evening / eve ruined } . district five -- fin

I am disaster. Walking breathing living disaster. I am the hurricane that washes its wrath over the land and wrecks our home. I am the wind, and most of all its harsh current. I am the clouds that form a blanket over the sky and blot out the sun, consume its light, and push it down into darkness.

We are disaster, my family and I. We are the red scar on the sunset, the stain in the sky. I never knew it until they took Pixie away- and then I saw it. We were ruined ruined ruined. She said, "If you have a heart-" but they didn't have a heart, Pixie. They didn't. She was the disaster that wrecked our home, and ruined as we were, disaster was all we could become.

We are disaster, but so is the whole wide world.

Sometimes I look in the mirror, and I think I see her. It is just a ghost, faint as an echo, but present. We do not share the same eyes- hers were blue, like the sea, and mine are dark, like coffee. We do not share the same hair, either- brown leaked from her scalp in silken waves, tinged ever so slightly with flaxen streaks, but my locks are dark dark auburn and lie beneath a halo of frizz. But there is something in our faces, a phantom, a ghost. Her bone structure is similar to mine, from her jaw to her cheekbones to her nose.

It is Viola who I resemble the most, with the brown eyes and soft brows. She has skin like mine, fair, but with the marks of the sun's kisses- darker spots along the cheeks and nose and forehead and shoulders and anywhere the sun can touch. But that is where the similarities end and the differences expand into a gaping hole.

I remember the way her body broke. Sometimes I see the blood dripping from my own flesh, but then I will blink and it will vanish. But I have learned lessons from her death and its companion, the pain: ghosts truly are real.

At least I am not cursed so deeply and irrevocably, like Nova, like Wolf. I see her in them- too much of her. I see the eyes the hair the skin- they wear the scars too boldly, whether they wish it or not. I do not wear scars like tattoos. I wear a ghost, like a translucent veil. It is not my face that tells the story, it is my surname, and the wistfulness in my eyes.

When it is silent, I sit at the table and waste away hours piecing together puzzles. They intrigue me, fill me with wonder, but they frustrate me, too. Sometimes my cheeks burn with frustration for not all of the thousands of puzzle pieces wish to cooperate. It is a soothing pass time, so I will not look out the window and count the hours until the night returns and I must surrender to the terrors that come with it.

Shadows of the nightmares dance on my walls before I close my eyes and fall into slumber. It is there I will meet them face to face and glare into their eyes. Our gazes with melt into one another, until one of us cannot take the flames any longer. Each time it is me- I am the fallen warrior. I dream of different terrors almost every night, but they are one in the same: they are death. From drowning to burning to bleeding out to falling- I always tumble back into consciousness before the final breath pours out of me, and I will awaken gasping for air.

I will awaken to the morning, chasing away the nightmares with a patronizing glare. (But they will always return.) I will throw my covers to the floor and leave them a mess there, and dress myself in tall socks and a floral frock. Shutting the door behind me with a hollow thud, I will head to my job as a nurse out on a ranch. My mind is often lost on the paths, but my feet are not. It is like my body has learned the routine, learned every step, every turn.

Peace settles in the atmosphere over the ranch. Perhaps it is the isolation from the empty spaces that should hold Pixie, or maybe it is the tranquil aura of the animals- or a mixture of the two. But it always ends, and the falling sun will drag me back to my sheets and the nightmares that await me with bared teeth and clawed hands curling in anticipation.

I am disaster- I am a Ruined, aren't I?

AND IF THE NIGHT IS BURNING
I WILL COVER MY EYES
FOR IF THE DARK RETURNS
THEN MY BROTHERS WILL DIE