D1 // Lyrica Hope Grimm [DONE]

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again
For this is the end

name Lyrica Hope Grimm
age Seventeen
district One
gender Female
occupation Pianist

I've drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue I owe them
Swept away, I'm stolen
Let the sky fall
When it crumbles

( B I O G R A P H Y )

It is an odd thing to stand on the stage. It is even odder when you are standing in front of a crowd of more than ten thousand people, with strange outfits and hair extending from electric blue, to blood red to those few individuals with an entire rainbow. Where there are those with skin patterned with the print of what could only be a tiger, or eyes that reflect light, narrowed into two thin slits. Or when some of them stand there backs are hunched, and some have tattoos so far up their arms and bodies that you can mistake them for clothes, because you can see no skin beneath it. I feel like I’m in some kind of zoo, but the oddest thing about it is that I am the animal they are looking at. The foreign creature, that almost appears naked to their vast wide range of colour. And in all sense it confuses me sometimes. I lather myself in the brightest clothes I can gather, I paint my eyes with thick lines of eye liner and massacre. My lips are tinged with brown to go with the subtle shade of my skin, but I paint them darker, leaving only the trace of the rosy pink that forms naturally on them.

Normally when I stroll through the streets of district one I am seen as strange, too brightly clothes, too eccentric and out there, but here in this world where colour is never enough. Into a world where the idea of being untouched by needles, that permanently ink your skin and having hair that is not of some unnatural colour is abnormal in their eyes. And that is what scares me when I stand before them. Forced to do so because they want entertainment, forced to please them because what I can do makes them happy. I always feel naked in a way that no one can understand. And yet I can’t help but love it. Standing there and gazing at them all, drinking in the way that after only a month of not being there the fashion changes within a flash. You see how some people still hold last month’s fashion, the way they look around with defiance as though it could possibly come back. But this is a changing world, where once something has come it doesn’t come back and if you aren’t on top of it you’ll drown before you know what has hit you. It is a tricky thing, fashion. It’s like a puzzle that no one can solve. I love it.

I love being able to go back to district one and to my home, spouting the newest fashion tips and always, always out-doing the others in my family. It irritates me that Cerberus can always maintain what he wears, how those infuriating bright clothes that just clash always work. More perplexing was the way that it seemed to always go in time with that of what the Capitolites wore. It was frustrating, as I tangled myself into that endless web and had that advantage of actually seeing it and being there and yet I felt like I was falling behind. I couldn’t second guess what was going to happen, so when I appeared on the door step of the Capitol I was already setting myself up for failure.

I feel underdressed, and I know that no matter what range of colour I add to my hair I’ll always look bizarre to them, because I don’t belong there.

At home, where I feel safe, at home where the beating of my heart rings in time with the need to write, the constant taptaptaptap of my pen, ringing to the rhythm of that heart, halting when my mind clears with clarity, and so does my pen and then at times it becomes a race. Where it goes ever faster, picking up speed like a race horse and it thunders, as my pen scribbles across those crisp, clean pieces of bright white paper. The Capitolites call it magic. I’ve heard the things they say. Those few words make me feel lighter, as though for a little time there is a reason for existence in the districts, and that someday I might reach those heights and perhaps even get to join them in the Capitol and be one of them. Oh wouldn’t Nero be so jealous. He would, he’d be so very jealous. I could see it, the image causing my thin, lips to curve, my delicate features every resemblance of a painting, fragile and colourful. Sometimes when I go to the Capitol I’ll ask them if I can have some glitter and then I’ll get glue and I’ll put it under my eyes.

I like it like that, because then in those times when my music flows right through to my very soul, grasping it and ripping it apart and I begin to sob the glitter flows with it. Leaving sparkling trails of glitter down my cheeks where the tears fall. Because a star does not cry, one of them does not cry. They were never made to cry with such simplicity, they are far to elegant and beautiful to cry ordinary tears so I make mine like there, perfect just like they are. I’m standing behind the stage. The cool crisp air feels familiar when I breathe. I liked the air in the Capitol it was so unlike that of back home and it amazed me that I could feel and taste the difference. The gentle hum of the crowd reaches me through the thick curtains hung in front of me. I could hear them talking, there was more than ten thousand in there. I had become something of an idol to them, a pet if you will, something that they all simply must see. The thought often brings a wry grin to my lips and other times I’ll sit and think, wondering if I truly am something that they own.

Right now I can hear them, and I love that sound. I believe it is the only sound that sometimes keeps me going with this whole little show. I love the hearing them I can feel it seep into me and it drives me onwards, it sets me alight and keeps me going. Peacekeepers line the walls, I’m not really sure if they are there for my safety, probably not. But I like to pretend that they are, when really they are there to make sure I don’t go running away into the Capitol. Boy I’d love to do that. It would be a lot of fun. I’ve often thought of doing something like that, you know slipping past all the crowds and just making a runner, and hoping to start a new and amazing life in the Capitol. Sometimes I’ve even hoped that eventually the Capitol will let me stay, you know as thanks, or reward for my excellent work. But it has never happened. The dress I wore was bright, it was a lime green colour, several strips of black were slashed along it, and then underneath each strip was a bright orange line, that traced them all the way down. My shoes were high heeled boats, coal black and they ran all the way up to my knees. The dress clung to my excellent figure and I wore net stockings. Black massacre lay thickly on my eyelashes and it was closely followed by the eye liner and as always the glitter.

