bleeding pinks and reds . the troupe, day 1

 

bird ivy

Moments are fleeting. There's a rush inside me and I know that the hardest storm to weather in the one inside, and that feeling only jumps to the forefront of my mind when I run as fast as I can, for as long as I can, but find myself in the same place as before. The bloodied and bruised are figures in the distance, an army preparing to infiltrate each and every valve of my heart with their weaponry, mangling into their plaything, into their prize for playing the people who play the game. I stop close to the cornucopia and comfort feels a whole world away - but running as all I can do. All I have is myself and these aching fists, a sharp mind, sure, but what good is that in a sword fight?

Over time, things start to fall into place. They float to the ground like they are feathers from a bird that has died in the sky and watching the dust settle is a trauma I will replay over and over until I die. There's no longer the agony that hangs heavy in the air, the throb in my ear from my own adrenaline desperately trying to mask any fear, there's no longer the echo of a cannon booming, no more supersonic tragedy to escape from. The peace is unsettling; if there's anything I've learned from going into the forest, it is that the quiet is a fragile thing. So easily broken, and once broken, impossible to replace.

I close my eyes for a moment. I take it in. Who knows when I'll feel this again? This emptiness, the loneliness of fleeing something so awful only to stand on a line in between one hell and another. Good is no good and to be bad requires being worse than ever. Stone, I stand in the silent storm that surrounds me. Acceptance of fate, sure, but it's more a case of dying before I've actually died. I know how these stories go; Panem is no place for fairytales.

That's what I keep in my mind when I leave, and when I think of it for the forty-seventh time, something shifts. 

There's a wind now: the soft kind. It's the kind of breeze that blows a curtains like an ocean wave, relaxing and calm, the type that could lull you to sleep as it whistles through the cracks in a wooden window frame. A bed of petals are sprawled across the ground, eccentric in its beauty, but I have loved and lost enough times to turn a blind eye to the dangers of something, or someone, just because it is pretty.

Mom told a story of a queen who was the envy of all other women: everyone swooned over her, she was powerful, she was elegant, she was regal in her reign. But the face disguised the sting of a black window and she murdered everyone in her life until there was no one left. She was alone with the destruction she had caused becoming her only company. She was okay. She was still beautiful, but she was a broken kind.

That is what I expect from this arena. Perhaps there will be pretty views. Sunrises and sunsets. The glow of the moon on a tranquil body of water. Spritely creatures making homes in sweet vegetation. A masterpiece of a sky. Perhaps there will even be something in here to fall in love with - but my trust is too crooked to be bent into place by the hands of any gamesmakers.

The petals whoosh into the wind; they take flight and become a flurry of colour, a prism of every shade imaginable. It's a sight to behold, there's no way it isn't, but illusions are trickery to hide the truth. I turn my head over my shoulder but where I came from has faded into where I thought I was going, and all sense of direction is lost. A compass would be drugged by the magnetism of this rainbow swarm because I can't stop looking at it. Entranced but enveloped, the wind sings an opera into the storm and it borders on a scream.

It sings and sings and sings and then it screams, and I hear it, louder than ever. 

"Bird! We're in the middle!" Callum's voice becomes torn by the strength of the storm. And it feels impossible to locate, but I keep walking because it is all I can do, and I keep trying because Kestrel and him are all I have. 

"I'm coming!" There's a break in the petals. An entrance, an exit - whatever - I bolt for it. As if the desperation in Callum's tone was gritty enough to scrape the storm apart, to crack its power in two for a split second. Maybe it's a sign.

The first glimpse of my allies reminds me of the story I am living. It's the hellish kind. The broken kind. The kind that wants you to get attached to people who aren't permanent enough. The kind where the writer is the cruellest enemy and they are a villain you can never face. Kestrel already seems to have her humanity clawed from her body, wounds littered across her like a sick graffiti. "What happened, is she okay? Kes, are you okay? Callum, are you okay?"

Blood covers them both. Her body, his hands. It's a stark contrast to the life of the rainbow petal swarm, because the red is royal, deep and daring. It has a certain aura of death about it. Surely Kes' story can't end before a page has even been turned? Surely, she can still be saved.

"I think we can fix you up," I say. It's a lie because I don't know if that's the case at all, but what else do you say to someone who lies on their deathbed? Goodbye? Goodbye doesn't try hard enough. "We can fix her up, can't we Callum?" I look at him and wonder if he realises I'm asking because I need the reassurance.

Because I have nothing. I have myself, sure, but I'm not worth that much. I only have him and Kes and they are all I'll ever have now.

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