mica . one

pogue Graphics 1,811 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5 Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?	mica . one Aug 16, 2020 22:09:25 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by pogue on Aug 16, 2020 22:09:25 GMT -5 Mica. Eighteen. Career. a career thats NOT from a wealthy elite family? why I would never think Credit to Christian Blanco on YouTube for the last name. Please check out his “Tales of the Hunger Games stories, they are fantastic!
	Last Edit: Oct 1, 2020 14:27:18 GMT -5 by pogue

pogue
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Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

mica . one Aug 30, 2020 14:51:29 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Aug 30, 2020 14:51:29 GMT -5

M I C A D E S O L

Your family is as old as the diamonds Panem is built upon.

And just as fragile. A diamond grows cracks on its skin whenever your fingers drag against wood grain underneath the yellow stain that coats the walls of the De Sol household, vast and empty hallway spaces for you to lose yourself in. You've found over the years that the shadows dance in those halls, peeking through the holes in a blanket pulled up and over your eyes in response to what your father told you was a childish fear: the darkness. Always forgetting that you are, in fact, a child.

That type of burning hot neglect is what has filled the empty spaces and dead air between you and your own family, what dances hand in hand with the creatures of shadows that dance in the hallway late at night. For children don't exist in the De Sol family, pesky little things to be nurtured and cared for and not eaten up by something before they even get the time of day. It's a dog eat dog world is what your father says, and if you can't bare your fangs as angry as the rest of 'em then you'll get nowhere. So you learn to steel your gaze and turn a quivering lip into a scowl and stare down both the darkness of the night and scorching hot light of the world you exist in, all tongue in cheek and half-hearted insults. It's wearing your legacy like armor instead of shackles, even though you have no concept of what the name De Sol truly means yet, of what burden it carries.

It doesn't take long for you to recognize how unfair the world can be, in the way your name carries a weight much too heavy for you to carry. A couple years at most, just long enough for you to pick up on the way the other kids dress and talk and carry themselves, just long enough to recognize that you don't exist in the same circles that they do, that you never will. And you start to understand why a childhood doesn't exist for the De Sol family, because you have to scrape and dig and fight and kill for everything you can call your own, for everything that others get for free.

Work twice as hard and get twice as little, that's what your teenage years teach you. It's learned through unique little moments that sear themselves into your own memory, like when you tell your teacher that you want to become a Peacekeeper one day, that you want to join the training academy, listen close and you can hear her quickly muffled laughter and assurances that a more realistic goal would better suit you. Like when you flick the end of your cigarette and watch the ash twist and tumble to the ground below, marking the cracked pavement of the road below as your voice cuts through the smoke your friend blows.

"I'll be a 'maker some day. Design arenas out in the Capitol."

"You really think that shit is possible?"

"I'll make it possible."

Curling your hands into calloused fists on your first day at the training academy, splashing water across your face in the bathrooms and muttering little pump up speeches under your breath. Your legacy smells like shit, that's what you've learned just from walking through these doors and seeing noses crinkle and glares like ice planted against your form. You hardly managed to get a sponsor for a school like this, uncomfortable in hand-me-down dress clothes as you desperately tried to convince a man richer than your entire family that you were worthy of his dime and dollars. You don't know what the head of the Pendragon family saw in you, why his mouth turned into a smirk as you stumbled through every question he asked you in that ornate study.

It's the only time your heart has ever felt like a feather, skipping its own beat in child like wonder when he told you he would sponsor your time at the academy.

"I like your spirit, Mica. Don't let me down."

It takes an hour and a half for you to do just that, to interlace your fist into some rich boy's cheek when his insult reaches your ears. And a poor boy becomes the entertainment for a few minutes, slugging the face of the poor boy who, in all his riches, had never learned to fight for his own damn self. Bloody and broken and bruised against the pavement, the boy spits up blood and his two front teeth when they finally pull you off of him.

"Listen, Mica. I know you grew up, different, than a lot of the other students here."

And you want to beg him to say it, to speak the word that District One would never represent in all its gemstones and luxury. To think, that for how much bravery was valued in a district like this, that they were scared of a boy like him, of the weight he carries and the dirt stain on his own last name.

"...but behavior like that is unacceptable in this academy. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

So you put on your pretty boy face during the weekdays, bury your head in your studies and take you anger out on the dummies with sword and knife. Feel the ache in your bones from writing your notes and the ache in your heart when you bite your tongue and curly your fingers into your palms when the insults hit your ears. And on the weekends you slip into your old habits with old friends and even older activities, digging your own grave in dirt and fire alike, tasting the dichotomy of a poor boy in his own kingdom and a poor boy trying to reach a rich man's throne. At the whim of those with more money than you, and it's not fair. But then again, you've known since six years old that life was anything but fair for a De Sol.

Because to be poor in One means your happiness isn't cut from diamonds and drowned in gold, in tailored suits and galas and balls. It's pulled from the rusted blade of a once silver sword, hours lost and hours remembered etched into the wear and tear of the hilt.

It's watching the flames dance against the night sky when you set fire to the run down shed you and your friends found in the woods, all hoots and hollers and childish youth bleeding from the swear words that fly from your tongue. Warmth hot and heavy against your body, highlighting the scars that blossomed upon your skin throughout childhood, little white lines counting the blessings you've never had. And the huff and puff of heaving lungs when the peacekeepers find you, chased through the woods like the animals you are, all covered in sweat and soot and stain and scum, your identity reflected through the jeers and insults you hurl like grenades back at the men in white who follow you.

It's the squashed cigarettes at your feet and blown smoke blotting out the sky above for sparing moments, feeling the grass press into bare skin on your back underneath the hot summer heat. Watching the sky melt and twist and turn and yell and scream as the drugs you've taken lace themselves into your bloodstream, all smiles and laughter and idiocy flowing across your face as you look to your friend. You can feel it as you drag your fingers through the sky above, feeling the ocean of a sunset curl and cling to your fingertips, the clouds laughing and smiling along with you. You don't know it, not yet, that the sky only melts for those who have nothing better to do than stare at it. You don't know it, not yet, that the De Sol family is already cursed to melt right along with the sunset, drowned in the red of blood and the orange of torn, ripped skin.

It's at eighteen years old realizing that everyone views your future as already dead and buried, written heavy into your surname from years past and destined to be seen for years forward. It's the realization that happiness doesn't want to exist for a boy like you, as unattainable as the diamonds you so longed for within your youth.

Because perhaps it's not happiness at all, perhaps it is simply desire. To be more, to be less, to be anything other than what you were born from.

The two are not so different. Both are deadly.

Last Edit: Aug 30, 2020 22:31:01 GMT -5 by pogue

pogue Graphics 1,811 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5 Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?	mica . one Aug 30, 2020 19:36:30 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by pogue on Aug 30, 2020 19:36:30 GMT -5 It's whateva' ripred_bot please and thanks

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mica . one Aug 30, 2020 21:57:02 GMT -5

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Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Aug 30, 2020 21:57:02 GMT -5

"Because to be poor in One means your happiness isn't cut from diamonds and drowned in gold, in tailored suits and galas and balls. It's pulled from the rusted blade of a once silver sword, hours lost and hours remembered etched into the wear and tear of the hilt."

i'm obsessed with ur writing