{of ice and fire} Zori

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...

Once upon a time there had been a time when I could walk down the streets, all smiles and happy. I had once smiled to every face the idea of impatience and annoyance and absurd one. There was a time when I was the perfect picture of work ethic and family virtue. Well family virtue not really. I’ve always distanced myself from the baffling family of goons. Because they are and never will be worth it. All they aim to do is tarnish a life and legacy I have built for myself. To put it simply I am not going to let that happen. Or so I had believed it would never happen until Elodie was reaped. If you had of come up to me a year ago and told me that in no more than a few months’ time I would become who I was now I would have laughed at you. I would have laughed and told you to wash such foolish ideas from your mind, before sending you on your way, with a pat on the back. Not so long ago I had revelled in the idea of being a good person. Owning things and being the king I had always dreamt of being, and one day would be. I had been a tall proud bird, the best of the best and yet better than those that are the best. But then my wings had been harshly and cruelly clipped. They were ripped from my back so that I could not lift off of the ground and fly any more. Instead I was stranded amongst faces I knew, but did not know. I was left to suffer. I had high hopes and expectations of where I would go and who I would become. No one was going to ruin them and stop them.

I flew. I truly had. Once upon a time, there had been nothing to stop me from lifting off of the ground. Now there is nothing to get me up there, with no wings I have slowly fallen and the dreams that I chase, the days that I am graced with the air rushing around me have been darkened. Where once they were never dreams, where once me flying had been a time of knowing, now it has become a time that has swallowed me into darkness and depression. I’ve long since lost the belief that they are real. And although I’ll continuously try to fool myself into believing that they are real, with the power and strength and conviction that had once made me spring and leap. I know it is no more there, just as I know that my heart beats slow. It isn’t something you can change and insist isn’t happening. Because it is all in your mind and that is what scares me. Elodie threw me off of my game and sent my into the dangerous part of life, where your world collapses and the good dances into the edge of bad. And I can’t fly to get out of it. Now the times when I reach up high above the clouds into the mystic land of the stars is no more than a carefully drawn dream that I feed to myself. To tell myself that it will all come back one day. It has to. No world can stay tainted by darkness forever, or at least I hope so. Sometimes you do have to keep selling yourself rubbish; you have to keep pushing on those sweet thoughts. I know I have to because if I don’t I’ll do something stupid. Who knows Elodie’s ugly body could end up in the river, rather than her grave. But I’m trying to behave.

When I look up into the night sky I see an entire new world. I see a thousand, billion leagues of untouched land that is ready for the taking. I see mile upon mile of starry sky for me to claim. And so that when I lift up and loop around in those endless fields of bright, brilliant lights I can shine as bright as the stars. Sometimes I like to pretend to touch them, reaching out a tender hand, stretching it high above my head. My eyes forward and focusing, as I moved my hand along the tiny speck in the far distance. I know that their touch would burn, being made of fire and all. But they don’t know that I burn as well with the fire of life and the need to outdo everyone that I see. I can’t be beaten down, not for long before I get back up. I just wished I could go back in time and stop Elodie from being reaped. I didn’t deserve this pain. I didn’t deserve this at all. I had done nothing wrong. I worked every day; I put in all my effort to expanding my hold over the district, to grasping more people and slowly embedding my name into every important person’s mouth, into their minds so that they will know me. Not her, not Justice or Meryem, but me. Dimly I come a bit more aware of the fact that the man still has not returned. I push the stars away from my mind, impatience pulsing through me. ”Hell-““I’m so sorry about your sister!” I spin around, to find myself staring at a boy. My age, I think. I glare at him, not wanting to mask my anger. There was only one sister he could be talking about.

“She was… She was lovely.” I stare at him. I stare at him, eyes blazing and hoping, hoping I had not heard what I had just heard, but then hoping that I had, because I wanted to scream at someone. I wanted to yell and explain how much of a bitch she was and that no, Elodie Magpie was not lovely; she was the opposite of anything to do with that foul world. She was the most hideous, rude, pathetic thing I had ever known. “But then, you must have known that.” Unable to keep my anger contained any more I step closer to him, eyes flaring. “Lovely? Lovely? Elodie Magpie was not lovely. She was a cold-hearted bitch that craved sex! She was nothing to me, she was not my sister, and she was a no one and a big loser at that. She does not deserve your sympathy or anything.” I spit. Closing my eyes I try and push the anger down. With a deep breath I run a hand through my ragged hair. “I swear to Ripred that if you mention her, in any context again I will hurt you.”

