<| Happy Holidays, Zoe! |>

To my darling Zoë,
It's going to be really, really obvious who this is from. But that's okay, because it's late anyway. So that counts as suspense. I've kind of struggled putting this together because, well, it's been a while since I've produced any actual writing. But hopefully you enjoy reading it, because you totally deserve nice things. Like, seriously. You are sweet and gorgeous and funny and kind and supportive and loyal and I trust that you'll always stick up for me, always be on my side, always look after me. Unless it involves natigating a city. In which case I think next time I'll bring some kind of GPS. I love you, seriously, I hope you know that. 

From your Secret Santa









princess arwen the lost and prince silas the great


we walk in silence.
heartbeats.             two sets of footsteps.    
we are not touching                  
and yet our arms are interlinked          
somehow, through the gloom and the thick, heavy fog
she told us "go into town"        
as though town lies at the end of the hallway but      
sometimes lilith expects too much from the world
and so we're walking with the mist heavy on our clothes,
weighing us down
dark, dark dark 
"we're lost" says silas        
"no" i snarl "we aren't"  
he sighs because he knows i am a liar  
lies, lies, lies,
they are the product of my sharp tongue and curling lips  
"i know where we are" 
quite specifically, actually, we are in:
the middle of nowhere, district five, panem        
at least two hours walk from home
but that is only if we are travelling in the right direction
the stars are no use to us, hidden away beneath the thick clouds
the world is no use to us
we've been alone for a long time, but we didn't even know it
"silas"    i say  
i think he does not hear me over the howling of the wind, because he does not grace me with a reply 
"silas"
i could repeat his name over and over again, if only it would help
"they keep dying, silas"       i think he knows what i mean
my parents, my sisters                      laila                   blaire
i ran out of fingers on which to count my losses long ago
he is the birthday present i was never quite old enough for,
just out of my reach
he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not
"silas, will you stay?"
"here?" he says. idiot.
we are in the middle of a field, somewhere, with raindrops clinging to our lips and shivers aching in our veins
and he thinks that i want to stay
here? 
now that i consider it, actually, the proposition isn't so terrible
would it be the worst thing to never turn around? 
leave lilith wihtout her damn bread
leave them all
no more reapings
no more stupid, leaky roof, no more ashes
no more hollow rooms, just us, me and him, suspended in tonight
"not here"   i sigh               dream or nightmare 
pretence or reality           we find it hard to prise these things apart these days
"i don't know where we are, i'm sorry"
"i want to go home"                       "we're going home"            
"no, we aren't"        "well, i'm trying, arwen"
"i love you"
oh, shit.  
there's something about this darkness, it seems like it's swallowing me whole
the words escaped from my lips before i could jam them back in
it's hard when that sentence is on constant reapeat in my mind
it's been four long years and i do not love him any less
edgar has given up scolding me for sneaking into his room right after dusk,
because behind there, wrapped up in his blankets reminds me of the time just after the fire,
when my room was destroyed, and all i had was him
and when the nightmares came he fought them with whispers
i am arwen sycamore and i am not scared of the dark,
at least not when silas is walking beside me
he is carrying a loaf of bread, which is probably no use at all now, considering that brown paper is not waterpoof
i move a little closer to silas, even though he hasn't replied, again.
him and his stupid silence 
 it means altogether too much and too little
it snatches my breath from my lungs
"maybe we should rest a little, wait out the storm?" i suggest, and we move beneath the shelter of a tree.
a sycamore tree, actually. 
it is the least safe place we could possibly be right now
because if anyone is going to be stuck by lightning
it is us, the unforunates
but we sit together, a couple of inches apart at first,
and then suddenly i am pressed against him,
entwined in his arms 
he holds me so tight i can barely breathe
and i feel his chest, cold and clammy, through the sodden fabric of his t-shirt 
ruth always tells me off for wearing stupid little dresses in the winter
but being cold is a way to feel the bite of pain without hurting anyone else at all
silas     silas      silas       "silas"       i have the urge to say that i'm sorry ten times over
but i have spent the last four years saying sorry, and strangely enough he seems to forgive me
we sit like that, a tangle of arms and legs, and a definite hypothermia risk
for seconds minutes hours days years months    until he says it back
"i love you too, arwen"                                                                  
i wonder if the bread will survive the night
                                        we really cannot afford another loaf





