zoface coding attempts

[zotho]

"the woods are lovely, dark and deep. but i have promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep."



Monsters aren't lurking in the shadows of my mind or the corners of my conscience, nor are they placed between the spines of trees in the dark or snaps of branches in the daylight. Monsters are real. I can see them in the eyes of these children as they circle me. This place turns them into terrible, bloodthirsty, desperate creatures. I cannot run this time, but my god do I try.

I make the mistake of looking back.

And then they strike me down.

There is red everywhere - how fitting. My ear is on fire. I cannot breathe. I cannot register anything but pain - scorching, white-hot, incandescent pain. They've been waiting seventeen years to catch me and I've been running away all that time. But I'm too tired to run. Too broken. I succumb to my nightmares, letting out a gargled scream as the monsters attack me and I am broken apart - waiting and waiting and waiting to wake up.

"Please-" I sputter to no-one and anyone. "Please help- "

Wake up, Rowan.

But I don't wake up. Instead, I fall. And yet as a blade slices at my chest and I feel my body jerk in a final defeat and fall backwards slowly and all at once, I do not hit the dirt-covered ground. Arms encompass me, breaking my fall, and I close my eyes and let them drag me away from this madness. (This must be death - comforting, freeing, almost like I'm flying.)

Thank you, I want to whisper to my saviour. But my mouth cannot move.

A voice calls my name.

Rowan!

I'm so tired.

Rowan! Rowan!

For a second, I slip into darkness.

.:.:.

Their voices pull me back. In a blink of an eye I am looking at the sky and curious faces. (I flinch, but their eyes aren't twisted with rage and fear. They look sad, almost. Scared. But not scared enough to hurt me.) Everything hurts and everything is slowing down, a name floats to the surface of my mouth to join a face looking back down at me. Stella. I want to say thank you but I can't. Instead I force a smile with blood-coated lips and reach up to grab her hand. They are not monsters - they are my saviours.

"Th-th-th-tha-thank-"

It's too much. It's too much.

With every syllable I speak my grip on her hand tightens.


Towering over me, I feel warmth trembling at my forehead.




"Sleep, " someone whispers, as if they have known all this time that that is what I've really been fighting for. Battling fear for so, so long, my fight stretching across days and nights and weeks and years.



.:.:.:.:.

There is a crown of metal against my temples tainted in blood and salt. Paper petals fall from the sky. I am weightless and floating, falling, floating, falling. I am not a whole - I am nothing, and yet I feel everything. I have no hands to stretch out, no fingers to touch the feather-light flits of paper, no voice to scream in delight with. Incomprehensible voices (or what I think to be sounds escaping from trembling throats) lift me up into the endless burning light. Across the universe I sail, the same pattern continuing for all of eternity. Floating, falling, floating, falling. Then I, and this eternity, come to an end.

At the end of eternity I find myself at the base of a tree, wooden steps carved around it's trunk and a harmony calling my name. Rowan! Rowan! Rowan! It sounds just like my-

"Mom?" I call out - certain, and yet unsure why.

Rowan!  the voice calls again. 

Rowan! Rowan! Rowan!

I begin my ascend - one step, two steps, a hundred more, around and around at lightning speed. I spin through days and years and the world is a blur. I become a beam of light, spiraling upwards, and yet if I blink I can see every single step I take in slow motion. Nothing hurts. There is a warmth here that surround me, hands brushing the rough, calloused skin of the staircase and as I rise higher and higher I can feel my footsteps dance through the stars around me. The world turns from white to blue dazzled with tiny specks of light leaking from a thousand different worlds. Still, I trek on. Upwards and upwards, dancing through time itself. And suddenly I am propelled forwards, feet grazing the leaves of the earthly staircase, launched high up into the sky and back down again. I do not scream. I do not flinch. Time stops for a moment or two. Then everything falls back into place, including me, and gently I am lifted into a daylight tinted with blue and hazes of green, perched in the highest branches of the thousand-year-old tree.

Rowan! the voice calls from above. I tilt my head to the sky but find nothing but white. Jump, Rowan! it pushes, as if conjured up from the depths of my mind. I turn to crumble into myself, but I find no fear shackled to my body. Instead, I look to the sky and close my eyes.

Sleep.

My body tilts backward and the air billows around my body. Falling, falling, f a l l i n g -


I love you, I love you, I love you Rowan.


- into slumber.

.:.:.:.

I wake to a bed made of damp earth and dewy grass.

Through a hazy blur of green and brown I blink once, twice, and everything falls into focus. Leaves that stretch for miles. Crisp air heaved in through soft gasps. Golden beams falling through shrouds of branches, freckling the floor with shadows and glittering light. I breathe out and rise toward the blue sky, toes sinking into the soft ground as I step forward past the trunks of trees. (For some bizarre reason, the afternoon sky is alight with stars.)

I quicken my pace and step forward again, running one, two, three paces - I move a thousand miles a minute. One breath in, one step backwards, and I shoot back to where I was. Spinning madly, a giddy laugh escapes my mouth and the trees dance in the wind. Gold dust fills me to the core and I run, run, run, free at last from a forest full of monsters and left to my own world of possibility. Up, down, forwards, backwards, around and around and around - I laugh, and the forest laughs with me. I dance over the rib cage of the woods and fly over the spines of my dreams. Echoes of joy tower over me and I don't ever look back. I run for hours. Evergreen and gold fall away to traces of yellow and a blurred streak of blue catches the corner of my eye - in a millisecond I am frozen and staring at an ocean, white-gold sand billowing from it's edges. Curious, the breeze from the forest pushes me forward, whispers of trees gently edging me closer and closer to the fairytale scene I could only be dreaming of.

