paris "pyre" hope | d8 | done

Like waves of fire spreading through a field, torching everything in it's path, I was born kicking, crying, and screaming. My mom's soul was burned and turned to ashes before I could even open my eyes leaving me alone with my dad. It was a peaceful life, taking my first steps, going to school, having my first crush that I giggled about with my friends.

I can remember the day I decided to grow out my ember hair. Dad said it always reminded him of her. It felt like a way to keep her close to me, to create the connection that I never managed to make but so desperately desired. On nights that felt like they dragged on forever as I rolled in my bed, my thoughts would wander to what could have been. The kind, blue eyes that I had inherited alongside my hair reflected in the only pictures that could put a smile to Dad's face. Her smile reflected in my waking dreams of contentment, her delicate fingers braiding my hair and singing me a song. I know Dad says she wasn't much of a singer, that I got my voice from him, but it brought me peace nonetheless.

That's how I lived my life for years. Waking, dreaming, then falling asleep. It was a daze of friendships, annoyances, and stories that eventually slip to the back of my mind. When I think deeply about certain moments in my life, I can remember a few details that I had forgotten, like finding one chain in a series of linked memories. Thinking now, I can remember the excitement I felt when we finally had enough money to move out of our small apartment into a small house when I was ten. Then I remember the garden I had tried to create in our front yard. I kept forgetting to water the plants, and the tomato stalks all ended up withered and brown.

I had been disappointed, but my dad comforted me with a few garden gnomes he had scraped together the money for. Even though we no longer had any thriving plants, the dots of color were welcome in the district that was normally comprised of varying tones of grey.

My life continued.

Then, it happened. It was just a joke, a dare. A memory that will never fade to the back of my mind. I was at my friend's house, and we were just messing around. By around midnight we were all a little tipsy.

I was the only one to make it out of the fire that I had started on accident. We were just messing around with some matches. By the time the peacekeepers shows up and in a haze of tears I explained to them what happened, I was taken. No trial, no any form of justice. No one even stopped to consider that it was a mistake, that I was just a teenager who wanted nothing more in life than quiet.

Their screams haunt my memory every night, starting with when I was pulled away from my father and taken to the detention center. They told him I was an arsonist. They didn't tell him I had tried to stop the flames, only worsening the blaze on accident. They didn't say how I tried to pull my friends out of the fire. They just told him I was a monster.

I tried to forget the two years I spent in the detention center. But the memories refuse to fade along the screams of my friends. The only positive that came out of it was meeting Preston at a rehabilitation group.

I'll skip over the details from that. I promise you, you don't want to hear about the sleepless nights that were haunted by painful nightmares. You don't want to hear about how the exquisite dreams with a mother I never had transformed into grueling torture with faces melting into the flames.

I didn't have any family left when I finally stepped back out through the detention center's gates. The peacekeepers didn't even give me the respect to tell me that my father had died, leaving my house to collect the blizzard of dust coating every surface. I sat there and let myself cry for a little bit, trying to stop the malicious memories from sneaking their way into my fragile skull.

I recollected myself after a few weeks, and, slightly malnourished, made my way back into society. It was difficult finding a job that would take someone with arson on their record. But I managed to find one at a factory that manufactured clothes for the capitol. It was the most color I would see in district eight. I had my hands placed on bright purple, greens, mahoganies, and every other color for the wealthy while I lived on just enough to live.

That was my life for a while. Bleak, dark, filled with color only in the place that I despised the most, work.

Then, life turned around for me again. I had been shopping for flowers, trying to find a way to rekindle the spark of color in my house after the garden gnomes had finally been broken. It was almost like fate planned for this to happen. I had found Preston again. I never truly had the ability to comprehend how large of a coincidence it was, but it was the best coincidence of my life.

We had a small marriage ceremony. We didn't care much for a large, traditional celebration. He had all but estranged himself from his family. I had no family left to attend.

Then came along our own family. Nile and Lotus. They were loud and rambunctious, cutting their way into my heart and into our lives we had tried to live as quietly as possible. They put a strain on us, as all loved ones do, but we all make do in our own ways. Sometimes needing to run in opposite directions to stop them from causing two large catastrophes.

And that's my life now.

My dreams will forever be haunted by the screaming faces and my father's saddened eyes, and the thoughts of my mom had long since been consumed by flames. But my dreams are slowly starting to fill with my life around me, my children, Preston, and that gives me hope that someday I will finally be able to leave the painful thoughts behind me.