Outlines Of Our Hands; Ella

[chelsey]

By tomorrow we’ll be swimming with the fishes.
Leave our troubles in the sand.
And when the sun comes out
we’ll be nothing but dust.
Just the outlines of our hands.

Blood swims down the currents of this violent river as the four of us try to thrash against it’s tyrannical waves. My body is bounded to the grounds of this artificial earth, and yet my mind has drifted off beyond the walls of my our prison. It’s hard to accept my surroundings - hard to accept that I’m actually here. Every step I tread forward is lightweight and delicate, as if I’m scared my footsteps could shatter the glassy dream I’m encaged in. The only thing is this is no dream, and nothing can shatter this reality.

The muddy water has washed away any remnants of blood that might’ve lingered in the valleys of my fingerprints - but the stain is still there, embedded to a part of me that no amount of scrubbing or washing could erase. My ghostly hands have assisted in the demise of lives, and even if their death hasn’t swallowed them whole today, it will eventually, and it is the scars I gave them that led them down that path.

No blade or knife has pierced my flesh yet, today. But I can still feel it's metallic claws slicing across the goosebumped fabric of my body, painting pictures across the canvas of my skeleton with a silver brush and red, red, red paint. And, like everything else, not even an ocean of tears can cleanse me of it's imprint.

I have been crying ever since the blood on Demeter's body pin-pricked across the pads of my quivering fingertips. We bandaged her wounds as good as we could with our own bare hands - but what good is that when we'll all fall apart anyway? Volatile battles erupt along the banks of the river, and when Demeter and Ailis stride out towards the bloody ribbons beginning to ebb towards us, I cower behind with Learna by my side. As I flee the opposite way of the emerging fights, something inside of me wonders if I will see the girl from Two and Twelve ever again. But, in these rocky rivers with waves built to take us down, I know I have my own fights to worry about.

Learna looks nothing like her sister. The girl with rich hair, tan skin, and a spear in her eye ironically seemsed more alive than her pale faced and blazing haired sister. A year ago, Penelope Libertine was just another dead girl pixelized through a glassy screen. Today, the bones of her name is clothed with the flesh and blood of a tangible sister.

"You don't look like her." I say without thinking, letting the words slip effortlessly through my mouth as easily as silk.

[/justify][/color]

By tomorrow we’ll be lost amongst the leaves,
in a wind that chills the skeletons of trees,
and when the moon, it shines, I will leave two lines.
Find my love, then find me.

[/color]

ooc - word vomit wut[/center][/size]

[Tattletale]

.// learna antiopa libertine

Counting all different ideas drifting away
Past and present, they don't matter now the future's sorted out
Watch her move in elliptical patterns
Think it's not what you say, what you say is way too complicated
For a minute, though, I couldn't tell how to fall out

[/center]

Demeter's voice breaks through our awful song of cries and whimpers, and it stands strong. “Ready your weapons, ladies. We’re going hunting.” She stands, and before me I see the only foundation we can rely on in our weeping mess of an alliance. Primitive bandage handiwork that were hastily done cover the flowing cuts and try to mend the bruises done, but they settle on her skin like they should be there, like makeshift armor to protect her while she slays her own kind — unlike the lone bump that sits on my shoulder and the few covered scars on my arm and on my legs, I feel my gaze traveling towards them every now and then. It was stupid to think that they would detach themselves and run away altogether, leaving me to stare at my blood crawling out and soon in a pool around me (a dead, teasing voice whispers that I’ve got it all wrong, it was the living around me that would run and leave me with the blood that they would had drawn from me and I might as well consider these bandages as my only friends and my lone meager protection against everything in this Arena. You might wonder where he got this sacred information — note my sarcasm dripping heavily — and I did, too. But then I realized he once walked the fields of the Capitol’s game. Once.) but it was difficult not to: would you rather protect the ones with the will or without?

[/color] Perhaps I had a will too, but Demeter and I, we were different: Demeter has the will to survive, and I have to will to die.

