the ocean thread [wolf tears]

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cinder
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I dream of a reality where my dreams may come true - 23 y/o in 2020 logging in and laughing

the ocean thread [wolf tears] Aug 19, 2011 2:22:32 GMT -5

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Post by cinder on Aug 19, 2011 2:22:32 GMT -5

We are all that is left, and
I am happier

Mercury is dead.
I don't care.

Nala is probably in a containment room in the Capitol being tested on because she is just as "insane in the brain" as I ever was.
I don't care.

Stark is also long gone, stealing away from us, her family, the moment she caught wind we were being picked off one by one.
I don't care.

It's hard for me to care about anything anymore, I am disassociated with the emotions I used to hold dear. I've gone numb, and the salt caressing my wounds is a welcomed side effect of living a life I don't deserve. Everybody dies, they all leave me. There's only one variable between the likes of Mercury, my mother, my grandfather, my shucking ex-boyfriend, everybody. Mercury probably never walked on the streets and saw Nero, and smiled at him then never crossed paths again. My mother certainly never met any of my cute, itsy-bitsy little friends, she would have paled if she knew who and what I could become, and she would have killed me as a baby.

In my head, the scene plays out just like her suicide. Water, water, everywhere. There's too much of it, our tub automatically stops pouring past a certain point, to make it as hard as possible for girls like my mother to steal their own lives from men like my grand-father. But she had pints of blood in her blue-bred veins, so it made it quite easy for her to smack

Someones scuffed a bit of sand to my right, probably about twenty paces away from where I'm standing half submerged in the murky ocean. Do you know that the ocean isn't like the pictures? It isn't blue and marvelous, I don't think it's ever been. Instead it's a great big heap of trash. People who expect more, people like me, should be allowed to submerge themselves in the water and die, in peace. But I'm not ready to die, I want to, but I can't. Not until I've settled the images coursing through my brain of a girl turning around and smiling at me, her face half-brightened by the light, perpetually solemn when she wants to be. And she can be anything she wants.

Right now, I'm hoping it's her when I turn around, but I expect numerous ghosts are haunting me, so it won't surprise me if I die even if the ocean won't take these feathers and hollow bones just yet. Oh Cady-Bird, you aren't even worth my time, you waste. Not anymore like you used to be... Grand-fathers voice is weak and gurgling, like how he sounded when these hands cut through a throat and watched him instinctively try to take one last hit at me. His hands raised from around that throat, clutching invisible guns, and he shot me dead in his mind.

But in my head, I can still hear the gunpowder and taste the thick blood-words pouring out of his throat. So many unresolved mysteries, many questions on my part. Father - no, grandfather (as I've taken to calling him in order to diminish his hold over me) was never forthcoming about why I am what I am, instead of Illiana being who I am and my being who Illiana should have been.

She is my sister with her feet planted in the ground so firmly I think the waves could wash away the ocean from her eyes and drench her pale, blonde hair is salt and sand before she would budge on her ethical, ethnical, moral, coral words of wisdom, "Code of Honor." I wish I can be like her one day, but I know it's a "could have been" and not a "would have," or even a "should have."

And for Christ's sake, I am so very tired of playing these games with myself, where I feign interest in the real world and grip at my knife and massage the kinks out of my body so I am always ready for anything. Expectant of it, even.

But I still turn around and navigate the murky waters, all too aware of the fog and the sea salt between me and her. She is still clear in the dawn light, with her hands in her pocket and a ferret warming next to it. The ferret sunned, that day I saw her turning by the window panes and gravely telling me, for once talking to be on an equal level that I could understand, because usually I treat her like my rock and my world and I can't believe she's talking to be like an average, normal, human-killer-being-girl, "Mercury will be dead soon, we have to go."

We've been on the run since then, but never in the places you'd expect. I've traveled coast to coast by sewer, forest, and train, but never by the mountain passes with half-remembered signs warning CAUTION to trucks that go by the TONS, always chattering about the near-and-clear HEIGHTS we're passing by, flying through, and in some cases over. There are long destroyed bridge foundations and ghosts of vehicles that pass through the mountains.

But sometimes the strong and steady come to an end. Cadia seems at the end of her wits, I can't always depend on her as my soul rock, my world. Oh, rock my world Cadia. We've been wading through sands of time and seas of salt now, trying to get lost or lose our tracks so our size large and size small feet don't leave tracks the men can see out, or the dogs can sniff.

I'm walking towards her, so close I can taste the perfume of her sweat and skin on my tongue, and it's marvelous. My eyes do a quick search of her, for flaws, for rigidity that will clue me in it is time to pull out a dagger and make "the quick exit" out of this life and into the next. But I couldn't do that, I'd have to kill her first, I think with a degree of a sentimental hitch to my mind. Thinking of going on without Cadia and her damn ferret is an idea I haven't entertained. She is the only one strong enough to keep pace with me.

My feet feel out a stone, I try to glide over it, but have to use those honed and active Career instincts not to fall on my face, preferring the easy and styled somersault to my face under feet. But my eyes strain not to leave her form, I like to memorize every part of her because she is all that remains the same, for such a long time now, I'm forgetting what it feels like to have a twin by my side who mirrors my body because Cadia mirrors all of my actions, and she responds to me in ways that send heat waves and pleasure into every inch of every muscle I toned today and yesterday. And tomorrow, I will surge with more strength because of her, for her.

Of course, she will never know for sure how I feel, because I can't risk having her walk away from me, or step out of life too quickly. I've promised myself I can bear to watch her like any other average human being, because to watch and to not-speak is what I like the best.

But her eyes are clear and sharp and hard, but amused when I see her again, and I can't stop spilling and splitting out of my skins so that I say words to her. "I'm glad for your company, Cadia. Those chips we had, the back-ups - I never would have known where they were." I try to sound respecting, but not now nor ever idolizing, still my voice hitches and catches on the words, almost as clumsy as my almost-fall while I left the ocean's embrace.

I glare at her narrowly, try to act like I can take life seriously, but visions are spilling into my mind like water through the sand between my toes. The tide raises, my heart beats fast and clear. I am for once rooted in the now and now, rather than then and there, where my head dreams of a day when she will know all of my desperate thoughts, when I am willing to divulge to her how much it means to me that there is someone to keep me out of the clouds in my head and the pouts on my lips.

You are my reality, Lalik.
I care.

Last Edit: Aug 19, 2011 2:41:37 GMT -5 by cinder

Arcadia, Illiana, Kade, Thea, Jezebel, Cassedy, Marina, Ronan, Karina

WT
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time, gender, furbies, and other things that don't exist

the ocean thread [wolf tears] Aug 19, 2011 16:01:30 GMT -5

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Post by WT on Aug 19, 2011 16:01:30 GMT -5

Wide eyes, firm stance, quick and sure words. In another child, eagerness to please; in this one, thirst to prove. "My name is Lalik, and someday I’m going to win the Hunger Games."

"Why would you want to?"

"Why...?" A foreign idea, as strange to the lips as the mind. Has she ever said this word? What reason has she had? It’s only ever seemed natural. Live. Breathe. Win. "Because... that’s everything. I’m everything."

"That sounds lonely."

Confusion ducks down as the eyes narrow, hiding away in the recesses where even she can’t find it if she wants to. The remainder, whatever that is, peers forward at the stranger. "You’re weird."

"You too." A standoff, ever so brief, and then a smile like none she has known. Not proud, not beguiling, not indulgent. Not sweet. Not even happy. Just a curving of lips, as dreadfully wrong as a morning moon but somehow as ~~soothing~~ ~~natural~~ ~~necessary~~ inevitable as the flow of blood from heart to hand, heel, head, heart. "I’m Cadia. It’s nice to meet you."

Who needs a dream?
Who needs ambition?
Who'd be the fool
In my position?

Like everything, idea of the ocean have ebbed with time.

