artemis chautin d2 {finished}

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Artemis - Goddess of the hunt, wilderness, wild animals, night and the moon. She is also protector of maidens.

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when all of your flaws
and all of my flaws
are laid out one by one
a wonderful part of the mess that we made
we pick ourselves undone

"Come on," my sister calls from behind the lens. "Take a picture!"

It's her new favourite thing. A camera - something you don't see so often in District 2 - but cameras have about as much use in this family as a bucket with a hole in it. Cameras are for happy families. And the only thing happy in this family is Tiger herself, with her radiant excitement and an incandescent smile that could burn a hole in the sun itself.

"Why?" I snarl, rolling my brown eyes at her as I fold my arms. "Because I want you to!" she grins from behind her hunk of metal and glass. "You look nice!" Today, I do. Not most days. I put on my best coat, a nice top, even pulled my hair up with a ribbon for once. Got myself dragged out to what looks like the middle of nowhere District 10. "Shock-horror," Ariadne would smirk (I snarled and grimaced and copied that damn smirk for years to perfect the art of carelessness Ariadne practically reeks of.) "Arty made an effort."

And why? Because she asked me to.

She doesn't crinkle her nose up, like me, or purse her lips together when things aren't going well, like me. Freckles splash both of our faces, as if the rain had once touched our skin when we were young and decided that it would never leave. Her eyes dance with possibility and optimism, whilst I cross my arms in a fierce brandish of defiance and fury. She just smiles, and waves her hand to nudge me along. "Shuffle to the left a bit? No, your other left... "

My small mouth opens to argue "That is my left!",

[/i] but with a snap, she's already caught me. Later on, as my brown eyes cascade over the black-and-white photo, I would find it looks more as if I've taken a breath of air [/color](or the wind behind me that dances with my strands of straggly brown has taken it out of me instead).

"There!" she says with a giggle to her voice and a completed shrug to her shoulders, "Got it!" My eyebrows furring together in disbelief, I cry out in protest. "You dragged me all the way out here for one photo?!" My insides burst with annoyance, patience unable to keep its bind against the rage building up inside of me. My short, gangly legs ache from the hours of walking I'd done for her sake, and for what, one photograph?

But she's already hurrying back home, a swing in her step just another dance in her optimistic world, too caught up in it to notice the darkness around her. Or too scared, I think with a sigh, trudging back down the path in a rhythm of stomps to follow her home. But that's the thing, I think quietly to myself as I catch up to her, trying to hide the smile that tugs at the corners of my mouth as she attempts to cartwheel down the hill - a blur of yellow, clothes and wonder being chased by a smaller shade of brown in the form of me.

Tigers aren't afraid of anything.

all of your flaws and all of my flaws
they lie there hand in hand
ones we've inherited
ones that we learned
they pass from man to man

And I'm afraid of failure.

They can tell, as I hammer at the punching bags in the Training Centre over and over again, refusing to let my temper get the better of me. Temper leads to anger, anger leads to arrogance, and arrogance leads you to getting into trouble - or worse, dead. They can tell that I've dragged myself here on my own account (filling out the Career paperwork myself because my parents didn't have time to take out of their busy schedule of eating, sleeping and arguing to do it for me), desperate to prove myself that I can, because they say I can't. I even insisted I went to school - real school, that is - because I was sick of my house so much that I couldn't bare having to be taught in it, too.

At school, we had to draw our family trees. Some kids loved it, highlighting famous victors and tributes on their branches. The most famous families got to be hung on the walls, effort wasted in crayons and fancy glitter labels that somehow made them just that much better than everyone else. I hated it. Not one of my family members are special, or famous - clever, yes, but not in the ways District 2 recognises. Ariadne is clever with words and wits, and Tig shines in her own special way. I drew my grandparents at the top - their names long forgotten. ("Because you don't miss something that was never here in the first place.")[/i] Then my Dad, and my Uncle, and my Mom and Aunt.

My Uncle and Aunt's line was drawn with the utmost care, pristine and perfect. My parent's one was broken and ugly, gaps in their pencil line where the arguments had eaten them away. [/color]I am my parent's child, the perfect combination of freckles and brown locks - but all that glitters is not necessarily gold. At the beginning of my sister's line was Ari, zig-zags and sparks and my Mom's complexion. Then came Tig, spirals and waves and corkscrew curls the colour of the sun. Next to her was me: a swirly line with the odd dot to decorate, the words Artemis Lyra placed underneath to signify my place in this 'family'. But families are supposed to be united, not broken and constantly arguing. My cousins have it so lucky, with parents who love them just as much as they love each-other. Why mine stay together, nobody knows.

Maybe they're just scared.

there's a hole in my soul - i can't fill it, can you fill it?
you have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve
and i have always buried them deep beneath the ground
dig them up; let's finish what we've started
dig them up, so nothing's left unturned

I'll admit that I get scared when they argue.

At night, when their angry voices bounce around the house and fall through my bedroom walls, Tig crawls into my bed and wraps her arms around me, shielding me from their words. She's always had a knack for knowing precisely what others are feeling. With small words that only I can hear (such a rarity in our house - whispering), she speaks softly into her sighs. "Sometimes I pretend that they're not here at all," she confesses into the dark. "Why?" I ask (a single syllable I tend to let slip from my lips far too often), croaking with tiredness and strain. "Pretending is stupid."

"Because you don't miss something that was never here in the first place."

In all of my sister's excited, never-ending glory of words and colours and whatever else goes on up in that frizzy blonde head of hers, she can really pack a punch when the time comes. It's silly, but I used to think that her hair grew so bright and curly not because of genes and DNA, but because her head wasn't big enough to contain the wonders in her mind, so they sprouted from her scalp instead and turned into gold. If that were true, then I must have something similar locked up in my head - but I think it's more tainted and dark like Ariadne's. Wonderful, yes - but never gold. 'Cause I learnt long ago that people tend to throw things at rocks that shine.

But Tiger isn't scared of anything. So I'll try to be a lion-heart, too.[/blockquote]

[/size]other info[/font][/size][/color]

age | fourteen
district | two
face claim | stefania owen
song lyrics | flaws by bastille
code word | odair

_________

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