[P] i'll rise up, i'll rise unafraid

[Katniss]

She felt as though her life was on a merry-go-round and she couldn’t get off. Everything since Metaphor’s death had seemed to speed by in a blur of pain and hurt and laughter and joy. Nothing was clear to her and it seemed she had more questions than answers. And yet, she couldn’t step off this merry-go-round to save her life. Days and nights kept coming, the sun rising and setting and she still seemed as though she was standing still. Her son was growing so much each day and yet, she felt as though she was missing all his milestones, missing precious moments while she was stuck feeling as though her life wasn’t going anywhere.

The ghost of the woods had not helped her through her depression, only made her question herself even more. If the ghost did not find her honest and true, then what was she? She had so many questions, so many unanswered prayers. Was she good enough for Denocte? Was she worthy enough to be their champion? Was she worthy enough to parent a child who only wanted her love.

The sun had risen and Katniss found that she was still standing in front of the lake, standing there since when the ghost had sent her back. Had she truly not been home yet? Had she really spent all night out here thinking and dwelling upon things she couldn’t change?

With a heavy sigh, the mare turned away from the lake, turning away from her reflection and her feelings of self-doubt. She needed to find some way to step out of her depression, to finally let go. Since Metaphor’s death, she had been a recluse, locked away unless she tending to her duties. Perhaps she needed to get out more, to go back to court life to remind herself why she had to keep breathing, keep serving.

Unfortunately, Katniss only made it a few steps away from the lake before she simply could not go any further. She was exhausted. Days upon weeks upon months of no good rest was making her look far worse for wear. Her body collapsed in the sand of the lake, her eyes closing softly as she tried to will herself to sleep. And yet…her mind was still racing, still keeping her from sleep. It wasn’t until she heard the press of hooves in the sand that she allowed her eyes to flicker open, her neck craning to lay eyes on her sovereign. How long had it been since she had seen Isra? Not since the night she sent Metaphor on his journey. The night of the funeral. The night she lost her better half. What would Isra say to her? What was there to really say?

@Isra

[Isra]

Isra and the whetted blade


Watching Katniss at the lake reminds me of how to feels to want--

I remember how I wanted death once, how it rolled around and around in my stomach like a heavy world around a sun. I remember seeing red, red, red, each time I closed my eyes. There had been blood behind my teeth each time I smiled, iron and gore. Each night part of it comes to call, the black sea or the red blood. But I don't want like I used too.

Behind her the lake is the rose-gold colors of new beginnings and the leaves are rust red around her hooves. The lake is lapping gently at the shore by her hooves and I wonder if it's nothing more than a memory to her of the last time she knew what the fire of hope felt like. Somewhere out in the dark sea Fable is prowling the borders to our land. I am glad for it. As I start to move towards her when she collapses, I am glad.

He hates seeing me be cruel.

My knees ache to fall with her, to brush our weary brows together and say only, I know, I know, I know. I tell myself there is steel in my jaw and a sun in my eyes devouring every tear that is begging me to dissolve. Grass ripples against my ankles and turns to pearls, and stone, and everything cold, hard and sharp in the world. Morning sunlight is hanging on my horn like god-blood.

I hope, oh I hope, that I look as terrible as I feel. And I hope she will forgive me for it.

“Get up.” My voice is iron and gore, steel and stone, wrath and war. The shadow of my form stretches over her in the same way Fable's wings stretch over the sun. Beneath my skin all my bones are rattling with the urge to curl against her for an hour. I toss my horn into the morning wind so that she won't see anything but the war-hungry cruelty of me.

The time for softness and sorrow set with the summer.




“You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.” 

@Katniss

[Katniss]

Her muscles ache. They ache to move, they ache to stand still, they ache because the weather is turning cold. She simply aches all over. Some of it is grief, but much of it is age. The warrior is slowly aging and for a moment as her eyes scan the back of her eyelids, Katniss wonders if she should try to conquer mortality. Perhaps she should find immortality magic and surround herself with it. Perhaps then she will not be afraid of ending this life with nothing to show for it. With Immortality, she has a lifetime to make an impact. But that will be another issue for tomorrow. Today, it seems, she simply needs strength to stand.