She tries to avoid the past these days. Truly, she does. Here and now is hard enough. Endless days of ~~Arcadia~~ running or climbing or swimming, endless nights of ~~Arcadia~~ forcing her body to at least try to sleep through the small noises that burn her brain alive as it tries to gage the dangers of things that might not exist. (How long has she lived like this? How has she not gone insane? Always a light sleeper, she exists now on the fumes of the ghosts that haunt her- and on pure instinct, the one thing that will never leave her. Never.) Eternal, infernal effort poured into figuring out ~~Arcadia~~ the best routes and finding ~~some kind of rationality in all this~~ something to sharpen her blades on and dissecting ~~herself to see if there are still missing pieces or if she’s just put them together wrong~~ animals for every last possibly scrap of meat.

Other people would find this an adventure. Alongside her fellow ~~Career~~ ~~murderess~~ ~~friend~~ girl, Cadia has seen things that have gone untouched by human eyes for decades. Ancient, decaying signs, their barely-visible numbers long since devoid of meaning. Objects that must have been vehicles, but now appear reduced to heaps of metal and rubber, their artificial voices silenced forever. Fallen houses, crumbling roads, bridges held together by physics rather than support beams—even, occasionally, a structure lucky enough to have survived more or less intact. Their feet have touched every type of soil, it seems- every rock, every grass. Panem is theirs in ways the Capitol, with their dancing speed-of-light machines and drugged electric castles, can never touch.

But adventures are a thing of the past. Adventures are for when your ~~first?~~ lover is alive and your parents are still parents, and you have something to return to, or at least something to save. Adventures are for when you still have dreams—when killing someone on TV still sounds like fun and you still believe the ocean is blue and the world yours for the taking. Adventures are for before your tiny hands learn to drive a dagger through muscle and past bone, before you meander down the coast of a murky liquid that only becomes blue when it meets the sky, before you learn that you can own the world and still be so far beneath its notice that it will not even notice when your blood nourishes its plants for the last time.

All she sees now is reality, and that is more than enough.

Once I had dreams
Now they're obsessions
Hopes became needs
Lovers, possessions

Waves (so tiny- there’s one more letdown, whatever happened to the waves that go above your head and drown the world in white and blue?) crash over her feet, painfully soothing. Beneath the foam of each crest, sand and salt scrub at her feet, carrying away dirt even as they lodge themselves in the cuts. (Shoes are difficult to make, and callouses only protect the soles- and at that, only so much. Feet aren’t made to run forever, even if running is the only option left.) Neither sensation is particularly noteworthy- the first is as mundane as a bath, the latter merely a new kind of pain that tries but fails to distinguish itself from the others- but they do manage to bring her back from wherever she was headed. With a start and a silent curse, for she didn’t realize she’d started down that road and has no great desire to follow it to any of its inevitable conclusions, she turns away from the water, slinking back up to dry sand. Though she could as easily walk in water—the disappointing waves are not enough to take her balance from her, not after she fought for that balance and held it for so long—the suction and squelch of soaked sand are disconcerting. Dry rock, even when tiny and broken, makes sense to her feet.

She always did like the familiar.

The downside: Ferret, who would not brave the water, comes running up to her, squeaking madly above the rushing water. Frowning, Cadia gives the ferret a sharp look, but it’s heedless as always, complaining about heaven knows what at an ungodly high pitch. "Shut up and go find something shiny!” almost does the trick, trapping the pest’s attention for a second with her tone if nothing else, but then it’s right back to square one: Ferret blares squeak, squeak, screech as though Cadia has a clue what it’s talking about.

Everything she’s wanted to keep, and lost. One thing she wishes would go away, and it tethers itself to her like the earth to the sun, always needy and never giving anything in return.

(Except she doesn’t want it to go away, exactly. She’s used to it, and it’s so nice to be used to something.)

Finally she gives up and just walks, willing the ferret to get distracted by some interesting shell along the way. Either it does, or it gets the idea that Cadia isn’t going to play mom anytime soon (the thing is smart sometimes), because surprisingly soon the chatter fades out. Relieved, the ~~girl~~ ~~murderess~~ Career ambles down the shore, grateful for the systematic white noise that drowns out her thoughts. Being cognizant has gotten her nowhere in life; it’s only ever confused her, drawing squiggles where straight lines used to be and coloring in her carefully-constructed world of black and white with hues she could decipher, but doesn’t want to. (Unless it’s the other way around. Sometimes she isn’t sure.) Thinking gave life and light to pre-planted ideas and half-dared dreams alike, built them into something she could use to fuel herself—but those grew too big, too bright, too hot. Ambition. Violence. Love. All of it. Everything she once built her life around is gone, either consumed fully in her effort to use it or smoldering away to nothing after it burned her and, in a panic, she stamped it out.

You taught me all of that, Cadia. I don’t know whether to be grateful anymore.

All that’s left is thinking. Paranoia, too, but that’s only a warped version of normal reasoning. So she lets the sea carry away her thoughts (it might as well be good for something—its only other use is disillusionment, and she’s had enough of that to not need it anymore), and then she’s ~~almost~~ free.

Without thought, there is only forever. Not the too-full forever she has come to dread, the continuation of this life with no hope for escape, but the empty forever that lulls her into all-too-rare slumber.

At least, that’s all that’s left until she sees Arcadia.

Now I'm
Where I want to be and
Who I want to be and
Doing what I always
Said I would
And yet I feel I haven't won at all

She wanted this. It can be horribly easy to forget sometimes—sometimes she stands at one end of a mostly-dead bridge and curses and spits Which one of us thought this was a good idea? and Arcadia just gives her this unfathomable look, and she has to remember oh yes, I'm the one who said it was time to go—but she thought this not-adventure would be a good idea. The two of them, together, far away from everything that didn’t matter ~~because only they matter, they them Arcadia us?~~. Forever, maybe. Apparently she still had something left to disenchant, then.

No, that’s not fair. She isn’t entirely disenchanted. Sometimes the revels in it: the freedom, the isolation, the pair of them knowing all they need to know ~~unless it’s about each other~~. From time to time, she digs her feet into the dirt and lets out her braid and laughs in pure delight as the wind pulls back loose strands of hair. When she lets herself, she is (almost close to) happy.

But then Arcadia shows up and the colours go everywhere again and she doesn’t know what to do anymore, because she has every reason to be pleased as punch and all of a sudden she’s not.

Except when Arcadia shows up during her anger, and the colors smooth out because everything is a tiny bit closer to okay, even though it really isn’t.

Or when Cadia is the one who shows up, and retreats a single step in the sand because for once she isn’t feeling and she doesn’t want to have to.

Running for my life and
Never looking back in
Case there's someone right behind to
Shoot me down and say he always knew I'd fall.

But the retreat is too late. There is nowhere to go, only open beach behind her and water before her, and Arcadia has already heard her. (Of course she would, that brilliant, maddening girl.) Anyway, by the time her counterpart takes her first step, Cadia is no longer sure whether she wants to go.

Which is, of course, the most maddening thing of all. Not the turmoil that eats at her all the time these days. Not the paranoia, which has admittedly been worse than usual (wasn’t she right about the Capitol last time, wasn’t she?!) but which she has learned to deal with over the years. It is the fact that she wants the turmoil- or, not wants, but somehow needs, as though she will fall apart if ~~Arcadia~~ chaos is not there to throw her back together.

When the crazy wheel slows down
Where will I be?
Back where I started.

When did that happen? Years have passed since she needed anyone in her life, and this is an entirely different kind of need from any she’s ever known. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t notice it creeping in, and only felt her chains when they had already become too strong to break. Had it been as before, woven into her skin instead of her blood, tempered by just enough reality but not yet tainted with too much—

But there is no way for the past to catch her, no matter how long she spends chasing it down the recesses of her mind—and someday, she knows, she will have to stop comparing them. There is, in truth, very little to compare. Only the most basic physical attributes, and all of them cancelled out by attitude, bearing, circumstance. Nothing is the same. Not even herself.

