"ART" | AVOX | FIN

 e x r a m.
✞

Seventeen, and years of corruption left to string from her fingertips, Exram had lived for the ounces of complexity in a world of simplicity. Each pint of it, she drank the poison by the vial. Back when life was too simple, where the pendulum never even began to swing, she was seemed to be just another drone of distraction. Just another dreamer in a black and white world - in district five that's all there ever was. Both her parents were oil collectors, basic workers and they barely had enough money to swing by the hinges of their rotting wooden bedroom doors. (That's where the devil enters, through the holes in the wall.) 

In the dark it all ran dry, the color of her world drained like the rain falling in all their eyes. (Blinking for vision, but they were always just as blind as before, weren't they?) Exram entered the same field as her parents', oil burns etching up her arms, and in a way she embraced them. Letting the oil burn through the edging threads of her grey sleeves, painting her arms red, pink. They weren't gorgeous, but they were art. Her goal wasn't to break the mold, but to burn the mold.

To burn the mold. Ripped gowns were her canvas, they never had money for an actual one. Funds ran dry like color clay, like the color of her world. On her paint palette were only two: the black of her district, and the red of her veins. The pains of art, but those who are great always have part of them in their work. Broken, sliced, burned; her goal wasn't to drown, but to breath. To be immune is to be sick first, every pain was dealt to come back truly more whole. And in the depths of her consciousnesses, she didn't fear death, death meant life. Losing this life meant gaining another, and in the end that was only reward reaped. The soft lick of an angel, heaven brushing her skin like those ripped gowns before being painted with hell and human greed. Life anew. 

Maybe that's why Exram died that night.

Touched by the embers of human greed and plagued by dignity, Exram's soul left that body the same way her body fled that district. Straight into the forests, the smell of oil meeting pines like a front and in the hurricane created, Exram never breathed again. Stripped of flesh and straight to the bone marrow, nothing of her remained but winter. The humming of frostbite, her burn marks became birth marks as she became what she never was, nature. She was the billowing, the whistle of the north, trekking to district two. Blessed by a new father called the north wind she was a gust, a frenzy, just a wanderer for just another minute.

Each new life you retain one thing - knowledge. Exram knew it, she didn't know much, just the grey of a world never painted, just the clouds of distraction, but she knew the concept of knowledge, the concept of worth. The concept of beauty, the higher your soul, the higher your concept. Bless by her aching bones with either  angel kisses or greed, winter only blew in one stream, carrying her by the collar as a wild child. Heavens were watching her, spectating her safety before her second life began, her soul was too new to be taken. Body weak, but her mind strong.

With a platinum heart she made it to the lion's cage.

✞

(Ona - it's glorifying, the cross carved into the hatchet in my hand, frayed hair sticking to my forehead by both blood and sweat, in the faded lights, I take my stance. A brief pause - art art art art - it's crazed, wide eyes peeling the pupils from my skin, my skin, it cries from the scars, self induced or not, I'm the true mutt here. A pure lion and Art, art art art, my head spins across the axis of this. Blood slides from the handle and crusts on my hands, both I and he are circling, drawing forth a ritual in the sand between us. Each step feels like I'm gravity, pulsating forth between the fabrications of what's real. 

He lunges-) static

✞

White blood cells of her new life rejected her, spit on the ashes she was forged from as a phoenix, not as a waste. Goddamn breath of winter, she was shunned from street rats, she was acid in the face of the public, crazed, what a fucking joke. Tongues laced with poison, each word spoken to her felt like a new injection, a new python bite on the skin cells of reality, but never once did she question it. For years of life, Exram had bit the head of this same serpent, swallowed poison like it was the platinum she was scrapped out of; Hiver was nothing but better. An evolution, a new era of suspension of being tested by an invisible examiner, burning and tearing and clipping the wings off her every time she flew too close to the sun to see if she was worthy enough of a new life. 

It's a new pysche. 

Just like each year of a life before, Hiver grew along from natural selection; a certain gene pool selected for the highlighted life style. In the technobeats, she embraced the shadow people who spit at her - in the end, art was only made for pressure. The weights, the tons of society weighing on her back, for months she had taken the odds by the bulk. For forever, all of eternity Hiver had received treated like a test, she found her home among the shadows the cut at the callouses building over her heart. In the form of a freak show, the word they used to label the burns on her arms and slash on her face, the indents of her stomach from starvation, she found her solace in the pressure. 

District two spit her out for a carnival to swallow. 

Surrounded by the same type of bred crazy like herself, it was therapeutic, they all had their place together in the same way obsidian was made. Her broken fingers and burnt rebirthmarks were not a down fall in a world shunned out from view. From the reputed side of the world, where social norms weren't mixed into their embers, they were all just beauty, glorious. Each moment she strived, made a lion tamer because the patterns and boils of her arms were a crown to reign under.  Hiver controlled, because here was where she was placed to be, not district two, just in the place of glory.

✞

(Sins - fangs sunk into hatchet, a river of blood drowning from the beast's mouth - purification - salt the wound. It roars of pain, I roar of pride, the monsters of the dark fleeing into my veins because only a certain breed of crazy lives down here. Blood paints my face, meeting with the open wound of my forehead from claws, both mine and his mane wore down with the weight of his blood, pounds full of our past sins, red slips between his snarl, ready to bathe me in it as if I'm nothing more than a damn sack. I'll be feasting on his fucking skin. I'll wear his eyes like a crown, meat is for the psychopaths, this lion is an etch of my own creation before I place its head on my hatchet.