But I'm not dreaming. This is real - or whatever real is anymore. I cannot remember what is real and what is a dream, or what my life was before all of this arrived. I am a soul of the forest thrust into this brave new world (just to be sure I look over my shoulder: it is all there, vast and beautiful and fixed to my soul). Grass slowly fades to sand and I breathe in the salty air - gritty and foreign and surprisingly warm. I take a step and sink into the welcoming vastness of this magical place.

"Oh my goodness!" someone shrieks, and all of a sudden the world is encompassed in light. I turn to see a bundle of gold, freckles and laughter scoop me up and twirl me around and around and around. My feet barely find a gritty ground to stand on before she swoops me in for another hug, breathless and exhilarated.

"It's you!" the stranger  sighs, hands at her face in awe. "Oh my goodness, you are just - I am so pleased to see you. Goodness gracious!" (I know that face but my mind cannot find a name. I cannot find anything in my memories at all.) "You're-"

"Tiger" I breathe, anything and everything flooding my existence."You're Tiger."

"No silly," she laughs, shaking her wild head, "I am Tiger - and you're-"

- "Rowan" another voice interrupts

Only now do I realise there's another girl standing behind us, laughing quietly to herself as she speaks my name. Unlike Tiger, brash and bold, she seems quieter. Wiser. As if she's been here forever.

I wonder if I've been here forever.

"What's your name?" I ask her.

She smiles. "Doesn't matter. I'm glad you're here."

I think I am, too.


.:.:.


"I'm dead, aren't I?" I ask after a while, directing my words to the mousy-haired girl in the sand.

She smiles. It doesn't light up the world like it does when Tiger beams, but I feel easier, lighter, safer when they do so. "You're quick to catch on. Not like Tiger. It took her a while."

I smile back - deliriously comfortable with where I am and all that is happening. A rolling tide washes ashore - bluer than anything I've ever seen. This place is strangely, eerily beautiful, much like the girl with the grey eyes. "Why am I here? Why any of us?" I ask, shoulder nudging in the direction of Tiger, darting erratically around the trunks of trees. I smile watching her, easing into all of this. She is warm and happy and harmless, really. I can see why Gavin liked her.

The girl shrugs, "I don't exactly know. This place was created for me. And then she turned up. And now you."

I don't say anything for a while. The stranger does. "You'll understand eventually. I call it the in-between." She nods towards the forest I awoke in, "I like what you've brought."

"I've brought?"

"Yes," the girl replies. "The trees."

Perplexed, I look to her for answers.

"Tiger brought the sun. And you brought the trees. They weren't here before you arrived."

For some bizarre reason, it all makes sense.

And yet nothing makes sense. Stars without darkness, forests at the edge of the ocean, three strangers that somehow know each-other's names. The water crashes against the sand and I join with it, sinking to the ground and floating through confusion. The girl does not stare or make a scene. Instead, to my surprise, she joins me on the shore.



The stranger without a name doesn't ask me questions, nor answer my last. A slender finger points to the twinkling speckles of light. "Let me tell you about those first" she says calmly, lying down in the sand with no hand to shield her eyes from the sun. For a moment I wonder if they're burning, but then I realise that I too can look up and feel no pain. There is no pain here at all - or darkness, or nightmares, or fear. Just sand and stars and the endless sky.



"They all have names. Some from before, some from after. You see that one, burning brighter than the rest?" (I look and nod.) "That one is the reason this place exists."



The girl with no name is cryptic and mysterious and yet I feel like I could tell her anything about me. I feel like I could tell her anything about me and she'd already know it.



"Tiger has some, too. And you, it seems."



I look to the sky and names fall through my head like music. Gran Gavin Mom Stella Simon Kiena Sue. Like magic, they appear, a constellation of my soul and the people who I held right until the very end.

Tiger gallops down back towards us, sand kicking up between her legs and ever as cheerful. "Magical!" she comments. "Simply magical. I've never been in a forest, did you know that? I still cannot believe you are here, right here, of all people! I watched and I hoped, I really did, and now here you are! Gavin will be-"

"Gavin?" I choke, and I swear the trees sway slightly in time with my body. Tiger looks to the other girl and the whole world lights up again. "Aria?"

Aria nods.

"Follow me" Tiger says, a hand reaching out to take mine. I do so in a heartbeat.

We walk along the sand linked at our fingertips until a figure at the edge of forever steps forward - all height and floppy hair and kind eyes. Tiger waves, electricity and warmth and light buzzing all over her skin, and the figure waves back and calls a name. My name.

"Rowan!"

I look back for a split-second to Aria and Tiger and my words float through the air. "Thank you."

They smile. I blink - and then they are gone.

My feet do not stop moving. Distance closes at lightning speeds. For the first time in my life (and death) I am running towards my grief and not from it. In an instant we collide and the world explodes - my death bearing new life as stars sucked through eternity. He laughs, and I barely let out a "I missed you-" as we are propelled forward at the speed of light.

Never looking back, never letting go, we fall as one existence into the rest of forever.









"and when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. every atom of me and every atom of you...

and when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight."




i.imgur.com/oK2F75Y.png

[zotho]

{ rowan }

just when we think there is a chance 

there is never quite enough time left 

to prove our beliefs, to prove we are strong 

hey

we just need some sleep 

we just need some time  

to catch our breath 

heyo

the fear that we feel  

in our troubled hearts 

is told to be what will make us last 

 

howdy

we just need some sleep 

to dream away these fears 

we just need some time to clear our crowded minds

"each day is a little life:
every waking and rising a little birth
every fresh morning a little youth
every going to rest and sleep a little death." 

