elvaina eckhart {district six} fin

{ E + R }

One the world is anything but dark. Midnight is not filled with threats of curses and monsters are imaginary shadows beneath the bed. Your parents have chests crossed with rifles and pistols leaves no room in their hands to sweep you or your sister into their arms. They are the Bonnie and Clyde of Panem, and hand in hand they sing a duet of screams and bloodshed. Headlines of their bloody tales and locked lips are thrown onto newspapers in bold letters - PARTNERS IN CRIME, PANEM'S INFAMOUS SWEETHEARTS STRIKE AGAIN, BANK RUN DRY, THREE DEAD, AUTHORITIES SUSPECT ENZO AND ROSIE - But your eyes were too innocent to see and your mind was too young to have the headlines carved into its surface.

Two forty-three gunshots - BOOM BOOM BOOM like cannons - and the majesties of thieves lose their crowns in the white white sea. An entire bunker for the king and queen and their loyal subjects punched through by bullets and flooded with the blood of the anything but innocent. Skies full of stars that no longer hold a pair of bloody lovers beneath them. A flick knife dull in the darkness of the underside of an old bed with rusted, groaning springs. Two children swathed in blankets rendered orphans, hastily swept into the arms of the Eckhart family. These are the ruins they left behind.

Three nestled in the haven of ignorance and innocence, you do not hear a chorus of gunshots roaring through your sweet dreams. Your mind is scrubbed pristine of your parents' filth, your hands are pulled free of the handcuffs laid out for them. The shadows of their graves do not entrap you within their claws and misery does not rise from their coffin to seize you or your beloved twin sister. You are free; they are six feet under.

Four you are embraced. You are cradled in warmth with each tiny step you take upon this earth and it has been vowed by Fate and Destiny themselves that darkness will elude you. Hatred and evil will never be known to you, they decide; such heinous forces could never penetrate the walls of the Eckhart home. Wolfsbane and Elettra and Jequirity, three among nine other sisters, by your side, cold could never brush your skin.

Five Wolfsbane is folded in the corner, shadows cast over one side of her face. The room is dim, it is dark, the sky is dark - and you have always cowered in the face of darkness - but fear does not clutch you with its cold cold hands. Hand in hand she spins stories of outlaws in love and other worlds beyond the stars in your sky and you wonder, you wonder until your mind aches, if you reached your hands far enough the fantasies could be yours.

Six full lips of rose are sewn together by the sentence of silence brought upon you by your own timidness. Laughter is muted by your delicate hand and cries of short-lived rage perish in the ashen graveyard of your throat; you are afraid, you are afraid of their glaring, serpentine eyes boring into your back. You swear, you see them weaving their final judgement around your wrists. You swear, you see their cruel words carving themselves in your skin. You have not condemned yourself to three years of silence, not like Jequirity, no, you are a whisper upon screams.

Seven solace rests between your hands and Wolfsbane's. You spend countless evenings in the attic by her side, huddled around a lantern and a small window, where words spill out of your mouth and your tongue does not coil around giggles until they suffocate. You are free, you are free, silent girl, and you are not afraid.

Eight you peer into the depths of the mirror, little girl, but you do not see the curse burned into your forehead. Blindfold over your curious eyes - ignorance built from two loving mothers has blotted out the darkness in your veins from your vision. You look like her, your mother - your true mother - but you don't see it, you don't see it. Angel hair falling in unruly waves, eyes like the tears of the sky, skin like porcelain, bare of the sun's gentle kiss. And he lurks upon your face, your father, in the shadows of your sharp features and along your harsh brows. But you don't see it, you don't see it, blind girl.

Nine breath in, breathe out, blind girl, and you still won't smell the blood behind you. Blind girl, blind girl, how could you not hear your mother's voice entwined with your own - honey and scarlet. (You are a blind girl, not a deaf girl.) Blind girl, blind girl, how could you ignore your father's knife glinting so clearly in your eyes? Nothing dares slip from foolish lips, not even a whisper of Rosie and Enzo. You receive uneasy stares from your replacement parents when you so rarely pry, "What was my old life like, the one before Elettra and I were adopted?" But they always leave you in silence, blind girl, blind girl, and you grimace at the bitter taste of your own medicine.

Ten Wolfsbane takes you to a glass shop, where you marvel at an empire of glass that seems to stretch to infinity. You watch fire's hands mold sand into glass, and your breath cannot help but burst into the skies. Curious little blind girl, you are immersed, you are drowning in the wonder that unfolds from your head, and you return home with an entire collection of glass trinkets.

Eleven you'd rather have your glass over diamonds; no beauty compares to the beauty of delicate things. You cram them onto any flat surface you can find in your room - they line your shelves, they take over your dresser. A strange sentiment of belonging blooms in your glass heart, for they are just like you - breakable. You will never be stone, Elvaina Eckhart - you have never been blind to this truth.

Twelve silence - Jequirity speaks no longer; chains are laced through her lips and the key has been thrown into the wind. You do not know why and she does not say why - she does not say anything.

Thirteen she is gone, Jack is gone. She has been spun down a drain and your hands are too frail to delve into the darkness to be her savior. You do not mind the silence but you mind the anguish that must writhing through her heart, cutting cutting cutting her to pieces from the inside. You have nearly forgotten her laugh, like the ringing of church bells in your ears, and you realize that you miss it. And you regret the growing distance between you and Jack; you regret not saying goodbye before you leave to work at the glass shop. (As if she would say anything in return.) But she is submerged in silence and you know all too well that silence is of the consistency and strength of tar.

Fourteen you have always known that you are fragile, but you never knew just how breakable you were until someone finally dares thrust you against stone. You light a fire with your questions and naive curiosity and your replacement mother screams, "YOUR PARENTS WERE CRIMINALS, ELVAINA! MURDERERS IN COLD BLOOD!" You stagger back as a sea trickles down her cheeks in the aftermath of her mistake, but her frantic arms cannot catch you and your glass body slams against the concrete she laid out with her words. Cracks creep down your bones and infest your heart, but you do not shatter - not yet.

Fifteen "Jequirity Eckhart!" and your bones fall apart from beneath you. (Bang. Bang. And you are crucified on the ground.) You are shattered. You are glass.

{ table: zoë }

GOING OUT A DIFFERENT PATH
LEAD BY A BEATING HEART
ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE TOWN
GASH THEIR EYES RIGHT TO THE GROUND