{Brush.Strokes.To.Heaven} [Elodie, Day 6]

I watch the blood drip. One, two, three, four, five. Most times we treat it like it's nothing more than a stupid liquid that sits on the inside of us, but I see it fro what it really is now. Gold. Rare - hidden within us until something cuts into our exterior in search of this valuable resource inside us all. Gold - everyone wants it. Blood - everyone around me wants mine spattered in the dirt. Gold - the most valuable of all the resources we pull out of the Earth. Blood - the most valuable liquid to the body. Gold - without it, every Capitolite would die. Blood - without mine, I die. But still I watch the blood drip from my arm like it is worthless. But, of course, that's because my blood is worthless. No one cares about the life it gives to me because no one cares about my life. If I bled to death right here and right now, no one would remember me after a month or so. Sure, it might hurt Urbane a little back home, maybe my sisters and brothers would shed a few tears, maybe some lost souls back in District 5 would mourn because they don't get their wonderful benefits from another Victor, perhaps a few of my male friends would be disappointed that they lost a hold to stick it in, but in a few months, no one will remember me. Because I am unloved, unwanted, unimportant, forgettable. The most I could do now is run around naked or be beheaded by the future Victor or chop off my other hand somehow and use it as a crazy sex toy. Maybe then someone would remember me for years and years and years. Remember me amongst the other naked tributes, remember me as another statistic, remember me as just another one of those crazies of the past. So which is more important? Being remembered as a naked kid, a stat, a crazy? Or being forgotten and dying as me, myself, and I?

I turn my eyes away from my bloodied arm, feeling around to my back where my hand comes away bloodier than it had before, the hot sticky liquid already beginning to consume me. My hand shakes as I stare at it, red and alone. I wipe it on my shirt, smearing the blood across the purple, creating a darker color. I imagine it to be the color of death looming so near to me. I heave a deep breath, pulling air shakily into my lungs, trying not to let my mind wander to far away from me. But still I see every single face - William, Essence, Benat, Ivy ... Dead. I can see their dead eyes, staring into the sky, blood draining from their bodies, pooling beneath them in the sand and in the vines. I close my eyes where I hide beneath a twisty labyrinth of vines and leaves, thorns digging into my back and my thighs and my feet, threatening to shoo me out of my hiding place and back to the screaming and sweating and blood. My eyes fly open again at the sound of a cannon, my body jolting in surprise and fear. I listen for movement, for footsteps, for another beating heart, but I only hear distant screaming. (Or maybe it's all just in my head? In my memories?) I take another deep breath, staring into the water that sits in my jug. My hair is knotted, snarled, dirty, sticking to my neck and forehead. My face is bloodied, caked in dirt, my freckles shooting through the murkiness, my lips cracked and bleeding. I lick at them, my tongue like sandpaper, scratching roughly across the lips that are supposed to be soft and kissable. My eyes - green, bloodshot, dark and sagging from the long bout of fatigue I have been fighting since this whole thing started on the day of the Reaping, glassed over, tears looming in them, planning to spill over my cheeks and down my chin. But I won't let them fall. I am done crying for things I have never had.

I shake my head, throwing the jug away from me, watching it roll away into the thicker thorns. I shiver as a cold wave runs through my body, even as sweat drips down my back and across my forehead. I rest my chin on my knees, staring at the specks of light that make their way through the tangle of vines. The light rests on my toes, making my toenails sort of glimmer. My hand wanders to the fingernails that dangle from the thread around my neck, five blood crusted nails searching for the hand that they will never get back. I move my hand to the ray of light that shines at my feet, letting it fall into my palm and in-between my fingers. I remember my jar of fireflies again, all of them dying inside without the air they need. I grab at the light now, pulling my hand away only to find it still empty. That's all I wanted then, that's all I want now. I only wanted to hold a bit of light, to hold it close to my heart. But it all dies before I can grasp it. It seems a common thing amongst everything I ever try to hold. It slips through my fingers, avoids even my slightest touch, fearing what I will use it for. Or maybe it's only teasing me, letting me look as much as I want, letting me walk by the light I see in the streets - the light I see in every mother's eyes, the light I see on every little girl's face - but never letting me hold the light in my eyes or on my face or in my heart. So close, yet so far away.

I dig my toes into the dirt beneath me, feeling the effects of being alone. At this moment, I feel myself wanting to be at home, to be with my family, something that I have never wanted before. For years I had been running from them, for years I wished I could just disappear, hide away in my room and never come out. But now I want nothing more than to be sitting around the dinner table, feeling out of place and unwanted. At least their I can pretend that I am not alone. Right here, sitting in this undergrowth, staring at the light I can never have, hugging my knees tightly to my chest, looking into the dead eyes, I know I am completely alone. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want my family back. They aren't mine to have or to hold but I want them back anyway. They weren't mine to lose but I need to find them. Justice, Meryem, Kirk, Savoy, Celeste, Francesca - I need them. I need to go home, to be home, to find them and hold them and never let go, no matter how much they struggle to be free of me, I will always be flying right behind them, fighting to keep up but managing the whole way. I won't let go. No matter how much they want me to, I will never let go

