𝑮𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒌 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒆 » 𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍

𝐈

𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐊 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄
𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄

TO THOSE WITH an average mind, the visage would've been nothing more than spectacularly ordinary. It would simply be as it physically was; a torch dancing in the twilight, dredging all the colours from the dusk into its soul in hopes of leaving an impression on the blissful dark of the kind that was acquired when one closed their eyes and allowed the world around them to thrive.

To her, the woman who nestled in a way so akin to a vulture upon the slate tiles of her roof, that an innocent might glance around in hopes of sourcing carrion, it was indefinitely all and none. It was splendour in the rawest, deepest sense of the word, yet it carried a tide of warning, born upon its fleeting peaks, lit so garishly by the amber-gold ochre of fire.

She, who was still perched in such a way that one might have mistaken her for some sort of ungodly scavenger from a distance, held the flame in one hand, the other balancing herself in case of a mistake. Several contusions and abrasions bloomed darkly up her arms and the side of her face as she still stayed, enraptured by the flames in such a way that one would've thought, had they had little to no context, was pyromania.

This woman, crouched in her cloak of dark glory, was many things. A pyromaniac - that is to say, one who seeks the comfort of flames above human contact or falls to fire upon becoming unstable - was most certainly not one of them.

She very rarely, however, let people know what she was. Instead, she sealed it grimly in a sheath, so that if she wished, she could draw it and wield it like a weapon that wounded so harshly that it could kill.

Her neighbour, a mere acquaintance whom she had spoken to no more than once, had found that she did this every evening, as the sunlight over District 5 began its slumber, its golden hue fading from the world to leave it scattered with shattered starlight. It was almost as if it was a ritual for the woman - who he had gained a wicked sensation from and decided to keep himself and his younger sister as far away from her as he could - for there was not a night that she had not done this since the darkness of her first night here.

Here, among the steel greys and graphite skies of District 5, where it was veritably impossible to distinguish home from factory from yet another factory. The one thing that was beautiful here, in their small section of this world that had drowned in blood so many years ago, was indeed the passing of time. It was represented here by streams of gold, rivers of plum velvets, belts of lilac and bands of amaranth, washed by a tender pink before they were flushed far away, and would drain into a new day, or yet another night.

The woman herself, for all her distinguishable faults, held a kind of rough, sharp beauty more commonly found in men than women. Her neighbour - whose name happened to be nothing more complex than Orion Gray - had found himself glancing through her window on the occasion that he would be the one of he and his sister to purchase food from the filthy, fuel-scented market. 

They were cleaner than his windows were likely ever to be, and often gleamed in the morning hue of sunlight. He had wondered about it at some points in time, allowing his thoughts to overtake the rest of his brain and often ending up physically or mentally lost. He had supposed, while promptly wandering into a factory he had worked in before he'd moved out, that each of them must have had to find something to occupy their time, whether it be cleaning, or cooking and painting, where he had inclined more towards.

She had been frozen in her trance for longer than she would normally allow herself, as he had noticed that she always did on the eve of the Reaping or the night before the Victory Tour was scheduled to trundle into their city of metal and wires. He wasn't quite sure why, but she had never once come with him to the Capitol, to help with the Tributes, or even attended a Reaping since her own.