Quarter After One [Lalia]

wimdy
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(While On a Horse) I Met a Hot Girl Who Reminded Me of a Plant

Quarter After One [Lalia] May 23, 2012 21:25:37 GMT -5

Post by wimdy on May 23, 2012 21:25:37 GMT -5

There have been times in my life when I have reached my lowest low and felt as it a giant was sitting atop my chest, using me as a stool to rest upon me just long enough to leave me gasping for air as he got up, leaving me laying on the ground struggling to regain my senses and make the world flip right-side-up again. Now is one of those times. The train is rushing and however many miles per hour is speeds by, each passing second bringing us closer to our fates, our final calls. Everything is rushing by, but here, in my little plush transportable room, there is absolute stillness. Nothing moves. I sit upon the cushioned bed, falling back upon it and closing my eyes, believing that I'm not really there, making myself understand that I'm simply out at sea. The water is gentle today. It's perfect for fishing. The fish usually bite when there's very little movement. There are seagulls swooping overhead, their reverberating caws slithering through my body and lulling me into District Four. But I'm not in District Four anymore.

The dream is broken. My eyes open and there is nothing but the sterile metallics of the bullet train before me once again. Darkness lingers just beyond my bed, fought off only by the small light sitting on the bedside table. Its just bright enough to illuminate my huddled frame against the headboard, curled into myself with my left arm outstretched. There, on my forearm, lies a roughly sketched Mockingjay. The skin around it is still red from initially attack, a small portion of it scratched open. What strikes me is the accuracy of it. Jude scribbled it onto my arm in a mere minute, the lines drawn precisely and perfectly. The Mockingjay stares back at me as I examine it, my forefinger stroking across one of it's delicate wings. It it weren't for the irritated skin around it and the dull throb in my arm, I would almost believe it had the ability to spread it's inked wings and soar from this confining space, away from the horror that is to become of me. Why would it want to look after me anyway? I'm as good as dead as it is.

My brothers are hurting. The look in Jude's eyes was enough to rip my heart into a thousand pieces, not to mention was he babbled at me in panic as he crushed me to his chest. That was likely the last chance I'd ever had to see him, let alone let him know that I loved him. And what did I do? Nothing. I stood there, clinging to him in desperation and shock as my situation fully came to light. Speechlessly, I let him stumble over his words and encouragements and pleas and just held onto him. There was no turning back. I would likely never see any of my brothers again and there was nothing more I could say or do. I'd passed the point of no return without a second thought. I would still do it again, over and over and over until Pen wouldn't be reaped and I wouldn't volunteer. I would rather die a thousand times over then let her be taken away from us. Now, however, there is the chance that neither of us will return to our district ever again, no matter how hard we try. Nothing can hold back the tears that that revelation brings to me.

L△LIA
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Quarter After One [Lalia] May 24, 2012 0:11:52 GMT -5

Post by L△LIA on May 24, 2012 0:11:52 GMT -5

( P E N E L O P E C A L Y P S O L I B E R T I N E )

Through mountains
And over seas
Through misery
And disease
A spectator, I played my part

I have been drowning for sixteen years and, for the first time in my life, I'm afraid this is not how I will die. Every night, for far longer than I can remember, I have dreamt of the ocean swallowing me into its infinite depths, but tonight —

What if tonight a new fear finds me? The ocean holds me close — too close — and I am so intertwined with it that often it is difficult for me to tear my mind away. I wander life in split-consciousness: one part of me smiling at my siblings as the rest of me treads the water of a fathomless current that seems determined to demonstrate just how deep a lure it possesses. Laying in my room, listening to the softly whirring sounds of a train that is steadily carrying me away from everything I have ever known, the prospect of slipping into a dreamworld full of something as unknown as my newfound waking life fills my lungs with panic until I begin to feel like Jude Ripley. No one is supposed to know that his paper bags are for more than just doodling, but I've seen him breathing into them with frenzied incoherence. That's how I know how the true importance of the one I now possess. In this way, maybe it's less of a token to help me remember the past and more to help me cope with the future.

Then again, sprawled out in the oppressive darkness of my own room, breathing mouth to mouth with a paper bag as though it might save me from drowning in this sea of oxygen that has always felt so unnatural to me, I don't feel like I'm coping with anything. The opposite, in fact. If only a single lesson has been taught to me today, it is the knowledge that there is only one thing that can save me now: Fitz Ripley. So it is no surprise to me when I abandon Jude's paper bag on the disheveled sheets of a bed that holds no true comfort for me, despite its plush pillows, and find myself standing at the door to a room that promises familiarity.