"Mom." It's only a whisper, something so small that I think it was just the wind, not something that escaped my lips. But then it comes out louder as I push myself to my feet, gasping in pain, my voice clawing to make it through the pain, my hand reaching for the other hand that isn't there. The hand I held on the way back from the orphanage. I can feel my hand in hers, happy and holding tight, never wanting to let go. I push from my hiding spot, spinning around, searching for a camera, hoping so much that she can see me, hear me. "Mom!" I reach out with my hand that is nothing more than a stub and scream when my collar bone grinds and protests my movement. And I pet at the stump, bandaged and bloody and totally worthless, and I scream again, tears sitting in my eyes but not falling. I can feel myself unraveling, the tightly wound spool of thread that is me is coming apart in a pile of twisted strings, tangled feelings. "I'm sorry, little hand." I manage in a strangled voice, the tears finally beginning to roll down my cheeks. I scream because I told myself I wasn't going to cry anymore, because I have to get home and only the strong get home and out of this hell, but the tears keep coming, the feelings still pouring out of me. "I'm sorry, Will. And Essence and Benat and Ivy. I taste the salt of my tears as I yell at the vines and sky and everything around me. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you and even more sorry that I didn't want to. I swallow and keep going, the filter on my mouth and the gate into my heart breaking. I stare down at my feet. "I'm sorry. I should've kept my shoes on, I know." I stare into the sky, pulling my hand through my hair, gasping for air. "God, I'm sorry for - for being a fucking slut. I'm sorry that naked guys are fun to play with." I stare into the undergrowth, spinning around and around, making sure they can hear me. "Cricket, I'm sorry I took your stupid knife! Pyrian, Jesus ... I know you can't hear me but I'm sorry I kissed you and like, enjoyed it? And River, you fucking - just, I'm sorry! I'm sorry I cursed you behind your back and not to your face. I shouldn't complain about my freaking shoulder when you coulda just spattered my brains on the ground but Jesus it freaking hurts! I'm sorry for trying to kill you earlier Owen! And - everyone else, I'm sorry but odds are I have pictured you naked and I realize now that that's slutty and I already apologized for that so, yeah."

Silence washes over me again as the words echo through the emptiness. And then I am sobbing, still trying to find someone to listen. They need to hear me. They need to know, to forgive. "I'm sorry paintbrush. I shoulda kept you at home where you would be safe and loved properly but I was being a selfish bitch and I needed you. I need you!" My hand is clenched around the wood of the brush, my blood pulsing, my knuckles turning white. But it can't hear me either. Or it choose not to forgive me. "Oh great Victor Lethe!" I laugh, shrugging even though it hurts, II close my eyes, hiccuping. "Sorry I totally ignored you and have been jealous of you and your - your everything since like, the first time I met you. That's just me being a total bitch, you know? Me, the Queen of all the Bitches and Sluts!" And then the short-lived smile falls from my face and collapse to the ground, ignoring the sting of thorns in my knees and hands. "I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment to you. To everyone really. I'm trying! So, so hard I am trying! You have to see that, don't you?!" I sniffle and wipe at the drool and tears that hand at my lips and off my chin. My heart aches as I curl up on the ground. "Mom. Not the real bitch who left me at the orphanage but the one that I love. Mom, I'm so sorry. For everything. Everything. I'm sorry. I love you, Mom. Thanks for making me your little girl."

My throat hurts as sobs rack my body, my shoulders shuddering on the ground. Everything hurts. My shoulders, my knees, my eyes, my lips, my feet, my heart, my head, my arms, my back, my lungs, my stomach, my hands - everything aches even after my burdens have spilled into the open air. I close my eyes and cry and cry and cry, even after the tears quit coming I keep crying, my body still shuddering. I hold myself, knowing no one else ever will, my arms surrounding me in the only real embrace I have ever had. And I stay like that, until the sun begins to set over the horizon and shadows begin to appear where the sun has been only moments ago.

And then my eyes flutter open to a parachute - multiple little things floating through the sky, searching. I sit up, blinking my swollen eyes, wiping at crusty feeling on my face. And then it is all landing before me, a gift sent from the heavens, something that makes the smile return to my lips. My hand shakes as I reach for palette, a whole array of colors sitting upon it. A bottle of wine, pure sparkling goodness, something only the Capitol has. I grab at the neck of the bottle, grabbing my knife and twisting and jabbing at the cork in the top until it pops off, the smell of alcohol hitting me in the face, drawing me in. I put my lips to the mouth of the bottle, letting the taste wash over my tongue, sighing in relief and joy as the warmth of it hits my stomach. And then I am staring at the expanse of white. A frontier that has yet to be created. I run my fingers across the rough canvas, sighing in relief, letting it's beauty engulf me. I smile and then grab the paint, desperate to do the only thing I am even remotely good at, afraid that it might all disappear if I don't hurry. I cradle the paint in the crease of my left arm, and press the tip of the brush into the yellow paint, twirling it, slowly lowering the tip to the white, drawing the toe of the brush lightly across the canvas. And then I am going furiously, painting and painting and painting, melding colors together, swiping the paint with my fingers, creating the first masterpiece I have in weeks. I paint even after the sun goes over the edge of the land, aided only by the light of the stars and the moon together. I laugh because my right hand is horrible at this, because I don't know what I am painting, because everything is so perfect and wonderful and beautiful. And because I know I can look at this painting and it isn't just a single thing. It's infinite things. It's anything you want it to be. Anything.

The world is not filled with 'definites' and 'for sures'. The world isn't made of straight lines. There isn't one answer but many. There isn't any wrongs, only rights. So what you see and what I see may be different, but we are always right. We are always lucky enough to see what we need to see.