Burke Ritayin Aurthurs ¤ District Three [done]

This is a story about the life of a teenage boy who resides in the District of three. While his story may be considered insignificant by some, it holds its own special value to him and to those he interacts with. Sixteen years is far from the point where he might understand everything but through the grasp of writing he has expanded his abilities and is now able to tell his story on his own. For a boy who has written out numerous lives the time has finally come for him to lay his own out on a blank page.

I am nervous as I dip my pen in my ink - there are pens which have ink inside of them but I have become fond of the old fashioned ones my grandfather had used when he was my age - even when it is not a mistake or blot that I fear. These notes I am preparing to write are not for the eyes of anyone but myself, which makes me constantly beg the question of why I have decided to write them in the first place. I am scared that some other may come upon these words and, with no knowledge or permission of mine, read them. Had I not the notion of creating an autobiography I doubt this thought would sound quite so silly. What's the point of an autobiography if not to be read? But then I go and fashion up one so I might stuff it under my mattress and never let it see the light of day. I suppose my fears may be due to the rejection of my father some nine years ago, but even then the logical path does not connect to my thoughts concerning the words I trace onto paper in gently flowing ink.

The pen I hold is of fine craftsmanship, its body is made of oak wood which is mainly a delicate forest green, though there is a single strip along its length that remains the original colour of the wood. A ring of brass circles it around two-thirds the length up from the point, and the nib is also made of brass. Currently it is the medium width nib, though I may need to change it if I encounter need. A handful of various nibs rest on the desk a few inches from my stationary left hand, poised and waiting to be switched with the one I was using at the moment. Each was designed so it would do a specific style, and each was willing to trace letters in its own unique fashion. But see how I've distracted myself in a story different from my own, an autobiography is not what it claims to be if it does not talk about the author.

In truth I call this an autobiography but a better name might be the writing out of my life. For in few autobiographies are they started so young, or with the prologue acting as the entire story up to the point of acquaintance. It is here that I will write my world through my eyes, that including myself through as many sides as I might manage. Rarely does a character write their own story, and rare too is the character going about their own description. Here I will detail what details there are, and place down the facts I know of myself. If I find this to be incomplete I realize I can not go back because then it will be as though I changed my own view of myself at this time. I told myself I would write everything as it was at the time I wrote it, for that is the only way to know the truth is told, and I must not allow myself to already go back on my self-promise.

Page 1

My desk is a fairly neat affair, made of oak like that of my pen - yet another thing that I was given by my grandfather to aid me with my new found love of writing. I simply have a stack of paper on one corner, a lamp and a candle on the other and my pens in the drawer. There are two drawers in this desk, but only the first one holds my supplies for the other is where I have placed my stories - each one held together by a metal clip with the tabs folded down in the order that I wrote them. With how many I have written I am beginning to wish for a system of filing rather than this amateur method. A simple fix might even be one of those file folders, or the briefcases withe their many slots, but it would feel to me like I was trying to act like a professional when I am no such thing.

I sit in a wooden chair, once again a oaken piece to match the desk, straight-backed and comfortable despite being what most would consider a hard seat. My room is plain, much like my desk, and the only things that share my space are my bed, my one stuffed animal and a laptop given to me by the company I work for. A simple wood frame - yet another piece of oak furniture - makes up my bed. I have two pillows leaning against the headboard and a light comforter resting on top. The stuffed animal, a gray cat, lays on its side on my bed, the only thing that is out of place in my mature-looking room and my one tie to childhood. My laptop rests unused on top of my desk, a fine sprinkling of dust on it from all of the times I hadn't touched it. The only time I ever use the thing is for my work, though truthfully its just for the final draft or when I'm actually at work.

Now it has finally come to the point where I can't escape the written log of myself. Sitting in this room surrounded by little and alone aside from Smokey - the cat I had mentioned earlier, like I had said he is my one tie to childhood - I realize that there is nothing left to describe but my own appearance. As it is where I am making contact with whoever reads this, I start with the hand on my pen. My fingers are long, and look more boney than they are as they press themselves around the writing instrument. They are pale like the hand they connect to, like my entirety is in truth, for with all the time I spend in my room with no more light than the lamp and the candle I keep on my desk it is hard for me to soak in any natural light. I still do get outside, but only in my trips from home to my work. It's enough for me to attain the vitamin D I need, no need to worry about deficiency pills, so I don't have to worry.