At first the tap tap tap of my knuckles rapping against its surface is gentle and inquisitive, but the following stretch of silence that answers it sends my fist knocking more persistently in a second request for entry. "Fitz —" My voice is a hushed patchwork of sound after my shameless crying throughout the day, crackling with unspoken words I can't bring myself to string together. My room doesn't feel anything like home, but you do. Please, let me have just one more moment of my old life before I'm forced into a new death.

But nothing could move this heart
Until I held the boy's hand
The little one spoke like a man
He showed me death and said:
"This is how you know you're alive"

( C H A R A C T E R S )

wimdy
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(While On a Horse) I Met a Hot Girl Who Reminded Me of a Plant

Quarter After One [Lalia] May 24, 2012 22:26:37 GMT -5

Post by wimdy on May 24, 2012 22:26:37 GMT -5

My throat feels thick, the mucous sticking to my inner passages as I try to breathe through my tears, through my sobs, through my muted wails. Every little movement of air sends my lungs into a flurry of movement and panic, their muscles contracting and shutting off my air supply as I sink into the waves my own self-made despair. No matter how hard I kick, I can't seem to surface for more than a second. The waters that were calm just mere moments before are suddenly vicious, ripping at my limbs and picking me apart piece by piece until there's nothing left of me but chum for the scavengers of seas. Everything hurts until there is no feeling left at all, just a numbness that spreads from my lungs outward until it leaves my hands and toes tingling in the new-found lack of feeling, the tiny pinpricks a reminder of all the pain left to come, waiting just beyond my door.

Tap tap tap... Tap knock taptap knock... "Fitz-"

I can't move. My body is frozen as her water-logged voice reaches my ears, her quiet desperation wrapping my entire frame within a scratchy rope net just like the ones we used to use down at the docks. The friction burns through me as I struggle out of it, wary of the waters around me but silently seeking solace. I fear I will find none on this ride. The ferryman is taking us far away. We won't be coming back. At least I never promised my return to Jude. I know it would kill him to have me make such a promise, especially when I can't and have no intention of keeping it. This was never about me making it back alive and it never will be. My life means her death. Everything I am will be put into this, just so long as there is hope for her survival. Starting now.

Slowly, stiffly, I rise on shaky sea-legs and maneuver my way across the room and to the door. The carpet spreads under my feet, faintly reminiscence of sand across the shores. I let myself sink into it, leaning against the door and closing my eyes, breathing deep until I can feel myself go lightheaded with the effort of it, until I can no longer try to function. I shut myself off, just like I always did back home whenever the seas were rough and the money was scarce and our jobs turned ugly. My brothers weren't stupid enough to think that nothing was wrong. They were just wise enough not to ask. Once closed, my door won't open, not unless I unlock it from inside. My labor roughened hands close around the brass knob and turn, gently prying the physical door open and towards me to reveal Pen, all wild seaweed hair and distressed ocean eyes, as per usual. Some things will never change, not even miles from home on the brink of the end of the world when all hope seems lost. There's more comfort in that than there should be.

"Hey..."

L△LIA
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Quarter After One [Lalia] May 25, 2012 10:27:18 GMT -5

Post by L△LIA on May 25, 2012 10:27:18 GMT -5

( P E N E L O P E C A L Y P S O L I B E R T I N E )

As the express train
Passes the local
It moves by just like a paper boat
Although it weighs a million pounds
I swear it almost seems to float

Nervous energy ticks through me as I wait, counting the infinities passing between each second of time. Curling bare toes into the carpeting, I begin to imagine its plush surface into grass or ivy that is growing up my legs and past the hem of the nightgown swirling at my knees, up up up to curl with the stranglehold of a python around my waist and neck. It won't hold me here, no matter how hard it tries to stop me from ripping free. I won't let it; I refuse to be so easy to control anymore. My hand lifts itself into the air with impatience, ready to drum knuckles against the door in a third time's the charm voodoo cadence, but it swings open, pulling my motions up short. "Hey..."

