taylor livingstone / twelve. resub

🌱 kaitlin. Graphics 2,683 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 24, 2024 15:20:05 GMT -5 aspiring beam of light	taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 1, 2020 11:05:50 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jan 1, 2020 11:05:50 GMT -5 taylor livingstone eighteen \| district 12 ✦ ❛ i am keeping quiet. but one day the forest will talk about me. ❜
	Last Edit: Jan 5, 2020 1:39:27 GMT -5 by 🌱 kaitlin. what are men to rocks and mountains? a haunted house.

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taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 5, 2020 0:54:54 GMT -5

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Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jan 5, 2020 0:54:54 GMT -5

T E N

It starts with chaos.

I don't know if that's going to make sense to anyone else, if any of you out there are ever going to understand what it felt like when I was little, but everything was too much and not enough and not right and exactly as it needed to be. I could never make any sense of it. As far back as I can remember, the world just exists in fire and chaos, in shouting and anger and confusion and a kind of noise so loud it is constantly threatening to suffocate me.

I first felt it when I was just a little kid, this need to escape, to run, to be anywhere except for right in the middle of the hustle of the Seam.

People in my neighborhood live their lives holding their breath, praying that something miraculous might fall into their lap, that food that doesn't taste like cement will magically appear on the dining room table. And all those hopes, all those dreams, they are always, always wasted. They come out of people chests in sobs and screams, in terrible violence and terrible words and terrible words that incite terrible violence—and I hated all of it, couldn't bring myself to understand it, didn't relate to any of it, just knew that if I ever wanted to survive, I had to live through it all without letting a single shard of shattered dreams cut my heart.

At first, I could only bring myself to escape to my front stoop. I was terrified to leave my little corner of the house, scared I would look at someone wrong and they would lash me, scared I'd see something I wasn't supposed to and they'd rip out my eyes. That happened to Alex Delaney's mom, the boy down the street, I'm pretty sure; she doesn't talk about it, but what other reason would the Keepers have had for taking them? I just couldn't handle it though, watching Ma cry every morning when Dad left at dawn, boots making the wood floor creak. So I settled for the front stoop at first, would take a few hesitant steps out the front down before the sun came up and would sit on the street, watching people walk by, learning the ins and outs of everyone around me's schedule. I knew exactly when Mrs. Williams would set out in the morning to bring her goat's milk to sell in the marketplace, or the exact moment when her husband would come back in the evening, soot caked on his face and hands but with a couple flowers in hand from along the fence for his wife every time.

I know I'm scrwny now, but you should have seen me back then, all skin and bones and too many elbows. It made it easier for me though, going out in the world—no one wants to look at the starving kid with hollow cheeks, even if mine are covered in freckles my grandma always tells me are the cutest thing she's ever seen. When I turned seven, I started going to the market with Grandma, then once I was familiar with the ins and outs of that place, too, I started going by myself, slipping and out, wandering around all the different stalls, quieter than a mouse.

And I watched.

And I learned.

And, when people finally looked at me, I was the last thing they would have expected.

Last Edit: Jan 5, 2020 1:07:59 GMT -5 by 🌱 kaitlin.

what are men to rocks and mountains?

a haunted house.

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taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 5, 2020 1:25:06 GMT -5

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Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jan 5, 2020 1:25:06 GMT -5

T E N

I wasn't sure what people really expected from me.

Ma's fire, maybe, her willingness to scream at anyone and anything. She used to run through town, yelling at the top of her lungs, demanding everything that life had ever denied her like some blaze of glory, but then she would collapse in a fit of hysterics not long after. I think most people wanted to take me away from her when they realized she had a kid, but Grandma, Pa's mom, would never allow them to remove me from under her roof, and she had a support of everyone in the black market to prove it. I think I'm a little bit more like Pa, but even he has his fire, like embers after a blaze. In Twelve, even just standing through the pain is rebellion, and I never saw him take a seat.

Maybe I'm like Ma in that I feel everything around me, but where she crumbled, I used all those things like building blocks, pushed down all those feelings and turned them into stones at the base of my stomach, built a wall around myself and taught myself to ignore them. Maybe I'm like Pa in that I've never let them control me, but I'm certainly not out there in the mines protecting men's lives either. He went to the mines every morning and was always among the last to leave, staying behind to help the men with too much soot in their lungs to breathe properly, to rope around his own shoulder the arm of one's who could barely stand at the end of the day so that he could help them stumble back to the soot-covered town they called home.