Her strength was infectious, and I find myself reaching for my sword and standing up despite the ache in my knees, their pathetic pleads that scream, “Give up, give up!” I steady myself and repeatedly adjust the grip on my weapon. It was a sword, perhaps broader than the ones I have trained with, and the silver hadn't gleamed like it had to me before, when I was swimming within adrenaline that I was sure was the only reason why I was alive up to this day.[/color] Now it was dirtied with streaks of the earth and, popping up against the rest, the dried crimson that I refused to clean off. Blood will come later,[/color] and I harden my grip even more.

But I turn around and see Heather, still sitting on the riverbank and in all words a mess. Her dress, like the rest of ours, were beyond its original color and dripping wet. Her hair was a bright nest, with suffocated strands struggling to crawl out of her braid, and her eyes were red, puffy, and duller than before. Her cheeks glistened, and it was difficult to know whether those were her tears or the river’s own.

Nevertheless, my knees gave way and I sat back down.

They don’t question my indecision and cowardice and not even a single glance back was spared, their silhouettes slowly disappearing in the war’s murky breath.

Coward,[/color] they hissed. I ignore their hypocrisy once more — they were souls who should've accepted their fate a long time ago, but no, they had to hid behind me instead —[/color] there will be blood later, and my hair will become shades brighter. My final breath will escape me and my body will crack open, and finally, together with their souls, mine too will be free.[/color]

“You don’t look like her,” Heather speaks and her distant voice calls me back from my fantasies. My mind snaps back but it falls into place, unlike the moments of yesterday that never let me heal and soon as tide washes over, they drown me through my cracks. But not now. As ironic as it is, actual cuts and wounds cover the ones that settle deeper (but Ursula insists, and the visions of her scarlet lines still haunts the corner of my eyes)[/color], and I’m thankful (but Ursula still bleeds).[/color]

They remember me,[/color] Penelope’s voice echoes throughout my mind but finally they sound far away, so far away but I know she’s just there. Sitting inside of me, never going away.[/color] It’s like she’s been bottled in a jar, or submerged far below the surface of the ocean, and in that certain selfish way of mine, I’m thankful (but Penelope still drowns).

“We’re sisters, not twins.” My voice becomes hushed, and they travel to the currents, to the waves thrashing against each other. I turn to her, childlike innocence and curiosity taking over the greed that swallowed me too early, and the spirits part to reveal the child buried a long time ago. “Do you have sisters?”[/justify][/color]

It's twenty seconds 'til the last call
Calling hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Lie down, you know it's easy
Like we did it all the summer long

[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size]

[chelsey]

By tomorrow we’ll be swimming with the fishes.
Leave our troubles in the sand.
And when the sun comes out
we’ll be nothing but dust.
Just the outlines of our hands.

The tears in my eyes ebb away at the red lining my face, until my vision is all but a blurry halo around the focused image of Learna. Demeter and Ailis are all but a distant and lost speck dotted along the flowing horizon, and thoughts of their impending deaths send quivers trembling down my spine. If Learna - this small and lost fourteen year old girl - is all I have left, then we are both damned. (How am I supposed to care for someone else when I can't even take care of myself first?)

"We're sisters, not twins," she replies, her voice barely a murmur along with the hushing flux of the river. And, although the phoenix haired girl looks nothing like her golden haired sister, I can still pinpoint the same trembling in their fingers or the same oscillating look in their eyes. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Penelope Libertine lives within her sister.

"Do you have sisters?" She asks, staring at me with the curiosity of a child. Suddenly, I am thrown onto the fields of home, walking down a grassy path with Ava clinging onto my left hand and Atimia clinging onto my other. The soles of their worn leather shoes would sound like heartbeats as they hit the gravel grounds, and their voices would ring out higher than any bird in any tree. ("Why don't you have sisters, Heather?" They would ask me, and I would laugh as I patted the tops of their heads - glad that their innocence and my lies could shield them from the sorry truth. "Because I have you girls to take care of, still.")

