lilja bane. district thirteen. fin.

i did not want to be afraid. when they called my name, i did not want my bones to shake. but sometimes fear creeps up on us. sometimes fear does not give us a choice.

fear is a greedy creature. it takes what it wants. it knows no boundaries, not even lines in the sand drawn by fragile, trembling fingers.

i once shut fear out, told it that it was not welcome here. but when they called my name, i let fear in. i opened the door and i let it weave its way through the defenses i had surrendered. i told it to take over, to turn my existence void.

fear shook its head and laughed.


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the tips of my fingers were stained black, like i had dipped them in shadow. i ran them along the sides of the stone as if they were claws.

drawings built up onto the walls of the cell like plaque.

i miss the sun.

i have only seen it once in my life, when i was fifteen and slipped away to peek outside. i hated being in the dark, deprived of light- it showed in my skin, pale as a ghost. when i looked, it was sunset, at the sun had burned up the sky, painted it canary, lilac, rose, with plumes of scarlet in between. the sun was hanging in the balance of the shifting day and night, but it was as brilliant as ever. before that, i had imagined it as it was described in old books and by people who had taken a glimpse- a giant ball of fire in the sky, illuminating everything beneath it.

but the sun was much more than that, i saw. it was a beacon.

and i knew i had to follow it.

sometimes i wish i had looked at myself more before i was imprisoned. after two years, the memory of my own face is slowly ebbing away. it must be different than it was when i was fifteen- less childish, more like a woman. i have felt my face before, the shallow hollows of my cheeks, the rounded curves of my face, the soft slope of my nose. i was trying to form a more solid image, but i can only imagine how i look now.

i remember my eyes, like my father's. he said i had the exact same eyes as him, but i don't think mine were as kind as his were. they were light blue, the color of-

he said that mine were the color of the sky, but i have only seen that shade of blue in photos before. (someday, i hope, i will see it with my own eyes.)

i know i have my mother's face, gentle features but with this strange, austere severity. and i know i have her body, too, willowy, agile. (only i am surely much skinnier than i was before.) but everything else resembles my father. i have his hair, too, fair blonde. it has grown far past my shoulders now, down to my chest. i remember it was to my chin before my imprisonment.

and my hands are always stained with my black charcoal. i clean them off only with my clothes- they bring me new ones every couple days. i wonder if the dark color is smeared across my face, too. i imagine that it is.


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i have never been helpless before this.

i had always had some form of control over myself, often disregarding my parents' will if it did not match mine. and i have always had a plan, or some kind of solid hope, but as the years slip by me, like i am a sieve and they are grains of sand, these things are leaving my head. they leave me, and i am only left with an empty room, a metal chair, and charcoal drawings.

and i have never been so silent before. i was always vocal about what i thought, what i wanted, but now i have barely spoken any words at all in years.

this is the agony of solitary confinement. this is how they want me to feel. and i know i can't let them win, that i have to fight it. but even the strongest warriors fall, don't they?