(It’s so hard to let go, though. Once they hid from the rain in a timeworn but still-sturdy religious haven of some sort, its walls falling apart but the supports still strong, and as she ran an idle finger down a dusty window to see the vibrant colour underneath she thought, She would have loved this. Instantly another part of her mind screamed, Look behind you! What right do you have to be thinking about dead girls when there’s a living one beside you? Figure your current goddamn life out, instead of trying to bring back your old one! It’s as dead as her. Get over it.

On the other hand, there are times when Arcadia is poised ahead of her, radiant energy stilled for just a moment, and Cadia glances up from her own feet to the figure in front of her and has to pause herself because can’t breathe—and then the same inner voice, or perhaps a cousin, snorts and chides her. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten! You have a promise to keep. Now start walking.)

Sudden motion distracts Cadia from her thoughts, and her eyes focus on the world again just in time to see Arcadia stumble. The slightest of smiles washes onto her face at the funny tilt Arcadia’s head adopts as it falls, rushing away with the next ebb of the nearby water but leaving the amusement behind. So graceful, the blonde can be—right before she dumps herself on the ground. It’s an attention thing, Cadia thinks, an issue of not paying enough attention to her surroundings sometimes, but she isn’t sure about that, so she’ll never actually say anything.

(Not that she would say it even if she was positive, because that would mean criticizing Arcadia and she cannot think of a single good reason to do that.

Unless it’s as Lalik, comparing Arcadia to Cadia.

But that’s not fair, because they’re worlds apart, and Arcadia is so much more-

But how can she say that, not knowing what Cadia might have become?)

Don't get me wrong
I'm not complaining
Times have been good
Fast, entertaining

As always, Arcadia rights herself and glides forward. (Always forward, never stagnating because even when she stops she’s so alive—how does she do it?) At Cadia’s back right corner there is a scraping of sand that can only be Ferret, but she blocks out the noise it because she’s trying to focus. She wants to speak, badly. So much is flickering in her mind, begging to be spoken or asked—little mundane things, hi and how’s the water and do we need to fish today, and ~~more~~ ~~less~~ unimportant ones like what did you find out there and the world doesn’t make sense anymore, or is that just me and thank you for coming back from the water, because sometimes you seem to melt into the world until I can’t tell if I’m going to get you back, and I don’t know anymore whether I could survive that... But they aren’t actually words, because she isn’t wired that way. Maybe she could have been, but that was a long, long time ago. In her childhood, school was the only place where words were necessary, and what use was school to her? When she learned anything, it was about building grenades, not making grades.

No, the poetry of dialogue is beyond her. All she has now are emotions she doesn’t understand—that, and an itching desire to somehow breathe them into Arcadia, as though the other girl can undo whatever it is she’s done to them. Try as she might, though, the translation is beyond her. Arcadia gets there long before Cadia ever could, her voice slipping in among fragments of thought that settle down instantly, unable to do anything but pay attention.

"I'm glad for your company, Cadia. Those chips we had, the back-ups - I never would have known where they were."

Rise, fall, half-smile, half-tense. Arcadia’s words are praise (it’s been so long since anyone but herself rewarded her for a job well-done—she thought she didn’t need it anymore, but then, she also thought she was beyond needing anything, didn’t she?), but they come out haltingly, riddled with catches and pauses that Cadia doesn’t know how to decipher. Patching things together has never been her specialty; it is the curse of the destroyer that while a builder knows how to take their creations apart, a sliced and decimated ~~person~~ ~~object~~ thing cannot be reversed. Between that and her hopeless lack of comprehension when it comes to conversation, she has no idea what’s going on in Arcadia’s voice. Only the words are clear to her, and she doesn’t know whether to take them at face value—or, for that matter, whether taking them at face value would make her happy.

(Does she still know how to be happy? Yes, she thinks so. No, knows so. She has been happy often in the past few months, or at least more often than she used to be. Part of it is the speed, the constant movement and discovery; she may not be interested in the world’s mysteries, but she can still find joy in momentum. And a part of her, the part that’s still focused on Arcadia’s clear, narrow eyes instead of her near-tremulous words and voice, is happy right now. But she’s also anxious—forever anxious, one way or another—and confused. And sad, or at least somber, because it’s been so long and she doesn’t know how to hold herself together without the old pain to act as her cocoon. What is she supposed to do with all of this? She longs for simplicity, and yet doesn’t because it would mean giving Arcadia away, but that just makes her want it more, because she doesn’t know what to ~~think~~ ~~feel~~ make of Arcadia these days.)

With the slightest of sighs Cadia crosses her arms over her chest, hands pressing to opposite shoulders in a brief display of ~~vulnerability~~ sentiment before she drops them. Is that all I am to you – useful? she wants to ask. She can’t, though, because she can’t risk hearing the affirmative when, if the question was reversed, she would have to stumble through a much longer answer. (Or would she? Even as the first question forms, thoughts from earlier circle around and settle beside it. Is that all you are to me – a replacement?)

But what's the point
If I'm concealing
Not only love
All other feeling?

Instead of the million things she wants to say, she goes for the one she can say. "Lucky guess." A pause. She looks away, pretending to glance at Ferret but really staring at nothing, hoping some great skill with words will appear from the nameless void that she’s sent so much of herself into. (In theory, the only things she can get back are pieces of herself, but she doesn’t want those. They’re too big or too small to fit with the her that’s standing on the sands, or else they hurt too much. Surely she’s paid enough for one new thing?) "You would have figured it out."

It’s not enough, but she doesn’t know how to make it be enough.

She never has.

Last Edit: Aug 20, 2011 17:17:36 GMT -5 by WT

'the way we lived' in stylized text, with 'character directory' as a subtitle underneath

banner by Dars! <3

cinder
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I dream of a reality where my dreams may come true - 23 y/o in 2020 logging in and laughing

the ocean thread [wolf tears] Aug 19, 2011 19:39:14 GMT -5

Quote

Post by cinder on Aug 19, 2011 19:39:14 GMT -5

"Lucky guess."

Luck is from another realm than me, it is entirely separated and my mind can't access it no matter where my fingers search.There are two parts to every spectrum. Cool and warm. Self and other. Light and dark, and concrete street signs that won't wash away oppose the illusions in my mind, like the concept of ever being safe or saved. Saving Cadia saving myself from myself from Cadia.

But the lines blur. I am the dream-being snapped into the real because I never knew that there is always a choice when I was too small, too weak, never enough. Rules for me are meant to be broken, cool and warm blend wonderfully on the canvas I paint, with my life split open so I can see the contents of an enigma like no other.

Self and other Cadia mingle in more ways than one until the lines between reality and fantasy blur, and once again I am trapped in a state of confusion, wanting Cadia, not having her, wishing, seeing warped images and trying, desperately trying to piece together what is real and what is not. I know there should be a line, but I can't define it when questions pop into my head at every chance they get.

if there are only two sides to every story, than why does my crystalline Cadia bounce lights of all color in every direction, to places I will never hear about or see with my own eyes.

and why does she taste like sunshine in the dark?

I'd ask aloud if she weren't staring at me, funny and amused: "Is there another way, ~~for me,~~ ~~for us~~?"

Incomprehensible, mysterious.
Can self and other mingle like I want us to? What other parables lurk beneath the surface of certainty?

"You would have figured it out."

No Cadia, not without you, I wouldn't have. I am not smart enough for that all on my own and I wouldn't have wished to live with a chip in my leg and a ferret far from my heart. You are my charm, Cadia, you charm me. I wish with every fiber of my being that I could be the one with the luck and the guesses, but all I can guess is that you will never want me like I want you.

