blood runs thickest // ines + yani

[Cait]

ines izar

The end of the world is coming. Every year come to pass brings with it another number to add to my age. It’s something that I can’t hide from, can’t outrun. I understand it now. Know how the universe works these days – the give and take, how everything comes with a price.

A memory of a shutting orphanage door and the cost of my freedom, the promise I made to the woman on the other side of the wall.

A memory of a year where no Izar names were Reaped, but two scared children still had to die.

Five Reapings down. Two to go. Then, I’m a free girl. A free Izar, I wonder what the price to pay for that future might be. It’s a reality few get to experience.

(Whoosh – the walls close in on you.)

“Haizea Rose-Izar!”

A voice, it should have been you.

(It should have been me.)

There’s blood on my hands, and no matter how many times I try to scrub at the skin, the stains still remain.

(Whoosh – the air carries particles of monoxide directly into your lungs.)

“Elise Krane!”

Faces in smoke, death circling, lingering in the spilled blood, it should have been you.

(It should have been me.)

My breath comes back to me, ragged and frigid. Sporadic exhalations that scream in relief as the tightness in my chest abates. The guilt doesn’t fade, though. It’s simply absorbed into my blood. This is the weight of being an Izar child.

I tried talking to Nekane about it all – the heaviness of my emotions, more complex than those of an orphan living in a sheltered world. I thought she might have been upset to see her distant relatives succumb to the fate of a Reaped Izar – or worse, be angry that they had been lost when there was a perfectly good sacrifice waiting in the wings. But it’s so hard to read someone you know so little about.

“They’re not real Izars.”

“Save yourself for the ones who matter.”

I think it means she’s okay. That I haven’t disappointed her. Yet. Her unspoken words are never far from the surface.

Nekane has done her best to keep me away from the rest of the Izars. She essentially exiled herself from the rest of the family the day she adopted me, but something tells me she doesn’t really care. The few times we’d had visitors had usually been Mayor Vasco coming over self-invited with a plate of Emma’s cooking and a fresh brewed pot of tea. On those occasions, I’d been ushered into the attic and told not to come down until Nekane came up to rescue me, when we were alone once more. I would wait for the silence signalling that Vasco had finally given up trying to pry answers out of Nekane about me, where I was, who I was.

If I was braver, maybe I would have spoken up sooner. Asked if we could go to just one extended family dinner. Begged for the chance to be a part of a real family. But I think I felt like I didn’t have the right to my new name. Like it was something to be earnt, and could only be truly mine with the ultimate sacrifice.

But sixteen is an age of promise. A new dawn, a blossom on the breeze. Another year older, but it doesn’t feel as frightening this time.

Sixteen year olds don’t have to listen to their adopted mothers. Sixteen year olds earn the right to explore the world, make new friends, make mistakes. Sixteen year olds are allowed to walk right into the Mayor’s garden and knock three times on the back door and greet a cousin you’ve only spoken to before in letters.

YaniMarie Izar is the famed golden daughter of District Eleven. Everyone knows who she is – even me, a girl so sheltered from the rest of the world. The differences between us are tenfold. When she enters a room, it lights up. When people look at her, they smile. When people see the happiness she brings to her father’s face, they have to look away when they realise how easily it could be erased. How quickly it could all come crashing to the ground.

When she opens the door, she grins wider than you ever would have thought anatomically possible. Her skin radiates a warmth that could only come from growing up in a house so full of love. It takes every ounce of strength to stop from hugging her straight away, on the off-chance that some of her warmth might transfer to me.

I’ve never felt more self-conscious in my life.

“Hi, umm... I’m Ines. But I guess you knew that already, right? It’s so nice to meet you finally! I can’t believe I’ve never been over here before.”

She stands in the doorway like she wants to invite me inside, ready to play the perfect hostess – I can see the words about to leap off of her tongue. But something about the impending invitation feels too intimate.

She scares me, if I’m being honest. She is a juxtaposition to my life, and she doesn’t even realise. Something about talking to her this intimately feels dangerous; but then again, talking to anyone has always made me nervous.

I stumble quickly over my words before she can make me an offer I don’t know how to turn down. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

★

Yani Izar

She won’t speak about it now.

Grief held her like a shadow. In the light of day it stretched long and far behind her. And every street she walked, people could see it – this unending grief, framed up against a brick wall or along a footpath. Always behind her, always trailing, a part of her exposed to the world by the fact the sun shone overhead.

She could never rid herself of the people she’d lost, that much was certain. Her sister’s ghost had never left the halls of their home. Her notches still set into the wooden doorframe to the kitchen. A picture hung in the hall of someone who this year was younger than she was.

And no one would understand loss like her, would cradle the unending sadness and turn it to sunflowers because she could do nothing else. The daughter of a man who never lost hope and a woman who taught her as much as her heart hurt her head could lead her through it, she refused to define herself by darkness. It would’ve been easy to have smashed all of her things, or to go to the shops and still trinkets for the thrill of it.

She had not lost part of herself, not in what she’d lost from all of the ones she burned candles for.

But how she wanted to be like the other kids. To know that she could crumble and fall apart and that was life, unvarnished and capable of knowing some things could not be fixed. Her father had spent his whole life trying to make the world a better place, and her heart felt so small in comparison. To tell him of the little problems running round her shoulders, even the ache in her heart that her best friend had been put to her death when his own daughter, nieces and nephews, children he’d raised had been put to death. The words couldn’t come.

Tears were told to tighten up, and that Haze would never have wanted all the tears to cut her apart. She couldn’t be reduced by saltwater like a sandcastle on the beach. Yani had been strong, bold, and as the world took and took yet again, she refused not to love herself.

It kindled the rage in her heart. Burning in billowing black smoke and spreading ashes far and wide, Yani had lashed out at her father for all that he hadn’t done in fifteen years. No matter the peacekeepers that had tried arresting him time and again, or the things he had managed for the district.

She’d heard Vasco go and stayed in her room. Another breakfast avoided. Cold oatmeal and a cup of coffee waited for her at the kitchen table. A handwritten note (te quiero, mi alma) she tossed into the wastebin.

She left the oatmeal and took the coffee mug in her hands.

A knock came at the door, and Yani bristled. Had her father forgotten something?

She caught sight of the girl standing on the porch from the corner of the window. Yani couldn’t place her at first – there were always people coming and going to see her father – but she knew her from somewhere. And as she tracked through the too-many cousins, recognized Ines from a hazy memory of some family gather, or school (who could ever be sure).

“Yeah. I – I could go for a walk.” Yani had looked back into the house and then into the light of day. If she’d stayed here, she’d have crawled out of her skin after too long.

“It’s better than being cooped up.” Yani managed a smile. She remembered that no matter how many clouds were over her head, this girl hadn’t brought any of that. “Yeah um, we met a while back right?” She furrowed her brow,  "Ines Is it? What brings you out here?”

She closed the door behind her and edged out onto the porch, shadow behind her.

elegant