Maybe they make up parts of who I am, but even they are a chaos that makes me want to run.

Last Edit: Jan 8, 2020 22:24:32 GMT -5 by 🌱 kaitlin.

what are men to rocks and mountains?

a haunted house.

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taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 8, 2020 22:53:56 GMT -5

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Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jan 8, 2020 22:53:56 GMT -5

T E N

The first time I stole something was the morning after mom died.

I can still see her lying there, hands clutched to her chest. I had held my hand over hers for hours, felt her pulse fading under my hands. Sometimes I think that this is the reason why I don't really like touching people anymore, think that this night ruined me for the rest of time, finally sent me over the edge. I sat at her bedside all night, refused to leave her no matter how many times Pa said to me You don't need to be here for this, T.

I did.

Her mind had never been strong, and when her body started to fail, there was nothing that anyone could do.

It's the only time I remember seeing Pa cry.

It's also when the fire in him finally goes out, like they were stoking each others flames, and when one of them died, both of them had to go. I don't know what it did to me, but I know that the next morning I went out to the market and stole my first loaf of bread. I'm not sure what possessed me that first morning, but after that I watched Pa retreat into himself. Some sick part of me was glad, I think; I was grateful for the things that Death did to my family, grateful that finally, for once, our home wasn't a crime scene, wasn't a place for screaming matches and never being enough. Still though, the child in me wants his attention, wants his love, even if it scares me sometimes, so I slip my fingers into more and more pockets, lift things from those with too much money, let grime dig her claws into me.

I get my nickname a year later.

I went to the market that morning alongside Grandma; she was going to set up a stall to sell some of her herbs, but she had me carry everything down to the square for her. She also needed to buy thread for some stitching and spirits for Pa, but I don't like to think about the holes in our clothes and I started pretending not to smell booze on Pa in the morning a long time ago, so. After I set everything up for Grandma, I went and did what I did best—plucked from the Peacekeepers. This time it was berries, slipped some out of their bag and stuck them in my pockets. An old woman saw, responded first with a dry chuckle. You're lucky to still have all ten fingers, she'd said to me.

For a second, all I had done was look back at her in fear, in horror, in terror. My eyes had been so wide, I'm sure, colored with childhood naïveté. I hadn't had any idea what to say, how to respond. But then—and it's this that follows me for the rest of my time at school this reputation that I hold until I send my best friends into the games. It follows me when Pa dies two yers later in a mining accident, follows me every time the kids at school push me down or being too quiet, follows me every time I think that I've stolen too much and I've hit the breaking point.

It's not luck, I'd replied. I've got no time for luck.

I'm going to start calling you that, Nico Thorne says and I spin around, see him leaning against a wall, surveying everyone in the room. I looked up at him in awe when he said that, the older boy who suddenly knew who I was. Between one breath and the next, I found myself a brother, a best friend, a boy who would understand exactly who I was in a single second.

Ten. He ticks his tongue, a noise I'd go on to hear him make a million times, tilts his head to the side. It suits you.

what are men to rocks and mountains?

a haunted house.

🌱 kaitlin. Graphics 2,683 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 24, 2024 15:20:05 GMT -5 aspiring beam of light	taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 9, 2020 23:38:59 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jan 9, 2020 23:38:59 GMT -5 ripred_bot
	what are men to rocks and mountains? a haunted house.

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taylor livingstone / twelve. resub Jan 9, 2020 23:46:04 GMT -5

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Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Jan 9, 2020 23:46:04 GMT -5

i'm sorry i have to quote this entire paragraph because:

' People in my neighborhood live their lives holding their breath, praying that something might fall into their lap, that food that doesn't taste like cement will magically appear on the dining room table. And all those hopes, all those dreams, they are always, always wasted. They come out of people chests in sobs and screams, in terrible violence and terrible words and terrible words that incite terrible violence—and I hated all of it, couldn't bring myself to understand it, didn't relate to any of it, just knew that if I ever wanted to survive, I had to live through it all without letting a single shard of shattered dreams cut my heart. '

wow. i want to be her best friend, nico is a lucky bastard!!!

“and men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.”