Fitz is standing before me like a child lost at sea and a violent pang of guilt sparks in my heart before traveling across my nerve networks to incinerate every last fragment of my being with a reminder of consequences. Which of us will most regret his decision to die with me? Morbid curiosity wonders if his vanished smile is evidence of those kinds of thoughts right now and motherly self-loathing, sisterly resentment, and utterly selfish, girlish relief duke it out for control of my emotions in a whirlwind of fisticuffs.

Hand still suspended in the air, it finds a new purpose for its life as it reaches out to smooth a few wayward strands of his hair. There is a persistent downward tug in the corners of my lips, but I fight against it until my mouth is quivering with indecision instead of straight up sorrow. This might be the most honest expression I possess. Pulling myself up onto my tiptoes (he has always been taller than me — a bigger person in so many ways — and now that I stop to think about it, my perception of him being a child in relation to me has never made any real sense), I wrap him up in my arms and press our faces together cheek-to-cheek as I simply hold on to him, ~~knowing I won't be able to do so for much longer.~~ Murmuring a gently soothing shhh shhhh into his ear, as though he were the one who had shown up at my door looking for comfort and not the other way around, I stretch the moment out until it becomes elastic. Now when we pull away, it will tether us together and expand with us, flexing against the distance between our empty arms until we return to one another.

As I pull back, returning to threateningly plush carpet and a doorway that leads to a hallway that extends onward to awful places named Away, I rebel against all those things and allow the energy coiled up within me to fling my body into the depths of sanity, safety, and Fitz's room. With the tumbling footfalls of a girl on a mission to save her soul the only way she knows how, I careen past him and pitch my body into a sprawling heap on his bed before he can object to my intrusion, rolling into the blankets until I am a messy tangle of awkward limbs and abused bedding. "I'm staying!" My voice may be broken, but when I make my announcement it is buoyed by a teasing stubbornness that manages to chip ever-so-slightly away at the melancholy of our situation. When I was still too young to understand how Ursula's kindness worked, I would attempt to hide from my nightmares in her room, climbing into her bed and her arms with absolute certainty that she would protect me from the Boogieman. As I sneak a look back at Fitz, wrapping myself up in a sheet as if it were a hooded cape made of impenetrable armor, I set my jaw in that same childish defiance. "Your room is better than mine. Let's share."

And I need something more from you
All I am is a body floating downwind
All I am is a body floating downwind
All I am is a body floating downwind
All I am is a body floating downwind

( C H A R A C T E R S )

wimdy
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(While On a Horse) I Met a Hot Girl Who Reminded Me of a Plant

Quarter After One [Lalia] May 26, 2012 12:21:17 GMT -5

Post by wimdy on May 26, 2012 12:21:17 GMT -5

A pale yellow veil is cast over us from the faded light coming from just behind me, Pen looking so much like the little girl I met so many years ago in a pawn shop, stubbornly rooted to the floor and staring up at me like she's never before seen me. She looks devastatingly beautiful and shattered, her breathing weaving the sad symphony of our hopeless adandon into the air for just us to hear, just for us to know. Outside of ourselves, no one will ever hear the broken medley of our lives. No one will see the desperate silence of our plight. No one will see how we cry and beg and plead with just our eyes and our bodies doing the speaking for us, the simple actions like knocking on a door or curling into a hug speaking volumes beyond what words could even begin to enunciate. We are the children of secrecy and delicate masks, closed of from the world and counting down the days till one of us can go home, while I meet my maker.

The minute she moves into my arms, I wrap her carefully in my own and hold her tightly to myself, breathing in her seaweed hair and ocean skin and burning inside with the familiarity of it all, clinging to the little bit of home that and have with me and trying to ingrain it in my memory for all of my time left. She sounds like the ocean waves, the cooed shhs rolling across my skin and inside of me until I'm drowning in it, rocking her back and forth as we sail across this iron sea. Then the ocean is gone and the little girl stands before me again for just a moment before I see the Pen I know and love resurface from the waters. She dashes around me and curls herself into my bed, carefully knotting herself among the covers and snuggling deep into the folds of sheets.

"I'm staying! You're room is better than mine. Let's share."

I can't help the chuckle that I snort out, closing the door with a quite click behind me and effectively locking out the melancholy mood that had had us wrapped up like fish in a net on casting day. Pen is smiling childishly at me, reminding me of her age once more. She's always seemed like a mother to me, but she isn't. She's just a girl. Here, in this room, she is just a girl who needs to be cared for. There's no difference between the two of them in that sense. They just need a moment to curl into themselves and let their emotions run free until they can no longer breathe with the thrill of freedom.