Today, today she must face Isra and reality. She does not want to face either, but she has no choice. Eyes look up at Isra as she towers over her fallen body. She’s not sure what she expects to see, but the harsh lines of her features are definitely not what she had thought to find. Perhaps she was looking for softness. So many things had happened since they had last seen one another. Both had given birth, the island had crumpled and faded away. The court was in relative peace. She had supposed her sovereign would want to catch up on life, to try and fix the wounds that buried deep within her soul. But she did not see softness when she looked at Isra. She saw the opposite. She saw the one who was ready for war, ready to lead with a heavy hand. It was a look Katniss was not prepared for.

She does not protest when she is asked to stand. It takes her a few long moments to gather her legs beneath her and stand, her body shaking off the grains of sand. Her body is so stiff, so tired, so willing to give up. But she stands tall for her sovereign. She stands with eyes reddened not only from her natural eye color, but also from lack of sleep, and stress, and tears. Instead of a softness to her features, they are rigid and unemotional. There is a void in Katniss that hadn’t been there before. A void that needed filling. What that filling needed to be was yet to be uncovered. Perhaps she needed to fill it again with love. Pehraps, even, she needed to fill it with aggression and war. Perhaps she should fill it with prayers to the gods. Katniss had never truly been religious, but perhaps now was the time to start.

For a long moment she stands, her eyes resting on those of her queen. For a long moment she says nothing. But then there is a call from the sky, a call that brings her eyes upwards to see Finnick as he sores closeby. Even through her depression, Finnick has never left her side. He has never faltered in his unwaivering faith in her and perhaps that is what keeps her going.

Eyes look back to Isra, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky. She looks back out over the water of the lack, back to the forest that had spit her out like chewed gum, and finally back on Isra. “Surely you have more important things to tend to today.” She didn’t need to be standing here, making sure that Katniss had the strength to stand. Wasn’t she just a number? Wouldn’t the world keep turning if she simply disappeared? She had so many other things she could be doing. She could be leading her people, hugging her daughters, making love to her lover. At least she had what appeared to be a normal, happy family. Isra had what she wanted and it angered her. Why did Isra get Eik and Metaphor had to be taken from her? None of it made sense and none of it was fair. But Katniss said none of this, only the flash of anger and resentment flashed over her already glazed eyes.

@Isra

[Isra]

Isra who is made of ice


Ah, there is it, the bitterness, the pain, the rage. I can read it on her face as easily as I can read it on my own every morning when I trace the lines of my reflection in Eik's eyes. Sometimes I wonder how she hasn't gone to war yet, how she hasn't burned the entire world down to find whoever caused the change in her heart. And oh, I know how that change feels--

The way our hearts grow colder each day. The pattern of frost that consumes them, the way each flake of it forms a face. For me it's hundreds of faces. I know how it feels like you are being burned alive, how each inch of your skin is begging to peel off, flake off, disintegrate off. I know how our skin just wants off and it doesn't matter how many others are there to see the gore beneath.

I know how it feels to hide in the grass and wish the world will swallow you whole. It was the sea for me. And because I let it take me, I let the brine fill up my lungs like stones, I know how much she will hate herself for it in the end. I know how much it'll kill her son, her one bit of Metaphor, to see it. When she stands up I want to tell her all this, I want to brush the suffering from her eyes like it's nothing more than ink on glass.

I want to change the world for her.

But instead I only stand still as stone and watch her struggle. There is exhaustion in her eyes and sorrow in the heavy dip of her spine. Each sight breaks my heart. Beneath my skin all my bones are trembling. My eyes sting with the promise of tears. I swallow and it tastes like bile. The backs of my teeth taste like soot, and smoke, and burning flesh. “Not today.” The sound of my voice, the ice in it, impresses me. I thought it was going to come out like a sob. And I'm not sure if it terrifies or exhilarates me that it's almost easy to hide my emotions now.