He lungs-)

✞

A crown can only be worn above a kingdom to rule over - as long as Hiver had her's, the lion following the red prints on her skin with every taunt. Every whip crack, every thrown meat, she called him Reiner, the lion she ruled, her personal kingdom, and rightly so she trusted Reiner's fangs around her heart. Under the torture of becoming art, chains wrapped their brain cells together and acted under the same guise, as long as people still showed up to watch people with dirt under their nails live their daily lives for cash, all was well. Their shadow carnival breathed on, as Reiner chewed on wooden pillars and the geek braided the lion's hair. They wore a crown around Hiver's wrists so tight. 

With their kingdom falling, Reiner ripped the crown from Hiver's fingertips, five fingers - the entirety of a left hand. Fangs sank into flesh with blood painting the scene in phantom-colors, flash of panic and only one hand, the crowd shouted as Reiner's paw slammed against her chest. Hiver grabbed up, free fingers clawing against lion's skin as she stabbed three finger's into black pupils. Claws printed into her torso like a cage, coming to free her heart, nononono, she wasn't a worth a third life, there was no sacrifice, long live the queen- Reiner roared as she ripped out a single eye.

It was terrifying, her only friend half blind and bleeding on top her, Reiner screamed as Hiver dug her fingers into the empty socket, blood coating her nails; long live the queen bitch. He cocked back, close to swallowing her face as the geek reached around its mane, knife shredding against its thick neck and releasing onto Hiver. Raining such as her dread before the word no could rip from her throat, scarring against vocal chords as rough as the wound of her hand would heal. Her last friend sank its head into the sand beside her, the crowd screamed horrified, but this isn't the final act.

It's only the beginning of Cha. 

Hiver screamed as Reiner's blood sank through her shirt, painted her entire body crimson as the eye in her hand stared right into her (and it never stopped, year built on year built on one more fucking year she still sees the black of that eye, the strained red veins and the blood snaking down her arm, it never stops) the geek dropped the knife, reaching for Hiver's hand and she grabbed for it, the knife. Stabbing him in the shins until he's on the same level as her - the dirt - and her only intention was making sure he wasn't buried anywhere near Reiner, knife meeting bone as the crowd flees. Somewhere a peacekeeper grabs her, blood shifting into the mold of his glove as he rips the knife from her hands before she can kill him, all she's given is the chance to fling crazed shit before she can break down completely. 

✞

(Sona - ten fingers wrap around the base of the hatchet, iron and sweat fusing them to one entity, he lunges again - Reiner - my breath traps in my throat, flying from the path but claws slice at my arm, three cornrows of ripped skin immediately bleeding. Sea salt forming from the maritime of my body burn the edges, seething pain through marrows of my being and my elbow numbs from the landing on the hard sand. How to breath, how to breath, the lion rounds up again after spewing blood back onto my face like a biblical plague and my hatchet wasting an arm's length away. Reiner bites the wall, while I raise again, grabbing and 

I swing-)

✞

In waves, the gods forgave her, the waste of a second life they implanted onto Exram's body - Hiver's existence was a black smudge of on the workships of the heavens, but the third life was no act of a lighter being. The third soul casted into her body, morphing her by the nature of genes, was no holy work; it was corruption, a human act outweighing those of a god. Rebirth was a light, the work of reanimation was nothing more than the shadows that haunted Hiver like the absence of a tongue. The capitol took her voice, and ruined Hiver, the chance of a second life rubbed into ashes; she was nothing. Less than nothing.

The horrors of Hiver melted away under the night, once her soul was sold to a Mr. Eerias Cornioux, she was no longer anything more than a body. Once a soul, artwork of a god itself, she now wastes as a door hopper, melted from the inside out into ashes, now burning alive. Cornioux drugged her from the hells burning around her, always too high to notice the new nose shape, the different eye colors, beauty marks dotted across her face, the addition of two arms, not crowns, or canvases, or anything, just arms. She was nothing more of the same body she had been a year ago, or two years ago, or seventeen years ago.

She was nothing more than Cha. 

Never had it scraped her mind like the pills had, head too far into the clouds to notice the way they morphed her body, no tongue, no life, no back story, she was a blow up doll. And for a time, scraping through life like that didn't hurt; she wasn't the burner of the mold, she was the mold, she was just clay to be molded in every direction plausible, she was just material to be cut, smashed, pounded, hammered, sliced, chopped, bled, destroyed, built, sculpted.

To be experimented with.

But no matter how much they changed her on the outside, she was no Cha, and even without drugs she was unacceptable. A special breed of crazed, yes, but an exception to their society, no. The distractions chewed away at her awareness, and for her it was decent, for her, just her, not Hiver or Cha or Exram, just her; that is why she was no use to them. Only a waste of time, already a waste of thousands. 

So they sold her once again.

✞

Fina - the hatchet collides by a joint, shifting Reiner's weight in the sand, blood splits at the same, spitting and shouting and yelling and screaming, burning, crying, he roars again, Reiner, as he dances in the sand, shifting at me, jumping, spewing, for that last time, and Cha's eyes are pure panic, fingers twitching on the axe as the leg of his falls into the sand (one down, three left) and the left of mine collapses, I stutter, sputter, resort to falling as he's flying; an Icarus (I know what happens when you get too far to the sun.)

Blood licks on the hatchet when he lands, after I swing blindly through Cha's eyes, I'll kill him, skin him, drink him, wear a crown that was once mine, Reiner will fade into the trees, standing cowardly while I wear his mane like a- he lands on my hatchet, the muzzle split into four sections through my hatchet, blood spits onto my face once again as my weight is used to keep him up, to keep me up, up up up off the ground, to stay out of it; the audience roars this time and all I see is black (black, black, black you never stop seeing them, every single mutt killed Reiner always looks back)

I still have years left of corruption to string, as nothing more but Art.