amity lumiere // district one

amity lumiere
sixteen
district one

A penny flashes across the backs of her fingers too fast to follow, and the circular disc of moonlight it reflects crosses across her face in time like a transiting planet. It illuminates the hard downwards slope of her eyebrows that her teachers always called "petulant" even though she did nothing to aggravate them. It causes sparks to flash in her blue eyes, with their flat upper lids and long lower eyelashes. Her father always said she was doll-like, with those eyes so blue they could be painted on.

He treated her like a doll, too; they all did, her mother, and all the aunts and uncles she knew about. She never once fell over as a child, her unscarred and unbroken body is evidence for that. There are subjects she knows very little about, the sciences deemed "too dangerous" for her - which she resents now. Her pale skin, blue veins visible on her wrists and her temples, are telltale of how often she was made to stay inside, having time spent with her. She always felt like a secret, a precious treasure no one could know about. She always hated it.

Her fingers seem impossibly long and flexible as they make this act of dexterity look totally effortless, which, to her, it is. Every one of her digits and limbs is longer than normal, and the fact that she's significantly thinner than one would expect in her District means she looks almost inhuman when she's standing. At home, the comments about it from her parents are saturated with embarrassment - that they did this to her. But when Amity found her love for performing, and magic, she used her distinctive alienness as a strength, rather than a hindrance. Her optimism is something she knows she's proud of.

It came from her admiration of the District's Careers, there's no doubt about that. Though she often felt guilty about it, aware that it was morally questionable, she looked forward to watching the Games every year. The fluidity of a fighter's body, their grace and power, it was one of the few times her small, downturned lips ever softened into a genuine look of amazement. It wasn't the violence itself that she was transfixed by, but more the reaction to it from the commentators and the audience.  When a Career did something truly extraordinary - miraculous - their name was on every person's lips for days at a time. The people were in awe of these fighters, who had the bravery and practice to do something they never could. From the pit of her stomach and the depths of her heart, Amity knew that after years of seeming imprisonment, she too wanted to make people in awe of her.

She didn't practise magic from books or shows, but rather from watching herself in a mirror or on the small video camera she had taken from her parent's wardrobe. That camera always brewed resentment inside of her when she realised it must have been sitting there, unused, since she was very small and they stopped showing her off to people. Though it wouldn't be worth much, it would still have sold for something, and considering there were evening where Amity and her mother had to fill the house with candles while her father tried to compromise on paying for electricity, she couldn't understand how neither of her parents had the sense to trade it for better things. Still, when she started putting it to use herself she felt somewhat vindicated. At least it was serving a purpose.

And then she simply attempted a trick and played it back, over and over again, looking frame by frame at her own digital form to find her mistakes, and correct them. With the act of assessing her performance, she began to become more conscious of her appearance, as well. At the beginning of the exercise, in those early mortifying clips where the cards spill out of her hands and onto the floor or where the penny got stuck in her sleeve and she was left shaking off her shirt to find it, her hair was short for convenience, unkempt as she had no one to impress. But as Amity got closer to being confident enough to perform, she let it grown, even enjoying brushing through the blonde-brown curtains that fell straight beneath her sharply pointed chin, and trying different styles. Once or twice she experimented with make-up, rouging her shallow cheekbones, but knew that the powder was too precious to her mother, maybe the only pot of it she'd ever own, and the woman would notice if it started to deplete.

This was something else that motivated Amity to perform, the idea of independence, of earning her own money doing something she enjoyed, getting the response she craved. Of course, all her practising had to be secret from her protective parents, but she determined that when her hobby started filling her pockets with coins, she could reveal her new self to her parents like the end of a years-long disappearing act; and they would be proud of her.

Of course, if she had been wiser, more realistic and less positive about her relationship with her parents and all the other Lumieres as well, she could have planned better for what would happen when she did indeed tell them, show them her earnings, and suffer the same consequences as if there had been no money involved at all. It's not appropriate, her mother had said as her father paced across the room, eyes darting to the humble but valuable pile of coins Amity had presented, when the time is right, you'll be more than a performer. It was the first time Amity had been told about her family legacy, but she could have seen it coming had she been motivated to make the connection. Her family wasn't ashamed of her, she simply hadn't stepped out into society yet. They wanted her to be the perfect example, the perfect leader, so she over all her cousins could represent the Lumiere family name in the District. She had put herself in the world too early, before her parents were ready. They wanted her to feel guilty for putting her whole future in jeopardy.

But it didn't feel like her future - she was furious at them. Her trick had gone awry and there was no illusion to it; she couldn't just rub her eyes, find the secret trap door, the hidden hinge, the mirrors behind the smoke. Though she had always felt distanced from her parents, never was it more distinct a feeling than then, when she felt so betrayed. There were puppet strings on her wrists and elbows. Though she rejected that she was a prisoner before, she certainly felt like one now - but a prisoner of an inevitable future laid out in front of her. There felt like nothing Amity could do but pray for a miracle.

So when her cousin Asha went into the Hunger Games, and in the chaos that followed she learnt that they weren't the only Lumieres, that there was a second branch she identified and yearned to be with so much more, it felt like an almost religious act of salvation.

And so the second grand disappearing act of her life began. Inspired with new motivation to match her ever-enduring hope, Amity would steal away from her house to find her new family. Their life was so different - luxurious, decadent - but what Amity really craved was the closeness of their family units, and how much pride they took in performing, just like her. Wearing her Lumiere surname like a badge, she was accepted into their lives an evening at a time, when her parents thought she was quiet in her room (an assumption they were so comfortable with that they never tried to question it). Finally, she had a place where she could show off her tricks and be thought of with wonder.

Moreover, and so much greater, Amity found a love for training with her cousins. Though she started wearing thicker clothes to hide the long muscles that built up under her delicate skin and the first bruises she'd ever had blooming on her body, there was no way her parents could ignore how much brighter she seemed, full of energy and enthusiasm. In their eyes, she was simply warming to their eventual plans for her, and they were content enough to leave her alone. But she knew what they didn't - she was deep into the greatest act of misdirection in her life; one that might never have an end.