My hooves carry me closer to her because I cannot resist the urge anymore. Over and over again I remind myself to keep my horn tossed into the light, like I'm more weapon than friend. It's easier than it should be. I don't stop until I can see the sorrow on her like feathers, and hear the hush of her eagle's wings. “I will be going away soon.” I say in tomes of icy hardness that do not fade even when Fable checks in through our connection.

My eyes do not waiver from Katniss as I wait to see if my statement will break her or shake her loose from this sorrow. I pray (and I never pray anymore) that it's the latter.

I pray so hard my knees feel weak enough to bend.




“Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it” 

@Katniss

[Katniss]

Katniss wants to start a war. She wants to kill whoever took away her Metaphor. She wants to burn all of Novus to the ground. And yet, she stays here. She has a duty to her son and to her court. She doesn’t have the luxury to simply gallivant around Novus on some wild goose chase that she might not ever see the end of. She has responsibilities and so, she stays. She stays because she cannot leave her son without a mother or Denocte without their champion. Perhaps it is what keeps her waking each morning, keeps her from succumbing to the darkness. Whatever the reason, she finds that each new day is not easier. It’s only more painful. The more pain she feels, the more she can feel her heart begin to harden into stone.

She looks at Isra after she has stood, her yes void of anything but pain, rage, and exhaustion. Katniss has not slept in months - not truly. Sure, her eyes would close and she would dream, but those dreams would be nightmares giving her a restless, fitful sleep. She is cold and alone and there is nothing that seems to make the nightmares go away. She’s tried magic, she’s tried prayers, she’s even tried a witches brew. But nothing seems to calm her mind enough to allow sleep to overtake her. Nothing seems to help and Katniss and tired of trying. She’s tired of it all. She just wants it all to stop.

She can hear the closeness of Finnick, the way his breathing seems to calm the raging storm within her. HE has been the only one who has any sort of power over her for he has been there since the beginning. He watched her create her son. He watched the bombs explode and cut through Metaphor like shards of broken glass through cloth. He watched her drag his body home and he watched Katniss suffer every day since. There is nothing he can say to make her feel better, only the closeness is all that seems to make any sort of difference.

As Isra begins to speak, Katniss narrows her eyes. Leave? How could her queen even think of leaving? There is anger there, an immediate blame for even thinking of abandoning her people. She doesn’t know the reason, she supposes she might not ever truly know. But her morals and those of Isra have always been different. At first she says nothing, she only lets her eyes speak for her. The way they blame her for leaving.

It is a long time before Katniss allows her words to speak what her mind wants to scream. “Why?” She has so many questions, so many things she wants to ask but simply cannot. “Will you return?” She hopes so. She needs the one and only true friend to be by her side. Even though she has been less than friendly since Metaphor’s passing, Isra is really the only one besides Finnick who knows her, knows the thoughts she has and the words she cannot speak. She is the only one besides Finnick who knows her deepest desires and her darkest thoughts. She doesn’t like the way it feels knowing that Isra is leaving.

There is a part of her that has a feeling Isra won’t be coming back. She cannot place that feeling and she has no idea where it has come from. But she supposes everyone leaves. She has heard of many kings and queens leaving, some having yet to return. It makes an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Will you take Eik, your children?” Would she had to fight for Isra’s family? Would she have to fight to save Isra’s loved ones when she could not even save her own. How could her queen ask this of her? Perhaps she is jumping to too many conclusions. Perhaps she should just stand here and wait for her answer. But nothing can soothe that feeling that settles deep within the pit of her stomach.

@Isra

[Isra]

Isra and the dead moths


For every inch of anger that runs across the expressions on her face, for every tense muscle between her bones, for every inch of her that I can see learning to hate me--

For every inch on her a mile of sorrow opens up in this chasm of my heart. There are more miles of pain racing across my soul than miles my hooves in this body have known. My sorrows could shape the outline of a new universe and my heartbreak, oh my heartbreak, it could water a million forests across the cosmos. I want to close to distance between us. I want to do anything but stand here below the shadow of my angry horn and my sad dragon.