[zotho]

[presto][/presto]

{ rowan }

just when we think there is a chance 

there is never quite enough time left 

to prove our beliefs, to prove we are strong 

hey

we just need some sleep 

we just need some time  

to catch our breath 

heyo

the fear that we feel  

in our troubled hearts 

is told to be what will make us last 

 

howdy

we just need some sleep 

to dream away these fears 

we just need some time to clear our crowded minds

"each day is a little life:
every waking and rising a little birth
every fresh morning a little youth
every going to rest and sleep a little death." 

[zotho]

[presto][/presto]

{ rowan }

by tomorrow

we'll be lost amongst the leaves

in a wind that chills the skeletons of trees

There is a crown of metal against my temples tainted in blood and salt. Paper petals fall from the sky. I am weightless and floating, falling, floating, falling. I am not a whole - I am nothing, and yet I feel everything. I have no hands to stretch out, no fingers to touch the feather-light flits of paper, no voice to scream in delight with. Incomprehensible voices (or what I think to be sounds escaping from trembling throats) lift me up into the endless burning light. Across the universe I sail, the same pattern continuing for all of eternity. Floating, falling, floating, falling. Then I, and this eternity, come to an end.

At the end of eternity I find myself at the base of a tree, wooden steps carved around it's trunk and a harmony calling my name. Rowan! Rowan! Rowan! It sounds just like my-

"Mom?" I call out - certain, and yet unsure why.

Rowan! the voice calls again.

Rowan! Rowan! Rowan!

I begin my ascend - one step, two steps, a hundred more, around and around at lightning speed. I spin through days and years and the world is a blur. I become a beam of light, spiraling upwards, and yet if I blink I can see every single step I take in slow motion. Nothing hurts. There is a warmth here that surround me, hands brushing the rough, calloused skin of the staircase and as I rise higher and higher I can feel my footsteps dance through the stars around me. The world turns from white to blue dazzled with tiny specks of light leaking from a thousand different worlds. Still, I trek on. Upwards and upwards, dancing through time itself. And suddenly I am propelled forwards, feet grazing the leaves of the earthly staircase, launched high up into the sky and back down again. I do not scream. I do not flinch. Time stops for a moment or two. Then everything falls back into place, including me, and gently I am lifted into a daylight tinted with blue and hazes of green, perched in the highest branches of the thousand-year-old tree.

Rowan! the voice calls from above. I tilt my head to the sky but find nothing but white. Jump, Rowan! it pushes, as if conjured up from the depths of my mind. I turn to crumble into myself, but I find no fear shackled to my body. Instead, I look to the sky and close my eyes.

Sleep.

My body tilts backward and the air billows around my body. Falling, falling, f a l l i n g -

I love you, I love you, I love you Rowan.

- into slumber.

by tomorrow

we'll be swimming with the fishes

leave our troubles in the sand

I wake to a bed made of damp earth and dewy grass.

Through a hazy blur of green and brown I blink once, twice, and everything falls into focus. Leaves that stretch for miles. Crisp air heaved in through soft gasps. Golden beams falling through shrouds of branches, freckling the floor with shadows and glittering light. I breathe out and rise toward the blue sky, toes sinking into the soft ground as I step forward past the trunks of trees. (For some bizarre reason, the afternoon sky is alight with stars.)

I quicken my pace and step forward again, running one, two, three paces - I move a thousand miles a minute. One breath in, one step backwards, and I shoot back to where I was. Spinning madly, a giddy laugh escapes my mouth and the trees dance in the wind. Gold dust fills me to the core and I run, run, run, free at last from a forest full of monsters and left to my own world of possibility. Up, down, forwards, backwards, around and around and around - I laugh, and the forest laughs with me. I dance over the rib cage of the woods and fly over the spines of my dreams. Echoes of joy tower over me and I don't ever look back. I run for hours. Evergreen and gold fall away to traces of yellow and a blurred streak of blue catches the corner of my eye - in a millisecond I am frozen and staring at an ocean, white-gold sand billowing from it's edges. Curious, the breeze from the forest pushes me forward, whispers of trees gently edging me closer and closer to the fairytale scene I could only be dreaming of.

But I'm not dreaming. This is real - or whatever real is anymore. I cannot remember what is real and what is a dream, or what my life was before all of this arrived. I am a soul of the forest thrust into this brave new world (just to be sure I look over my shoulder: it is all there, vast and beautiful and fixed to my soul). Grass slowly fades to sand and I breathe in the salty air - gritty and foreign and surprisingly warm. I take a step and sink into the welcoming vastness of this magical place.

"Oh my goodness!" someone shrieks, and all of a sudden the world is encompassed in light. I turn to see a bundle of gold, freckles and laughter scoop me up and twirl me around and around and around. My feet barely find a gritty ground to stand on before she swoops me in for another hug, breathless and exhilarated.

"It's you!" the stranger sighs, hands at her face in awe. "Oh my goodness, you are just - I am so pleased to see you. Goodness gracious!" (I know that face but my mind cannot find a name. I cannot find anything in my memories at all.) "You're-"

"Tiger" I breathe, anything and everything flooding my existence."You're Tiger."

"No silly," she laughs, shaking her wild head, "I am Tiger - and you're-"

- "Rowan" another voice interrupts

Only now do I realise there's another girl standing behind us, laughing quietly to herself as she speaks my name. Unlike Tiger, brash and bold, she seems quieter. Wiser. As if she's been here forever.