miss charlie the reckless and miss grace the fearless


the waves crash against the shore in a flurry of salt water and laughter. rocks jut out from the sand, unpredictable and rough. charlie navigates them easily, barefoot, hopping from one to the next with ease. she doesn't have to look behind her to know that there is a shadow on the horizon, wisely tracking her footfalls. for grace, this is uncharted territory. it is dusk, and the tide is turning. the two girls slip away from the shoreline, slowly and steadily, drifting away from the docks with the tangle of lights and the shouting voices of sailors coming home for the night. they move past the rich houses, set into the cliffs like jewels studded into a crown. beyond there, they follow the breadcrumb trail of one another's shadows through the formations of granite, dancing around pillars and tucking their heads to avoid the ocean spray. after what seems like forever, charlie finch finally turns around and acknowledges her friend. they are far, far away from the confines of the district and the laws of they bitter family feud, far enough away to grin and giggle and dip their hands down into the icy water to splash one another. "do you like it?" charlie throws her hands up in the air and tosses her head back, a tumble of dirty brown hair and sunkissed cheeks. "it's beautiful!' cries grace, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the waves. "come on, then, before the sun sets completely!" charlie leaps into the air and lands on the sand, a tiny little beach out to sea. she reaches back and grabs grace's hand, and they run together, leaving only imprints of their toes behind. they are followed by two tangled streams of curls (one sandy, one brilliant red) and the whispered traces of their shouts. they make their way around the corner, and grace points in awe to a great hollow cave, carved into the rock by invisible hands. "shall we go inside? reckon it's safe?" charlie snorts "probably not." and then she drags her friend into the darkness, deep into the belly of the cliff. after a little way, the tunnel twists around and the sandy floor turns to hard stone. they climb up a little way, on their hands and knees, using the uneven ridges as footholds. after a minute or two of deep concentration and silence, they turn another tight corner and gasp. the tight, damp tunnel opens into an airy cavern, the centre of a rock formation with no ceiling. the circle of dark stone gives way to a round network of pale blue water and shallow rockpools, the sunset magnificent and bare. grace skips forward gleefully, splashing into the first of the rockpools and gasping, for the water is not bitterly cold like that of the waves but warm and gentle. she kneels down, not caring that her clothes are getting wet, and examines a starfish close up. nearby, charlie attempts to scale one of the steep, sloping walls. "come up here!" she demands, and grace grins before scrambling up after her, an undeclared race. they reach a ridge half-way up and settle there, legs hanging over the side, sitting together and panting heavily, feeling the ocean air in their lungs and the rise and fall of the tide deep in the pit of their stomachs. "i dare you to jump," whispers charlie, pointing to the pool below them, the deepest of them all. it looms, close and yet altogether too far, a rich indigo, beckoning them. grace hesitates. and then she gets to her feet, tugs her clothes off, tosses them at charlie and stands there for a second in her underwear, biting her tongue. and then, she jumps. she screams. she disappears beneath the water. charlie gapes after her, not breathing. 

and then she re-emerges, cackling, a magnificent smile masked beneath a crown of dripping hair. 





queen susan the gentle and king peter the magnificent


The boy and the girl take a walk together on the anniversary of their sister's death. The sibling bond that they share doesn't seem quite tight enough to bind them together; they pace on separate sides of the footpath, with a wedge of empty air gaping between them. Behind them they leave a thousand broken pieces of jigsaw. A dead sister. A father who never came home. A mother who's grief overcame her. Another brother, a boy with an arrogant heart who disappeared into the tunnel behind the wardrobe and never came back. Those figures are ghosts, dancing wordlessly in the fog that they breathe, the clouds of moisture that hang in the frozen morning, figures born from empty lungs. These two are not smiling. They pay little regard to their corroded bodies. Susan Peverell laces herself with poison from sunrise to dusk, and late into the night. Shot after shot, chased down by mouthfuls of smoke and the occasional handful of pills. Sometimes, they chase away the constant headaches. Other times, they do nothing to dull the pain. Peter walks with heavy feet, as though it takes a little more effort than he can muster to drag himself to Lucy's grave.

