Marie Anning // District 3 // Fin

When Marie Anning was born, seventeen years ago, she was already dead. Wrapped in deaths arms, who was prepared to carry her to the beyond before she had even been. She came into the world and only saw darkness, a void of empty with a noose wrapped around her neck; her body was cold, her skin blue and her lips purple as the cord that had kept her alive in the safety of her mothers womb, cut off her air. Marie knew nothing of life, she was merely asleep in her eyes at the time, she knew not of the horrors that the world had to offer and for the first minute of her life, it seemed to remain that way.

Then, suddenly, she was screaming as her lungs filled with air and she was wrenched away from the comfort of death. Her world filled with blinding light as her skin faded from blue to a shade of pink, a sunset of life as it filled her whole body; the world was cold against her warming skin, icy to the touch as she squirmed against the soft cloth of the bassonet, beneath the watchful gazes of her father and the midwife. As she lay their, wailing, a foul stench filled the air; the smell of blood, drenching cotton sheets.

Death was not going home empty handed that day.

Motherless, in any other household in three, life may have still been impossible. Many children who lost their mothers at birth, or shortly there after, withered away into nothing more than skin and bones. Turning to ash when they were touched. Starvation was the horseman that kept a watchful eye of many motherless little ones across Panem, the powdered milk was expensive and not as nutrious as mothers milk. Luckily for Marie, she grew up in a big household, with a larger income than most in three and so Marie grew, a little slower than her peers but all the same she was kept fed as best as they could without a mother.

Growing up in the Anning household, Marie was passed from hands to hands more often than she could remember and so when it came to speaking, she was never really sure who to call mommy and who to call Daddy. She didn't understand that her mother was no more, but then again not many 1 year olds do; she called most woman who cared for her Mommy, and while she knew who her Daddy was, she more often called all the men in her house (even her cousins) Daddy; innocence was bliss in a world where everyone feared everything because almost everything was dangerous. One mistake, and you're dead.

Thats why, when Marie was six, her Dad didn't come home from work. It had begun as a normal day, Marie had woken up, eaten her oatmeal and then seen her father off to work before she walked with her cousins to school. It was routine, something she knew well and so when she'd hugged her father goodbye that morning she did not expect it to be the last. As lunch time drew near, the principal came to Marie's class and asked if she could excused; you were a smart kid, you knew that you were not in troulbe and so something must have been wrong and you were right. They told you there had been an accident- they did not tell you he had burnt to an absolute crisp in a wiring accident- and now, your father was dead. It was unfortunate, but Marie was not swayed by his loss. She did not cry, she did not feel grief, she could not feel. Marie just felt numbness, a constant sensation that filled her body.

Her father waa dead, and that was that. Life went on, and the funeral passed with no tears from the six year old, and the world continued spinning for Marie. Many orphans in Three would have perished shortly after the death of their parents or fallen into the hands of the state but Marie had the rest of the Annings to take her under their wings, much to the disapointment of death. Things scarcely changed for Marie, she continued to walk to school with her cousins, she still ate the same breakfast she always did and yet she did not express the same grief that her family had shared; her mind was not quite wired to feel emotions like the others. Emotion to her was like a foreign language, undecipherable to her mind, despite her mind being over the average of IQ; her family was concerned over her lack of sympathy but it did not bother Marie.

Marie flourished regardless of her lack of emotion. She found it easier to focus on her school work without the distraction of acquaintces or friends to hold her down; she did not even remain so close to her family members the same age as her, she kept to herself squirrled away in a corner with her nose in a book. She felt as if she were truly alone, safe in her little bubble while reading her books; but this turned out not to be so. She was 15 when someone decided to breach her protective bubble while she was alone in the library; she was suprsied that someone had the gaul to apporach her when she was in her safe space. The girl was a older than her, by two at the most, but she seemed interested in the book she was reading, captivated by the words printed across the frail pages of the book; Marie tolerated the girl, whose eyes looked more affectionately at paper pages than she did most people, mainly because you both shared a love for radiation and sciences.

It has been a year since meeting the stranger in the library, both girls have since whiled for many hours on end in the makeshift lab that is- was- Marie's room. Viles of low-grade radioactive matrial, weigh scales and a cage of mice which are their test subjects, fill the box room, leaving little room to breath. Perhaps the clostrphobia is why Marie often felt out of breath around the girl, as well as an explenation as to why her face so often turned red but still, the girl could find no rational explanation as to why her stomach fluttered with urgency everytime the girl smiled. Her books of science held no answer, no indication to why she felt that way; it was perhaps the only emotion that Marie would ever feel.

Her mind was a curse, of sorts, trapping emotions so needlesly created by the brain, snuffing them out before they reached the surface. Sadness, anger, grief, guilt, happiness, fear were all things that were numb to her, very few emotions remained to fill the void and those that did were confusing to Marie; sometimes though numb emotions boiled too close to the surface of the cage and broke free, hence her tears at the funeral of Hypatia, a brilliant mind bought home in a box and burried in the earth; a room, left empty and void of life. Sometimes, Marie finds herself drawn to the bedroom her cousin had once often spent hours upon hours in. Playing her violin as if the insturment was made of glass and silk. Marie is not sure what it is that drives her to Hypatia's room, an emotion perhaps, but she does know this.

If she listens closely enough, she can just about hear the strings of the violin being played.