lola. | district five.

Force a promise of the sun and the arms of its beautifully beating blaze upon her lips, pursed in obstinate reluctance, and it is darkness you will receive in your hands, struggling for steadiness in the shattered strength following feverish tremors of anticipation.

The glass on her tongue could never be swept away by the apologies flooding from her mouth to slice and scar the air. She has been titled comrade to the tang of blood dancing along the insides of her mouth. Child of the glass and the darkness of lies, the saline crimson rivulets grace no boundaries for none have daringly been drawn before their path, and it digs a grave one fistful at a time, not for itself - departure does not lie in the cards of its future - but for her, its host.

The blood, it swells up on her tongue until rivers expand to vast seas and sashays down her closing throat, so entitled to its claim. It flows with a threat gliding upon the surface, one that whispers like a child humming with excitement before delving into a tango with mischief,

"You will drown, Lola. You will drown.
And it is not I who will force your head under;
I am the dagger, not the hand behind it."

She inhales, prayers between her held breath that she will not shatter everything she touches -

she exhales, and a string of words pour out with the staggered breath,
a sledgehammer to her promises, riddled with a festering spiderweb of cracks.

The holes left behind expand to consume her, and if she started forward to break into a bolt, the wind would cut her skin and captivate her struggling, breaking frame in its arms to drag her back to the brink of the abyss that has turned her name into an omen with its calls -
Lola.
Lola.
Lola.

She cannot run, it reminds her,

but running is all she has never done best.
She ran from the ruins she had made of the boy who dared reach into her chest for the trade of hearts, but was only met with a wall of stone that broke his bones.
She ran from her mother's strictures that joined her wrists and ankles into a prison.
She ran from her last name, burned into her every square inch of her flesh.
She ran from the wars in her home, stole a safe full of money on her seventeenth birthday -
only to be dragged back into the battlefield kicking and screaming by a wave of white.

. . .

She will cast her bitter glare upon her mother, a mirror in those eyes locked in a wretched glare, reflecting herself and her mouth agape in the midst of a scream. Thick, dark brows slanted in anger, chocolate hair wild from curling it between her twitching fingers, once soft jaw cut into stone by the dagger words firing back and forth -
the family resemblance is striking; blood runs deep.

Lightly sunkissed skin, dipped in red by rage, had never been twisted into such masks of fury. She is not a calm girl, she is a loud girl with loud thoughts and loud words, but she is not an angry girl -
this is a lie in the face of her mother.

Mother Deerhart is an irritable woman with a sharp tongue and a knack for pulling the right strings to send a tranquil girl whirling into the broiling crimson waters of rage rage rage. And she swears her father's lips have been sewn into silence against the screaming; he does not dare speak a word, no, there is only the slightest twitch of his head that must be a subtle shake in disappointment.

She once called him a coward, but she fears that if he is a indeed a coward, she is something far more pathetic.

It's like the man can't tell his wife and his daughter apart anymore, and who could blame him: their screams entwine in harmony and they seem to take turns looming over each other, a battle for dominance and pride. They mirror each other right down to the narrow bridge of their noses and the beauty mark just above their lips.

Their thin lips, when not wide in a battlecry, are hardened into a hard line of stone between wars. Peace only rolls over the Deerhart home in slumber and sheer silence with the exception of the soft breaths in dark rooms. But they will rise from their graves of sleep in the golden dawn and the twins will scream once more.

And those dark, dark eyes match the anger twisting through their face. They are endless abysses drilled into their skulls;
they would be empty, just pairs of voids, if not for the red emblems of pride and wrathful flames crawling skyward.

They are twins from separate worlds, never meant to meet.

She swears, destiny screwed her over the moment she was born from none other but the wretched Deerhart woman.

{ table: zoë }

NEVER MEANT TO BREAK MY OWN PROMISES
ONE MORE NIGHT, I SAID IT THE LAST TIME
BUT THIS IS THE LAST TIME