![[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ Avatar](https://64.media.tumblr.com/683a92111484c53f37dbd1c08199593d/da90adf6dc68f15a-a4/s540x810/e04e6852f0a2b32247c83e78e179b62d8fdd55b0.gif)
at once, i knew i was not magnificent // talon & quinn, vt.
May 14, 2022 0:00:14 GMT -5
Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on May 14, 2022 0:00:14 GMT -5
↳ QUINN EMBERSTATT
Fourteen comes around like a solar eclipse, rare and beautiful and terrifying. Her mother puts her foot down - "you're fourteen now" a never-ending phrase falling from her mouth alongside a frown or a sigh. Unspoken, its weight hangs heavy on Quinn's shoulders - though stubborn as she is, she pretends that she feels light as air. Unbothered and unafraid, hiding the fact that she holds her breath at every reaping and only lets herself breathe out when they draw for the second name.
Enzo. Mom. Fourteen is a death-sentence, a second birth. Quell twist, she's been so terrible to half of the children her age that it's a miracle they don't call on her out of spite, twisted vengeance, sweet revenge. She would have held her head up high, that childish bravado that comes with who she is and who her family are. Smiled. Been so terribly wonderful, even in death. And she wouldn't be scared - at least, not outwardly.
Not until her final breath.
Fourteen going on fifteen, a summer child - she shrinks in the cold, trudging through post-snowstorm sludge in boots, nose pink and burning. Once upon a time she reveled in meeting these Victors, waiting patiently in her best dress at the gates of the Victor's Village for her brother to finish his tour, for her mother to finish fussing about the house and her father to get caught trying to sneak bites of food from the chefs before dinnertime. Now she is cold and bored and perpetually unimpressed, teenage wasteland of a girl. Quinn glowers at her parents, drags her feet through the frost-covered grass, grumbles about the weather - it's never been this cold in winter before, not ever.
Her Mom elbows her gently on the platform, reminds her to stop slouching. That only a year ago she begged to take over the reigns of the Victory Tour from her brother, throwing a fit when she was told she was too young. "You're fourteen now," her mother reminds her - again.
She doesn't need to say the rest.
Quinn knows what it all means, feels the crushing impact of regret against her chest. When her mother was her age yet half her size she won the Games, when her brother was the same he lived and died and lived again. Her father an orphan, fighting ten other pairs of hungry hands for scraps at mealtimes. Fourteen going on twenty-four, Quinn thinks she knows everything & anything there is to know about being alive.
"I know," she parrots back, scowling at her feet and the puddle of melted ice that pools on the platform below.
Talon Grey, Career. Victor. Twin of the fallen, except won't get their brother back like Quinn did. Damned by their own name, much like Quinn is - but where excitement and wonder once bubbled in her chest now houses anxiety. What did she have in common with any of the victors anyway? At fourteen her Ma was one of them. At fourteen, her brother too. But Quinn is just a sour-faced girl with red hair and a shiny last name, bitten-down nails and a lump in her throat as she nods nervously at Panem's newest victor when they step off the train carriage, shifting nervously into step behind the Keeper escorts as she and her mother make their way outside.
"I'll see y'all later for dinner," Saffron smiles. Her gaze shifts to her daughter: "Behave yourselves" - and then she's gone, daughter adrift in teenage responsibility.
There's a nervous beat, another. She looks to Talon awkwardly, as if to ask the Victor what to do now - not that they'd have a clue. This was supposed to be Quinn's gig. Enzo was always so good at this. Charming, energetic, so full of enthusiasm at this age. Easily loveable - no wonder her Mom took him in as her own. But Quinn is polar opposite of her brother - gangly and awkward, legs aching from growth spurts and walking down to the town square from home.
So this is fourteen? It's absolute ass.
"Um..." she breaks the silence, shifts nervously on her feet, acutely aware of the small crowd they'd accumulated of photographers and official-looking persons bristling in the cold, dressed for much warmer weather. Quinn crosses her arms over herself, nestling into the comfort of her quilted down-jacket, not quite able to meet Talon's eyes with her own. District Ten, District Ten - what was there even to do in this shit-hole of a place?
Well, there was always-
"Wanna go see some horses?"[ coding by griffin ]