I wonder if I've been here forever.

"What's your name?" I ask her.

She smiles. "Doesn't matter. I'm glad you're here."

I think I am, too.

and when the sun comes up

we'll be nothing but dust

just the outlines of our hands

 

"I'm dead, aren't I?" I ask after a while, directing my words to the mousy-haired girl in the sand.

She smiles. It doesn't light up the world like it does when Tiger beams, but I feel easier, lighter, safer when they do so. "You're quick to catch on. Not like Tiger. It took her a while."

I smile back - deliriously comfortable with where I am and all that is happening. A rolling tide washes ashore - bluer than anything I've ever seen. This place is strangely, eerily beautiful, much like the girl with the grey eyes. "Why am I here? Why any of us?" I ask, shoulder nudging in the direction of Tiger, darting erratically around the trunks of trees. I smile watching her, easing into all of this. She is warm and happy and harmless, really. I can see why Gavin liked her.

The girl shrugs, "I don't exactly know. This place was created for me. And then she turned up. And now you."

I don't say anything for a while. The stranger does. "You'll understand eventually. I call it the in-between." She nods towards the forest I awoke in, "I like what you've brought."

"I've brought?"

"Yes," the girl replies. "The trees."

Perplexed, I look to her for answers.

"Tiger brought the sun. And you brought the trees. They weren't here before you arrived."

For some bizarre reason, it all makes sense.

And yet nothing makes sense. Stars without darkness, forests at the edge of the ocean, three strangers that somehow know each-other's names. The water crashes against the sand and I join with it, sinking to the ground and floating through confusion. The girl does not stare or make a scene. Instead, to my surprise, she joins me on the shore.

The stranger without a name doesn't ask me questions, nor answer my last. A slender finger points to the twinkling speckles of light. "Let me tell you about those first," she offers calmly, lying down in the sand with no hand to shield her eyes from the sun. For a moment I wonder if they're burning, but then I realise that I too can look up and feel no pain. There is no pain here at all - or darkness, or nightmares, or fear. Just sand and stars and the endless sky.

"They all have names. Some from before, some from after. You see that one, burning brighter than the rest?" (I look and nod.) "That one is the reason this place exists."

The girl with no name is cryptic and mysterious and yet I feel like I could tell her anything about me. I feel like I could tell her anything about me and she'd already know it.

"Tiger has some, too. And you, it seems."

I look to the sky and names fall through my head like music. Gran Gavin Mom Stella Simon Kiena Sue. Like magic, they appear, a constellation of my soul and the people who I held right until the very end. Everything now feels as if it will be alright, and I relax into the sand next to her. 

"Better?" she asks.

"Much better" I reply with a grin.

Tiger gallops down back towards us, sand kicking up between her legs and ever as cheerful. "Magical!" she comments. "Simply magical. I've never been in a forest, did you know that? I still cannot believe you are here, right here, of all people! I watched and I hoped, I really did, and now here you are! Gavin will be-"

"Gavin?" I choke, and I swear the trees sway slightly in time with my body. Tiger looks to the other girl and the whole world lights up again. "Aria?"

Aria nods.

"Follow me" Tiger says, a hand reaching out to take mine. I do so in a heartbeat.

We walk along the sand linked at our fingertips until a figure at the edge of forever steps forward - all height and floppy hair and kind eyes. Tiger waves, electricity and warmth and light buzzing all over her skin, and the figure waves back and calls a name. My name.

"Rowan!"

I look back for a split-second to Aria the sand-stranger and Tiger the sun, and my words float through the air. "Thank you."

They smile. I blink - and then they are gone.

My feet do not stop moving. Distance closes at lightning speeds. For the first time in my life (and death) I am running towards my grief and not from it. In an instant we collide and the world explodes - my death bearing new life as stars sucked through eternity. He laughs, and I barely let out a "I missed you-" as we are propelled forward at the speed of light.

Never looking back, never letting go, every atom of mine infused with his, we fall as one existence into the rest of forever.

and when the moon shines

i will leave two lines

find my love, then find me

[zotho]

[presto][/presto]

{ thank you's }

"and when we do find each other again,
we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. every atom of me and every atom of you...  
and when they use our atoms to make new lives
they won't just be able to take one
they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me
we'll be joined so tight..."

to my bb guardian angels cait, pogue, rave, mylee, avalon, azaleah, kire and rosetta - thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. i feel like you guys already know by now how grateful i am for your loyalty and love right 'til the very end of that crazy night. i am so thankful and lucky to have friends like you. your friendship, loyalty, laughs and dedication throughout has really made me feel so much better about all this. words cannot express. i adore you all. thank you so much.

to my wonderful alliance: stare, arx and avalon - thank you for all the excitement and planning and making me feel so welcomed and appreciated in leviathans. although i'm sad i won't get to properly thread with you all, i am so incredibly excited to see how you all develop and your journey in these games. kick some booty for momma rowan!

to all of you in this thread: your beautiful pieces of writing are so treasured. you are all so wonderfully, wonderfully talented and your writing is simply breathtaking, as are your characters. thank you for making this thread so special and meaningful. all my love <3

to shrimp and thundy - thank you for keeping your cool in the bb, answering my questions and my frantic-ness in the cbox. it's been a pleasure to have been in these games, albeit short-lived.

to kay - for always being there for me. <3

to elegant, tristen, python, kousei and rook - for reaching out to me afterwards and making sure i was okay. your words and support are so very much appreciated and valued, thank you <3

and of course to dars - thank you for helping me shape rowan into the character she is/was. she and gavin will have totally found each other again in the endless universe of fictional afterlife. i treasure that ship, those threads, your kind words and your friendship so much. thank you.

