lighting matches just to swallow up flames | indi&arie blitz

   

The night of her defeat she dreams of blood. In-between the aching cries of her injuries that impatiently pull her awake and the last dosage of sleeping pills on her bedside table India Krigel dreams of her brother, and his crown, and how she plucks it away with her arms up to her elbows in blood.

On the fourth hour of his victory she wakes up screaming, hurling an invisible trident toward the opposite side of the room. She'd always been a sleep-talker, even as a child, mumbling to the ghosts in her slumbering head - but these friends were enemies. Leo crushing her body into the sand, sending her so deep into the ocean she couldn't see the light of the sun. Arie dancing on the red ocean. Her mother sobbing. All of it, awful. 

All of it, more bearable than what she had to face when awake.

When her breaths slows and her body relaxes she sinks back into her bed, shifting uncomfortably in sheets now soaked in sweat. There were eyes of a ghost still lingering on her - a figure stood in the light of her open bedroom door.

"Come to gloat?" India snaps, heart pounding in her chest, her back. Her leg, her stomach, her arm, in all of her wounds. Tears well in her eyes, because she knows who it is. Nobody else could stand so gracefully, no-one else's hair fall so perfectly than Arie's. 

Arie would be fine. She fell lightly to a strong opponent without expectation of victory. Without shame. She had their mother's beauty and their grandfather's pinky finger and their brother's affections. Arie would be more than fine. She'd be great. 

"Don't bother," her cracked bottom lip trembles in the light. "I already feel like shit."