DISTRICT FOUR // felix faustus finch, navigator [fin]

It's beautiful out. I can't remember the last time I'd been able to do this; just relax within the cocoon of a net and breathe under the weight of the sky. The daylight tapestry has been covered over with a thick blanket of night pierced repeatedly to show the remnants of day throughout. The night is alight with day, twinkling ever brighter as the darkness grows deeper. I could stare until I'm blind from the pure stellar burst of it. I'm caught by every pulse of light as the current dances across the sky and surges through every opening above, only to let the dust trickle down to the waters upon which I float.

The gentle clang of chains pulls me from looking at the Phoenix, wings spread in glory and alight with sunfire in the dark night sky. Cassiopeia is mournful, chained to her throne and wailing in despair, pulling at her heavenly bonds and begging for mercy. It takes me a moment to realize she is not real, my head swimming with visions of past events as if they had happened before my eyes. Sometimes, I'm so lost in my reverie of the stars and stories interwoven so deeply into my heart that I forget that I'm not among those glistening orbs yet, not etched into eternity, but bound to my earthly bonds indefinitely. The others make fun of my airy-headed dreams, but I cannot seem to pull myself out, not when Pisces is swimming above me among the late fall chill and beckoning me to follow it across the horizon to what must lie beyond.

My limbs tangle in the makeshift blanket of nets, my thin arms and fingers so woven in that I find I'm an anchovy flopping about aimlessly. My tiny frame is caught within every knot of the net, my slight tossing and turning wrapping me more tightly within the ropes. It takes me a while to remove myself inch my inch from the interconnected web of which I've made a bed. I stumble from my bindings, my booted feet thumping against the worn wood of the vessel we call home. It is no home really, but it will surely lead to what must be beyond the shores and across the seas. It is but a temporary means of passage. I try to trod quietly as I make my way up to the bow of the Red Star, tripping upon my own clumsy feet every so often and flinching at every noise I make. The others all rest below deck, sleeping in swinging hammocks and dreaming of ridding the sea of monstrous enemies to mankind. A grimace turns my lips afoul at the thought, my tongue ready to drop scoldings and harsh awakenings alike. What do my brothers in arms know of the monsters that lurk the world? Not a thing, say I. If they could only see the darkness that dwells in their own hearts, then they would truly see the horrors that must be washed from this world. It's sad, really, how such evil can linger within the bodies of even the most valiant of souls.

When I reach the bow and measure my steps carefully, I shimmy my way forward until I lay precariously above the ocean mirror. My own night-swallowed face stares back at me, all sharp lines and soft skin. My wide eyes blink curiously, their burnt brown faded in the deep of night, looking black as coals in the dim lighting. Dark lashes flutter with every movement, brushing against my cheeks. Wiry eyebrows sit just below my wreck of hair, nearly black strands tinted with a deep burgundy falling messily across my forehead and into my eyes. It's been so long since I've kept it in an orderly fashion, combed off neatly and parted. Life at sea hardly allows me time to clean my body, not to mention my hair, not when I have charts to write up and directions to clear for headings. The work shows on my face, plum colored bags hanging under my squinting eyes and my lips pressed into a fine line. I frown at the cracks and splits that vein my lips, deep red wounds mixing with the normally pale pink of my mouth. My tongue feels dry, as if I'm rotting from the inside out. My entire body has felt like that recently, seeing as we haven't made landfall in a while and we're running low on important provisions, like, oh, I don't know, sterile water. Sterile water and shade would be nice, especially after three weeks without landing and getting supplies. I haven't exactly been able to sit inside the cabin to chart out courses. I needed to see the land before me, draw every little detail as far as the horizon. My skin, even in the dark, is red with fury at the abuse I've put it through. Some of the little spider veins across my cheeks seem to have burst for good, small red lines vining across my face. The rest of me doesn't fare much better.

My right hand is almost permanently stained black from my continual use of ink to chart out our courses, plot out the numbers and equations to get us where we need to go. The cage that is my body is malnourished, my ribs sticking out like a xylophone to play upon. My legs are skinny enough to use as a fishing rod, as are my arms. I'd always been lithe and more frail in frame, but never had I been so underweight. In the recent days of short food and even shorter temper, I've taken to staying up on deck during meal times, drawing across old paper another charting schematic while the boys below eat. It simply wouldn't do for a navigator to lead them astray.

As I look down at myself in the dark waters, I see the shell of a little boy searching for adventure and long since grown up prematurely within the confines of fire. My left side still holds the scars of that inferno, a long trail of pink, wrinkly skin swirling up my leg, torso, arm, and even neck, just barely licking up onto my face just below my eye. My fingers reach up to trace over the scar slightly, touching softly at the marred skin and wincing at the memory of it. It feels like it was yesterday that my life went up in smoke, but it was really two whole years ago. Feliciana was only eleven when it happened, all innocent smiles and joyed laughter. She was so tiny, even then, not having gone through any growth spurts despite most girls her age being taller than the boys then. She was a little midget, but she was always so happy. Never were we apart. It was always me and her, sitting in her room reading poems together or walking down on the beach. She was my little blessing, the best thing I could ask for. When I used to have night terrors of monsters, I could hardly trust myself to sleep, but Feliciana was always there for me. Eventually, I grew out of that phase with a little bit of practice. Father had once told me that monsters were just like us, just misunderstood creatures. From then on, I saw the monsters in everyone; greedy hounds with long claws and gluttonous pigs with large stomachs. I could only see the evil, having to try so hard to see the good in anything anymore, but Feliciana was always different. I could see the monsters of the world in everyone else, but I could never see a monster in her. She wasn't a monster, but an angel.