But the time for touching her, the time for love-- oh all that time has slipped away from me, from us, from this flesh and blood form of mine. It's gone, gone, gone. Like a river it's gone out with the tide. “I am going because I must.” Because all the time for staying is out in the sea with the love.  “There is a country I can free. One that killed me once. Every day it's killing a hundred other hearts, every day someone there is begging for death. I am going because I have enough power in my body to save it, to save the ones still dying. Surely you can understand that. This country does not need me in the same way.” And I know that all of them are not the beloved of the sea, all of them will only turn to worm and rot when their body has no blood left to give.

My eyes are begging her to understand, to see all this rage and fury in me begging for a direction. This world, and that world, and the sea have all made a lion out of me. Nothing has let me stay soft. I wish I was, I wish I was soft enough to curl in her side and cry and cry and cry until we watered the desert. But I have only learned how to replace my sorrows with tears and my heartbreak with weapons. I have only learned what this world has let me learn. All my stories are about blood now. All of them.

“And I promise you,” My knees tremble beneath my sinew and blood when I move to her, they knock like dead trees in a storm. If her eyes are red-rimmed with exhaustion mine are bloody with all the magic that's slowly eating this form alive. I can feel her breath so close to mine, I can feel the way my skin is begging me to comfort her. “I will come back.” It feels strange to tuck my ears back against my mane, to look like an angry hurting unicorn instead of a queen. It feels strange to want to beg forgiveness with my heart and have my lips refuse to form the words. The notes of forgiveness turn to moth wings in my throat, they die each time I try to give them air.

There is a lock of hair upon her cheek I want to brush back. But all I do is wait before her, a warrior going to war for love, for freedom, for a reason to soothe all these sharp edges that are bleeding me dry. And when I say, “Aspara wants to stay,” I hope she can read all the death moth wing words my lips do not know how to form.




“Only lost unsaid words that added up to good-bye.” 

@Katniss

[Katniss]

She hates Isra for leaving. She hates knowing that she is leaving behind a court who loves and needs her. She’s leaving behind a family who needs their mother and a man who needs his lover. She is turning away from all the things that Katniss wishes she still had. She wishes she had a lover to hold onto, a family to hug her tightly. She has none of those things and it makes her angry to know that Isra has them and is simply throwing them all away.

And yet…she understands Isra in a way that only a warrior can. She understands what it means to be able to free the enslaved and bring hope to others. She understands more than anyone what it means to be a breaker of chains. She knows and understands this, but it doesn’t make it any easier. She says nothing though, but her silence and the softness in her features should tell Isra that she understands.

Katniss is silent as Isra steps forward. She is silent as she promises that she will return. Her brain tells her that she needs to believe her queen, but her heart tells her that it’s all lies, that she will not return. Once again Katniss is being left alone and all she has will be Kibou. Will he be enough for her? Or will he slowly watch his mother give into the darkness that she has been fighting for so long?

And then she continues, telling her that she is leaving with Eik and Avesta. She is splitting up sisters and for a moment, Katniss wonders why she would allow one daughter to go into battle, another to be left here so very much alone. She doesn’t understand what her queen is doing, but she says nothing.

The silence between them grows thicker and Katniss takes a step back. At one time she wanted to throw herself into Isra’s embrace, to show her that she is the friend Katniss has always wanted. But now she is leaving and there is nothing but sadness deep within her soul.

As she takes a step back, she’s putting distance between them. And then slowly, Katniss begins to turn away. Only just before she turns away from her completely, she pauses as she speaks. “Then I will look after her as a mother, as a friend, and as a soldier.” She will look after Denocte too, but she doesn’t say as much. Isra knows that Katniss would die for her court and it wasn’t something that needed repeating. While Katniss would not give Isra her blessing, she would allow her to part knowing that at least her daughter would be looked after.

And then she is walking away from Isra, walking towards the lake. Her feet enter the cold waters and she can feel the way her muscles tense at the sudden onslaught of cold. Within moments, her body slips beneath the surface, her magic producing gills so she might breathe beneath the surface. She stays here until Isra is gone. She stays here until her eyes are dry of tears. At least here beneath the surface of the water, no one knows she is crying.

@Isra – a closer