I try to smile, because praise warrants reaction, especially from Cadia. But my thoughts drift like clouds, they always have, and so Father creeps inside my head and knocks on my ragged, sand-drenched curls. He brings me memories to feast my eyes upon, and I lose all my focus.

He'd taught me that fine dining on desserts in the Capitol, I'd someday come across a man who would look at me and see more than I can bear to be all on my own, he'd love me with money and save me from the bad people in the Arena. And so my face was painted in preparation for my eyes, my ancestress with the smooth and steady fingers paints me pretty.

Wide, blue eyes will attract attention, and all is wanted, all is right when you are fighting to earn back a life.

You're going to need mascara, apply it from root to tip, then blink onto the brush. Tears are like shimmers, darling, beautiful, natural shimmers in your eyes. Smudge a bit into the outside creases, that's right, my girl. Now line your eyes in black - no, no. More gently. Try to think of the application as soothing, I know you use that blade more times than not, treat it as an exercise for nimble, steady hands. Now dust on some powder, and bring a smidge of white to the inside corners. You've done it, Cady-girl, well done.

I wonder if Cadia ever saw her face painted.

A fair complexion is more radiant than any costume.

So she paints onto my face a layer of smooth, ivory liquid, cool to the touch. I'd drink it. She slathers it from ear to ear, chin to hairline. Next is a lotion, then a powder and soft dusting of translucent colors, she swipes red across my bones to hide them and colors my skin in.

Cherry lips are the finishing touch.

Dear, please hold still. It'll only be a moment. I smile back at her, she tells me to hold my pout and I obey, always a dutiful daughter. Her fingers smudge the color and shine across my lips, she draws lines to make them large and cushed. Then I smile, her finger wipes across a stain to my teeth, before her light hands feather across my face once more, and move to my hair, where they work until Father groans.

It's explained to me then, that I must appear alien to who I will be in the Arena. I am sixteen, then, and proud to be a dutiful, striking daughter. I will have the shock value of angular beauty mixed with power, but for now I am a softened, gleaming blade - polished and dull. You have to be beautiful enough that people like you, Cady-bird, but they're going to need to see you transform to have any faith in your abilities.

I stare at myself in the mirror, and think - what will happen when my face hardens, and I stare down another Tribute with all this pretty make-up on? "Am I beautiful," I asked then. My ancestress stares proudly at her handy-work, then says no. The illusion shatters with a faint, dull roar, like the sound of waves -

I regain control of my thoughts, shake my hair like the sea salts are to blame for my lapses in attention, and smile again for Cadia, but this time it is apologetic. I find myself threatened by fantasy now, I'd like to side with my reality, my Cadia. Because every moment I spend in my head at dinner parties and training sessions, is another moment I can't be running with her, and I know our journey isn't endless. One way we will die, or worse. We'll be forgotten, and we'll welcome gladly the phrase Mrs? from the Peacekeepers mouth's, the ones who don't know our creviced, haggard faces coincide with fresh, young girls running circles around Panem, desperate for escape.

I try to think of clever things to say, but I am never in the moment. My thoughts ebb and fade before I capture them, so that I'm lost in the past's never-ending cycle, like waves eating away at the sand, always chasing the trees that border the beach. They'll never find them, but they still try to reach new heights, and strain against the weight of rock and sand.

"But that isn't what happened," My thoughts interrupt with frantic choral calls, Oh god I want to say her name but I'm never sure what to call her. Lalik. Cadia. Lalikia. Calik, even. I intend to end my statement, my thanks, but there are no more words for me. I decide not to hunt for them, and instead track my eyes on Cadia so I can wait for her acknowledgment. When she looks at me, I feel everything I've ever split down the middle mending itself, I feel balanced. I'm tired of sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw and trying to make it work the way the game should be played. ~~I need a partner.~~

I need to try to sit right down the middle with my legs held to each side, so that I don't fall and spin and turn like I do now. I'd prefer to be balanced, never make messes out of air. When I walk, I don't want to stumble and catch myself altogether too quickly and too gracefully so that the ideas conflict in my mind - strength and weakness, the measure I judge myself by. I don't want to hurt when I'm told my eyes are wide and blue, my lips are cherry red, my fine bone structure delicate and wispy, but I am not beautiful, ancestress, how? how? how?

But here is Cadia, balancing me. With her, I know I can be both beautiful and ugly, and she will bear her own skins and furs to me and match our pieces so we are utterly beautiful and entirely ugly, together. If what I want is not entirely possible, I must be able to settle for being a piece to a puzzle, a beautiful, complex puzzle that never sorts itself out, that moves and shifts and grows. Still, I fear.

Will it hurt to me to be the sand to Cadia while she washes over me, a part of something greater than I'd ever imagined, but never like those god-damned trees at the end of the beach, waiting patiently, hugging themselves to each other and being one, shifting being, never at odds with itself? Cadia balances me like no other, I think if our hands clasp together we will form two perfect halves in every spot. The places where I have fresh, bloody wounds will swell with her. Injuries don't matter, it's hard to explain, but when I'm with Cadia I don't care if I am beautiful, or strange, dark, light, or grey for god's fucking sake. I am me with her, I will always be me with her, and we complete each other.

Who am I to ask for any more than the perfect companion to hold?!? I'll endure the storm if we slice ourselves away from one another, but I'd much prefer to love the taste and feel of Cadia while I live. I'd much prefer to one day be able to look into her eyes, her real, human, achingly ~~so beautiful~~ eyes and see my fantasy right there, inside of them, locked on my own because it's where I am meant to be. It's where I want to be.

I know, either way, things ~~my life, my love, my world, my stability, my sanity, my confidence, my cries~~ are going to end with Cadia. It's all just a matter of what that means.

Last Edit: Aug 19, 2011 19:44:35 GMT -5 by cinder

Arcadia, Illiana, Kade, Thea, Jezebel, Cassedy, Marina, Ronan, Karina

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the ocean thread [wolf tears] Aug 25, 2011 20:34:33 GMT -5

Quote

Post by WT on Aug 25, 2011 20:34:33 GMT -5

Moments after Cadia finishes speaking, Arcadia’s mouth twitches upward. Something funny twitches in Cadia’s heart, lifting it with her counterpart’s face—but whatever it is, it dies as the smile flickers. Without thinking she opens her mouth, thinking to ask what’s wrong. Immediately she slams it shut as not just that but all her questions rush to the tip of her tongue, then change their minds and retreat back down her throat.

After a quick glance down to make sure she isn’t about to step on her ferret, Cadia moves forward. (Moving feet do not facilitate a moving mouth, but motion soothes a little of the anxious fluttering in her head and stomach.) Her half-step toward Arcadia is the most tentative action she’s ever undertaken—but then, the thoughts she grapples with are the most complicated she’s ever tried to put into speech. She can’t walk any faster. Reaching Arcadia too soon would be disastrous, because something tells her that this is too important to let words topple out like they usually do. Soon, though. She so very nearly has it...

What would-
(it mean
you do
it feel like)
if-

And then there is no Arcadia to ask. The smile fades into something distant, almost otherworldly, and the girl’s eyes lose focus entirely.

Blinking, Cadia retracts her almost-completed step. Breath that was meant to power her question slips silently out her lips as they close, hesitating for a second in the elongated oval of one who might still speak but ultimately meeting each other in a harsh line. Eyes flashing, she draws herself up to her full (if not very impressive) height. No blades come out and no fists rise—not for Arcadia—but she is prepared to do damage with her mouth, if she can. "Will you stop that?" she’s going to snap, glaring up at Arcadia with a ferocity that will make up for her stature. "Always running off somewhere in your head. Damn it, I need you here!"

