Sundered Bones [Prop / Vasco]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o

I don't wanna be stoned
I don't wanna be stoned anymore
Don't wanna be alone
Don't wanna be alone anymore

Rain came down yesterday. Brought rolling thunder and flashes of white lightning across gray clouds overhead. Shedding rain as though their drops were angry at the specks of dirt underneath our feet. Whole hours where the drum of it clanged against the metal roofs and shot streams out of gutters and into the street. Flood warnings went out in the southernmost part of the district where the earth lays flat like a man on his side, not ready to get up. We sent out a radio call to take shelter up in the justice building where we turned out offices to make cots and the magistrates chambers to a mess hall.

I spent half the day between dispatches of people surveying the lowlands for stragglers and fetching any available boats – in case floods trapped those in their homes or some got washed out – and serving the porridge and bread we had put together in the mess hall. This was the sort of work that I could disappear into. I became nameless in grief when the hushed families were too worried about their livelihoods to pay any sort of mind to me being mayor. No need for any sort of deference when one kept imagining their whole world having disappeared under murky brown waves.

Listening to people talk about what they’ve lost had a way of creating a little halo, a light to reflect on all the rest of your life. Not to get down to thinking at least it isn’t so bad, since silver linings fray and tarnish. But that if you really listen, and hold your breath, you can understand the pauses between each of their sentences. How when someone doesn’t have to speak out their grief for you to know that it’s suffering of the soul. To lose everything you’ve ever known is to sink under those same brown murky waves without sight of the surface.

Sometimes it’s enough to want to hold there, to sink under water and wonder if you wait long enough, the fire in your lungs will burn out.

I didn’t pity them, not for what might’ve been lost. More that all of us live in a world where the greatest good is to live a long life hoping not to lose ourselves. Imagine, living forty, fifty years with just enough, only to see it all washed away. And some might say it’s selfish to miss all those little things, of photos at the nightstand, or that little baby tooth you’d kept from your daughter, but when you get old enough, you recognize there’s more than people that can’t be replaced. All those memories that we’re supposed to carry on can fade, especially out under a hot sun and cracked earth.

Six died.

Someone had whispered in my ear that he’d gone out and while it’d been quick, meant eleven was out of the eighty-eighth.

I served a few more plates of porridge and biscuits before I’d tipped my hat and excused myself from the make-shift mess hall.

Rain still came down crossways as I rode off toward where the O’Malley’s farm. I could’ve waited for a bus to take me (though there’d have been a transfer and with the state of the roads, not as likely to have been passable) but something had told me I needed to get to them as soon as I could.

Nothing’s so important as to let someone else know you’re there for them. And even after all that I’ve seen, the selfishness of the capitol, of other districts or men in my own family, I believe there’s a better side we’ve yet to see. I get that there’s bad people, and a whole system that people try to use to pull one another down. Crabs in a bucket, as I like to say – no one seems to like anyone else to do better – but that doesn’t mean I have to keep following the same path.

Every last drop of rain seemed to whip across my fast as I charged on horseback, fighting through the storm. My hands numbed as they clutched at the reins, head down while I galloped along.

Maybe it’s a futile effort to hold out my hand, to expect anything I could do would change the world we’ve made. Eight long years and it doesn’t feel any safer, any better for my daughter. But then I remember the people of Eleven during the fires two years ago, and Katelyn working to make things right. We were a lot stronger hand in hand than standing on our own.

I turn the old mare around at the edge of the drive and steady to jump down into the gravel. My boots hit a puddle and I’m up to my ankles in mud. I couldn’t help but laugh as I steadied a walk toward the little farmhouse. The rains slowed to a drizzle and I held at the front porch.

“Mr. and Mrs. O’Malley?!” I called out, my voice hoarse, as though the hours I’d spent riding had scratched it bare. “Hello? I – I came as soon as I’d heard. I wanted to…” help, I wanted to say, as though the word were ever strong enough for fresh grief, “See you all, to bring you what I could for the next few days.”

I’d never used my mayor’s salary for anything other than to give away. Some just needed it more than I thought I ever would.

elegant

[Deleted]

None of us expected Six to die today.

There were close calls in the past, the days when we told the younger kids to look away as we all squeezed each others hands, many of my siblings whispering their prayers. But today? Six was strong. Stronger than any of us had seen him be before. He did something I wasn't sure I'd be able to do. He cut off that bitches ear.

Waverly or whatever her name is. She should be dead right now instead of him. She looked so close to death, like a gentle breeze would finish her off. But then Julian happened. A man I would never forgive for as long as I lived. The Bible may preach forgiveness, but there's a reason I haven't touched mine in years.

The rain started yesterday, and we knew our house was high enough we'd probably be safe from flooding. But, then the rain continued through the night and into today. We knew it was still unlikely we'd flood, but the house is old. The house shakes if a gust of wind is a bit to strong and leaks happen. That's the reason I'm still here, well part of it.

