ERIS MORENO, D1 | DONE

Take a breath, take it deep
"Calm yourself," he says to me
"If you play you play for keeps, take the gun and count to three"
I'm sweating now, moving slow
No time to think, my turn to go

( N A M E ) Eris Sybil Moreno
( A G E ) Seventeen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District One

And you can see my heart beating
You can see it through my chest
Said I'm terrified, but I'm not leaving
I know that I must pass this test
So just pull the trigger

( A P P E A R A N C E )

It's not out of the ordinary for them to show up every couple of months, the man and woman with posture so regal that it puts royalty to shame. If it's not the Lightwoods one day it'll be the Morenos the next, Mrs. Dawkins fusses mentally, watching the couple stroll the halls of the community home speculatively, more akin to shopping for groceries than looking for a new member of their family. It's not decent, the way they lose a child and just come right along to replace them with two or three more, it's all cold and removed and -

"What about that one?" A cool, even soprano chimes in behind her, and Mrs. Dawkins nearly jumps out of her skin, revolving on the spot to see an interested-looking Mrs. Moreno and following the line of her gaze to a light-haired form in the corner.

The girl is tall, willowy with the frame of a dancer or a gymnast perhaps, maybe five-foot-nine and a hundred and twenty or thirty pounds. Everything about her manages to look compact somehow, like she's holding in far more than her body is capable of containing, narrow but strong shoulders and toned limbs and a sort of quiet strength sitting unspoken but present beneath smooth skin tanned to a honeyed shade.

Her clothes are the same simple fare of everyone else in the community home, worn hand-me-down fabrics clinging to her frame in the form of a comfortable-looking tracksuit, like she doesn't really see the point of dressing to impress anyone. Small, clever hands are toying with something that Mrs. Dawkins can't quite see from across the room, but the girl's eyes remain fixed on it with an unbreakable concentration, such a deep shade of brown they're almost black, large in size but holding a feline sort of slant to them. Her face is a patchwork of too-big features, it seems, big eyes and a strong-bridged nose and large, thick lips that curve into an eerie, darkly satisfied smile as she continues to toy with the object in her hands. Her face itself, all stark bone structure and sharp cheekbones and a defined jawline is masked behind a curtain of long, thick hair as she leans forward, the naturally brown strands bleached blonde with the peroxide from the medicine cabinet even though she's been warned about doing it time and time again. The trade-off for her disregard for the rules is evident in the way the wavy locks falling to about the bottom of her ribcage look distinctly unhealthy, the oils stripped and the hair left dry, brittle and prone to breaking at the slightest provocation. It grows fast, as evidenced by the fact that there is constantly about half an inch of brown roots showing no matter how many midnight trips to the medicine cabinet she manages to make, the thickness and wave of her hair in combination with her regal features and fierce gaze giving her the distinct appearance of a lioness on the prowl.

"Oh, that's Eris Carrow," Mrs. Dawkins says, voice pulling taut over the words even though she makes a concerted effort to sound offhanded and nonchalant. As if hearing her name from all the way across the entrance hall, Eris Carrow's eyes shoot up from whatever it is in her hand, her dark gaze flitting over the room's occupants until they land on the only independent variable in the situation, the well-known faces of the Morenos looking for their newest addition. Another one of those raw, feral smiles curves across her face and she stands, stretching out long, lithe limbs to rid herself of the cramping caused by her long stint huddled on the floor. Eris seems to give off an even more imposing presence when she stands at her full height, something quiet and hard to place but distinctly unsettling rolling off of her in waves. It feels like uncertainty, like change, like chaos, and Mrs. Dawkins has to suppress a shudder as the girl draws closer, unceremoniously shoving one of the younger children out of her way. "But really, I would advise you to look at someone else. She's been here since she was a little girl, and people... just don't feel right around her. The other children are terrified and they won't say why, and prospective families... well, they always leave after they talk to her."

Mrs. Moreno smiles, something disturbingly close to the calculating grin of the lithe-limbed blonde making her way across the room. "She sounds perfect."

"Hello," Eris says in a low, stormy alto, drawing close enough for the couple and the caretaker to get a much better look at her. There are the dying remnants of a smattering of freckles across her cheekbones, gradually being usurped by the summer tan, a slight smudge at the corner of one eye where carefully-applied makeup has been knocked off-kilter (it's not uncommon for the other children to come into the infirmary with the clear marks of a lost fistfight and swear up and down that they've just had a bad fall). "Eris Carrow, seventeen, been here for most of my life, utterly miserable. Pleased to meet you."

