, big spiders in her apartment, feeling cramped, preachy people, humidity, liars, time wasters.
FEARS: Being buried alive, spiders in her home, losing her freedom.
SECRETS: She fell pregnant her first year of college and got rid of the baby. If her Bibi knew then Bo would likely never be welcome in the family home ever again.
PERSONALITY: Bo is a strong young woman. She doesn’t let anyone push her around or try to question her authority. She’s young and working in a career filled with people who don’t believe a word she says. That makes her a fighter both in many professional circumstances and outside of them. She’ll speak up for the things she believes in, and isn’t the type to walk away from a cause her heart belongs to, no matter the consequences. Bo is confident and honest from the start. Although she is friendly and the type to greet new neighbours with whatever she’s baked lately, she doesn’t have time in her life for people who are playing games or who have ulterior motives. To this degree, she can be confrontational; she doesn’t like liars or those who belittle or bully others. She’d rather face those kinds of people rather than let something carry on and fester under the surface. She was raised to be respectful and so Bo will honour other people’s opinions and wishes unless they are harmful to other people she cares about. If a line is being crossed, especially after she’s made an effort to welcome someone and let them be themselves, she will let her fury show. Bo keeps a very good leash on her temper, but her blood runs hot. Her passion is both a good a bad thing, as many can attest to. Romance has been something she’s not really had time for; or so her exes will say. Her relationships end because she doesn’t commit enough time to them, always choosing work, an environmental cause, or her friends over the foundations that a guy is trying to build with her. Bo has a lot of interests and dreams, so for a guy to stick around with this free spirited little flirt he’s going to need to be able to keep up with her, and help her strike a balance in her life; something no one has wanted to do before.

MOTHER: Giselle Antoinette St Fleur, deceased.
FATHER: Riel Baptiste St Fleur, 44.
SIBLINGS: None – but with so many cousins, it felt like she had plenty.
OTHERS: Claudette Zamira St Fleur, 68, Paternal Grandmother – Bibi.
Baptiste Elian St Fleur, 73, Paternal Grandfather – Babu.
PETS: Simbi, Estrela Mountain Dog of one!
HOMETOWN: Léogâne, Haiti, but grew up in the Everglades, Florida.
HISTORY: Giselle had gone through her life with this morbid vibe that she would die at a young age. Everyone told her to stop being foolish, and a doctor even put her on anti-depressants, but she just knew, deep down, that she wasn’t destined to grow old with someone. Still, she wanted her story to go on. So when Riel swept her off her feet when he was in France with family, she figured why not follow her heart? Riel had come from Haiti with his brother and some cousins as part of a traditional trip. It was something the family had done for years to learn about their heritage and see the country that had once dominated their own, as their own bibi would say. Riel was shocked that this pretty French girl was so besotted with him, but then suddenly she was pregnant and his own mother – the ever fierce Claudette St Fleur – was telling him to do right by her, or else she would strike down a wrath so great he would wish he never came back to the island.

Claudette St Fleur was a very strong woman. She believed in her God and if that wasn’t enough there was also Vodou. Claudette was never wrong no matter what. She raised her children right, cooked for her family, and wouldn’t hear a bad word about anyone – unless it was coming from her own mouth. She was excellent to all who stayed on her good side. So when a terrified Riel came to her, she told her son that he was going to marry the pretty French girl, and that they were going to deal with any trouble that came their way as a family. And by that she meant the fact that it was the first time any of them had married outside of Haitian blood. Times were progressing, but not everyone was moving with them, and Claudette knew some people around their locale would not be too accepting of the delicate French girl her son had brought home knocked up.

Giselle gave birth to a healthy baby girl, who was named Boheme Reverie, at the behest of her suddenly eager father. Riel slipped quite well into fatherhood. It fitted him comfortably. Giselle did well, too, with Claudette’s guidance from time to time about how she shouldn’t fuss about keeping things so delicate. In her own words; “Babies bounce and squeak for a reason.” However, when Bo was just two years old, Giselle simply didn’t wake up one morning. An examination couldn’t find anything wrong with her, but Riel kept repeating how Giselle always believed she wouldn’t live until her golden years. But why couldn’t she live long enough for Boheme to know her face? People had doubts and whispers went around, as they always do. Some thought an inconclusive death was too suspicious. They thought that maybe the young mother had taken her own life. Sudden Adult Death syndrome was too terrifying for some people to just accept because it could happen to any of them, too.

