elvena fray, district one | finished

Stone woman
— break down your walls; let them come to crack their skulls against your bones.

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She's not beautiful.

Her face is the same as her siren of a twin sister's, but her lips don't curl upwards in a graceful invitation. She only offers a crooked smile with sharp canines, a mockery of joy, and her eyes never shine quite as blue as the other girls in her district. She is grey, with dull irises and pale flesh wrapped around features too imposing to ever be seen as 'fair.' (And you'll never love her.) You won't find love for her brooding figure, or the way that she holds herself like she's a damn dragon waiting to burn down all of your defenses — and she's entirely fine with that.

Because Elvena Fray does not long for love. She won't twirl her thick, sandy hair around her fingers when you caress her skin, and she'll give you a casual five seconds before she decides to detonate. She's not a storm, and she's not a hurricane, and she's not a blizzard, and she's not flood — she's simply an explosion, a manmade terror, and she doesn't waste time in trying to build or break connections. She lives for herself, and she's taught herself to be fine with isolation. A victor's crown is what she was raised to aspire for, and her blood is gasoline, and her veins are made of fire. Victory is the only constant in her life; the one thing to work for, and the one thing to let herself care about. People die, and people break you, and people are not certain in any sense. She was birthed to be a machine, and to destroy empires just for the sake of taking the crown, and though victory is not a promise — it's more exciting to live for that than something that might not be waiting there at the end of the day.

"Harder," a father's voice says, and she wrecks herself against the scratching fabric of a dummy just to say she did.

"Focus," a mother's voice commands, and she bites her lips to refuse a scream just to prove she swallow her pain.

"We love you," say two voices at once, and she turns away just to save herself.

Dad and Mom had taught her to be inflammable, and maybe that's how she saved herself from the flames of a burning family tree when her mother lost her life due to a lung disease at the age of eight, or when her father's heart eventually collapsed in on itself at the age of seventeen. She was raised to be a dragon, and she had not wept. She breathed fire, and she sent an axe flying at the wall, and she tensed her form even tighter. Life had killed her mother, and love had killed her father, and she vowed that she would never let either of them kill her — she vowed that she would destroy life by living it and crush love by ignoring it.

She, Syrena, and Trylle were sent to live with their cousins, in a house far too cramped for her liking, and during the mourning process she had only clenched her jaw. One day it was dirt tossed onto a casket, and the second it was a brand new mansion, and the third it was back to saving herself the only way she knew how. Because when she's training, and when her muscles burn so harshly that she has to scream into her palms, she doesn't have to think. She doesn't have to think about her existence, and how confusing it is, and how all she's doing is wrecking herself by pushing others away, and trying so hard to convince herself that all she needs is herself — and she builds her armor out of the shards of her broken childhood, and she bites her cheek just to prove that she can feel. Something awful.

("What do you live for?" says a ghost in the shadows.

"Nothing but me," says a phantom in the flames.)

Elvena Fray is a warrior made of stone, and she's afraid of fear, and she's cautious of love, and she's terrified of life — but she's going to live until there's nothing left for the fire to eat away.

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Arrogant girl
— love yourself so no one else has to.