Lyra Harper -- District Twelve

t h e b o o k t h i e f | lyra fae harper
s h e d i d n ' t s t a r t t h a t w a y | lyra
i n t h e b e g i n n i n g | fifteen
b u t i g u e s s | female
s o m e t h i n g s t u r n o u t d i f f e r e n t | district twelve

THE SKY IS THE COLOR OF THE IN BETWEEN. Something she never wanted; her feet are always on the move, even in early birth. She went from doorstep to doorstep, while the rain falls lightly. She had no one to sing to her and so that was her lullaby. The basket was her home and she has kept it forever. Now the cracks between the woven reeds house the accumulated dust, and the blankets that once were her walls, the other half of the whole — the other part was her infant self — that lay in there (cut up to pieces to sew new things, she believed in rebirth) were now replaced by trinkets and little pieces of paper — all clues. She believes she has a mystery to solve, and time is precious, constant. Fast. It waits for no one, and certainly not for her.

She never liked gray — it reminded her of stillness — but I liked it: I loved it, the contrast of her burning hair against the milky sky, like she was the only one alive.

In this place of starving bodies and hollowed faces, maybe she was.

*** A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ***
She was not.

She is alive like among many others, like the ones that she lives with. The ones who share the same roof with her, but not the same blood. She wished she did. To share a some sort of connection to the rest, to the ones left breathing. She doesn’t cry out for longing, not because she won’t or she can’t, simply because she just doesn't. But her heart is heavy no matter how many times she sets it aflame — it drowns nevertheless.

Her eyes are green, but they don’t remind me of spring. They are dead in the edges and alive in the middle — nature wouldn’t suffice, but how her mother and father lay lifeless among the flames, limbs dead but their chests glowing; your parents are not dead, Lyra. They are in your eyes. She doesn’t pierce people into their souls. She flits through their figures and her gaze would land nowhere. They’d say that she can daydream even in the highest noon, but I know her. Maybe I know her too much, and her wayward gaze — she wasn’t staring at the distance.

*** SOMETHING THAT I HAVE ALWAYS FEARED, YET WONDERED WITH GREAT CURIOSITY ***
She was staring at me.

SHE WOULD READ UNDER COVERS, under shadows, and no matter how many candles she light they would always seem to dance in the corners of her room. She drank every letter, grew thirstier as her fingers plucked a corner and flipped to the next page. Books of all thickness and all studies piled up high, towers of their own, occupying most of the wooden floor so she'd have to tip-toe around to get from one side to another. Your room was filled, Lyra. Filled with books, filled with little scrap notes with hastily written words on them, but most of all filled with secrets. (I wish I could read you like a book, like the rest always say — they say a lot of things. A favorite of mine is that I can end anyone to my own whim. I can’t; I am only a result, an aftermath.) Dangerous — her eyes are dangerous; they reveal her mind. With every glance that lasts for too long towards the flickering candle, I know you want fire — you want the fire that lives in the hearth of every home during winter, that makes every beating heart thrum, that took what you could’ve had.

You cradle it, but it will consume you.

They called her Fae when she began to walk. Her feet were small, minuscule, and so were her limbs — but she moved in a whirlwind. She wasn’t graceful — she was three — and she stumbled in her own feet and already had scratches and nicks embedded in her pale skin at such a young age (they faded, but the three burns on her back didn’t.) Her eyes were large and glassy, her lips almost nonexistent and thin, while her hair strayed and settled in curls at the nape of her neck, grew to sleep in the curve of her shoulders. Maybe they reminded her of stories older than Panem itself, but she reminded me of fire.

She saw the resemblance when she was twelve.

*** WHAT SHE SAW IN HER REFLECTION ***
A waif-like figure, arms and legs that never held more than bones and entwined veins, snow for skin that never melts but burns to a pale shade of pink, thought never close to your hair that now grew to half your height — half a liability, half a cape, but all the fire on her stick figure of a body. A candle.

SHE SEARCHED FOR ME EVERYWHERE. She scoured mine caverns with history of explosions written by the vacant carts that line the wall, the air of silence that hangs around them, a standing obituary — some post printed signs to announce a beloved's death, the rest will have a natural monument while I carry different shades. She peered through faulty electric fences, tiny hands gripping the wires as though in an effort to stop herself from crossing the other side altogether.

*** AN INEVITABLE EVENT ***
She will, one day.

She sees me reflected in the lost gazes of the hungry. They litter the Seam, and perhaps it is haunting to some — but not for — how the bodies all seem to line up, just waiting. Maybe she hopes to see me in the hollows of skeleton trees, in the graveyards of the ones long gone, in what she hoped were the ruins of what could have been her home, just there in near east to the orphanage. She thinks I'm hiding.

*** WHAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW ***
I've been beside her the whole time.

c o d e w o r d | odair
a n d w h i l e h e r f a c e | olga moskvina
r e m a i n s t r u e , l i k e s t a t u e | life after death plot
i t b r e a k s | inspired by the book thief by markus zusak and his dark materials series by philip pullman

a n a u t h o r ' s n o t e | colors will be added in later. it's 2 am and i think i need to sleep xD