"each day is a little life
every waking and rising a little birth
every fresh morning a little youth
every going to rest and sleep a little death."

[zotho]

[presto][/presto]

S

K

L

For some reason, this morning I cannot speak.

Thankfully Mace does the talking for me. It is as if the train has swept me up and sent me back all those years ago to when I refused to open my stitched-up lips and let my bruised heart mourn the loss of a girl I once was. Secrets hanging at the nape of my sister's neck and feathers interlocking fingers, de ja vu wraps it's wrath around my brain and sends me into silence. I am frozen in time, shivering at the memory of Lucy's towering figure above me in the snow. Warmth comes to me in the form of Mace's hands and they stop me from jerking my fists up to hear the crack of Lucy's rib cage puncturing her lungs, absorbed in a memory I both crave and loathe to forget.

"Indigo. I mean that one's easy."

I smile slightly - terrified of the cameras picking up any trace of pleasure on my face. There is nothing to smile about today, but I do it anyway. It is, my face assures. A hand squeeze confirms it. That one is easy.

"Regalia Stromstatt!" isn't.

Everything freezes - including me. My lifeline disconnects and I think my heart stops beating for the second time in my new life. I can't hear anything but gasps and a broken cacophony of that one's easy, that one's easy, that one's easy.

"Paige Lowe!"

That one's easy...

From the crowds, my mother wails. A shrill sound rings across the District Square and I can't seem to clamp my mouth shut. The world around me begins to collapse, just as it did in the arena as Ewe lay dead upon the scarlet-stained ground. A shard of the sky falls and pierces through my chest but it's already broken upon repair and I can do nothing to stop the step, step, step of Paige's feet echoing through the universe. Stop, I beg - I don't hear my voice but she's too damn stubborn to listen to me. She can't hear me. I can't even hear myself. Stop - step - stop it - step. I walked for her, for Mom, for Mace - but she walks for herself and nobody else. I reach out to grab for Mace's hand but they're at his face and I have nobody to cling to. No Mace, No Mom, No Paige-

My world collapses around me. Her steps send cracks through the pavement, tremours threatening swallowing us all. From above and below we break the world apart and as I fall into her eroding earth I reach out my hand and beg for a lifeline, for someone to lift me back up from the wordless depths I swallowed myself up in for so long. But there is no-one's hand to hold. Only ghosts - Lucy Ivana Cerise Lucy Ivana Cerise - their faded silhouettes only blur in my overflowing eyes as transparent fingers pass through me as nothing but weightless air.

I wake up to the sound of my own screaming and find I cannot speak.

[zotho]

S

K

L

For some reason, this morning I cannot speak.

Thankfully Mace does the talking for me. It is as if the train has swept me up and sent me back all those years ago to when I refused to open my stitched-up lips and let my bruised heart mourn the loss of a girl I once was. Secrets hanging at the nape of my sister's neck and feathers interlocking fingers, de ja vu wraps it's wrath around my brain and sends me into silence. I am frozen in time, shivering at the memory of Lucy's towering figure above me in the snow. Warmth comes to me in the form of Mace's hands and they stop me from jerking my fists up to hear the crack of Lucy's rib cage puncturing her lungs, absorbed in a memory I both crave and loathe to forget.

"Indigo. I mean that one's easy."

I smile slightly - terrified of the cameras picking up any trace of pleasure on my face. There is nothing to smile about today, but I do it anyway. It is, my face assures. A hand squeeze confirms it. That one is easy.

"Regalia Stromstatt!" isn't.

Everything freezes - including me. My lifeline disconnects and I think my heart stops beating for the second time in my new life. I can't hear anything but gasps and a broken cacophony of that one's easy, that one's easy, that one's easy.

"Paige Lowe!"

That one's easy...

From the crowds, my mother wails. A shrill sound rings across the District Square and I can't seem to clamp my mouth shut. The world around me begins to collapse, just as it did in the arena as Ewe lay dead upon the scarlet-stained ground. A shard of the sky falls and pierces through my chest but it's already broken upon repair and I can do nothing to stop the step, step, step of Paige's feet echoing through the universe. Stop, I beg - I don't hear my voice but she's too damn stubborn to listen to me. She can't hear me. I can't even hear myself. Stop - step - stop it - step. I walked for her, for Mom, for Mace - but she walks for herself and nobody else. I reach out to grab for Mace's hand but they're at his face and I have nobody to cling to. No Mace, No Mom, No Paige-

My world collapses around me. Her steps send cracks through the pavement, tremours threatening swallowing us all. From above and below we break the world apart and as I fall into her eroding earth I reach out my hand and beg for a lifeline, for someone to lift me back up from the wordless depths I swallowed myself up in for so long. But there is no-one's hand to hold. Only ghosts - Lucy Ivana Cerise Lucy Ivana Cerise - their faded silhouettes only blur in my overflowing eyes as transparent fingers pass through me as nothing but weightless air.

I wake up to the sound of my own screaming and find I cannot speak.

[zotho]

Jun 28, 2015 5:51:07 GMT -5 zotho said:

S

♔

L

For some reason, this morning I cannot speak.

Thankfully Mace does the talking for me. It is as if the train has swept me up and sent me back all those years ago to when I refused to open my stitched-up lips and let my bruised heart mourn the loss of a girl I once was. Secrets hanging at the nape of my sister's neck and feathers interlocking fingers, de ja vu wraps it's wrath around my brain and sends me into silence. I am frozen in time, shivering at the memory of Lucy's towering figure above me in the snow. Warmth comes to me in the form of Mace's hands and they stop me from jerking my fists up to hear the crack of Lucy's rib cage puncturing her lungs, absorbed in a memory I both crave and loathe to forget.