When they arrive, they stand a little way away, not meeting each other's eyes.

Peter is the brave one. He takes a step forward, slowly, unsure, because he hasn't been here in three hundred and sixty-five long days. It has been a year in fast-forward, as though time has picked up the boy by the scruff of his neck and propelled him forward without warning. He lurched from a child to a man without the chance to look back. For that, he is lucky, because what lays in his wake it not a pretty sight.

"Lucy," he whispers, and he does not believe she can hear him. "We miss you."

Susan rolls her eyes, gives a dramatic, drunken sigh, and perches herself on the curved stone top of an unmarked grave.

"Susan!" Peter scolds, her elder brother now as much as ever.

"What?" she raises her eyebrow, challenging him. "Why? Why does it matter?"

"It's disrespecful, how would you like it if-" he glanced at Lucy's grave.

"If what? If someone touched her grave? You know what, Peter, I wouldn't give a damn. I couldn't care less if her headstone was destroyed. Every flower we've ever left here has died. On the first day, we sat and wept for so long and we didn't think we'd ever see a life outside of these walls. For the first month, we visited daily, coming back like slaves. After that, it grew farther and farther apart until now we can't bare it unless we have no other fucking choice. And one day we'll leave and never come back."

"But-" says the boy. "She's our sister."

"Lucy was our sister. The only sister I ever had. But Lucy is gone. She isn't here. This cemetery is no more Lucy than anywhere else in the world. The grave might hold her body, but it's empty. I've never felt a place so empty."

Peter reaches forward and places a hand on his sister's shoulder, an attempt to calm her. She lashes out, enraged.

"Don't touch me! Stop acting like there's something you can do, maybe somewhere you can go or something you can say to make anything better. There is no better." She draws a flask from her pocket and takes a loud gulp. "There's fucking nothing and you know it."

Peter takes a deep breath, counts to ten, and sits down on the grass.

"Do you remember how when we were little, and we ran out of wood in the winter, and we had to spend god-knows-how-long chilled to the core, we felt like we were never going to be warm again? That summer wasn't coming, that the snowfall was eternal? A winter that came and never left?"

Susan nodded, slowly, and sank down from her perch to sit beside Peter on the grass.

"Well, do you remember what Lucy would say?"

She did, but she shook her head anyway. She wanted to hear the words from someone else's lips.

"She'd make us all climb into Mama and Papa's bed together, and bring all our blankets with us, and that dirty old teddy she wouldn't put down, and she'd say, that if we huddle together, we'll keep warm, and that summer was coming."

Susan bit her lip.

"And we'd all laugh at her, and think, she has no idea. That little girl, filled with hope and optimism, she doesn't know that the frost won't break for another couple of months at least, and that the season might as well be eternal. But she was right, you know? Summer always came."

"What's your point, Peter?"

"That Lucy knew best. I don't care how long you think it'll stay dark for. It can't always be winter without Christmas. Put down the flask, Susan."He reached out his hand to take it from her, and she did not resist. "And tell her we love her."

"I do." A tear falls from Susan's cheek and lands in the thin layer of snow, hot and salty, melting through the ice to reveal the ground below. "I'm sorry."

"We're sorry," Peter corrects, and together, finally, they begin to thaw.