Air enters Cadia’s mouth, reeled in as sharply as she plans to send it forth again—but before it has even hit her lungs, the bite is gone from her breath and her mind alike. Arcadia is smiling, and the result is not an expression she can stay angry with. Perhaps she has it in her to be mad at Arcadia, but she cannot be mad at Arcadia’s apologies, even unspoken ones. If anything, her own expression is now tinged with guilt, a slight downturn to her eyes betraying her answering smile. What right does Cadia have to chastise Arcadia for something she can’t even keep herself from doing? What right does she have to criticize the girl at all, when they have been through so much together and Arcadia has proven herself over and over to be so strong and resilient and amazing?

Whining rises up from somewhere below her. Cadia glances down to find Ferret clawing at the hem of her jeans. With a snort she reaches down and scoops the creature up in one fluid motion. For a moment, she drags her thoughts to a halt to concentrate on the tickling feel of claws scuttling across her skin as Ferret runs up her arms to her shoulders, then the sensation of fur in her fingers as she reaches up to snatch her tiny companion down and stroke her head. Though she would never admit it, Cadia keeps the creature around for more than just familiarity and reusable bait, and this is one of those reasons. There is a comfort in non-human contact that she has come to rely on, if only occasionally.

It isn’t enough to keep her attention for long, though, and Cadia pets Ferret for only a few moments before looking up at the subject of her remorse again. Arcadia stands closer to the water, putting the sun at her back, but no amount of light can turn her completely into a silhouette. Those wide, pale eyes still stare back at her, captivating as always, and even though the gaze is not accusatory, beneath it she can’t help but feel like she has done something horribly wrong. It’s stupid to feel so bad about something she never did, but the sentimental part of her (When will that die? So much else has, it seems) grieves for intentions. The two Career-spawns have saved each other’s lives almost continuously for months now, sometimes trading off and sometimes acting in tandem. To blame Arcadia for anything—particularly something that would be so hypocritical to pick on, not to mention ultimately insignificant—would mean throwing all of that back in her face.

But if owing my life to someone isn’t enough to keep me from killing them—or make me save them...

Just like that, she plunges back into chaos. Around her head flutter answers to ages-old questions that she ignored and can no longer listen for, yeses and noes and maybes with unidentifiable purpose. Pursing her lips, she gives her head a shake that whips her dark braid over her shoulder. "You’re too wound up in- in everything." She speaks softly and from her lungs rather than her diaphragm, hoping that these will muffle her voice. Bitterness rises anyway, a tense note audible even to her ears, and she winces—not physically, for years of all-too-realistic fights will teach a child to hold their composure no matter what, but mentally. New regret bleeds into her mind, darker than the old because she doesn’t know who she was trying to shield her acrimony from—Arcadia, who she does not want to hurt, or herself, who she does not want to deal with.

Sorry, Arcadia. I shouldn’t have said that, or at least not like that. I’m angry and I’m confused and I’m taking it out on you. That’s not fair to you. You’ve done nothing but help me since District Eleven. It’s my own fault that looking at you makes me confused. My own damn disloyalty. Or loyalty. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve never been smart—I never finished school, you know, and I didn’t pay that much attention while I was actually in. All I have is instinct, and that’s not helping anymore. It got those chips out, it helps us get food, but... fuck, who even cares? I don’t. I can’t. If I care about one thing, I have to care about more, and that means caring about you, which I don’t remember how to do. All that artificial -made-natural instinct blocks me. Everything they made me says fight, but there’s nothing to fight. Just you, and I don’t want to hurt you. Can’t hurt you. Won’t. Except I want to, sometimes. At least, I want to hurt something, and I’m too well-trained to turn it on myself, and Ferret is so good at getting away...

Ferret squeals and thrashes her limbs, but fails to free herself from the encircling fingers even when her flailing claws draw blood. Too much is rattling around in Cadia’s mind, screaming out to her faster than she can keep up with it. Only when Arcadia speaks does Ferret run free, dropped from startled hands.

"I suppose it didn’t, no," Cadia replies, but she barely even hears her own voice. Sunlight touches the beach, transforming tan sand into molten gold, but even this image of pure light and heat cannot compare to the liquid fire ripping through her veins and pounding in her ears.

Perhaps it is this fire that propels her forward when she had resolved to stay still. Certainly, she doesn’t decide to move; she knows that touching Arcadia is a bad idea right now, that physical and mental stability are very different things and the fingers that have kept her from falling off cliffs cannot help her now. Despite this, and despite everything in her that wants to turn and run until nothing matters but momentum, she steps forward and threads her hand with Arcadia’s.

Her grip is too tight and she knows it—restraint is not an option this morning, it seems—but tighter still is her voice.

"Tell me what to-"
think do want say ask know need miss feel
"to-"
Cadia halts, struggling to finish a sentence that she never meant to start. Against her will her throat continues to convulse. Words form, but never reach her tongue. Frantically she centers her attention on Arcadia’s eyes, willing something in them to inspire speech the same way Arcadia herself inspires so much else: flight, fight, chaos, life.

Nothing comes to her. One word condenses on her lips, but it is one she hasn’t said—or at least, hasn’t meant—in so long that she can only make the shapes. Unable to accept it, her vocal chords refuse to budge, and she is too lost in the maze of her own thrashing mind to find the brainpower necessary to force them.

"Please."

((The hell, Cadia. I like you better when you want to post.))

banner by Dars! <3

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the ocean thread [wolf tears] Aug 27, 2011 0:43:30 GMT -5

Quote

Post by cinder on Aug 27, 2011 0:43:30 GMT -5

I am preconditioned to be thoughtless, and trained for calculation. I am one part cautious and yet my constellation demands I take risks. I pay attention to the world, a little attention to everything. Focus is not my strong-suit, yet I am glad for it. Focus means knowing death is coming. Fantasy means never expecting the expected. I am the mixture of a girl who loves with eyes closed and ears deaf. Cadia is a great risk. One by all training, I should not try to take. But I am happy my mind thinks of her as capable of being more than an end to all ends.

A whim tells me quietly, “could it be that you are wrong, and Cadia is more than an end. She may be a beginning, dearest Arcadia.”

Voices disagree profusely. Vehemently. Altogether it is regarded as an entirely unorthodox method of “winning.” There is only one way to be a victor, and that is to be the last one standing. I must survive, my training tells me. I am haunted by the feelings of the Games I never played. But internally, my heart skips beats and tells me. It is worth it. I’ve volunteered for this fate, now I need to follow through. It’s honorable.

Victors aren’t good girls, Cady.

But Good girls are happy, Arcadia.

Happiness is survival!

”You are all wrong.” I say with mental clarity and vocal conviction. My voice mixes here and there again too, so that I feel the firm logic and romance of the statement. I will mediate between my own two minds, minds of their own. I will choose all by myself, if I have to. Cadia holds my hands, she might’nt of heard my outburst, it was so much softer than I could have anticipated, and I saw her lips move while my eyes flashed and my heart blew up to the size of a balloon.

(I wonder privately, if it is also the consistency of a balloon. This would increase the danger to me, if one mismarked fingernail can explode and scatter what I hold dearer than all of the worlds I care for)

Everything becomes so much dimmer in the shadow of Cadia. She raises her hands, snatches my own. I want to ask her what she’s doing, but my eyes are still flat and filmy, if I shatter my own barriers between fantasy self and reality Cadia, will it shatter the dreams in me? There’s a secret fear hidden in my heart that any move I make will ruin me. So I sit paralyzed. Still, but fluid. Cadia grips my hands and emotions pour between us. I know metal conducts lightning, but do hands conduct emotions? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a friend. Do you still kiss to share your hopes and dreams without cluttered words?

Cadia has never been just a friend to me. I’ve always wanted something out of her, because only she has grounded me for long enough that my eyes feel clear and real like the ocean, never those glassy, fabricated blues designed to entrap Capitolites and unsettle others. Cadia isn’t unsettled by me, and even though I am afraid of her sometimes, it is more for the things she stirs in me than for the pain she could cause my heart.