[/i][/color]

I shake my head slightly, my voice still small as it lodges in my throat. (But, if I were home right now, my voice would be ringing out against the orange filtered sky. It would run along the banks of misty clouds and a setting sun, and settle around the flocks of birds that sit upon a barbed wire. If I were home, my voice would be free.) I'm not home though - far from it. And if I should ever want my voice to race against such a sky again, I need to force my voice out and demand to be heard. Silence has always dictated my life, and, even on my death bed, I still allow it's tyranny to take control.

Still, I force my tear filled voice to crawl out of my raw throat. "You must miss her." I am pushing a boundary, stepping over the threshold of an unopened door; and I know I should have kept my mouth as thin as my chances of survival - but I have spent too much of my life being quiet with lies than being loud with the truth.[/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify][/color]

By tomorrow we’ll be lost amongst the leaves,
in a wind that chills the skeletons of trees,
and when the moon, it shines, I will leave two lines.
Find my love, then find me.

[/color][/center][/size]

[Tattletale]

.// learna antiopa libertine

Your voice is fading
A distant sound, a silent call
It keeps me waiting
The one to catch me if I fall
I can feel it and it's not the same

[/center]

“You must miss her.”

Her words swim with the river, and they travel in a speed too fast for comprehension, too fast for salvation. In an ironic twist of events, I am the one drowning. I am the left clawing through currents in a feeble attempt to get air in my lungs once again. But it’s becoming hard. It’s becoming hard to fight the seaweeds that tangle themselves among my ankles like fingers trying to pull me down, and it’s just like the sea knows that you just can’t fight something you love. You can’t resist the siren’s lure and although your ears know very well that this could all just end in anything (rocks and boulders line the shore, will your body be seen? Nevermore.) but good, you can’t resist the bell chimes of home. Why must Heather control the waves and not me? I’m the one born crying out the sound of thundering storms and not her. I’m the one with saltwater for tears, certainly not her. District Eleven was where within the confines of barbed wires and electrical fences, there was heaven though on flames. There were grassy fields and flower beds and security that stretched to infinity, and the warning smell of bread too long in the oven and stale hunger in the air. They were stable, grounded, inside a cupped palm — like what I thought Heather was Heather was supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to be the rain shower that thundered on people for its own glee, but the earth that never swayed. She wasn’t supposed to drown me out with words, only children of the water did that. But the wounds weighed me down, and I had a feeling I had spent my whole life running too quick that waves never did reach to me — until now. Now was a bad thing, because right now, I could see Heather changing. She was changing into a tsunami, and she would consume me. But I will never know better.

She shouldn’t change. She wasn’t supposed to be a tsunami. She wasn’t supposed to send me back into my mind and show me Penelope drowning happily. And where, you ask? Drowning happily — inside of me.

I don’t want to drown.
       (The waves)
I don’t want to drown with her.
       (Have already)
I don’t want to drown with Penelope.

[/color]
       (Chained you, sweet sister)

I don’t want to swim around lazily, like the ocean was our bed and was just there, smiling contentedly like she never fought their call her whole life. I don’t want to turn and see her face, to see her eyes resting on me, to see her smile so peacefully that only Death could possibly provide — but I know that in exchange for that I have to live and never die.

Don't rest, my dear. Keep me company.

I don’t want another reminder that I’m still a jar of souls.

You must miss her? Miss, her? How could I miss her, Heather, when she’s — “Yes, I do miss her.” I miss how the rest room’s door would slam shut and the almighty sound would reverberate through our house and everyone would be silent, and we would all guiltily anticipating the clink of a tile dropping on the floor. I miss how I could do nothing, because her life was her own. I miss how her bed would be in rumples and it would just be like the ocean she’s drowning in. I miss how she’d drown in the actual ocean, the one everyone actually sees and not the one in my mind, the one she's dragged me under. I miss those telltale signs that she’s still living, and not in my head. But I don’t miss her. She whispers to me everyday.[/color]

The answer was already obvious, with the way her tired eyes hid something behind that blanket of shivering uncertainty, but I ask anyway: what about you, Heather? “— Do you miss anything?”[/justify][/color]

Tell me is this real or is this fake
I'm circling around this room
I keep running and I don't know why
I see my demons and I just can't hide
Say no! I wanna let go!

[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size]