RAINFALL || [c. snow]

vi

ACT 1. REPUDIATE

❝SOME STORIES AREN'T MEANT TO BE TOLD❞

𓆩⟡𓆪

[Ten Years Prior]

THE WORLD WAS painted in dust and destruction. The melancholy tune of death was sung through the streets as the war progressed, oblivious to the suffering of the children, to the families. Fire ravaged their homes, stealing their lives and their joy and sorrow— now all the people had was fear. It was the monotonous cycle of fear that ruled their days.

And yet her mother, that beautiful woman with long burnt, umber hair down to her waist, still danced away while the song of annihilation played across the country of turmoil.

Dolores did not remember much of her mother. She remembered only her long, slender arms that seemed to wrap the world in her embrace as she twirled, and her legs— pretty things that hovered over the grasslands with gracefulness. She was a dancer. And had always been one.

Her mother's mangled corpse stared at her three weeks after the First Rebellion started.

The girl wandered the streets aimlessly. Cold, dark, hungry in a bleak world where time dictated, as a graveyard for all. There were no exceptions. Not children, not men, not women. None. The war took everything from everyone. In only three years. And so, the child wandered the streets, famished, starved and desperate. A one in the millions.

She had learned first hand of the lengths humans would go to survive.

An injured man would beg for forgiveness. A helpless man would pledge his allegiance to another. A starving man would eat whatever that was given to him. Anything.

The devil cackled from below as the country was thrown into utter turmoil. More. Because the Capitol wanted more. More from the Districts and more from the Earth. Mountains and rivers of immense, never-ending wealth was never enough. All the goods and services provided by the Districts at its disposal and still, it was never enough.

The Capitol had sown seeds of dissent and resentment deep into the flesh of the Districts, down to the roots with its poison. The people had suffered at their expense while they turned a blind eye. They had risen, an inevitable conclusion for what they had endured.

But now the flame was dying... and there was none to rekindle it as the Dark Days arrived.

Ash painted her once-rosy cheeks. Her eyes had long lost its glow and her hair, its luster. Her feet were in pain from all the blisters. Her shoes were gone— lost probably days ago. Her stomach roared and her heart was too weak to pound. She could barely see straight.

The streets were engorged with dust. Dust and blood, the only things the survivors in the Districts knew. District 13 was no more.... or at least, to the eyes of the public. The blazing heat of fire grazed her skin, the flames threatening to burst before her. Flames had almost engulfed the entire world... if not for what the Capitol did at last.

Blood was the price of victory.

And the world was cruel.

Life leaked out of her body like a flowing wound. The girl's knees buckled easily, sending her tumbling along, what was once the sidewalk to a beautiful District town. Silence pierced the air before the roars of Capitol aircrafts filled the dark skies above.

For half a second, the girl closed her eyes, praying for her mother's warmth, her mother's smile, and her mother's embrace. And then, she thought of how death's embrace could be. Grime coated her face and fingers before the rain arrived.