I hear my sentiments echoed in her strangled voice. I’ve seen people with guttural words gushing out of broken throats, and raspy smokers at age eighty trying to piece together reason behind their life. Cadia’s voice holds all the confusion of a child dying, and the wisdom of someone far more aged. It’s only her body that matches mine in age. Her mind is elsewhere, as in she will never be exactly as I am. Cadia is simultaneously the oldest and youngest I’ve ever known. I wonder if I’d – if her body weren’t young and fresh and toned like mine?

”You are not that vain,” whispers the kinder of two voices, and I am willing to accept it where there is no concrete proof to disprove the statement. I will not go so far as to agree, but it isn’t just the hard-edged, clean-cut eyes, and hair, and soft skin that peeks my curiosity in Cadia. When you see as much beauty in a day as I, it ceases to amaze. Cadia simply burns brighter than anyone I know. I can’t say it’s better, she’s just more to me. She means so much.

Through my eye-lids, Cadia sparkles vibrantly, to the point that the seeping sheen has driven me half wild. Her hands hold my own, soft, warm skin cradling my cold, ocean-wet body in as close a contact we have ever shared. My madness does not stop with cool fantasies of holding Cadia. Without an inkling of predilection, I’ve brought one hand to my mouth, hold it just within my lips reach, and brush as gently as possible. Perhaps if I steal some of her light, she won’t shine so brightly, and I can feel like I am ”meant” to hold her. Basking in the glory of the sun is one thing, cradling it in your arms is another. But if I share in her, we can ignite our fires and flare like supernova’s ”together.” (Mutual destruction is an old habit)

With my other hand, I wind my fingers through hers, and clasp the hands to my heart. I try to feel through our links whether or not her eyes have shut slowly in the ecstasy of the moment, I fear opening my eyes to find a glare on the face I know so well. I like every face, but Cadia’s holds the specific draw of familiarity and comradeship. And more.

“Would you rather I got caught in you,? My voice strangles out, and my eyes try to lock on hers. They stay put while I begin my statement. It starts out smoothly enough I don’t give a second doubt to my emotions, but I’ve heard amputees feel dead arms itching in the night, only to find their natural instinct concerning the sensation is utterly useless. I wish I was more pragmatic than that, so I could tell Cadia right off the bat that holding her is natural, and I don’t give a damn whether or not her arms aren’t susceptible to my whim. If there is anything I’d fight for, it is victory. I’m trained to win, but I want to ~~woo her~~ be accepted into her graces, entirely welcomed into the arms I adore.

If I have ever felt love, this is it. It feels more natural for me to shift our hands so they can rest on Cadia’s hips, but mine are so greedy they drop her sweaty palms in exchange for the bones under the skin I touch. Cadia’s bones don’t feel the way the mine do. Touching hip bones on boys is strange and foreign, but her skins resemble mine, only smaller and less jutting out. My hands want more than what I’m touching.

Frustration is a well-liked sentiment in my mind, but never in my heart. I’ve never had the thrills and chills of growing up normal-style. In District Two, we reach arms elbow-deep into torsos after we’ve cut a slit down a skin. We’re trained to know how to kill, and we’re trained to follow through. The best of the best doctors for bodies and minds hone teenagers into graceful, confident creatures of the Arena.

Frustration is what makes success possible, because it adds a mix of pleasure to the results. But of the process of creating a positive outcome, I can only say that my mind enjoys the familiarity of solving a puzzle, but my heart knows that I give more than a damn about Cadia. I dread the outcome more than anything.

I want the outcome more than anything. My hands are settling slowly into the rhythm of connection. My mouth says words before I know how to form them. But this time, I think carefully, try to construct something as strong as the mountain signs and remnant cars from days described as better and worse, depending who you ask. Old days. I want this to last, it isn’t as fleeting a touch-and-flight as other endevaours. My months with Cadia must count for some commitment. She must realize I ”adore” her. (I certainly do now. I want to speak the words my head allows to flow freely. I want to not-stutter when I tell her this, I want her to see my mind and think it is perfect, at least perfectly suited to her own. ) I just want to get lost in Cadia, it’s my time to take a few wrong turns to make a right.

“Because,” I say. It’s almost amusing, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever focused on one thing long enough to finish a sentence. Hopefully Cadia likes my ends as much as my beginnings. I can’t tell, god I don’t want to. I don’t want to follow through.

“I want to be,” My feet quake, is the ground shaking? My balance pushes me forward, into her, “you mean so much,” my breath is quick and short, but my hands are tracing slow, tantalizing circles on her skin. “I want us to be, together,” I breath, so my head is pressed to hers, and my eyes are as close to hers as they will ever be. But I’m scared, so scared. Nauseated. The ground is moving, I know it.

My lips move in directions, but not forward, not yet. “Lalik,” I say and share our breath, try to make the moment last, but never touch any closer. I can’t bear to share with her what she won’t give to me. I can’t – I can – I won’t – want to –

All in the future. Right now I struggle.

You drop a coin into the sea,
and shout out
"Please come back to me"

ooc- ..omg if they kiss lol

darkmagenta=regular, lightsteelblue=mother, cornflowerblue=father, lavender=parenthesis, coral=speaking, mediumpurple=stressed/[*i]wannabe

[/center][/size][/color]

Last Edit: Aug 27, 2011 1:30:27 GMT -5 by cinder

Arcadia, Illiana, Kade, Thea, Jezebel, Cassedy, Marina, Ronan, Karina

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the ocean thread [wolf tears] Nov 26, 2011 5:52:16 GMT -5

Quote

Post by WT on Nov 26, 2011 5:52:16 GMT -5

Somehow, as soon as she feels Arcadia's heartbeat, everything feels both surreal and horrifying concrete. Until now, nothing felt final; it was all a half-memory, a waking dream, something that if she needed to she could turn and flee from at any time. (And she cannot, at least in the recesses of her mind, pretend that she did not consider it. Flight is not her natural response to all things, but she cannot fight Arcadia anymore and possibly never could.) Now, with Arcadia's pulse beneath her fingertips, Cadia has no choice but to accept reality in full. Heartbeats are life, and life is undeniable. Pulsing out the blood of dying prey, driving forward the limbs of a fourteen-year-old runaway, proving that life exists where none ought to. Fluttering beneath the fingers of a ~~frightened~~ ~~exhilarated~~ breathless girl who suddenly thinks that she cannot handle this, cannot allow such contact, can'tcan'tcan't-

To distract herself from her own wavering, Cadia focuses on Arcadia's face, which after all this time is familiar enough to be soothing. The large, no-longer-alien eyes; the long, thin scar that echoes the ones scattered over both girls; the long, pale hair, haphazard but beautiful, like everything about the girl it belongs to. Like her voice, always seeming either dreamy or strangled but always welcome, even if Cadia does not know how to answer the words.

Yes. Always.

The words form on her lips, but she does not speak them. It is hard to make herself do so, when she does not know if they are the right words to express what she means—if she even knows what she means, which is doubtful, considering the myriad desires flashing through her. Get closer. Flee. Melt into Arcadia. Shove her. Speak. She is so bad at all of this—words, affection, herself, people in general. Cadia is the worst possible name for her, lifted as it is from the identity of a girl whose capacity for these things defined her—

—and there she goes again, trying to drag the past into the present. How could she?

How could she not? No matter that it happened years ago. No matter that so much of what she pines for is in the past, and Arcadia is here in the present, and when they touch Cadia's skin sings. Fourteen years (more like nine, truthfully, but can those first few be counted?) cannot be easily forgotten, even if she were to will them gone. It is understandable for them to have left such a mark, for her thoughts to drift there even now.

But it is so unfair.

