[ ROMULUS . CAPITOL ]

Since birth, I've always been known by my father as Romallious, not the two names he gave me but Romallious, because I was the first dragon born of his, and despite what he may think of me now, I am still Romallious. Back before when my sister was born and it was just my father and I, he always talked me up because in his eyes I looked like a victor -- in his eyes I looked like a spitting image of him. Broad shoulders, hazelnut hair and a crooked nose, "ma sons gonna be a champ'in," he'd always say through his broken jaw. He was just that type of man, always believing his endurance was the only medicine he needed, and he swore his face to match the color of my public hair that he raised me to be too.

It's a flame, shifting between dull ginger and blue with the different pressures and seasons; It's always been ginger or blue, one for my father and one for my mother. She always loved blue, the same way she loved me and my sister, turquoise painted the rugs and the chandelier in the living room and the plants in the vases greeting every door. Brittle things, glass and flowers and mothers, she never loved my father, and I never knew whether to respect it or not -- staying in a loveless romance. But I stayed in contact with my father all the same, I guess I got that from my mother.

Neither of them could place a final agreement on raising my sister and I. Father wanted me to call him Mr. Romallious, since we were not equals, and I look up to my betters, so I was just Romallious. Mother wanted kids, she'd say, brats and childish fights and antics, she wanted to raise us as children and not as employees, but in the end they both almost got their wish. I've always tried my best at that; peace making. You've got to know when to bow your head to survive, so I called my father Mr. Romallious as long as he was my better and my mother raised me as she pleased, home schooling me and having me help clean and garden.

Mr. Romallious never liked it either, it wasn't what he planned, what Mr. Romallious wanted, "he is uh Romallis!" He'd scream at my mother, smashing my cleaned china to the ground as I remain stoic because now I have to clean that up. "Uh boy, ma son too! Not no fruity sonuvabitch," spit sat in his beard when he screamed like that, it's always something I remembered picture perfectly, like the way my sister hid in her room every time he raised his voice. Whenever he got as pissed as that, my mother always held composure in her face in parallel to the red growing in his.

I've never liked the color red.

The majority of my childhood followed that routine of Mr. Romallious smashing something onto the ground and my mother and I picking the pieces back up, of violets and dragon blood. He never had a fond place in my heart, chanting "tha wretch'd fool wasted you," as an excuse for a while after my mother stopped homeschooling me and I was allowed to make my own choices. My father called her weak, saying she was too soft to raise child as she told me she loved the brown in my eyes she didn't see in my father.

I asked her why she loved the mess that he was, and she told that their love took them out to sea, and he told her the blue was almost as beautiful as her. Sometimes, she swore to me she still loved Mr. Romallious, not the dragon blood. By the blue and purple painted on her arms, I wasn't sure if loving a man like that was worth it. Broad shoulders, hazelnut hair and a crooked nose, all I had of my mother's was that blue she loved once upon a time.

When I finished schooling, I started as an office worker since it wasn't on the blacklist my father always raised me around. Of course, I never cared about it, watching paperwork grow like tulips wasn't interesting, it wasn't something I could actually be proud of. It was caging a dragon; pointless. Mr Romallious only allowed this job for his first son - no matter how much of a fruity sunovabitch he thought of me, I was still his first son in his eyes, Romallious - because to be a dragon I had to breathe at the top of the food chain. Always told me that one day I'd get somewhere meaningful in life if I followed through with that.

I told him to go fuck himself.

After a near decade of working that same damn monotone building, fingers as a barrel pressed to my head, I got flat-shit nowhere. Broad shoulders, hazelnut hair, a crooked nose and twenty-seven years old, I was still hunched over my father's words. Swearing stoic, I hated this life, the absent-mindedness and monochrome daze; there were no blue or red or violet bruises, "only black pen, please." 

Maybe that's why I took the job during the 66th as games management, less than the name lets on it's nothing more than an elaborate janitor. It'd paid worth shit and the uniform fit me terribly, but the few seconds I caught here and there of the games, the actual games, not that mosh pit of teens but the intellects actually playing them was worth something more than the extra dollars an hour and that upgraded cubicle.

In those few seconds, those broad shoulders, hazelnut hair and crooked nose actually found something more than half-empty compliments and an ugly shade of blue in their arm.

"Ya fuckin' idiot," Mr. Romallious drilled into my skull, "'games management' what a piecea'shit, do you wanna die meanin'less or somethin'? Fuckin' ridiclous," I'd never handle this bullshit the way my mother does, "blue hair too, uuh? Next you'd want a matchin' c-" his voice gnawed at my bones, there's a snarl built on my face as I groaned out a "fuck yourself" before fully realizing dragon blood does not course through my veins. Two steps back in his words meant two steps further away from the cunt, and two steps closer to regaining my birth right.

For three years, I watched the shifting of gamemakers, all capitol borns, dragon bloods. Throughout the shitty positions I worked with blue hair and brown hair and then blue hair again, I've never been nothing more than clean-up crew. I can't say one day I'll be Romallious, dragon blooded gamemaker, because I don't have time anymore to sit around waiting for the crown to be placed on my own goddamn head. One year forward and I'm just an errand boy, a blue sheep for Murdoch Fenn, 'gamemaker personal assistant,' fourth year in the making and I'm working for a coal miner. 

Fourth year in the making, and I'm only two steps away from being forged from dragon's blood.