meet me on the far side (cass)

There is a house built out of stone
Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home...

I had neglected to speak to my family for a week now. I had seen one of them here and there, wondering the district. I know they saw me, but they made no move to talk to me or even apologise. It was all Elodie’s fault of course. She just had to have gone and gotten herself reaped. Since that day it had begun. I had feared it for more than six years now, having been able to finally understand it all, having been able to grasp my own hold on society and not let go. Now, that grasp was slowly weakening as my sister dug her claws deeper and deeper into my hands, forcing me to let go. Of course I fought. I tried all kinds of tactics, I told people I didn’t know her, I told people I wasn’t related to her, but no one seemed to hear me. They heard the words Magpie and they were suddenly blind to everything else, but praise for that idiot.

She had made it pretty far in a brutal game, but that didn’t make me any more proud of her. I hated Elodie. For six years of my life I had earned myself a name. The name Savoy Magpie was more than simply what it had become now. Everyone in the district had known me; my name had been more than what it was now. A week ago when people had seen me it was because they knew me. I had spent years, upon ears building the foundations of who I was in this district. I had spent years, upon years working every single day to manipulate, twist and control all the big people, all the most important people in the district. Yet seven days ago my years of work were destroyed.

When people heard my name they didn’t think about me, their thoughts went straight to Elodie Magpie, the poor tribute fighting for her life. That poor little girl. Poor, poor Elodie, oh, it must be so hard for your family. And I just want to hit them. I want to be the one that spreads their wings and flies. I want to take off and be known in that way, be known with a simple word, by a face, by a name. Elodie had stolen that from me. What was more; the normality that had settled over my life had been shattered. My normal routines, my normal schedules and everything had turned upside down. There was nothing just there; nothing held their usual neatness and normalness. It was all so out of control. I needed order, I needed control and my world lacked even that.

It was cold. But then it had been cold for a long time, you could tell, though, that the weather had lightened up, if only for a little bit. I wrap my jacket tighter around myself, drawing in the warmth to keep it with me. It had been a long day, in a way longer than normal. I was foot sore and weary, and I paid little attention to the world around me. Even when the houses began to go from little worn down shacks to piles of mess I felt no need to stop. Normally I would have ages ago, but I felt like walking away from it all. I was too tired to fight with anyone, I was too exhausted to try once more and assert who I was, it scared me that I was fading, and it scared me that my name no longer invoked the meaning that it once had.

I missed the popularity that I held; I missed the way people would just know who I was by face. It seemed as though even those few small luxuries I had worked for were fading. Elodie had become their everything now, she was more important than I had ever been. I hated her for it.

I use to fly. I use to climb so high into the sky that I was sure I was going to choke. I held that power and strength, I held the ability to flap my wings and just soar across the mighty sky. I could reach heights and places that no one else could. I could go places and see things that no one else could, because I had weaved my way in there, I had become an eagle when I was only supposed to be a magpie; my wings were too big, to full of dreams for what I wanted. And I fell. I fell hard. It hurt, my wings seemed to shatter beneath me and I was no longer a person capable of knowing, of seeing and being something that I wasn’t. I was as if Elodie had taken away the identity that I had created and replaced it with what she saw, what they all saw.

"Savoy, are you here?"

I halt, my feet drawing themselves to an abrupt stop. I spin around, confused. Yet, someone had spoken my name; someone had called me by my name, as though they simply knew who I was. In the dim light of the streets I see her, a girl no older than fifteen. Her hair was dark brown –it looked almost black, it was short, like a boys. I didn’t recognise her, in fact I was pretty sure I had never seen her in my life before. That was nothing new. I didn’t know people who had no power; I didn’t talk to people who lived in a place like this. Despite myself I was curious. “Who are you?” I ask inquisitively. Despite myself I had to talk to this girl. She knew my name, and no one had spoken that name for over a week.

Ground had arose and passed its knees
By the cracks of his skin I climbed to the top
I climbed the tree to see the world
When the gusts came around to blow me down
Held on as tightly as you held onto me

There is a house built out of stone
Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home...

"Cassidy Ellis, it's nice to meet you."

She offered me her hand. It was a grim covered, filthy hand, there was not a pale inch that I could see of just skin, and it was disgusting. It was one of those hands that came from a person who knew nothing of hygiene; well they knew some of it, but cared nothing for it. Just by looking at the hand she offered me I could already tell she was not a person that I would normally associate myself with, the world that I now stood in was not a world I would often step into. I tried to stay away from people like her and although most of my family were like her I was not. I was better than all of them.