alaska zephyrllis, district four

She is a summer breeze, carrying warmth and giggles, like wind chimes clinking together, in her current. Her heart is a sun and her voice is a burst of light against blackness. In her hands are lanterns, guiding lost souls down a stony path shrouded by night.

Alaska.

The name slips off of lips familiar to the name so fondly.

When she carries her willowy frame down the cobblestone streets, she is regarded with the same kindness that she shares. People know her face, namely her smile that touches her soft features with life. Just beneath a pair of thick, unruly brows, her ocean blue orbs for eyes cast gentle beams of warmth upon those who catch her gaze.

The sea is her home, her house is her prison, the training academy is her hell. Beside the glimmering ocean waters is her bliss. The sea is her haven; it is where her body expels its worries and throws them out to the waves. The sea is where she rests beneath the sun that catches flaxen streaks in her hair and kisses her skin until it is tinged bronze. The sea is where her heart soars with the salted breeze that runs through her mass of tawny hair. The sea is where she is truly happy.

She is an adventurer if not just a curious child. She wanders the town and the ivory beaches in bouts of curiosity, leaving behind joy in her footsteps. Often does she stray from her domain and into places with hostile crossed arms of ice, but her eyes hinder her blind to malevolence. The light in her vision blots out all that is dark, even when the greatest shadow stands before her. In her many adventures she finds only solace and bliss.

A house is no place for a girl with such wanderlust.

Her parents prison wardens threaten to confine her, out of worry for her safety, they claim. She does not loathe the house she is forced to dwell in, but it does not hold a place in her heart, though its other inhabitants do. Never has harshness crossed into the walls of the Zephyrllis house. It is a place content and quiet; it is a place without the ocean or the wonders that lie elsewhere. These things make it a prison with shackles and chains, despite the inmates she carries close to her.

And her hell, the dreaded training academy, is where she lies weak beneath steel blades. In this hell she has burned for years, scathed by the demanding barks of the trainers and buried alive by swords and knives far too heavy for her tiny hands. It is where her glass body is uncovered for all to jeer at; it is where she, the rabbit, is encircled by ravenous wolves.

"You're weak, Alaska."

"I know."

Too gentle. Too weak. She is not meant for the world she lives in, let alone the training academy.

She is born for the steel, they will tell her. She is made to be a warrior, they will lie. This is what your parents want, they will coax her, speaking one of the only truths among their deceptions, fabricated to take her apart and put her back together as a Career. They want to replace her glass bones and paper skin with shining titanium and nails.

"We can fix her," she has heard one of the trainers say.

"There is nothing to fix," she replied. There were no flames in her voice, only stone.

The girl with cracks in her skin and stinging eyes has shattered upon the floor of the training academy many times before. But not once has hatred begun to sprout within her for the trainers, despite the boulders they place upon her back. This hell is the only seed of sadness in her life, but even against the intensity of the encroaching flames, she stands on her tattered legs.

The fire is one she cannot extinguish with her tears. And in the heat that nearly suffocates her, the smile that so often casts light upon her face falters.

And she is left in the darkness, in the unfamiliar cold.