queen lucy the valiant and queen saffron the brave


I am shadows, I am tiptoes down an empty hallway and I am bleeding without the blood ever staining the sheets. I am dusty fingertips, closed coffins, nails on a chalkboard and darkness, and light. Once, I was a girl with a heart and a mind. I laughed, I cried. Now I am a girl with an empty chest and an undisclosed apology. I am a girl with last words lingering on her lips, avoxed and yet still in possession of her tongue. "Saffron," I say, in the lonely night. She is my best friend. Forever, and ever, we promised. We sat together with our fingers entwined and we told each other that it was us, until the end. She didn't break her promise. I did not break mine. And there is a house on the other side with doors a-jar; open just enough so that I may press my eye to the crack and watch her grow, flourish, live. Too much of time is spent that way, sitting cross-legged on the floorboards and tracing my fingertips over the very edge, the line between myself and she. Tonight, though, the door was left wide open. I hesitated, for just a moment, because I was never the kind of girl to stray far from what was supposed to be. I wasn't, at least, until I met Saffron Lowe. That was when it changed, and I stopped being the little girl, youngest of four, never listened to. And I became an almost-winner, nearly-alive, not-quite-fighter. I was a warrior, for a fraction of a second and a lifetime. Clocks don't run in quite the same way over here. Now, I am brave. If time permits. 

So I walked between the worlds and away from the house. I walked on my own whispers, until I was retracing the very steps I followed three years ago, back when my name was Miss Lucy Peverell, Female Tribute from District Twelve. I go to find my fellow Queen. She is sleeping when I arrive, and I watch her for a long, long moment. The rise and fall of her chest. Breathing, gently, innocently. She's still a child, even though she is also a Queen. It's strange, how once we were fourteen years old together, and now I sit on the end of her bed, still having lived only fourteen years while she outruns me, a grand total of seventeen. Still counting birthdays in the way I can only remember. I pity her. 

"Saffron?" I say finally, reaching out in the darkness to touch her shoulder, awaken her. "Saffron, it's me."

She jumps, sits up straight and stares at me. It's a reflex, and product of having to spend each slumber on edge and wondering if your allies truly meant to put a knife to your throat, if your enemies were just around the corner. Us two, we were a flurry of early dawn escapes and midnight races, fleeing around in circles, a moonlit dance toward our graves. She is still turning pirouettes. 

She screams. 

"Saffron, no, it's me. Stop!" my words are quiet and they creak like a door that has not been oiled for a century. Her eyes are wide.

"It's just a dream, it's okay. It's okay." It's not a dream, but I am not who I used to be. A girl who only spoke the truth. I have spent three years watching through the crack in the door and have finally learned that the truth is rarely the best thing to be said. The truth is painful. The truth will scar people far more deeply than the tip of any blade. 

"I'm awake," insists Saffron, but I shake my head, scolding her with the swing of my hair. It was blonde once, but now it is dirty, died pink at the tips where the stain of blood mingled with the pallid curls. No amount of washing can seem to shift the evidence of my death. 

"Don't talk," I tell her, "it's all you people ever seem to do. You have all the time in the world for talking. You can talk for the rest of your life. So listen to me now." I take a deep breath, and it shudders through my cavernous, empty lungs. It has been a long time since I have smelled the scent of my best friend's shampoo and the seconds seem to catch in my throat. Swallow. 

"Don't forget where you came from," I say. "Don't you ever forget it. When you're old and growing up like all those other Victors? With that heaviness they all carry, I can already see it growing in your step. Don't you forget that you're different. You're the Queen. You and me, Saffron Lowe. Until the day you die."

There are tears on my cheeks. They roll slowly, and finally fall, landing on Saffron's pillow. They are traces, markers, and the only thing I will leave behind when I go. "And if you ever think for a moment I'll hold this against you, hold anything against you I need you to stop and remember what we fought for? Our kingdom, Saffron? Don't give up our kingdom for anything."

I kiss her cheek, and wonder if I feel solid to her, or perhaps just like a breath of cool air. That's how it felt when my father would visit me after he left. Like a patch of darkness in the corner of the room, a breeze somehow leaking through a closed window. He was raindrops when the sun shined, but they were the kind of raindrops that reminded me that the world was turning. They were not a sign of winter, but a promise of spring. Maybe I can be Saffron's promise. She needs one. 

I leave her quite differently to the last time I said goodbye. This time, I do not utter another. There is no crying, no shuddering sobs that wrack my bones. No streaming blood mingled with tears. Just a dusty, hollow feeling, a scattering of footsteps, and then I am on the doorstep of the prison that is now my home, and the door is swinging closed behind me. It slams, loud and angry at my escape. I turn back around and watch through the keyhole as Saffron Lowe falls back to sleep.