Page 2

My arms are by no means muscled, instead they are somewhat lanky and once again my elbows show more when I'm writing than when I'm not. It is like some odd trick of my grip that seems to make my joints stand out as I grip my pen. I feel lanky as a whole, tall with disproportionate limbs and little mass to cover my bones. What little muscle I have is what is necessary for my body to function - I am a twig in the eyes of the Careers. My shoulders, yet more of me that seems overly boney, and can get quite tense when I write - especially if I continue for too long without taking a short break. They aren't particularly wide, in truth compared to many they are narrow for a male, but it's not as though my life or job requires me to be lifting anything heavier than a stack of papers or a laptop so I manage with my skinny build without much difficulty.

My face is narrow, though unlike my joints it is more rounded than sharp, and some may say it makes me look boyish. At this point in my life, though, boyish is completely acceptable. My hair is a vivid ginger colour, something I don't mind so much as it somehow goes with my pale skin in a way any other shade wouldn't. Still, my pale skin makes it so my dark coloured eyes appear much larger and more vivid than they are. It may be a good thing with a different face shape, but for me it makes me look a little bug-eyed. Comparatively my nose looks small, and then I get a sort of hourglass-like shape with my lips appearing larger than actuality. My eyebrows are thin, at least, though they aren't the thinnest I have seen. They also have a gentle sloping curve to them that fits to the shape of my eyes well. The actual irises of my eyes are interesting to look at, dark as they are it is easy to see that there is two colours in them. The main colour is a dark green, like pine trees in shadow or a brunswick green. It shifts in shading from intensely dark around the edge and the pupil to almost a whole shade lighter between these two darker bands. Mixed in with the green are flecks and streaks of an amber-brown colour that look almost like drips of sap to the leafy colour of my eyes.

My only vanity, in terms of jewelry, is a watch with a sterling silver watch face and a well-fashioned leather strap. It was a gift from my grandfather when I got my job, and it is one of my most expensive possesions. It isn't my most prized possesion, however, that role belongs to my pens. My clothes are generally on the more formal side, with collared shirts and nice jeans or dress pants, because of my job, but I do have a few things that are more informal. Most of my shirts are long sleeved, the reasoning behind it has escaped me but habit has come to dictate that I wear long sleeves. When I write, especially with my ink pens, I always roll up the sleeves so that they won't get in the way or have ink get on them. That's not to say I haven't wrecked a few shirts by splattering myself with ink, but it certainly helps.

Page 3

It is as hard for a painter to do a self-portrait as it is for a writer to write of themselves as a person. How do you describe something you have never seen from the outside when each person who reads your words might meet you and see that they're wrong. Once again, the promise that I made to myself comes into play, and I can only describe myself as what I believe is true in this moment, not the next moment or a year later. If something needs to be corrected it shall merely be added into one of the chapters where it fits and does not change the story in some paradoxical manner. Even in these few words I'm sure I have left traces of myself as a person, little markers and notes that might lead to the pieces of me so a puzzle can be put together.

From my mind's eyes I view the world through words, each scene and circumstance I come across translates into a new chapter of my life. Writing, after I was introduced to the whole of it, has helped me to understand the world in a deeper manner. Texts of fiction show me what a world outside of our own is like, building a picture through the eyes of the main character much like my own writings might be building a picture as they are read, non-fiction shows me sides of this world that hadn't been visible to me before. Each idiom I ingest allows me to know more of what surrounds me, like paintings being unveiled at a gallery. Life is a storybook, and you can either be the writer or the main character, either way your role in your own life is much greater than one you will play in someone else's.

Every story has a beginning, middle, end, and epilogue. People do not seem to see the epilogue, think to forget it and close the book before it is done. Death is not the end, it is only when the last sentence has ended that we can even think we are truly gone. It feels at this moment as though the pen has taken control and is writing things I am not sure to be true or not. The emotions I read here are things I may have felt at some time but they are so much deeper than I swear to have experienced. As though I do not feel with my heart but with my words, what I read on the paper - although not different from my emotions - is so much more exquisite than what I think in term of myself. This is a reason why I fear anyone ever coming across these pages, why I feared ever writing these words in fact. I would lay my entire self out for any to see and I could never retract it. Ink holds a permanence that my mind can not master, though I hold a mastery over it.