We hadn't been poor by any means. Our parents had a prospering tailor shop in their prime, my father having a handy eye for the numbers of the operation and my mother having careful hands for even the most intricate of sewing details. Father was usually quiet, reserved, but mother was a while different story. Mother had a bit of a tendency to fly off the handles. By nature, she was a very emotional woman. She got riled up about everything, but she mainly just seethed about the Hunger Games. That was one thing my parents both despised, their deep burning hatred for the injustices of the Capitol seeping into their everyday life. They'd been warned a few times in the past to tone it down too, but I don't think they ever really did. I don't think they should have either. The Capitol is disgusting, a fake fairytale land that sucks the life from those around it and leaves everything else a wasteland. My parents saw it for what it was and didn't care about the consequences of speaking out about it. Other than that, they were normal parents. They weren't home often because they were always working, but they had a maid stay home with us while they were off in the shop. Marian was young, probably no more than twenty, so it was no surprise that she tended to float off into her own thoughts while watching us. We just didn't expect for her to disappear from her head so completely that night.

I just remember it being warm when I woke up late at night, a scream ripping through the air and chilling me to the bone. My room was dark, but there was bright orange creeping just beyond, lighting up the crack between the floor and the door. It had only taken me seconds to slip from my bed, tired and confused, and yank my door open. Flames raged all around me for just a moment before catching upon the left side of my body and gnawing at my flesh. I tried to scream, but nothing came out with the stifling heat around me. Then I was being pulled from the inferno and outside, immediately doused in water and patted down with a blanket. Everything hurt and I couldn't even think straight, not when there was screaming and crackling fire. That's why it wasn't until a week later when I finally started to ask questions and beg for my parents and sister that I found out the truth. My parents couldn't be found, had supposedly disappeared, and my sister had... I had been half eaten by the fire, but she had been consumed.

It was then that I was shipped off to the orphanage, suddenly completely alone. I buried myself in my father's numbers and my sister's poetry and my mother's weaving. I clung to the memory of them and tried to make them come alive in myself, but all I could can really see is my own monster, an ugly thing that can't save anyone. It can see so much, but it does nothing to change what surrounds it, choosing instead to preserve itself and shut itself away from the world. My hand swings down at the water, striking the ugly thing before me and making it wash away in ripples as I quickly flip over, unwilling to acknowledge it anymore. Two years and nothing has changed. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if any day is really different anymore. Every day blends and melds together to the point where I'm not even sure where in life this ship floats any longer. Then again, I'm not sure I've really understood this ship, or those on it, to begin with.

I was alone when I went to the orphanage, still burned and recovering from the physical damage and mental pain. The itching of the healing I could bear, but the inner torment was too much. My monster was eating me alive inside, whisper things I didn't want to hear, laying blame I didn't want to bear. Could I have saved her? Could I have gotten her out? Was it my fault? Should I have made sure all the candles had been blown out before going to bed? Every single day, my insides wear away with the raging fire that my own monster created, burning away everything I feel until all that's left is grey ash, just remnants of what used to be. It hurts, my skin crawling and itching more at the sweltering heat building inside until it all just blows out. I used to keep it under control with numbers and poems and sewing. I still do, but that's not what tames the fire anymore. The ocean does that now.

I can still remember the day my life changed. I had been sitting up on the roof, drawing out the stars and their paths across the sky, charting my own map of the heavens, when I heard a voice from behind me asking if they could see. He was one of the most handsome boys at the orphanage, charismatic and charming. I was the little loner boy who people were afraid to get close to. He was curious about the stars, had dreamed of them again and again, had dreamed of getting out. My quiet confirmation of my similar thoughts was all it took to bind us with a common need. Both of us were dreamers, people trapped behind our own walls created by fate and the monsters around us. His monster was a cunning one, one that made him inferior and easily swayed by his more perilous mate. I had hoped that that night up on the rooftop could last forever, my monster quelled by a kind smile and a gentle concern.

As life goes, it did not. In fact, that night stretched into a different life. Jasper often came to fetch me to join he and his friends after that, ignoring my quiet protests and pulling me along. They were a ragtag bunch of kids, all of them different and in their own worlds with their own monsters. Their naivety, their pride, their foolishness all made them weak, but together, they were strong. Each of them had someone to lean on, someone to gain from, and for the first time since Feliciana's death, I felt truly alone. I had been invited into this group, but I knew I would never really belong to it, no matter the camaraderie I felt for the others. I was still a boy trying to protect the innocence in others, trying to steer them on the right path, especially the younger ones. I didn't expect to actually have to guide us along the ocean though.

The idea to steal away onto a ship and take it over was so sudden that I didn't really understand what was going on until myself and my pack of belongings were stowed away in a cargo hold. The gravity of the situation was lost on me until we had become the crew of the Red Star. Suddenly, I was adrift at sea, my fire washed out by the waves and my dreams encouraged by the endless expanse of the sea. The possibilities were endless once we had taken off, set sail into the sun, and never looked back. My future was somewhere on the horizon, come hell or high water. I'm just still searching for the path there across the seas glittered in sunrise gold.

There's only a speck of the sun on the horizon now, the globe of the sun rising fraction by fraction into existence and concealing the stars. It's fire burns my skin over again, numb limbs warming as I stare down at my monster in my reflection, just a little boy looking for something he'll never find and keeping himself closed away until he finds it. My hand swipes the image away before I straighten myself up and set about getting ready for another day's charting and equating where to go. The fire will never be quelled, not until I reach the land beyond the waves and dive straight into the heart of the inferno itself.