vervain ward {district three} fin

There is an old clock above her headboard. And its toll, like a lion's roar, rattles her to her core. It ticks and ticks and ticks. The sound is like a pebble against a pane of glass. When it tolls, she-

She tries not to turn her ears to it, she tries to peel her gaze away. (As if it will help her not to think about it.) She is skilled in the art of silence, biting her tongue until it bleeds, but she has never been good at silencing her mind.

She is a quiet girl, with anything but a quiet mind. Sealed lips shut away the chaos- it is vicious in her head, but its bite is sweet.

Grease and grit, dark and oily, stains her face. She does not mind how heavy it feels upon her skin, or how slick the back of her hand feels after wiping her brow. It only catches her attention when she glances in the mirror and sees the mess she has made of herself- her hair, how it mats together in some areas from brushing away with greased fingers, and her skin, glistening with lines of oil and black.

Sometimes she ends the day with sore, reddened fingers, an ache surging in every joint with every lift of a finger. It is a bearable pain- she was once more sensitive to pain like paper cuts, light little stings from light little cuts. Over years of work in the shop, tinkering and toying with and putting together every piece or part she could ever imagine, she has grown accustomed to any light little sting hours of work may leave her with.

Her work as a mechanic is not for the money- she has enough of that- but to occupy herself, to give her purpose. She loves fixing things, feeling like she has some sort of benevolent power by putting together pieces of metal with screws. (If only she could fix broken people, too.) When she was a young girl, she would pick up metal scraps she found and steal tools from her father's toolbox and put them all together to make who knows what.

She is all sun and scarlet. Her hair, furious red, tumbles down her back in flattened waves. It is disheveled by a day's work in the shop and the breeze that accompanies her on the way home. She has never been one with eyes for flaws like these, let alone her own. She lets her locks fly free, go wherever they want, do whatever they please.

When the sun kisses her, it leaves fragments of itself behind. The imprint of its lips show up all across her face in dark copper speckles, from her forehead to chin. They fleck her shoulders, her arms, her hands, her chest, and her legs, too.

Her clothes hang off of her slight frame. She drapes herself in light sweaters and tank tops and T-shirts and black jackets and sometimes, on the rare occasion, a floral dress or a blouse. She is a thin girl, reaching to an average height of 5'6, with a bird-like frame.

It was rare that she would spend more than ten seconds peering at herself in the mirror, and she spends even less now.

Kiena Ward-
she knew the truth the moment her name cut the air.
After two years, the stares have ebbed, but they have not faded, and neither has the half-sister she never knew. In her heart, there is pity and regret and sadness still, though not despair. Pity and sadness for Kiena, that she had to go home in a box. ("I don’t care about any of it anymore, Wyatt. I just . . . I don’t want to go home in a box. I’m scared," she had said.) And regret, because her mind reaches out to the sister she never knew, driven by wonder, but her fingers only feel empty space. They only feel the distance death has put between them.

She will never know Kiena, but she can keep her memory in her pocket.

The girl has become a ghost in her face- in all five of her siblings' faces, too. She is present, faintly, in the shape of her nose and her brows. But she is most prominent in the darkness of her eyes- they seem to gleam almost the same way.

She does not occupy her mind with every moment her heart beats- only when her eyes scrape over the clock tower and when she strays to the mirror for too long does her mind stray to her. (And it stings.)

The story behind the blood between she and Kiena remains unknown to her. Only bits and pieces have surfaced- her father keeps the matter quiet. (It almost feels clandestine to her.) She knows there was another woman, not long before his marriage to her mother, and that he left Kiena- for that, she resents him.

It wasn't fair.