"Indigo. I mean that one's easy."

I smile slightly - terrified of the cameras picking up any trace of pleasure on my face. There is nothing to smile about today, but I do it anyway. It is, my face assures. A hand squeeze confirms it. That one is easy.

"Regalia Stromstatt!" isn't.

Everything freezes - including me. My lifeline disconnects and I think my heart stops beating for the second time in my new life. I can't hear anything but gasps and a broken cacophony of that one's easy, that one's easy, that one's easy.

"Paige Lowe!"

That one's easy...

From the crowds, my mother wails. A shrill sound rings across the District Square and I can't seem to clamp my mouth shut. The world around me begins to collapse, just as it did in the arena as Ewe lay dead upon the scarlet-stained ground. A shard of the sky falls and pierces through my chest but it's already broken upon repair and I can do nothing to stop the step, step, step of Paige's feet echoing through the universe. Stop, I beg - I don't hear my voice but she's too damn stubborn to listen to me. She can't hear me. I can't even hear myself. Stop - step - stop it - step. I walked for her, for Mom, for Mace - but she walks for herself and nobody else. I reach out to grab for Mace's hand but they're at his face and I have nobody to cling to. No Mace, No Mom, No Paige-

My world collapses around me. Her steps send cracks through the pavement, tremours threatening swallowing us all. From above and below we break the world apart and as I fall into her eroding earth I reach out my hand and beg for a lifeline, for someone to lift me back up from the wordless depths I swallowed myself up in for so long. But there is no-one's hand to hold. Only ghosts - Lucy Ivana Cerise Lucy Ivana Cerise - their faded silhouettes only blur in my overflowing eyes as transparent fingers pass through me as nothing but weightless air.

I wake up to the sound of my own screaming and find I cannot speak.

[zotho]

PERSIA _______ KEENI

For some reason, this morning I cannot speak.

Thankfully Mace does the talking for me. It is as if the train has swept me up and sent me back all those years ago to when I refused to open my stitched-up lips and let my bruised heart mourn the loss of a girl I once was. Secrets hanging at the nape of my sister's neck and feathers interlocking fingers, de ja vu wraps it's wrath around my brain and sends me into silence. I am frozen in time, shivering at the memory of Lucy's towering figure above me in the snow. Warmth comes to me in the form of Mace's hands and they stop me from jerking my fists up to hear the crack of Lucy's rib cage puncturing her lungs, absorbed in a memory I both crave and loathe to forget.

"Indigo. I mean that one's easy."

I smile slightly - terrified of the cameras picking up any trace of pleasure on my face. There is nothing to smile about today, but I do it anyway. It is, my face assures. A hand squeeze confirms it. That one is easy.

"Regalia Stromstatt!" isn't.

Everything freezes - including me. My lifeline disconnects and I think my heart stops beating for the second time in my new life. I can't hear anything but gasps and a broken cacophony of that one's easy, that one's easy, that one's easy.

"Paige Lowe!"

That one's easy...

From the crowds, my mother wails. A shrill sound rings across the District Square and I can't seem to clamp my mouth shut. The world around me begins to collapse, just as it did in the arena as Ewe lay dead upon the scarlet-stained ground. A shard of the sky falls and pierces through my chest but it's already broken upon repair and I can do nothing to stop the step, step, step of Paige's feet echoing through the universe. Stop, I beg - I don't hear my voice but she's too damn stubborn to listen to me. She can't hear me. I can't even hear myself. Stop - step - stop it - step. I walked for her, for Mom, for Mace - but she walks for herself and nobody else. I reach out to grab for Mace's hand but they're at his face and I have nobody to cling to. No Mace, No Mom, No Paige-

My world collapses around me. Her steps send cracks through the pavement, tremours threatening swallowing us all. From above and below we break the world apart and as I fall into her eroding earth I reach out my hand and beg for a lifeline, for someone to lift me back up from the wordless depths I swallowed myself up in for so long. But there is no-one's hand to hold. Only ghosts - Lucy Ivana Cerise Lucy Ivana Cerise - their faded silhouettes only blur in my overflowing eyes as transparent fingers pass through me as nothing but weightless air.

I wake up to the sound of my own screaming and find I cannot speak.

[/quote]

[zotho]

It gets easier for her mother to spill little cracks of light into the darkness that was her memory. Often spontaneous and rarely long, but it was enough for her. Small doses kept them going.

"Did you know he picked your name?"

The victor's head jerks upwards, eyes awake and heart open.

Her mother looks out the window and smiles. "I loved Kira. But he loved Saffron. He promised to let me name the next one a simpler name. But of course he picked Paige's middle name, as I did with you."

Saffron Kira and Paige Sparrow.

They hang in their minds and on the tips of their tongues. But Saffron, by reputation, cannot speak.

"He looked to the burning summer sky, pointed at it, squinted and said 'Saffron. The colour of the sunset.'"

(She is 11 years old again in a fleeting vision of memory - running, running, running - from nothing but her own shadow. She was always scared of the dark of the night but chased the sun home just to say goodbye.)

She drinks in the evening sky and feels her father's warmth wash over. Endings are bittersweet but what the sky brings after dusk is just as magnificent.

