clover . four [fin]

[pogue]

Clover de Vere  .   Four   .   Career

[pogue]

C  L  O  V  E  R

Three bloody knuckled raps on the wooden door and they were met with a baby boy, a moth hole ridden blanket and a rusted through piece of metal tucked into the folds. They gave me my name that night because I was left with nothing else, desperate hope clinging to the four leaves of the faded green pin that I'd come with. I think they knew I'd need it in that place.

It only took me until age five to realize that they were right, by twelve to start to loathe lady luck for whatever irony she'd blanketed over my life, injected into my veins just to watch my eventually bloody come down from that high. It's sobering and it's brutal and it took me by storm as a kid, the way the walls drenched themselves in shadows and the way the sun never seemed to be able to break through those dirt stained windows. I was a small fish in an even smaller pond, overpopulated with the bodies of those forgotten by four.

Even the best pair of eyes will go blind when faced with too much of the color green.

I don't know how much he paid for the owner of that orphanage to let it happen, to tell us that if we wanted out of that place that'd we'd have to fight for it, pulled all the kids who were brave enough to still say yes into that field and let us loose with nothing but our own survival instincts to guide us. Don't remember much of it either, just that I looked towards the only friend I had ever made in that place and nodded, whispered "help me hold them down" before sprinting forwards.

Thirty five minutes later and we stood there, bloodied knuckles curled into themselves and fragile heartbeats hammering in our chest, the last two fish left swimming in a pond that was now too empty for the both of us. I remember thinking that this was where that luck in my name had gotten me, facing down a friend in the name of survival.

"Stop, both of you."

His voice was laced with sweet truths and a different turn of life, two paths of survival laid out before us instead of one. We would have been stupid not to take it. Some days, it feels like we were stupid to take it anyways.

Now I stand here, head pressed softly against the pristine glass window, eyes tracing the paths of the hedge maze that sprawls out around the mansion, wondering when lady luck will take back everything she's given me.

[pogue]

done. eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris has dibs!

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

^ that's me on the other side of the window, he's so good i love him