Mrs. Dawkins' lips purse into a thin line at the girl's utter lack of a filter, narrowing even more when the Moreno's seem to find it entertaining, each in turn shaking a delicate hand that isn't as flawless up close, the skin marred by pink-white swaths of burn scars and the nails an utter mess, bitten to stubs and red-raw with hangnails that are a result of a picking habit that seems impossible to break. In all, she's a hodgepodge of mismatched pieces, a chaotic whirlwind of a girl that doesn't fit in a world of balance. Even more unsettling, she seems to be fine with that. Something in her seems to delight in the fact that she can't fit in anywhere she goes, evidenced by the spark of mischief in bottomless eyes as she stands before the pair of people that most of the children in the home would shrink from, finally coming to recognize them as angels of death rather than potential parents. Reyes, Jae, all of them... there are stories that no one really speaks of in the open but still manage to be known by all. Eris certainly knows them; she hears and sees everything in an unsettling way that make one think she might have eye and ears all over. She knows, she has to, and the truly scary thing is that she looks almost excited.

"Hello, Eris Carrow," Mrs. Moreno says, benevolently but with a quiet hint of dangerous anticipation beneath her words. "Would you be interested in becoming Eris Moreno?"

Eris smiles wider and wilder than Mrs. Dawkins has ever seen her, pure forces of chaos swirling off of her skin in a cataclysm of palpable ruination. "I think you'll find that I was born to be a Moreno, ma'am. I'm pretty sure I'm exactly what you're looking for."

"Say a prayer to yourself,"
He says, "Close your eyes, sometimes it helps."
And then I get a scary thought
That he's here means
He's never lost

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

The office at the community home is just like everything else in the building - old, threadbare, and clinging to a distinct air of hopelessness. Eris scowls as she folds herself into one of the creaky chairs, a million incidences of being hauled between these walls for discipline all blurring together into a vague, unpleasant memory. Ten years in this dump, over half her life, and she's spent the entirety of it as a pariah, a hurricane force that the children avoid and the adults attempt in vain to squash into submission. Her refusal to be tamed is what she does best, though, forever hovering on the fringes of reality and determined to craft life into something closer to her own brand of entertainment.

Chaos.

It's something that's inherent in the very fabric of her being, from her name, a nod to the goddess of discord, to the worn talisman in her hand, the surface of the metallic disk so eroded by time and constant contact with her hands that it's hardly recognizable as a coin anymore, the lone object salvaged from a burning house that was just another sign of her touch. Eris knows that everyone has a purpose, it's part of that namby-pamby routine that gets shoved into children's heads as they enter the bleak facade of the community home. Everyone has a purpose and everything happens for a reason, they said, and Eris found that she only disagreed with the latter. Everything happens for a reason until Eris Carrow gets her hands on it. Then it happens for no reason at all, and that's much more frightening. Perhaps everyone does have a purpose, and if that's true then Eris is fully aware of what hers is - to stop the world from making sense. Logic is something dull and unnecessary in a world of independent variables; Logic favors some and abandons others to despair, and in a way, she thinks, chance is the great equalizer of the world. It doesn't matter who's rich or who's nice or who's the best human being in a game of Russian Roulette. All that matters in the end is who's got a bullet in their head. To Eris, that rationale is better than tiptoeing around life's issue with pretty reassurances and promises of things that might very well never happen. Never promise. Never dream. It's too easy for it all to be ripped away.

"So, tell us about yourself, Eris. What are you like?" Mrs. Moreno says in a smooth but cool voice, like silk brushing against her skin as she and her husband settle into the much nicer chairs across the big wooden table that the community home kids have come to call The Chopping Block - if the Morenos take you home, you're dead, and that's a promise.

But Eris has never liked promises, and defying them is one of the closest things in life she can get to true satisfaction.

"I'm tenacious," she says, because she knows it's what they want to hear and because it's true. While she may lie for sport there's too much riding on this, and for once in her life honesty seems the best policy. "I'm pretty smart. I like to read. I don't like when people get in my way. I'm hardheaded. I'm a fighter."