A man steps into the small room where I stood, it opened onto the stage and held a back door that emptied straight into the car that would take me straight to the train that would take me straight home. No tour of the city for me. Walking up to me he halts. He was a tall man electric blue hair sprouted from an aging head. Streaks of bright red and lime green were layered into it. I took careful note of the colour arrangements, determined to use the same when I got home. Tattoos lined his arms and legs, each a different shade of purple, with the occasional orange or yellow. He was an assortment of all kinds of colours and he looked amazing. His clothes were as bright as the rest of him. I’d noticed that most of the Capitolites seemed to be taking trend with the current games, following their clothing after it. Ripred they were so inspiring. He gave me a once over, his head nodding in reluctant approval at my attire. “It will do. You have less than a minute before you must perform. The lighter is right beside your music. As soon as you have finished you come right here. Do you understand?”I’d grown awfully accustomed to that Capitol accent. It was divine and when I was at home I often tried to mimic it, but I found it tiring to keep up. I nodded my head, turning it towards the stage where the crowd had risen in volume; they knew it was any moment now.

”Sure, preform and come back here. No problems, the same as always.” He looks at me for another moment, before turning away. I watch him as he goes, my breathing calm, slightly faster than normal, just like always. Just before he left he paused, turning to face me once more. I raised a delicate eyebrow in question. “Oh and make sure you do actually preform. No more breaking down. That was disastrous last time.” I force back a scowl numbly nodding my head in response. He sighs as though resigned to the fact that all people like me, from the district were too dumb to say a word.

To be fair it had not been last time I’d broken down over a year ago, but every Capitolite I might seemed determined to remind me. It had been almost half a year before they had let me come to the Capitol again after that. That had hurt me a lot; I’d had to suffer not knowing what to wear, not knowing the latest gossip or news. It had been so hard. Then had been scooped up once more and placed before them. They had become stricter and in some ways a bit more crude and rude, but they let me perform for them. That was good enough. Stepping out from behind the curtain I was welcomed by an increase in calls and applauding. Curtsying slightly I head over to the centre of the stage, my eyes taking in the thousands of odd faces, painted faces and just plain weird faces before me. I smile warmly at them all. In the centre of the stage stood a single piano, five sheets of music sat in my hand. I never let anyone touch my music; I never let any of them see it. It was mine and mine alone and when I was done with them Id burn them and destroy them so that no one would ever see or hear it again from me, live.

Drawing them upwards I placed them on the stand, before sitting before the large grand piano before me. The notes played before my eyes and although I had never played the tune before I knew exactly how it would sound. I knew exactly how each not would be played, the pauses, everything. To me it was like a magic and it seeped into my body when I wrote. There was always a pen in my hand when I went anyone. As soon as an idea came to me I had to write it down. I’d panic and scream and cry if I could not, because it would slip from my mind and anything I came up with was magic and one missing note would destroy it all. If I missed one, because I was too slow to write it down that piece would be destroyed. It only came to me once. I placed a hand against the keys, my fingers lingering over them, feeling their cool touch. My other hand came upwards and touched the keys, my fingers finding the places where they needed to be without me even thinking. And with eyes closed I began to play, my fingers pressing down on each key, lightly and gently, as though coaxing the music to come forth, as though asking it to play for me, not demanding it. The tune began off softly, almost unbearable, my fingers playing on the highest of keys, and then suddenly my left hand was on the deeper, more echoing sounds and the song turned, twisting and I fell into it, becoming one with it. No longer was I drawing the music to play for me, I was calling it and twisting it and demanding it to do as I say. The music was mine and it would be one with me and it would follow my every command.

The song spoke of those very things. In my mind it was about this game that I played with the music. Forcing it to be one with me and never letting ago until it did as I commanded. I could feel myself crying as though I was in pain as though this very memory was there and the music and I were battling. In my mind we were. That after the longest of moments the music stopped. Abruptly my fingers left the keys; there was no ending tune, just a finish. Because that was how it was. There was no softly spoken ending to a war, to this battle with music. When you were done with it you did not round it off. You finished and that was what I did. I ended this. For the longest of moments there was no noise then the room burst into applause, it rang into the space where my music had been and I sat there, lost in the tune, Slowly my hands moved forwards and with ease I gripped the lighter. Grasping the pages of my music I pick them up. Flicking the lighter I set them alight. My hand flies to the pen in my pocket and I sit there, ignoring the applause, ignoring the people, ignoring them all. Instead I focus on the flames, letting that fire engulf me, letting those flames swallow up a memory, swallow up a life, because that song, for once and one time only had lived and now it died.

And within those flames I searched for a new life, a new song. Dancing images flicker before me and I’m lost, the flames grabbing me and dragging me inwards. I fall into the new song, the last one vanishing from my mind.

We will stand tall
Face it all together
Skyfall is where we start
A thousand miles and poles apart
Where worlds collide and days are dark

<img src="http://i41.tinypic.com/16h2ibt.png">

You may have my number, you can take my name
But you'll never have my heart
Skyfall is where we start
Let the sky fall
(let the sky fall)