[justify]

The king of the jungle
Was asleep in his car
When your chances fall in your lap like that
You've gotta recognize them
For what they really are

( N A M E ) Denali Victoire Lyons
( A G E ) Seventeen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Five


Nobody in this house
Wants to own up to the truth
I crawl in shotgun and reach into his mouth
Grab hold of one long sharp tooth
And hold on for dear life

( H I S T O R Y )

Death follows me like a desperate child that wants me to be its hideaway. I am the eye of the storm, a secret calm surrounded by something vicious, and yet this supposedly hidden piece of me is all the world sees. It's why injured animals cry out when I wander the wilds behind our house, why the summer locusts come to my windowsill to sing their funeral dirges.

I comfort them as best I can, but once they've left their own lives, they never quite leave mine. Insect shells and antlers linger in my pockets before they fill the shelves of my bedroom, a collection of mourning. After all, the irony isn't lost on me. I know why the earth dies in District Five; I know who rallied for the oil spills and air pollution — I am the daughter of this Destruction. It's my penance to care for the victims of my parent's sins.

Each passing makes the ache a little stronger, sends the surrounding air whirling with a building vengeance. My vision blurs as I turn my eyes to the world, so much that I cannot understand how others don't see it... no one except Zion. My brother feels it too, feels it through me, because it's a kind of pain he cannot carry in my place and that weighs more heavily on his shoulders than any insult of ignorance that gets thrown at Peregrine and Tallulah.

The decay makes me bare my teeth and howl at the distant, useless sun, but no matter how undone I become, the oil rigs stand strong and continue to bleed the earth dry. "There's nothing to worry about, my deer dear girl," my parents murmur as they stroke my hair, as if attempting to sweep the evidence away, because they've never held a dying animal in their arms.

I have.


Well
Of course he wakes up
His paw hits the horn
I am gonna regret
The day that I was born

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

When the light of the living goes out of their eyes, bodies slackening until even their bones are limp, the air grows heavy in my lungs and breathing seems akin to suffocating. Newly idle fingers lace into fur, balling up with fists of unfocused fury, and I try to hold onto logic, but the excess of empathy that festers within me refuses.

(Feel it.) It's a quiet demand, one that wells up from the deep of me without fail. I hear it every time. (Feel it.) It hits me like a seizure, clawing at my muscles until my heart begins throwing itself against the walls of my throat with desperation, trying to escape in a flurry of thudding panic. Curling into myself, I have to bite down to hold it in — on my hands, wrists, arms, the frail skin that covers my knees... the teeth marks leave sharp little bruises behind, scatterings that follow thin crescent paths like mock-galaxies of otherworldly evidence. Blueprints of guilt. They try to hide among the freckles that cover my entire body, ashamed that I won't make a better attempt to hide them beneath clothing and lies, that I leave them out where anyone can see.

I don't have to hide anything. After a while, people push what they don't want to see from both their sight and minds.

Just like the death, no one is willing to see the pain except for me. It has always burned within me, even in the womb, igniting the thin strands of my hair until they turned as red as Hell itself. I became an effigy for warning, for danger: a mane of blood tumbling from my scalp and a pair of snake eyes to settle any confusion. Those who've heard the Old Stories, might call me an Eden beast. They wouldn't be wrong. I hold terrifying knowledge within me — my skin is not pale from innocence. Perhaps wealth is a kind of Paradise and maybe I should be content with it, to let my siblings live in ignorance, but we already know too much for that.


And then mom
Rushes out to the driveway
My sister too
Everyone's screaming
I am dreaming of you

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

There's no unknowing. Once you've eaten an apple, its flavor stays with you, lingering on your tongue with a persistent memory. Discovering that your parents were a force that demolished the good of an entire District isn't so different — the bitter taste of it may fade, but cannot be fully forgotten. I can't stop myself from carrying the thoughts with me, from offering them to Zion when he pries into my worries, despite being more than aware that knowing is enough to get us thrown out of... Paradise.

Our house is as big as a fortress, as if walls that raised children in their youth could grow up to be a measure for defense. Whether they're holding something in or keeping something out... this is the line of thought that keeps me awake at night as my eyes wander across the bird feathers and insect wings that I've gathered in my room, each of them from a creature that died in my hands. That irony won't leave me alone, forever reminding me of the source that heralded their deaths and my duty to them. (Beg for forgiveness. Shed your skin of sin and become Salvation's daughter.)

There is a squirrel at my window, huddled against the pane of glass in the dark. It's waiting for me. Everyone is waiting for me. Like everything else in this world, it wants to know what I will do with myself, if I will stay the keeper of sin, the one who haunts the cusp of Paradise and Hell, or if I will quit the agony of indecision and choose a side. My bed is soft and warm, like the creature outside, and will grow cold if I leave it — like the creature outside. There is no option without betrayal and although the gnawing ache is already possessing me, sending me shivers of inevitability, I'm still unsure as to where my loyalties truly lie.

(Denali.)

There is good in this house and no matter how many final breaths I witness, I cannot forget the unceasing breath of my family either. I cannot condemn them for their death-defiance.

(Denali.)

No. I can't love them any less, not even as I stumble from my bed, sheets flung to the floor as I throw my window open just in time to feel the squirrel's last heartbeat pulse against my fingertips.

(Feel it.)


And my arms get sore
And my palms start to sweat
And the tears roll down my face
Till my cheeks are hot and red
And soaking wet

( C O D E W O R D ) Odair
( F A C E C L A I M ) Elvira Eriksson


In come the cops
They blowtorch the doors
I start wailing
The lion roars

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

Lion's Teeth by The Mountain Goats

one :: two :: three :: four :: five :: six :: seven :: eight :: nine

The sister of Zion, Rio, Tallulah, Peregrine, and Seville Lyons. Also prolly some more Lyons, because I have ALL THE MUSE for this family.

There's no good way to end this
Anyone can see
There's this great big you
And little old me

( O T H E R / E M P A T H Y ) 3C1828
( O T H E R S P E A K I N G ) 50213E
( T E X T ) 663D65
( T H O U G H T S ) 6D518C
( S P E A K I N G ) 6865AD


And we hold on
For dear life
We hold on
We hold on