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...

I could still remember as clearly as if it had happened yesterday what it was like to walk down the street and every now and then someone would stop me and ask me how I was. It had always been the high light of my day to be stopped by some wealthy man, some high up person of the district and even once by the mayor himself. And the part of it that had always been the best had been the part where they would say Savoy, where they would actually use my name off the top of their heads, they did not even have to hesitate. They simply could put a name to a face, my name to my face because they knew who I was. I had been someone that was known, I hadn’t been like most of the people in the district, living their little sulky lives, in their houses, doing day to day business, nodding to their boss as he called out idiot or you. None of them had ever held the joy of being on a first name basis with the mayor, where he would praise you on your skill and tell you how well you were doing. None of them had attended a dinner party with some of the most explicit, wealthy people of the district. And I bet none of them had ever stood with the Peacekeeper’s the way I had, when they would look at me and there would be something of a friendly glint to their normally hard, cruel eyes. I knew a lot of people in a lot of high places.

And oddly enough it had all just seemed to slip from underneath me. When I had stood at the top of the mountain it suddenly just disappeared and then before me there was nothing, but open sky. Now, normally when I fell I could fly. I could gain my footing and it would not be that hard to graciously, and easily manipulate my way back into good standing. But when my sister was reaped that all changed. It had been crazy, like the wings that kept me a float where suddenly gone, clipped and they did not work. So now when I fell I fell hard, nothing to stop me from falling and falling and falling. And So I did just that. I kept falling with nothing to soften the fall; it was a cruel, hard dive into the world. There was no one waiting at the bottom to catch me. I had climbed that mountain on my own two feet, I had done it all by myself with no one’s help. I had used my own cunning and genius to get me where I had been. So when I fell I fell alone, as I always had. It hurt, it hurt a lot. Now when I spoke to the people that had once re-lied to my comments with ease there was always a distracted look in their eyes. When they heard the name Magpie it no longer associated with me, but had become a word that meant Elodie. No one seems to understand that it is hard, that it hurts to be forgotten, that when you have done everything aloe you are left to pick up the shattered pieces of the shattered life you have created with the help of no one.

I’d built a life stone, by stone. I’d spent weeks and days manipulating people. I’d tested ground, step by aching step before diving into the deep waters where there was no way out unless you could swim. In that kind of situation I’d taught myself to swim, but then life had to be a bitch and throw in some sharks as I scrambled towards a receding shore, and as waves crashed and crashed down. Ripred it sucked. And to top it all off the world seemed bent on reminding me and telling me that life would never be as it had been. It wanted me to suffer more and more, it was making sure that Elodie became that light of the family. That the family name was beared by her alone, it was making sure that people would never know me again, it was pushing me right into the ground and then stepping on me, burying me sixty feet lower then was needed, just to make sure I would be forgotten, just to make sure I would forever be out of the picture. And Ripred did it piss me off.

Then there were those assholes. Those stupid people that seemed to think I should care that my sister was dead. There were those idiotic people who just seemed to want my suffering to be like a blade to the gut every time my name was spoken. Ripred the world hated me. I glare hatefully at the idiot in front of me. The stupid, pathetic low life that has the nerve speak, that has the nerve to tell me I should respect some dead bitch. Some people. Ripred they don’t seem to understand that not everyone has to live people, that not everyone wants to love people and that I, Savoy Magpie hated my sister. Sometimes I just want to step backwards and look on, shaking my head, knowing that one day when I die the world will fall apart because it will be left to idiots like the one in front of me. It is a rather depressing thought and one that I wish was not true, but the obvious stupidity of the retard in front of me begs to differ on that matter. Sucking in a sharp breath of air, I push down the raging feeling to stab him, to grip the pain in my left pocket and just stab some sense into him. Or maybe I could hit him in the head and maybe that would make him smarter? I’d heard a few tales, myths most likely, that by hitting a dumb person you can make them smarter. I was sure that if I hit him in the head it would only make him dumber, but from the look of him getting any stupider then he already was, would be a very hard thing to achieve.

”Look however the fuck you are, no one gives a shit what some dim-witted, brainless, thick, idiot like you has to say. I could not careless that she was dead. I would see this world crash and burn before I even gave two fucks about her death. So I’d run along now before something bad happens.” There was a cold edge to my tone. I was no longer shouting, my anger bottled up within me and instead my eyes flickered dangerously, just daring him to say something, anything so I could hit him and hit him hard.

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