gwin ilsidore {twelve} fin

S mall tongues of fire dance across bony finger tips. Shades of red and orange lick at my hands, contrasting the pale white of my skin. Fire leaps over my wrist and up my arm. The familiar smell of heat fills my nostrils, rushing into my lungs and then back out. People don't think you can smell heat, but that's not true. You can feel it on your skin, you can smell it in the air, you can taste it on your tongue. It has an aura, a presence. You just know it's there.

My hands fold around the flames, shaping them, molding and bending them to my will. Fingers lace in and out of the heat with ease, and I hold it out for all to see.

Everyone is told not to play with fire at one point or another. It's a lie, words meant to steal away one of the best childhood toys in the world. Fire is the single best plaything I've ever held in my own hands. The only thing that can truly keep me entertained for hours on end. The only thing that brings me some form of excitement, a thrill that fills up my chest until I think it might burst open.

Most people have only seen my face under the harsh lighting of fire and shadow. When the flames dance under my chin, Nicholas says I look different. Older is the word he uses. When my only source of light is a flame, my face looks more angular, sharper, dark shadows against pale skin, brown eyes turned amber from the glow. In reality, I am much younger-looking. My face is round, my nose short and snubby instead of narrow and pointed. Hair that turns silken in the dark becomes frizzy in the daylight. Shiny white teeth turn a soft shade of yellow. I always preferred the way fire made me look to anything else.

The only thing that doesn't really change is my height. Average, not unusually tall, but not too short either. As for everything else? It all looks different in the darkness. Hidden by shadow, revealed by firelight and nothing more, the most beautiful source of illumination in the universe. I feel beautiful when I'm hidden behind fire. I feel beautiful when there are flames dancing around my skin. Of course, I don't talk about it with Nicholas. He's a boy. He wouldn't understand.

I don't remember much from Before. And by that, I mean anything before the streets. That's all I've known, ever since I was little. The streets. Hunger. Stealing from the Hob. Putting on shows with my brother to earn ourselves enough money to survive. It's hard, especially because we're alone. I suppose it's hard for anyone in Twelve, but we don't have our parents to watch out for us, and that makes it even more difficult. I suppose I could ask Nicholas about Before if I wanted to. But that's just it: I don't want to. I don't ask about it, he doesn't offer answers, and we reach a mutual agreement to simply not talk about Before.

Before ended after I turned six. Winter came, the cold swept through the streets of Twelve, filled our homes, our bodies. That's when they died. I don't remember how it happened, I just remember Nicholas telling me we had to leave. We had seen the faces of the children who'd been taken into the community home. Sunken cheeks, dull eyes, grey skin, the occasional bruise. It wasn't safe, and we knew it. There was no way Nicholas was letting either of us be taken into one of those places. So before the Keepers could come and discover what had happened, we slipped out into the allies. We didn't take much with us. What little food was left in the house, a couple of matches to keep us warm, two jackets our father used to wear when he went to work.

I was scared back then. Scared of what would happen to us, scared we might starve or freeze to death, scared the Keepers would come and sweep us into a home like dirt being swept under a rug. I lived in fear for months, and when I finally got over myself, I vowed never to be afraid again. I hated the feeling with a passion. Instead, I taught myself to survive, learned new skills alongside Nicholas, and built up my courage until I wasn't afraid of what might happen, because nothing ever would.

It wasn't until a few years into our time in the streets that we discovered something about the jackets from our father. Night had fallen, winter was beginning, and we needed to stay warm. The edge of my shirt caught fire while I was lighting one of our matches. It burned a hole through the material, and there was a red patch on my skin for a while afterwards, but it wasn't too severe. The important thing was what happened to the jacket. Or rather, what didn't happen to it. It didn't burn. We tested Nicholas's jacket, and sure enough, it stayed in tack as well. We had taken fireproof jackets from our father, ones he used to work with burning coal in the mines.

At first, we didn't think much of it. Great, we had fireproof jackets from our father, but what good was that too us? We weren't old enough to work in the mines. The only thing it really did was cause us to waste matches. Well, more specifically, it caused me to waste matches. Nicholas was always telling me off for lighting them when we didn't need to. I'd carry a few in my pocket, scratch them across one of the brick walls of the allies, and hold it close to my coat, testing how long I could leave it there before something caught fire. I'd cup it in my hands, see how close the flame could get to my skin, lick my fingers and snuff it out. One day a lady at the Hob told me it was a neat little trick.

I think that was when I got the idea. Matches weren't too difficult to come by, we had our jackets, and we had all the time in the world to practice. I'd seen the circus performers from the Capitol, playing in between clips when the Games were on. My favorite had always been when they seemed to breath pure fire out in front of the audience.

So Nicholas and I practiced. We got all the matches we could, found materials in the dumpsters that burned quickly and materials that didn't, things that let of extra smoke and things that sparked. It was a make-shift act, but we got better over time, which we had plenty of. We weren't working. We weren't going to school. Instead, we were learning to play with fire.

We're still not professionals. We certainly aren't as good as the circus performers in the Capitol. But, it earns us extra money, and we need all the money we can get if we intend to survive on our own. We perform at night, when no one will recognize us, usually as far from the Seam as possible. No one there has enough money to give us. We like to stick close to the richer part of town (if you can even call it rich), sometimes in front of the Victor's Village or the Justice Building. We get the bulk of our earnings from the Keepers, surprisingly enough. They're the ones with enough money to give us, and the ones with enough time to watch. I was nervous, at first, when we caught their attention and they came to watch. But I think they genuinely enjoy it. Perhaps they find it nice to take a break from their brutality and watch a little spectacle of ours.