---------

She finds the remnants of her former self in her sister - silent and still. Her eyes still glimmer with embers but the raging fire has been dimmed by the endless winter that froze this house cold. Once they burned bright from the light of the sun. Now the sisters are snuffed out by white walls and white seasons and ice clinging to their insides.

It breaks her to open the door and see Paige crumbling but she'd rather die than say she never tried to help her sister hold her broken pieces together. This house only has room for one broken girl at a time and Saffron is not sure she'll ever be completely fixed. She is well acquainted with depression stitching her lips shut and weighing down her chest but seeing it seeping from the holes in her sister's soul shatters her chest.

Perched on the end of her sister's bed, a thousand things dance through her mind. Nobody could help her but Mace and his words, so she'll try and craft her own and pray her sister alights once more.

"I know you don't remember anything about Dad but..." she starts, hesitant and terrified. "Do you ever wonder what happened to him?"

Paige has no words. To her surprise Saffron finds that the silence hurts more than the knives she used to send spiraling into her head from her mouth.

"I've been thinking about it for a while now and I think I want to find out."

Be brave. Be brave. Be brave.

"Whether he's dead, or alive, or..."

She should not fear her own voice but it cracks anyway.

"It all sounds impossible, right? But I've got to at least try."

Answers were not what she expected from her sister, nor words, but without speaking she seems to have brought them to life. With a kiss of her sister's head and hands trembling the victor stands and finds Paige struggling to speak, lips torn open and anguish dripping from her mouth.

"Saff?"

"Yeah?"

"Close the door."

She heeds her sister's words and sets off to do just that.

---------

A few days before the nightmare begins again her mother tells her another story. This time there is no fondness in her voice or a happy glistening of what could be tears. There is just sadness. And fear. Saffron always thought that her mother was the bravest person she knew but the brave can shatter every once in a while. She of all people should know this by now.

"He was dragged away. They took him from the front field before he had a chance to speak, or defend himself..."

Saffron cannot speak. Or breathe. That is nothing knew to her, but this revelation is.

"And when they took you away too, I thought..." Her mother is crying - something she rarely sees. "I'd never see you again. But I thought that if he were there, and if he saw you..."

Words aren't needed. She understands now.

She understands why her mother could not speak for all of those years.

---------

Mace has been with them for weeks now and it hasn't gotten any easier. Her heart aches for Juliet a thousand miles away and her siblings left to live without her. It aches for her family - her entire family - now separated through a crack in the road between their homes and a scar plunged through Mace's heart.

She doesn't knock, but her fist hovers over the door. She doesn't want to see him but doesn't want to find an empty room either. There was a time when they could tell each-other anything. Distance never mattered. And now the space between their souls is worse than it has ever been, even under the same roof. Lies catch at her throat whenever he passes her by and she is reminded all over again of the tragedy they have all become. 

Her heart aches for Mace and the forever with him she will never be granted.

"Mace?" she begs, forehead pressed against the cool surface of the door.

"I don't know if you're home but..."

Speak, she thinks. Speak, for fucks sake.

"But I'm going to be gone for a few days and-"

And I want you there with me.

And I need you there with me.

And I want you.

And I need you.

"And I was wondering if you wanted.. if you would..."

She trembles violently in his silence, magnitudes engulfing her in their destruction.

"...if you would want to come and help me find my Dad."

Nothing. 

She shouldn't have expected anything other than that. He doesn't need her anymore, after all. 

But Saffron still needs him.

---------

She has memorised parts of this journey. Compromised of landmarks and dips on the horizon and familiar flashes of memory from hours upon hours of staring out at the uninhabited world, a no-man's land of possibility taunting her year after year. But it's not really no-man's land - it's the Capitol's land. It's Snow's land, and a chill run downs her spine at the very mention of him. This is no time to freeze - she must thaw, burning like the sun she was named for.

Any trace of liquid disaster evaporates from her cheeks. Skin on fire, heart on fire. Terrified of discovering the other half of her creation and what has become of him, Saffron has to remind herself that for a sun to be born a star has to die but she's still damn sure he didn't deserve a fate worse that death - but death would be harder to swallow. The world keeps moving without her, a blur behind glass too far out of reach and the victor stays frozen within herself and her tortured past.

---------

The girl escorting her through the halls of the Capitol buildings carries herself with grace and elegance, as poised as those on the thrones of the government. They all know her name but Saffron will never know theirs. She wonders if they know each-other's names scrawled on pieces of paper or if they are just faces without voices, made up of freckles and scars and traces of their parents. Perhaps they've all forgotten who they used to be.

"August Lowe" Saffron tries, throwing the name into the air as both a question and a statement.

The girl stops and looks at her, an eyebrow raised.

"Do you know him?"

Nothing.

"August Lowe?"

The girl gives the slightest shake of her head and sets off again down the halls. 

The victor sighs and follows, closing the door behind them.

---------

President Snow's presence makes her hands shake and her eyes dart frantically around the room. It has been so long since she sat in this seat and she swears it were larger the last time. Everything seems smaller - or perhaps she is bigger. It's hard to tell these days. He contemplates her words, pretending to consider them by weighing out the pros and cons of her request. Though something in his eyes tells Saffron that he made up his mind long, long ago.

"Miss Lowe" he begins, leaning forward across the regal desk adorned with intricate patterns and littered with treasures a smaller, younger Saffron would have craved to snatch up and keep for herself. "Although pleasant to be graced with your company, you should know by now that criminals in Panem are a threat to the peace the Capitol has brought to the Districts. To resurface and revisit these cases would be a threat to the very reason we reprimand them in the first place."

She swallows and smiles. "Of course, sir."

