winona greymoore. four. fin

[4m dagger thane 🗡jay]

winona greymoore.




seventeen

district four

refugee

[4m dagger thane 🗡jay]

WINONA.
PART I: NO MAN'S LAND.

There was a time when Winona knew what happiness felt like.


Before the war — before the world she called home was ravaged by fire and buried under ash and bone, she was happy. District Thirteen was never much, it always smelled of gunpowder and virtually everything was a shade of grey. Winona and her sister, Lena, used to play tag with the neighborhood kids around the mine-shafts, they didn't want her to play after a while because she filled her pockets to the brim with gravel and threw it at them whenever they got to close. She thought it would buy her more time to get away. That was her happiness, those small but telltale memories, and she isn't sure she'll be able to feel that way again.


And soon war came and those memories became just that — memories, forsaken books that were hinged at the seams and buried under a layer of dust. Ash swallowed the sky and the ground trembled under the gunfire. Bodies of orphaned children and those whose houses were smothered in flames lined the streets. Her mother saw the worst of it, soldiers with missing limbs and bones that poked out of their skin, writhing between life and death before her eyes. Her parents became one of the few who were outspoken against the war, fighting for months for an end to the rebellions. Their efforts went overlooked.


They fled from the borders of Thirteen at dawn, packing up everything they could hold and leaving everyone they knew behind.

The outskirts of District Thirteen was a No Man's Land.


The ground became ash, buildings became ruins, trees became scorched, and bodies became bone. Everything was just a carcass of what it used to be.


On their fourth day, her father and Lena were walking hand-in-hand, swaying to the sound of mother's hymns. Winona stared at the horizon as they trudged along, after all this time smoke still swallowed the skies whole. She could taste the gunpowder in the air, it's acridness burned her lungs and caused her eyes to tear up. Lena's head bobbed as she started skipping, the metal canteen's in her little orange backpack clinking together. Winona could see her brother, Noah, face twist into a small smile. It was the first time she's seen him smile in a long time.

Bang.

And all she could see was white. A deafening resonance knocked her off her feet, sending her crashing to the ash-covered ground. Winona clasped her hands over her ears and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them like they were armor.

"Alden? Lena?" her mother cried out. They waited for what felt like hours for an answer but there was nothing, not even the wind. Winona's vision slowly started to clear and all she saw was dark, almost black, smoke billowing towards the sky. She clambered to get up off the ground. Winona whipped her head to where her father and Lena were just standing.

There was nothing but smoke.

Winona waved her hand, desperately trying to see past the smoke. Noah wheezed as he swung his arm, breathing in the heavy smoke as it wafted towards him. When the smoke subsided, there was still nothing. She clasped her hand over her mouth to cover up a sob. Poking out of the ground was an little orange backpack, crimson splattered all over the front and one of the straps was singed off. It took Winona a minute to realize what happened.

They were standing on a field of mines.

[4m dagger thane 🗡jay]

WINONA.
PART II: SALT OF THE SEA.

Winona was just like the wasteland she walked through, a shell of what it used to be. It still haunted her, leaving the bloodied bodies of her father and sister to rot on an ash-ridden tomb. Being afraid that every step she took closer to the borders of District Four could be her last.  They made it, regardless of how broken they were.

Her mother opened an apothecary close to town because she couldn't spend anymore time praying. Noah got a job on a mingy-looking fishing boat and every second he wasn't on that boat he spent drowning himself in liquor. Winona found a home within the ocean, allowing the tide to carry her out so far that land seemed almost distant. None of them wanted to admit how truly ruined they all were, though all of them knew it, even if they didn't want to. Winona recognized the pain in their eyes when she looks at them, it was the same one she saw when she looked in the mirror.

The ocean became the only thing that set her at ease. For the years that followed it was essentially her only friend, she couldn't let anyone else in. She confided in the sea, swam across the tides even when night hugged the sky because there was nothing else she could do. Confronting the past wasn't an option, so she let's the ocean guide her path.

At seventeen when they come for her, she thinks of the tide.

[4m dagger thane 🗡jay]

L△LIA

[L△LIA]

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