Page 4

What I read I understand, but I can't understand the entirety of myself in the same way. While a character may form in my mind so I might know each little detail of their being and thoughts I still cannot say the same for myself. The self-image I create in my head as I try to write my own story is one of vague details and blank spots. The outer shell is completely, but all of the internal parts are a puzzle that I seem to have lost pieces to. Throughout my life I may discover these lost pieces and eventually have them all fall into place if I am lucky enough to gather them all before I die. It is hard to find myself when I only ever look in the same places, like a stray dog hoping to find a scrap in a place where no one lives. The first time is the lucky find, a bone or perhaps scrapings from a plate. After there is nothing left because nothing more is added, still there is hope that maybe someone will come along and offer the one thing that could change the course of the search. Food, or tidbits of knowledge about myself, is something I haven't come across for some time - still I search the same places.

Once more, I reveal ideals of myself I don't want anyone to know. My fear that I give away too much in my writing holds me back from ever presenting my words to another. I'm afraid they will laugh at who I am, or despise what I put so much care into. I don't want to feel inadequate in another's sights when I already feel incomplete in my own. So I pretend like I know better, like my words are more important than the person who wishes to read them. I shut down ideas that I will let anyone read them with words of a superiority I don't feel. I shut myself away so I might avoid the looks and pointing, the glances and whispers that tell me I am weird to them. I am sixteen and yet I don't go to school, I work, and I have no friends. Successful as I may be with my writing, I could never let them see what I am on the inside. Whatever I am on the inside.

I use my stories to get away, not because I am running from my life but because I like to escape my view of the world and I want to see things through fresh eyes. Every character I write is their own person, though I can't say that I care for each one let alone each one equally. I merely translate a person into writing, whether or not they are the person I want them to be or not. They create themselves and I simply act as the vessel to detail them. Such is not true in my own life, but that is for reasons that are plain enough. I continually come up with plots and ploys for some of my existing stories or new ones. New characters come to me all of the time, begging to be placed in some place or other because they claim that is where they belong. This means I am never short on ideas, or on possibilities to go somewhere new, but it can also be tiresome to work on so many projects at once.

Page 5

Still, despite all of its - and my - shortcomings I still love writing, the way the pen glides over the paper until I have to dip it once more in my ink well, the feel of papers weighted by the curving blue-black lines I created. My life is now based entirely around writing, and I thank my grandfather endlessly for showing me such wonder as this. He is the only one I ever let read anything I have written - though even he will still be kept in the dark about the pages I currently scrawl over. I fear even he might judge me for what I have written, find out I am not the grandson he thought I was and not know how to think of me anymore. Relationships are a hard balance for me, and if I tip them too far to one side then I fear not even words can mend it.

Even after laying out the parts of me so cleanly for anyone to read - if this book ever escaped the confines of my room that is - I know that there is yet so much to explain because I could not be who I was without my past. It is hard to know where to start, how do I know what is too much information and how much is too little. To start from birth could take too long but to cut out my early years would leave a gap that might cause important information to just vanish. I suppose my best choice would be to just write of the major events that have shaped my life and my person, making me who I am today and what not who I might have been otherwise. To be certain, it requires I start at the beginning when I was first born. Mentioning conception would offer no real insight and would merely afford me an awkward air, which I'm sure has already crept into my words by this point. No, I will start at my birth.

My mother was exhausted, so she had told me, after the hours of labour before I finally emerged. I wasn't a difficult baby, but birth was no easy task and my father hadn't made it any easier by not being in the hospital with her during it. I suppose even then my father had chosen to distance himself from me. Thankfully, my grandparents had rushed over as soon as they heard and my father's absence was soothed by their joy and excitement. Honestly, all of this I learned from what my mother told me - most of these conversations taking place in one-on-one talks where we would tell memories in exchange for thoughts. This really covers all that happened when I was born, or at least the bits that are important.

Page 6

Growing up around my house was an adventure, each day bringing me some new and wonderful surprise as I learned what the world outside of my mother's womb was like. When I learned about touching objects my mother would hand me toys and fabrics, when I began to crawl my grandmother would watch that I didn't knock anything over or crawl on something sharp, when I learned to walk my grandfather would pick me up every time I fell. Even without my father being around for more than a few moments I was still living and learning well. With the help of my grandparents my mother raised me without much help from my father, until he finally withdrew the little bit of assistance he had rarely offered.

I was seven - old enough to walk, talk, hear, and understand but too young to realize exactly what consequences were - when my father stormed into the house and caused my grandmother to fly into a panic. My mother and grandfather were immediately standing in front of me and my grandmother to confront the man who had given me nothing other than my bare-bone existence. That was all he was to me, the donor of half of my genetics, there was nothing substantial between us and as far as I was concerned it didn't matter. He said something about being tired, frustrated, or both, as though those excuses would cause my mother and grandfather to back down from the threatening stances they were in. It was then that my mother did something I hadn't witnessed before - she turned cold. She spat his excuses back at him, I couldn't see her eyes but as a seven year old I remember believing that she was shooting lasers at him because nothing else would match her tone, making her stance even more sturdy as she stood up to the man she had loved.