The rest of my family is visiting Uncle Cliff. My dad originally was planning to stay behind, but I volunteered in his place. Just like I was too scared to volunteer for Six. My siblings needed my dad right now, and they needed me to be strong. I needed time to cry, to process, and I can't do that in front of them. Plus, I didn't want to finally lose it and punch Cliff. If I heard him make a comment about how "fruity" I look or say anything about Six, I know I'd hit him. And that's stress the family just doesn't need right now. Because Cliff isn't a pussy, he'd fight back.

My clothes were covered in mud and dirt, I had just recently come in from the fields, doing what I could to protect the crops from "drowning" or flooding out. Our entire livlihood was in that God-forsaken farm and I wasn't going to let all of that wash away. We didn't need to lose any more than we already had. Because today, we lost everything. Everything vanished in one stab of a spear. Our lives would never be the same again.

I was sitting by the wood stove, trying to do anything I could to warm up after being out in that freeing rain. Which included smoking. My family needed me sober, so weed and booze were out of the question. But smoking with no one around? That was the only thing keeping me sane. Maybe one day my lungs would finally be as damaged as the rest of me.

Then I heard someone calling out. My boots, muddied and soak, were sitting just inside the door. But, I didn't go for them. I wanted to stay inside if at all possible. I also didn't bother putting out the cigarette. Even my parents would understand why I was smoking, I'm surprised my dad didn't try to bum a cigarette off of me before they left. I don't doubt Cliff would've if I went with them.

I opened the door and froze when I realised the source of the voice. The guy I had spat on and broken down in front of, showing the most vulnerable parts of myself. Part of me felt embarrassed and another part felt ashamed. But, he was here to help. And I didn't want to be alone in the cold, dark house. I needed someone now more than ever. I opened the door a bit wider and moved to the side so he could slip in if he wanted.

I knew I looked like shit. A cigarette in my hand. My eyes were red and puffy, glossy even from the tears still threatening to fall at any moment. And I also knew I looked like Six. The pale, but freckled skin. The untamable and curly red hair. Except,  I was alive and he wasn't. My parents said it was all part of Gods plan, but I'm convinced God made a mistake. He meant to take me instead, it was supposed to be me on the end of that spear.

"My family isn't here right now, but you can come in, take a seat by the wood stove to try to warm up. Excuse the candles, we lost power a couple hours ago."

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o

I don't wanna be stoned
I don't wanna be stoned anymore
Don't wanna be alone
Don't wanna be alone anymore

I could feel the rain tapping at the brim of my hat as Prop came into view. He pulled open the door and the chill crept up my neck, enough that I thought my teeth were going to start rattling.

He’d had enough of what we’d been selling back in the town square. A part of the next generation wary of what he’d already spent his life losing, Prop had told me what I was doing hadn’t been enough, at least, not for his family. I’d thought about him since then, and all the people who’d been holding on, without much left to hold onto.

Maybe twenty years ago, we’d still had enough of the generation that’d survived the dark days to not be so distant from history. People that could speak on what total war had looked like and what could’ve been. But those years had faded with each passing game, and their spirits had thinned like the stars in the night sky. Now they whispered so soft it took patience to listen, or luck, to have someone like my own grandmother still alive. Hope had been the thing that killed so many of them, this generation hadn’t a reason to trust any of it.

I took off my hat and pushed back the strands of blond hair with darkening roots into the grays at the fringes. I placed my hat over my chest with my hand and gave him a nod. I stepped slow across the porch until I reached the doorway when I turned to face him.

“Thank you, Prop,” I smiled a little smile and turned to head into his living room. The cast iron stove belched a flicker of red sparks. I drew close to feel the heat and closed my eyes. I stretched out my hands and let the warmth soak across my chest and legs, my jeans now stuck close to my skin and my shirt tight across my back. My knees had started to ache halfway through the ride, and the warmth brought a tickle across them.

“Been problems all around the district today and yesterday. Storm washed out a few of the roads and is bound to hurt some of the harvest. We have people posted up in the justice building so they could stay away from the flooding.” I stared back at the fire dancing along the inside of the stove.

“Nothing better than these stoves, eh? I remember sitting around this at my grandmother’s during the winter. We’d fight over who got to put a piece of wood in, since most of us wanted to see the sparks shoot up. I think I spent half my life smelling like smoke because of it.” The bit of nostalgia worms its way through my memory. I could see Marisol’s face some forty years ago, my pile of cousins and brothers all chattering over one another as a storm raged outside. How safe we’d felt then. Free of danger because we’d dared to believe so.

“I’d wanted to come as soon as I’d seen that Six had been murdered.” I stopped.

It had taken me years to build the courage of moving past euphemisms for their deaths in the games, but at last I’d learned that their deaths were nothing short of that – murder. To name them as having ‘passed on’ or ‘died’ took away their agency. It removed the threat of the games and the power of the capitol on their bodies. To name them as murdered felt as to give them back their personhood – they were people, not just pieces in a game.

“I wanted to tell you and your family not to worry about having to cook for the next week or two. I’m going to send what you need and make sure none of you go hungry.” That the was first thing that could be done, free them from having to think about the day to day when the dizzying haze of their son or brother’s death clouded everything.

“And to tell you how sorry I was. I didn’t know him well but what I did know is that he loved you all very much.”

elegant