lucia bellerose, capitol | fin

A mound of misery,

insecurity,

vanity.

Her mother once told her that she looked like an angel.

And she spat back, "Liar."

Hair like silk of pale gold poured cascaded fell, flat, down the long, bony back of an adolescent girl. She had a body as straight and as flat as a board, and despite the arguments that there was nothing wrong with her body type, the magazines of beautiful women with breasts and curves taunted a teenage Lucia Bellerose.

The mirror screamed,

U G L Y.

She would peer into the cursed, wretched glass everyday and grimaced at her rounded, childlike face, thin lips cracked and dry from the cold. And that nose, how it seemed to laugh at her, too thick and too long, with a bridge not quite straight enough to her liking.

She was not pretty or mesmerizing, not blessed with everything a Capitol girl could want. She had the wealth, the grand marble mansion, the parents with sugar hearts and honey lips. They raised her to be a lovely little girl, never knowing that it was a serpent they laid down in a cradle, wrapped in a blanket of clouds.

(A changeling.)

It is her lies that are lovely, not the person inside.

They gave their perfect, beloved daughter everything, but they could not give her the beauty she so deeply desired - not until she was older.

"But darling, you have everything any girl could want."

"Not beauty. And that's what matters right next to money."

"What about brains? You are one of the brightest children in your class."

"That doesn't matter, Mom!"

"Just because you don't look like the models doesn't mean -"

"Yes it does. Everyone else looks like the models."

No, she wasn't the image of Aphrodite. But she did - does - have beautiful words, crafted by a serpentine mind plotting and planning and raging with brilliance and ideas. In her own way, she is a mad genius.

She knows what people want to hear. She studies them like science experiments, analyzes their behavior and finds her way through the great maze of their mind, weaves herself into their heads and tampers with their gears, adjusting them to fit her agenda.

It is an art she has mastered and carries with her, even as she stands at the top of fashion food chain.




Mother and Father paid for surgeons to file down a squared jaw, slim down a "too thick" nose, and turn thin lines of rose into full lips too plump to be natural. In a shower of money a new Lucia was born, one with extraordinary beauty. Artificial, extraordinary beauty to match the magazines.

She was a sculpture, a work of art.

And they no longer said her eyes were murky blue like lake water, that her hair was the color of old, wilted hay, that her face was "just under average." No, her eyes were suddenly luminous and sapphire blue, her hair was suddenly pale gold like shiny new coins, her face was a work of art, a masterpiece of proper maintenance.

The mirror swooned,

G O R G E O U S.

(Welcome to the world of privilege and vanity, Lucia!)

She was a girl with big dreams swirling in her new pretty head with a refreshed clarity. Dreams turned to needs, much more than desire. She needed fortune and fame the same way she needed air.

Red red wine, cherry lipstick slightly smeared from sloppy kisses, black lace, and snow white velvet filled her long nights. Bodies aching with exhaustion wrapped in sheets, smug euphoria on her lips, regret cold in her chest - these were her mornings.

From the ground to the clouds she climbed with her bare hands, making connections with figures of power between two heaving lungs. Men and women with heavy pockets and overflowing bank accounts, granting her opportunities beyond her imagination.

Dark deeds, some may have called it.

She called it the helping hand.

Lucie Couture, one of the top fashion brands,

founded by

vicious and undying desires, a silver tongue, mastermind handywork, and sex.

A kingdom of lies and selfishness.

She rules it well.