ember calderon | district five | fin

♫ ember calderon ♫
i just gotta get you off the cage
i'm a young lover's rage
gonna need a spark to ignite
my songs know what you did in the dark

Somewhere between the fire crackling in the hearth and the snowflakes that littered the ground, somewhere hiding within the shadows but containing a light more brilliant than any others, somewhere between the gentle touch of flesh against flesh and the denial of the word "love" one would have found Ember Calderon. Somewhere with the tears saved for pillows and the scarred knuckles aching in the cold winter air, between the confident smile and the broken heart, one would have found Ember Calderon. Within the crowds of people that knew her name, feeling a million miles away, one would have found Ember Calderon.

She was a girl on fire, and she proved this by igniting the things around her, the torch an extension of her nimble finger tips. As the smoke danced through the air, she danced with life. As the things around her burned, she did the same. She felt a sense of power with her plaything, something she could always use to make bad things and bad people go away. She didn't see it as torturous though, no, but through those brilliant blue eyes, she saw a form of art. A form of art that was to her as music was to some, an escape from reality, even if only for a little while. Even for as briefly as a few fleeting moments, like the shooting stars in the deep dark sky she refused to admit she watched through the windows of her less-than humble home.

Home.

She would hardly describe the place she lived as such. Her parents believed love could be bought and in a way, it had been. They left gifts in Ember's name to distract her from their absences and it worked. She became a girl in love with material possessions growing up until she was older and wiser and could see what they were doing. Until she found her passion within the stone walls of burnt salvation. Most of their gifts were reduced to ashes, floating away in the wind, or sitting in a messy puddle of goop at her feet. There were a few she'd become too attached to, however: a stuffed bunny that she still hid beneath the pillows of her bed, a plastic tiara she had worn for a month straight as a child, and a blanket she wrapped herself up in every morning when she descended the stairs for her daily cup of coffee. Those were things that she had grown accustomed to seeing in their designated spaces in her room every day. Those were things that the reason for her owning them in the first place did not matter, because they were things that helped her cope with the fact that, in complete honesty, she had raised herself.

As her parents had treated her, she treated her peers. She would buy them gifts and toys and clothes and all sorts of things with her parents' wealth and eventually she rose to the top of the social food-chain. She tried to fill the void her parents left by making as many fiends as she could, by keeping herself distracted with them so she never noticed that her parents had both slept at the rig sites yet again. It was a good career choice, logging more hours, rising through the ranks, becoming the bosses of the working class, but as far as family went, Ember was left in the background.

It was funny to her, how their entire life's work could have disappeared with just one of her matches, but how she was too afraid to ever see it happen because despite the lousy job her parents did raising her, she still wanted them to love her, and destroying what they loved to make room for herself hardly sounded like a decently lit plan.

She used to stare at herself in the tiny mirror that still hangs in her bathroom, only then she had to climb onto the sink to see herself and now she was so grown that she practically had to duck down to see anything. She would braid her hair like her mother liked it, blonde strands falling in an uneven mess over her right shoulder since she was definitely not old enough to be fixing her own hair yet. She would purse her lips like her parents did when they were telling her goodbye, thin pink lines turning red and plump. After her parents would leave she would often sneak past the babysitters and into her mother's closet, where she would put on all of her clothes and shoes and jewelry and pretend to be a grown up. Little did she know, she would have to become one more quickly than would ever be fair to her.

These days, she had traded in playing dress-up for the hearts won over by a few shy smiles and a timid blush or two. She was the girl that knew all things and in order to obtain her information she was willing to stoop to any lengths. Boys were always going on about the numbers of girls they had slept with and how girls needed to take a hint and let things go after the boys had gotten what they wanted from them anyway, it was only fair she return the favor. A little love in the dark, secrets whispered, and she was finished with them for good.

Somewhere falling apart, but picking the pieces up as they fell, one would find Ember Calderon. Somewhere setting the world on fire, but being afraid to get burned, one would find Ember Calderon. Somewhere, sometime, between the tear stained nights, one may have found her smiling. Because maybe one day, just maybe, she could find happiness. Until then, she would ravage the world as the queen of flame. To storm or fire, the world must in, and Ember already knew which it would be.

a constellation of tears on your lashes
burn everything you love,
then burn the ashes

in the end everything collides