"Bully," Mrs. Dawkins coughs under her breath and Eris grins up at her, feral and elated. It's the truth, of course, she does find a sort of solace in grit and blood and bone structure shuddering beneath her hands, but she finds even more joy in the terror that runs so deep in the veins of others that they don't even speak of their fates for fear of having a worse fate befall them. Eris nearly laughs at the combination of memories and the fact that the daft old woman is unwittingly helping her out.

"If I am a bully," she grins, something sparking low and dangerous behind her eyes, "You've never caught me."

The Morenos smile approvingly.

"Smart. You've been to school, then?" Mr. Moreno asks conversationally, belying the fact that there's an open notebook on the table in front of him and a pen in his hand, the lists of countless prospective children riddled with notes and X's and checkmarks. This isn't a family, it's a Victor farm, Eris knows that much, and such a life sounds infinitely more exciting than the drab walls and occasional fistfights of the community home.

"Same schooling as everyone else here," she mutters, examining the bitten stubs of her nails before looking up with another dark smirk. "But it's not so much smarts as other things. You know, street smarts. I pick up on things quick. Things, people, places, I can remember lots of stuff. Photographic memory, I think they call it. And I know how people think. I know how they think before they even know what they're thinking, it's all like a big map in my head."

A few more notes on the paper. Eris smiles even wider when she sees a long string of checkmarks. No promises, no dreams, that was the vow she made to herself a long time ago, but the frail, frantic hope that there might be a whole world of disaster for her to sow beyond these walls makes her heart thrum a violent onetwothree stutter against the seashell surface of her ribs. Life on a Victor farm is dangerous unless you've got what it takes to be a Victor, and Eris know that she does with a solid sort of certainty that's rare to her. Most would call it arrogance. She'd call it a simple assertion that fate loves her even if the rest of the world doesn't.

"And how do the other children here feel about you?" Mrs. Moreno pipes up, now holding a notebook of her own. "If you come home with us, you'll have lots of new siblings."

Eris knows how people think. She's said that already and it's the truth, so the woman across the table's thought process settles over her own mind like a shimmering web. A bluff? Double bluff? Pure honesty inherent in the question? No, Eris shakes her head slightly, wiping that last possibility off the slate. If someone were gathering children for a Victor farm? What would they want from those children? The simple answer is everything Eris Carrow has to offer. She grins again but it's layered with a false sense of apprehension, a manufactured stutter in her movements as she looks down at the table's notched surface. The Moreno's aren't the only ones in here that can play mind games. "Erm, they're sort of afraid of me. I guess I am kind of intimidating, and to be honest I never really saw the point in making friends. Alliances are much more solid than friendships, when you think about it. I've got plenty of those. I'm good at getting people to do what I want, but getting them to like me is a bit of a different story."

Twin smiles. Twin checkmarks. A shared look between them. Twin nods. Something in Eris' chest feels like it's going to explode in a victorious cataclysm of discord and glorious ruin. Her hand squeezes so tight around the metallic disk in her palm that the delicate bone structure creaks audibly in protest, prompting Mrs. Moreno to quirk an eyebrow in her direction. "What's that you've got in your hand, dear?"

"Oh, my coin," Eris says almost proudly, opening her hand like a flower in the sun and letting the dull shimmer wink in the light of the harsh fluorescence. "It's just something I saved from my old house. It's how I make all my decisions, you know, flipping a coin? It's more fun that way."

The old coin has become as much of a feared fixture in the community home as Eris herself - Heads, I beat you up, tails, you go free. Heads, I throw your favorite toy into the sewage drain, tails, you keep it. Heads, I ruin your goddamn life, tails, you're safe for another day - the 50/50 chance of total destruction descending somehow just as frightening as paper slips in a glass ball one day a year. Under Eris' reign, her kingdom lives in a constant Reaping, every day a heavy sort of trepidation weighing down on their heads that asks whether or not today will be the day when everything comes crashing down. Some would call it horrible. Eris would call it glorious.

"Your old house. So you didn't come here as a baby then. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your parents?" There's something heavier and more decisive behind Mr. Moreno's voice, and Eris smiles wider than she ever has, the sticky-bright arc of teeth glimmering in the light. The answer to this question will get her out of this hellhole for good because she knows how people think, knows what the Morenos really want in a child and knows what her answer is. It's the same answer to everything she's been asked in her life - Eris, why did you push George off the jungle gym? Eris, why did you rig the television to explode? Eris, why did your parents die?