He grew angry, his voice rising as he told her that he was done with this and he was just going to get his stuff and leave. Now my mother did something else I had never seen - she began to yell, long pent-up anger that finally had broken through the seal she had put on it. She asked how he could be done when he never started anything, he was never around and if anyone was done with anything it was her. I witnessed a man being beaten down by a woman that never raised her fist once, yelling that she was sick of him coming home and ignoring all of them unless he wanted something. She got on his case for every time he ever let me down, things I hadn't realized until that moment that were supposed to involve my father. It slowly sunk in that my father really hadn't been around, still I had managed to live well and I had a sense that he wouldn't be around again anyway so it didn't hurt so bad when he turned tail and ran. It was the last I saw of him, and I was glad.

Page 7

It took some time for my mother to go back to her normal self, flipping between angry and quiet distress that set the rest of us on edge. I didn't know if my mother would snap then or whether she would just crumble to pieces and it frightened me. The woman I had used as the guiding light through the few years of my life was no longer the anchor I had thought she was. The roles had switched, and now I had to ground my mother while the torrents of her thoughts attempted to drag her away from us. My grandmother took over my care, and my grandfather would try to distract me from my mother's constantly changing emotional state until her heart finally settled and she was at peace again. When she was back to herself I was back in a happy life, and I continued to enjoy myself with little notice of my missing father.

A couple years later, on my tenth birthday, my grandfather gave me the very gift I use to convey my words at this moment. He gave me this pen, along with a bottle of ink and some paper. At first I was merely puzzled and I stared at my gift with as much admiration as confusion, my grandfather put a hand on my shoulder and, with a crinkly smile, told me how to use the pen. I was already quite proficient with my letters, one of the best in my class and already on to prefixes and suffixes rather than the title sentence stuff my classmates were working on. With my grandfather's help I learned how to properly use the ink pen and neaten my writing so it wasn't illegible scribbles anymore. I ruined more pages with blots than I care to say, but eventually I got the hang of it. Under his guidance I became a the best writer in my class, and I began to use my ink pen whenever I wrote instead of the pens and pencils the schools supplied. I actually was sent to the principal's office for refusing to use a pencil during a math exam, my grandfather explained to me that there was a time and a place for that pen and that math wasn't it. I just used my pen at home after that.

About a year ago I applied for a spot in a news paper company, just a local paper that the Capitol only sanctioned if they were able to choose what went into it. I was expecting to be accepted - only as a delivery boy or some minor job of that sort - but they asked if I was interested in being a journalist. Amazed, I agreed and later found out that my grandfather had shown them one of my one off written pieces which they had thoroughly enjoyed. Somewhat annoyed that my grandfather would go behind my back like that, but grateful for the opportunity it offered me, I was unsure whether to hug him or give him an unapproving stare. It ended up being a combination of both, and we both celebrated my new job. At the end of the year I ended up dropping out of school in order to spend more time at my job since I was making enough money to help support the four of us and have some money left over.

Page 8

A year later and I am one of their top journalists, I do stories dealing with the Hunger Games though I try to focus more on the interactions rather than the fighting. I suppose that's why people enjoy my column more than the others writing about the Games, I bring information on the tributes themselves rather than the blood shed. People love to learn more about people, but it is a sore reminder to the Districts when all that is talked about is the killing style. Other topics I write about are the latest inventions I can learn about, though I prefer to write more about the character of people than the inventions they make. I always try to snag stories about people since they are the things I enjoy writing about the most.

This brings me to the present, and the end of this prologue. Once again, I question why I wrote something as detailed as this about myself when I'm not sure if I want anyone to read it. Still, it is written and finished and when I put the last period on the page I will wait until the ink has dried before I clip them together and stuff it into the bottom of my drawer to not be read until someone else finds it or I grow brave enough to let it be read. Here's to finishing the beginning of my story.

Page 9

Lyrics: Secrets by One Republic

FC: Luke Newberry

Words
100 - Author's Note
877 - Introduction
768 - Appearance
1229 - Personality
1627 - History
4601 - Total

"I don't see the world unless I see it in ink." - Jewel Kilcher
"Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory." - Harvey Mackay

Palette

odair