President Snow adjusts his sleeves and rests his wrists on his desk, all the while never breaking his line of sight on the girl who sits across from him. "It is, however, a topic of which I do understand your interest in. No doubt you'd want to find out whatever crime your father committed to damn his two daughters to a life with one parent."

Her heart picks up and her fingers tighten against the wooden arm rests. This must be what hell feels like. She's come damn close to it 6 years ago but this place is far worse.

Swallowing her pride, she remains silent.

"The people of the Capitol do indeed enjoy when Victor's visit their city - and I would never deny them that pleasure, but I'm afraid you have come to the wrong place to look for answers, Miss Lowe."

"I'm sorry?"

He smiles and in that moment she knows she's damned herself for coming here. "You may find that when seeking knowledge your answers are in the very first place you looked for them."

Her home flashes up on the screen between them - but she recognises the masses of people, the dust, the heat shimmering on the horizon, the barren wastelands of drought and a Justice Building being emptied of nearly everything inside of it.

"This was 5 years ago" she states, confusion filling her throat and tainting her confident facade. She aims to be a lion-heart but never quite learnt to roar.

"In the drought following Colgate O'Leary's victory, District Five offered to lend it's heat-powered turbines to District's Ten and Eleven. They were operated by burning coal to power machinery and water supplies to help support the crops and dying cattle."

Images flash before her - some duplicates of memory and others foreign like his words.

"I'm sure you are aware that neither Ten nor Eleven have access to coal, and Twelve can barely produce enough for the Capitol as it is."

This makes no sense.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't quite understand."

The screen flickers again, and piles of boxes fill trucks, arms, and then sheets of paper are poured into the flames powering the district.

"District Ten used whatever they could to keep them running, Miss Lowe. Things worth burning."

Things like 15-year-old criminal records.

Smoke billows upwards until it spills from the hologram, pouring into the President's office and filling her lungs. It burns and aches and suffocates her, flowing from her eyes and ears and mouth. A fire can burn and break and destroy but smoke can be just as deadly.

She can't breathe.

She's forgotten how to breathe.

Saffron is swimming in a current of tradgedy and cannot fight the waves that pull her down, strip her of her understanding and drown her from the inside-out.

"So you're telling me..." the victor begins, panic rising in her lungs and stealing her breath with every rise and fall of her chest.

"That there is no possible way to recollect information of the whereabouts or outcomes of a man arrested 18 years ago in a District that destroyed its records in the drought following the 66th Games?"

Saffron nods.

"That is exactly what I'm telling you, Miss Lowe."

And then Snow takes out a hand gun from his desk, unhinges the safety, and shoots her right in the chest.

The world falls apart.

Everything hurts. This must be what it is like for a star to die - to explode and erupt from the inside out.

August Lowe dies in that moment, all hope of his discovery eroding in the echoes of a gunshot. Blood bubbles up from her insides and erupts from her lips, scarlet words spilling into the room in gargles and desperate, wide-eyed chokes. All she can hear is screaming, screaming, screaming, coming from every inch of her except her throat. Acid fills her insides and she falls forward in defeat and the last thing she sees is red and red and red and red and-

Saffron blinks, and Snow smiles.

---------

She was wrong. Death would have been easier to swallow.

This isn't easy, but words sure are. Wrapped in a silent aura she exists Snow's office and hears nothing but static. She needs a lifeline, she needs words, she needs steps and reasons and answers and Lucy, Ivana, Cerise, Mace.

She needs him more and more every day. There was a time where he was the only person on this earth she could speak to and she yearns for that ease, lips stitched up by fear and frozen tight by mistakes and bitter words. Unrequited love crushes her suppressed heart and silences words she wishes she could say.

But there aren't any names Saffron can whisper from the arena anymore to keep her sane. There aren't any strong arms to fall into this time. There isn't a single sound in her throat to scream out and shatter the fragile entity she finds herself in.

This new world is falling apart but the walls of it don't crack like they did when her life ended in the arena and her new one began.

Her heart does instead.

[zotho]

HOUSE SUMMIT

[presto][/presto]

[presto][/presto]

text hurr

text hurr

OF DISTRICT SEVEN

[zotho]

HOUSE SUMMIT

[presto][/presto]

[presto][/presto]

text hurr

text hurr

OF DISTRICT SEVEN

[zotho]

-HOUSE SUMMIT-

[presto][/presto]

[presto][/presto]

NAME HERE SEVENTEEN

NAME HERE SEVENTEEN

-OF DISTRICT SEVEN-

Eunice: magdalena zalejska [18]
stanley: idfk [18]
belle: bella hearthcote [17]
Demetra: Auguste Abeliunaite [16] cousin
Cynthia: Sasha Belyaeva [14]
tarian is cody Christian [17?]
Stella: Anastasiya Jepsen [17]
Blanche: Ksenia Komleva [16]
Shaw: Zhenya Katava [16]

[zoe2016]

character name. lyrics here maybe

character name. lyrics here maybe age gender district “if peeta and i were both to die, or they thought we were....my fingers fumble with the pouch on my belt, freeing it. peeta sees it and his hand clamps on my wrist. "no, i won't let you." "trust me," i whisper. he holds my gaze for a long moment then lets go.”

character name. lyrics here maybe

 

[zotho]

character name. lyrics here maybe

character name. lyrics here maybe age gender district “if peeta and i were both to die, or they thought we were....my fingers fumble with the pouch on my belt, freeing it. peeta sees it and his hand clamps on my wrist. "no, i won't let you." "trust me," i whisper. he holds my gaze for a long moment then lets go.”