Theo Meyer {d10; 18} [resub] DONE!

I live in fire yet I emulate ice. Everything is bright here. Colorful, as if it has been set ablaze by tan fields and the crimson blood of the never-ending stream of livestock. I am the color of snow, no, ice. Cracked ice, shattered even. My body is so littered with scars my white-white skin is hardly recognizable. I am not a careful carver, just quick.

Dirty waves of chocolate hair fall freely from my scalp and past my shoulders. Ragged strips of stubble encase my oval chin and leave a trail down my giraffe neck. I curve towards the sky, statuesque and stretched out by years of rapid growth. I tower above most, like a rag-doll that has been worn thin over the years. I am more than beat up. You can see my recklessness from a mile away.

Eyes the color of a clear-blue sky sit beneath thin lines of hair, surprisingly tame for so wild a look. Better days lurk beneath my pupils, as if I am holding in knowledge of some far off happy place in their almond depths. I disagree with this sentiment. I think they represent drowning. We all drown here, in blood and in the screams of hogs and cattle as they meet their demise. I am better at masking my distaste of this simple life. I appear hopeful, optimistic even as terror and anger make homes within my heart.

I have seen too much death. In the mindless beings whose necks I so carelessly slit, yes, but also in the emaciated children of my district, who only long for a tiny sliver of one of our deceased beasts. We do not get to keep our kills, only package them and ship them off to the Capitol. We are enslaved to their every demand. Ensnared by their proclaimed protection to the point of death.

My gaze is stark and unforgiving towards those who do not hold my heart. I guess, in the end, even the meaning of my stare has lost comprehension. I come across as spiteful, adoring, unforgiving, believing, and distant in one glance. In an attempt to diffuse this tension, I try to avert my gaze from most of the overall population. I appear calm and simple-minded, fit for the ranch I was raised on. Only my younger sister can really capture my eyes for longer than a few minutes and see what they really are. Only she knows who I am.

I was reared along with seven others. We all get along well enough, but they are far too practical for my taste. While I dream of victory and revenge, they take the punches as they come. They are far too accepting. They preach an easy sentiment, stay out of trouble and trouble will stray from you. I suppose we have a content relationship, if not slightly indifferent. Only Teresa hears my secrets. I'm okay with this.

My tribe has no reason to know what emotion hides beneath my skin. Though I look collected, burrowed deep in my body is a flame that cannot be extinguished. A thirst so unquenchable it takes all I have to keep it in. Desire to attack, to fight, to take back all that the Capitol has stolen from us so mercilessly. Rage is what really emulates me. It defines me. It drives me to more creative ways to slaughter. It paints my skin in red as I turn my wrath to my self. My cuts and bruises are no accident. They are only a reflection of the pain that rips apart my very soul.

I am fire, I am ice, I am an explosion of elements. The soft, gritty dirt beneath my boots and caking my fingers is my earth. The liquid I pour into my dehydrated mouth under the hot sun is my water. The candle I light in the throes of evening is my fire. The frost that doesn't seem to meet my district is my ice.

No, that's a lie. It was all a lie. Earth is the muscles I so tirelessly shift each and every day as I commute to work, as I chase pigs and tackle sheep, as I drive my awl into the walls and fence again and again and again.

Water is the salt that seeps out of the bottom of my eyes each and every time I carve my knife into my skin and sew it together with a rickety stitch. Tears represent weakness but to me they prove my strength.

Fire consumes me. Fire belongs to me. Fire is the skeleton of my body.

And ice. How do I even begin to describe ice. Ice is the destiny I desire. Ice is the feeling of the bodies of the animals we kill once they bleed dry. Ice is the fate of our enemies. For, though even this is debated, I believe that our enemies are universal. Our enemies are those who watch us die so they can live in luxury. Our enemies are those who applaud as we line up for slaughter. Our enemies are the demanding explosions that turn our bodies to ash.

And I will convert them to ice.

My name is Theodore Meyer. Theo. I am eighteen. I am fire. I am ice.

And I will freeze the world as I set it aflame once more.

This is just the beginning.