Hands shift downward, startling her out of her trance. As they brush her hips, Cadia's skin convulses. Or perhaps that's her mind; she isn't sure. Everything about her is an electric buzz of adrenaline and confusion, and it's becoming hard to tell the difference between one piece of her and the next. Those places where instincts and emotion separate, where she ends and Arcadia begins, are hidden beneath the film of conflicting desires. She isn't used to being touched, doesn't like to be touched; there is a potential for danger inherent in being this close to someone, one that is only sometimes allowed because contact can protect her from some worse hazard. At the same time, she cannot protest the settling of bone on bone, skin on skin, a connection that mirrors everything she is afraid to want. She wavers, and then pauses, and then inches a tiny bit closer—not far enough for the hands on her hips to feel any different, but far enough to set her ~~heart~~ balance shrieking.

For a split second, Arcadia's eyes start to haze, blue phasing into the strange not-quite-colour of distant thoughts, and it seems as though she is about to drift away again. Almost frantically, Cadia leans into her for the first time. What she cannot say in words, she tries to say with a forward tilt to her upper body and a slight lift to her feet, and she hopes that the tension in every muscle doesn’t contradict the message. Don’t stop. Never stop. Please. In that moment Cadia wants nothing more than for the two of them to go on forever, but that means there is no stopping, not even for a moment. They're too close and too far, burning each other with their friction but unable to meld, and if they stay like that they will wear each other away to nothing. The only way to go on is to go forward, in the same direction. Stay with me, Arcadia...

And inexplicably, miraculously, she does. She shudders back into existence with a single word, then a sentence. The words are electrifying—especially the name, which slices through her—but distantly so, because Cadia is only half-listening. The warm breath against her face and the slow circles against her skin tell her all she needs to know. Names don't matter. Because doesn't matter. Why doesn't matter. All that matters is existence, whatever form it may take. For Cadia—both Cadias, perhaps the only thing they truly had in common—that form is feeling. Sensation, emotion. Visceral, but poignant. If she loses something of herself to that, so be it; at least she and Arcadia are here together. At least she and Arcadia are.

Lalik leans forward and closes the distance between their breaths.

((Well. That was... awful. But after so long, I refuse to waste any more time on a rewrite. =P Have gifs and a picture as apologies.))

banner by Dars! <3

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the ocean thread [wolf tears] Dec 21, 2011 18:15:34 GMT -5

Quote

Post by cinder on Dec 21, 2011 18:15:34 GMT -5

Youth knows no pain, follow youth and prosper a mind-voice murmurs. Cady is content to listen to it, (for by now she is very used to all the voices in her head) but debates actually listening to the poison-honey words.

The youth-voice in her is so dark and so bold, the youth watches touching-feeling Cady and screams "all wrong, all wrong!" It's bitter. It weeps because it knows Lalik and despises her. The innocent, dark youth meaning to tear Arcadia away from dangerous-lovely-Lalik, as though it were really that easy to separate Cady from something so -

It observes their embrace and reacts with agonizing writhes. Cady imagines a deep pit in her mind wrenching her out of the soft-gentle-touch of Lalik, and bats away the drifting strands of the youth's ill-minded vendetta against the very same because they mean nothing to her. Why should she listen to a voice that whispers so quietly, when Lalik's breath screams louder against her skin than any peppered, haunting words?

Against her own will though, predator-huntress-Cady heeds its warning. While she knows Lalik is perfect in every way, and only wishes she could mesh with her even more perfectly, there is an imperceptible shift between their skins, and a sudden gap of air between the hips and hands, or the chapped and crinkled lips. It's an airy symptom of the larger question in her mind.

This is what it means to be in love.
Is this what it means to be in love?

Caustic fires burning through her blood, sparking cell against cell with mighty friction. Unnatural explosions bursting out of fizzling skin, under the grip of warm-hot hands, Lalik's hands.

This is love.
Is this love?

She considers that maybe, just maybe she should - what?
Cady doesn't know. In hunting stronger prey though, one proceeds with caution, always, even when the prey is captured and turned to a docile house pet, or a gentle lover. It will always pose a threat to the self, and it is wisest to dispatch or become entirely free of the prey, else it turns the tables.

Lalik posed a threat to the stability of Cady's mind. Cady, a huntress, watching her cells catch fire, sees her love as dangerous prey. Sure, Lalik is wanted by every fiber of her being, but is she worth it? Dispatch. Be free of her, or dispatch her.

But oh.
Oh.
oh.

Lalik was a fellow predator, and had she ever shied away from Cady's touch, had she ever indulged in selfish unloving-fears? Arcadia almost accepts this as a sufficient squasher of her fears and easer of her pains.

Of course, the youthful voice still blundered on with taunting blows against Lalik/Cadia. She's all wrong for you, don't you know that Cady? Haven't you figured it out now, that you are a hunter and she is a good for nothing, scum-bag street-whore thief!?!?!? it sneered.

Yes, yes! Cadia is no hunter. She's a taker of names, weaver of lies, and tangler of threads. She had no right to embrace Cady like they were one-and-only-the-same, and take her breath. She had no right to feel into her skin and mingle breath with poison.

I'm not the enemy here, Arcadia. I'm protecting you.

Hunters beat down their prey, but Cadia had never done that to Cady.
She'd simply stolen her heart and stuck around for the ride.

Suddenly, things seem clearer though. Hesitantly, Cady peels the last bits of skin away from Lalik, noting the oceans rode up behind them, and a breeze stirred the trees to their side with half a mind to dive beneath the waves or fly above the trees. To escape, as she should.
Carefully, Cady looked and spoke all at once.
"You know,"
The sands were stirred by wind as well. Cady hadn't noticed it; hadn't really cared, but the skies were darker than they'd been before, and she couldn't really argue with the other voice in her head telling her to take shelter soon.
"I've never doubted us ~~or you~~," she said with a tremendous sigh behind the third word. "But."

Her eyes flit away from the face and the breath she loves. Cady bitterly reaches a hand up to touch the face she refuses to see when seeing is so hard. She simply speaks and reaches and touches.
"I've never realized how different we are. We survive, don't we? Predators. But we're so different,"

"And that's never been a concern. But we're not compatible I don't think, not the correct way. I think we aren't meant for each other, you know? It's hard for me to shape the words, but I'm trying to - express - you're so dark Lalik, but you - are - necessary. I - please," Arcadia stutters, and turns her head towards Lalik again. She's been arguing with herself, it shows to the outside-world-where-youth-doesn't-matter-and-voices-don't-speak.

Somehow though, through the internalization, Cady seems more aware of her surroundings, and stares with unhappy clarity at those same trees and sea-salt waves. No, she cannot flee. The young and resolute inside of her bones is wrong to tell her to leave Lalik, but right to show her all their differences.

Because it's only when Cady detaches her skins from Lalik that she sees that Lalik is worth it.

She will not take shelter and weather the storm alone tonight.

[/color]

Last Edit: Dec 28, 2011 4:22:16 GMT -5 by cinder

Arcadia, Illiana, Kade, Thea, Jezebel, Cassedy, Marina, Ronan, Karina

WT
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time, gender, furbies, and other things that don't exist

the ocean thread [wolf tears] Jan 7, 2012 18:37:41 GMT -5

Quote

Post by WT on Jan 7, 2012 18:37:41 GMT -5

She pulls away.

Lalik freezes, perplexed by the sudden absence of Arcadia's warmth. Her first instinct is to follow the other girl's movement—to stick close, as she always has, to what she needs for survival. For some reason her muscles will not go through with this, and her euphoria dwindles into a muddled cloud, then a sinking, crushing weight. Something has, as it so often does, gone wrong.

Speechless, Lalik watches as Arcadia sighs and speaks. The sunlight seems to fade away from her voice, capturing minute details of the taller girl's face and skin that Lalik's mind, so accustomed to seeing her but never used to her, can almost but not quite replace.

(It is so wrong, that the sky should brighten only to be obscured before the land had time to gather warmth.)

