¹ THRONE ─ the hunger games

PROLOGUE: life breaks free

When night falls, stormclouds eclipse the blister-yellow crescent moon and by this time it is near impossible to tell structure from shadow. In this hour, where every makeshift cradle rocks its whimpering babies to sleep and the pneumonic folk persisting through their humble existences in the dilapidated stone buildings of District 2 rest in sweat-soaked slumber, a cloaked silhouette slinks along the maze of alleys, scattering rodents and trailing the silence of the dead in her wake.

In this hour, underneath the black cloak, shaded by the shadows obscuring her pallour, lambent eyes—tempered in the embers of rage—of a girl who is not a girl but something unfathomable and misunderstood gleam with a furtive watchfulness. Wolves howling up her forearm to the moon of her elbow. A pack of four, with more to join them in their ranks, made of tattoo ink and pain, memory and shame. Nothing surpasses her electrified attention. Every muscle is coiled tight with a crackling tension, a viper ready to strike should danger make its presence known.

Does she seek the generous umbrage of the darkness to make her way into a city that does not welcome time-cheating monstrosities like her or does she wear it like a cloak moulded to her skin? Some might say, where she walks, the shadows seem to bend a knee, the loyal winds escort her through the gates, and the vermin in the gutter dare not twitch a muscle in her presence.

Not a lot of people from the districts voluntarily alter their appearances. Both because most of them want to distance themselves from the morbid flamboyance of Capitol culture as much as possible, appearance included, and because most of them can't afford it. Outside of the Capitol, the skin of the servants remains unblemished by all but scars and grime and filth. Only one other Hunger Games victor has chosen to refine her appearance by surgically tapering her teeth into razor-sharp canines. Memorabilia of her time of glory. Of the moment they knew she was the apex predator after she'd ripped out the throats of one of her victims, and emerged from the arena, triumphant, bathed in the blood pouring from her mouth, down her tattered clothes, staining her teeth red, glimmering like rubies in the sun.

It's nothing as flash as that for this particular case.

This one has chosen to etch reminders into her skin. This one has chosen penance in the form of pain and permanence, memory and ink, loss scrupulously etched into her flesh so she carries it with her wherever she goes. Before the ink, all she had were pieces. Bits and pieces. Serrated fragments stuck inside her head, jammed without ceremony, she almost went mad with the abyss-carving magnitude of carnage trapped inside that small space between her ears. And now that she has given all of it a corporeal channel in the shape of the black wolves swooping and jostling and striving against her skin—always running, always in motion—the noise in her head has dimmed and her own thoughts have returned like straying sheep from the flock. After all, there is nowhere she can put it all down. Not anywhere that she knows of, anyhow.

Titus. Opal. Elias. Sage.

One name for every wolf. One wolf for every lesson.

Lethal hubris. Necessary casualty. Persistence. Revenge.

           As she pulls back the plastic curtains obscuring the doorway, she steps into the tiny, back closet of a room in the depths of the slums, the only place where the only known tattooist had set up shop. This would be her fifth and final visit to the tattoo shop with its cracked leather chair and dusty shelves lined with bottles of ink, illuminated by the fading light of a single bulb dangling from the water-damaged ceiling.

           A long time ago, she never would've seen the point of altering her appearance like the Capitol freaks who covered their bodies in absurd art pieces, let the ink crawl into places where the flesh never saw the light of day. It just wasn't natural, changing your skin like that. But now she understands. It's not about making change. It's about preservation. Like an insect trapped in amber glass, the black ink immortalises the corpse of all that she refuses to let go of.

           She doesn't take her eyes off the needle as the tattooist etches the final beast onto her arm, slightly bigger than the four wolves, more pronounced in the foreground of the complete piece. For two hours, she lies in the chair, watching the ink take shape. Remembering. In the end, she bears another flawless open wound, still stinging, throbbing under the gauze wrapped around her forearm. But this pain is not the worst she has faced. In comparison, it hurts not because the needles had been tirelessly shredding her skin open to pour the ink in, but because of the constant assault of mangled memories called to the surface of her subliminal thoughts.

          At one point she'd considered stopping the tattooist so she could up and leave at the apex of her threshold for retrospect. But rationality outweighed escape. She was already here, too far from Victor's Village to make another trip when she could've finished the entire piece in this one. And what afflictions has she not buried in herself already? If she could handle death and the red on her ledger, she could handle this.

Destruction has made a home under her fingernails, nestled in their beds, precise where she wants it, knife-bright and skeen where it needs to be.

Iko, the girl growled to her reflection in the grime-flecked mirror that night, whispering in the dark, My name is Iko Moriyama. I played to win. Whatever it takes.

Children were not made for war, but this one was. This one was generations in the forging.

Titus. Opal. Elias. Sage.

One name for every wolf. One wolf for every lesson.

Lethal hubris. Necessary casualty. Persistence. Revenge.

Tracing a finger over the protective paper sheet plastered over the freshly inked wound of a lion and its jaws cracked open in a triumphant roar, Iko mouths the last name.

Alex.

Loyalty to the very end. A reminder of her rage.

There was once a time Iko had thought she might be able to reminisce with more for posterity. There might've been any number of stories to impart. Stories of a savage glory earned through brutality without mercy. Stories that'd last generations. Stories of herself, soaked in someone else's blood, knife in hand, skewering the penultimate tribute in a pyrrhic victory for a war that cost too much and gained too little. But, now, this is the only story she will ever be able to tell.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

thoughts?