hesperides castellan | district two

Such a short frame would easily be named as delicate by a tongue sharpened by career nature. But no longer is this body constructed of paper; it was all torn down from inside and out and metal was nailed down in its place. Rippling lean muscles have sprouted underneath fair skin from honed skills in karate and general combat training. A once clumsy step has become lightened with grace and coordination.

Eyes of solid ice born from a midnight freeze are shocking against long waves of dark hair. They are barren of tears and blaze with an intensity that reaches deep into the bones of whatever rigid body stands within sight. It is enough to rattle even an instructor.

Broad, unruly eyebrows were once drawn down in sadness, but they now are lifted by joy and the satisfying sound of the THUMP of a fist against the punching bag. Lips, pale pink like a seashell, once hardened into a thin line in worried contemplation, are slack. Only rarely do they stretch into a smile.

Beneath this exterior of classic beauty is a core of stone, built up and up and up from years of training and influence.

Hesperides Castellan is the name sewed into this vessel, alive with strength and might. And she wears it as a bright banner of pride, for it is the name often called out for triumphant praise by her instructors.

She is a career by heritage, like many other children in District Two. She was born into a dynasty of blood and steel.

Her tiny porcelain body surfaced into a toxic atmosphere that quickly ate away any gentleness she held. It was once like needles filling her lungs each time she exhaled, but in time the pain ebbed away and the air of brutality and ruthlessness became sweet on her tongue and passed easily through her windpipe.

Despite the word CAREER swimming in my bloodstream, they said she was weak.

They deemed her a fragile bird with flimsy paper wings. From their lips spat flickering flames they barely comprehended with their minds, just as young as her own. They would dance around her, armed with blades, tearing at her from the inside. She was curled on the floor, a crumpled paper doll, before the mercy of hearts ravaged by cruelty, drilled into their brains and distributed throughout the rest of them in rivers of poison.

Her days roaming the playground were hunters vs. foxes.

(It can be easily guessed which one she was.)

Each string of words darkened into a demon, hovering over her in the form of a long shadow.

She was suffering, heaving for breath, beneath her demons, beneath a roof of granite. But in a surge of pure will and strength, she rose and shattered the barrier like it was glass and her fist was iron. And in the shower of rubble in the wake of her rise, she became paper no longer but stone.

She is just as hard as stone, and in her own way, just as cold. She dwells in a house of harshness and the aggressive career attitude, but her home is also a place of warm embraces and tight family ties. Among the many souls that drift across District Two, very few manage to penetrate her distant heart.

The softness that once dragged her down was weathered away until all that remained was steel. It is her rightful form as heir of the dynasty of steel and blood, established the very day the Hunger Games laid its foundation upon Panem, where thousands of cold, mangled bodies of children would stack into mountains.

But steel comes with a price tag attached to its gleaming surface of promise. Distance. Solitude. Ruthlessness. She does not mind the gaping space between she and her peers, nor does she mind her closed lips, barely speaking a word, for there are often no words worth speaking. And when she does speak, her voice rings out loud and its unfamiliar sound snatches the attention of most people within earshot. Her rare words are bold and bright, flames against the blackness of night.

Not often does laughter emerge from her mouth. Laughter only comes with her ridiculous younger siblings, running throughout the grand Castellan house, spinning sarcasm and childish jokes. And when she does smile, it is not dazzling or pearly. It is small, just the slight stretch of the corners of her lips, but meaningful.

Her exterior is flesh, but she is stone, she is steel, within. She accepts the crown to the dynasty, blood and sweat stained and all.

She is stone, as she was always meant to be.