Eventually, Claudette told them all that they would be moving away. It was shocking given her love for her home, but she had decided that there was a bad vibe around the home since Giselle’s passing and that a new start was all they could do now. Her new start, however, was one in the Everglades, Florida. Her sister was nearby there having recently moved due to her own husband’s ailing mother. So, her and her husband Baptiste moved to Florida with their grieving, confused as hell son, Riel, and their innocent and oblivious granddaughter to start anew. The rest of the family stayed in Haiti, so there were constant travels back and forth for everyone over the years. Bo didn’t grow up wondering about where she was born, Riel made sure of that with frequent trips back to Léogâne. If they weren’t travelling to Haiti, there was someone from Haiti travelling to Florida. Big families as close as theirs don’t just drift apart with distance; it’s not an excuse.

Growing up in the Everglades was how Bo became to understand the environment. Claudette was very respectful of nature in the first place, and given that she was the ‘mother figure’ in Bo’s life, it was very easy for her to influence the growing girl. That was how she became so interested in protecting the ecology system. Bo couldn’t grow up in a more loving household. Her father and grandparents were always there for, and they kept no secrets from her. She might have been reluctant to go to church on Sunday and the holidays when she got older, but Riel told her it was the one thing she could do to make her Bibi happy. Bo was more interested in their Haitian history than the Catholicism they were supposed to believe in. However, she would die for her Bibi, so she went along with it. She had a voice she wasn’t afraid of using, and in a house as loud as theirs, it needed to be used if you wanted to be heard. Bo was the only one of mixed race in the family, and while other people from outside the home made jibes at her for it, the family never saw her as anything less. She was a St Fleur through and through. Claudette gave her secret recipes that the men didn’t know, she was taught all of the history and stories, and her heart was full. Even though Giselle was not around, Bo never felt like she was missing out on a mother. She looked at photographs and wondered what it might have been like with her here, but there was never that void other people suggested should be there. Still, she kept the photos and the trinkets because she had been raised to honour the dead and respect them. She might have no personal memories of Giselle, but she was still her mother.

Boheme grew up and went away to college in New York. It was a fantastic opportunity she had been offered and she couldn’t turn it down. Being so far from her family was very strange, mostly because of how quiet it was when she came home at night. The calls home were to fill that silence with something familiar. She got close with a guy on her course in her first year and they began dating. It was a lot very fast, and just as finals were coming up, Bo found out she was pregnant. It was earth shattering. She was the same age as her mother was when Giselle had met Riel and had Bo. This wasn’t some perfect revelation though, or a sign from the gods. Bo wasn’t her mother, or her father. She wasn’t ready for motherhood. She didn’t know if she ever would be. Children were not something she was sure about. She was just a fierce eco warrior who protested on campus about disposable drinking cups and starting a swap meet. She wanted to change the world, not diapers. There was no question in her mind that she couldn’t keep the baby. She also knew that her Bibi would talk her out of her choice and try to make everything completely different. So, without telling another soul – including the boy who had helped do this to her – Bo went and had an abortion. It was the scariest day of her life. She cried twice, threw up once, but ultimately she knew that she was making the right choice for herself. If, and it was a big if, she was ever going to have her own children she wanted to be able to give them the time they deserved without regrets. This would have been a regret; her biggest one. So, she broke off the relationship, realising that she was being a fool letting emotions run wild when she was still working hard on dreams.

Everything from then on didn’t last; at least not romantically. Bo made friends she was sure would be there for life, she impressed the right people and said the right things. She was strong and confident, and all the time her secret remained hers. Moments might have come by when she wondered, but she never doubted her choice, and never would. She got through college and left with job offers. Ultimately, she took the one that led to her becoming an Industrial Ecologist. It meant she could yell at men in suits about what their businesses were doing wrong, and what was harming the environment while demanding that they change their ways. Obviously, it was more official and legal than that, but Bo liked to keep it simple. She still does. Besides, she grew up in a home where yelling was what got shit done; she isn’t about to forget that when she marches into a CEO’s office.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: On Spotify.
SAMPLE:

Please, no.

[kim]