I'm leaning against the door behind me for just a moment before I let a grin stretch onto my face and my body moves of its own volition. My limbs push me forward, throwing me onto the bed and half on top of Pen as I curl into the sheets and snuggle her close to me, trying hard to fight off the thoughts that, no, we will never get to do this again because the next time she's on this train, I'll be long gone. I wrap myself around her, my head laying atop her own and hugging tight until I'm unsure whether or not she's still breathing in my arms. I tilt my head back to look down at her, smiling widely at the innocent face that greets me. "How can I refuse the request of a sea-maiden like yourself?" I tease, poking the tip of her nose and making myself comfortable again against her side.

L△LIA
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Quarter After One [Lalia] May 29, 2012 10:03:28 GMT -5

Post by L△LIA on May 29, 2012 10:03:28 GMT -5

( P E N E L O P E C A L Y P S O L I B E R T I N E )

If I told you things I did before
Told you how I used to be
Would you go along with someone like me?
If you knew my story word for word and had all of my history
Would you go along with someone like me?

When the smile returns to Fitz's face, it is the joy of a sailor returning home to his family. To me. Without it, he looks like something unknown and strange, but when the corners of his lips tug outward and the idea of joy remembers him, the entire world spins steady and righteous. Contentment swells like pride within me, because I put that beat of laughter in his lungs and it is beautiful in the air. As the door closes, the rest of the world ceases to matter. There is only the spring of movement as he leaps toward me — a jump of faith that I don't deserve, but encourage anyways — and proceeds to half-tackle me in his landing. I cry out with a sound that could be mistaken for pain if it weren't laced with the mirth of relief. This is a kind of homecoming for both of us, I suppose. The way we're abandoning ourselves to the childish ignorance we've passed the years in, ignoring the exhausting thoughts of our unavoidable futures. We have a moment and it is ours.

Burrowing into the sheets, he loses himself in the tangled mess that I've created ~~and not for the first time today~~. I lose track of which limbs belong to who as my hair braids itself between arms crisscrossing and heads pressed together, circulation fading in and out with sharp flashes of static. He is holding me far too tightly and yet it is nowhere near enough. "How can I refuse the request of a sea-maiden like yourself?" Yelping as his finger punctuates the teasing commentary with a tap to my nose, I writhe against his hold in defiant response.

You can't, I think to myself as a dull ache twists through my stomach. The truth sounds cruel in my thoughts as it echoes against shameless memories of save me, save me, save me. "You can't!" Howling out my throat, buoyed by giggling as I wrestle and roughhouse my way to freedom, the words sound completely different. Playful. They are a splash of shallow water that seems so harmless. As I pull myself up, making a theatrical show of straightening my spine and setting my shoulders into something mighty and commanding, I glance down at Fitz with a matter-of-fact smirk dancing across my lips. "Sea maidens sing sailors to rocky shores when they are refused. Folly!" Throwing one arm into the air in a dramatic swoop, the other sneaks down to lace fingers into the sheets and holds tight. Reeling my voice into a whisper, I press my mouth to his ear in secrecy: "It's best to find a safe place to hide."

Then I am a whoop of laughter followed by a tumble of haphazard limbs, climbing over him and landing gracelessly on the floor beyond the bed, sheets fluttering out behind me as I pull them along like ship sails unfurling. The billow of fabric flies into the the air and before it can touch the ground, I am already tucking its edges between couch cushions and the sharp hold of a chair pressed against the wall. After tying a corner around a table leg, the sheet is suspended in the air a short distance above the ground, as if by magic, sheltering the floor beneath. For good measure, I steal the pillow straight out from underneath Fitz's head before ducking into my newly created fort. "Sea maidens only," I declare with with the tone of a spoiled queen and a badly stifled giggle, hand creeping out to tug at the bed's comforter, my thieving fingers intending to pilfer everything within reach, "no fishermen allowed!" You'll have to become something else to follow me now, Fitz. ~~I'm sorry~~.

I did before and had my share
It didn't lead nowhere
I would go along with someone like you
It doesn't matter what you did or who you were hanging with
We could stick around and see this night through