Of course they're different. Lalik does not hate herself, but she is certain that if identical copies of her met, they would kill each other within the week. As for two Arcadias, no doubt they would both survive, but she doubts they would do it together; each would go her separate way sooner or later, too lost in her thoughts to notice that the other was meandering away. Arcadia needs Lalik to ground her, and Lalik needs Arcadia to... to what, exactly? She was fine on her own, truly. Maybe she wasn't happy, but she was sure. She knew her place in the world, knew what she wanted and how to get it. She never could have dreamed up this whirlwind of confusing emotion. Yet she would not give away Arcadia, or the bizarre life they have built together, for anything.

So why would you?

As a general rule, Lalik understands little of what Arcadia does, but this is beyond confusing. This is bewildering in a way that chews straight through her chest, leaving behind a messy trail like Ferret ripping apart entrails. Why change her mind? Why hesitate? And why now? Why after what feels like a lifetime of saved lives and desperate risks, their destinies twined like fingers? Why after making the first move? Why mere seconds after Lalik made peace with herself for the first time in longer than she can remember?

Arcadia reaches out, bridging the gap between them with skin even as she widens the chasm with her words. Lalik's hand flickers up, pressing lightly over the fingers she knows so well almost as if to shelter them from the sudden wind. She trembles as everything she thought she had left behind rushes back into her, led by a jagged, selfish, intoxicating rage. Images of throttling Arcadia under the waves rise unbidden to her mind, laced with deliberate venom.

This is shit. You make the first move, and then back off? What is your problem? You do not fuck with me like that. No one does. Not if they want-

Familiar as this type of speech is to her, the words stick on her tongue as frustratingly as everything she has tried to say this morning. All she manages is a single harsh "You-!" before getting swept into Arcadia's voice and words and then eyes.

Because this is Arcadia, after all, and even now Lalik would not—can not—trade her away.

The realization helps, soothing the jagged rage into a pointed anger, a mental dagger that she can hold back if she so chooses. This situation is new and unfamiliar and she does not like it, but she has to learn to deal with that. Arcadia is new and unfamiliar, even now. She probably always will be. Lalik doesn't have to like that, but for some inexplicable reason, she needs it.

Lalik sighs through her nose, a short, sharp sound that is angry and sad and confused and resolute all at once. So succinct, these sounds humans can make, so much better than words for some things. Unfortunately, she cannot relay the torrent of ideas inside her with a single sound, so she sighs properly and wakes her voice. "We have to be different," she says, struggling to keep her voice stable, "and maybe we aren't. Compatible, I mean. But maybe we are. So let's try, for a while at least." For what may be the first time in her life, speaking helps. Not the act, the stressful search for syllables that stick at the back of her tongue, but the communication. The anger doesn't evaporate, but there is a subtle shift in Lalik's bearing as she realizes that she wants to explain her thoughts—she wants Arcadia to understand her. And so she smiles—a small one, tainted by her lingering sense of betrayal, but a smile nonetheless—as she returns Arcadia's last word to her, the same word Lalik herself had so much trouble with before. "Please?"

((Remind me to edit this later because WHERE IS MY QUALITY?

Also WHERE IS MY SLEEP))

Last Edit: Jan 7, 2012 18:41:14 GMT -5 by WT

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the ocean thread [wolf tears] Jan 7, 2012 19:17:48 GMT -5

Quote

Post by cinder on Jan 7, 2012 19:17:48 GMT -5

Sometimes Lalik's smile brightens up Arcadia's inside, so she feels sunshine-rays soaking into her and tossing sunbeams through her eyes, burning her heart into a stuttering, fiery pace. Beat-beat-beatbeatbeat thump beatbeatthump beatbeat beatBeatBEATBEATthump.. Lalik is the sun who lights up Cady into a soft-glowing moon. She outshines her, she is an ageless star next to a still, small rock.

But together, Lalik helps Arcadia become something more than the easily molded, dark-stuff clay that Fathers and Brothers punch into shape. Cady's an ethereal thing now, a whispered word love and a nameless emotion painted across lips, through bones. Piercing darkness. Everything is so much brighter with Lalik, Cady London lights.

The strength ignites her, so that words come easy to her mind; they flow like a steady stream from her mouth: "No, Lalik. You've settled it. We're assassins! We're murderesses, my," and in her only pause, Cady's cheeks rouge, "la-love. We'll, yes we'll do well." Cady ends, and thinks about how all the challenges of the past few minutes lie within her sunstar lover, and how the possibility that Capitol-bullets will pierce their redhot hearts soon is all too real. But isn't it always?

They straddle earth and sky. The Capitol will keep them grounded, but love makes Cady feel she is flying. Or falling. A meteor then? Not a moon. Not a sun, but a bright comet followed my a lonely piece of dust. Have I already hit the ground? I've completely fallen for Lalik-Cadia. I wouldn't want to stop myself, or there's a gravitational pull.. a pull of some sort, drags us in closerCloserCLOSER.

Certainly if the connection is that strong, it must mean some force works on their side. They may not be compatible, but Cady and Lalik are inseparable now. They're the twisted vines and shattered glass that life glued together, because broken bits deserve their piece of happiness too. Perhaps they hadn't originated in this way, with Cadia-Lalik having her Cadia-Cadia, and Arcadia loving all those other men, but in the end they'd found they suited each other nicely. An unexpected, but hardly unusual couple.

Cady had often enough sealed clam tops to each other, and known she was crushing out some of the unimportant things, or bridging gaps between the sea-flesh with ribbons to keep them together. Truly, these ugly, sea-toughened shells weren't born together. They could be from opposite sides of the world - but what did that matter to a lonely clam far far away from everything it had known?

Lost in a sea of tiny grains of sand, even less attached than a clam. When life threw a partner their way, the clams reacted like any creature driven by instinct. They compelled themselves right into Cady's hands, and by need, they fused together. Sometimes the edges were what made them spectacular. They represented those past experiences, the journey that led to the love. In them, there was a story. Perfect fit - could Cady even say a thing about it? Predictable. Like a puzzle with its picture on the box: one always knows how the puzzle turns out, and yet insists upon completing it, for the sake of follow-through, Cady thinks.

With Lalik, danger is simply the spice of excitement, and friction burns are scars to be worn proudly.

With Lalik, tender touches are deeper, and the smallest gesture of a hand on a hip turns Cady's head to mush.

They could be stars and moons, salt grains and clams, or a broken childrens toy. They can be anything they like.

They are limitless as the sea. If they find the walls closing in on them, Lalik and Cady have an escape: right into each others arms. They could drown peacefully. It could be euphoric and nobody could ever stop them. They'd be dead-together, never alive-apart (again). And on the off-chance they make it through a year together, without ripping each others broken edges to shreds and gnawing at petty insecurities - If the Capitol didn't find them and send them to separate hell-camps where they'd train for the day they'd have to kill A Dangerous Enemy of the State - For the hope of a someday -

For the hope of a future, Cady and Lalik could endure. Together. maybe one day they'd raise litters of squeeling puppies and kitties, or grow so old together, people assumed they were aged maiden-sisters living sweet little nunnish lives. And nobody would interfere with what happened behind closed doors between two lovers, because nobody would care and they could finally be alone.

[/b]

Their future was limitless, now. In the moment.

"Lalik, I fucking really do love you. I do love you." Cady says.

ooc- this is why I like having pseudoromantic conversations at midnight. it gives me minimal muse to put the death of a peer out of my mind for long enough to imagine up the romantic tendencies of an unconvicted killer.

~~I'm going to Hell lol.~~[/color][/size][/blockquote][/center]

Last Edit: Feb 18, 2012 3:21:14 GMT -5 by cinder

Arcadia, Illiana, Kade, Thea, Jezebel, Cassedy, Marina, Ronan, Karina