Klaus Riviera- District Five male
"If you stay here, you're going to die," I told my mother, and the flames danced in her eyes as she stared back at me. Never had she looked more like the demon she worshiped.
"This is my punishment," she said, her voice depthless and echoing with the pain and guilt that brought her here.
Heat seared my face and simmered inside me as I lost it. "There is no punishment!" I screamed. "There is no fate, or Deimos, or spirit world! There's just your choices and your mistakes! There's no Nyra either, because you got her killed!" I bent over, wracked with coughs from the smoke we were both breathing. The tears on my cheeks felt cool compared to the air.
"You'll see," my mother said. It came out a hiss, the moisture in her mouth sizzling when it hit the air. "You'll see when we get there."
"No, I won't. Because I'm not going," I said. I'd only stayed this long for the one-in-a-million chance that she might respond to one last plea to reason. But my mother was lost, probably long before the botched experiment that killed my sister. She was an adult, and she made her decision. I wasn't obligated to save her from herself, and I wasn't obligated to die with her.
Time was almost up when I walked out of the house. On my way to the door, the fire around me was so bright that it might have been high noon. My lungs were drawn tight with the empty, scorched air. Heat surpassed a background sensation and became an omnipresent covering over me, tearing at my skin and trying to wither it away.
I watched my house burn down, my clothes reeking of smoke and embers smoldering in my hair, stabbing my scalp with intermittent pain. I never heard a sound from my mother. The others in her cult would have said she was brave, or that Deimos had taken her before the flames in reward for her devotion. None of that was true. It was just cold equations. The smoke had killed her before the flames ate her body. That was the only reason.
Meenah Turbine- District Five female
The man walking by my stall made eye contact. That was all I needed.
"Hey, sir! Nice day, isn't it? You looking for anything in particular?" I asked. I wouldn't call myself smart, or even that street-smart, but some things were just common sense. A man wearing a watch and shiny shoes, for example, probably had money to buy a knicknack.
"Not really. Just shopping," he said.
"Maybe something for the lady?" I asked, having noticed his ring.
He looked down at the ring and smiled.
"She's a lucky lady," I said. "And I bet she's happy just with you, but sometimes it's nice to show that, isn't it? And it doesn't even have to be expensive. Sometimes little things are the best." I slipped my hand into a loop of string necklace that held a lacquered acorn.
"Take something like this. It's just a little acorn, right? Wrong. In Seven, acorns are a symbol of the permanence of love. It starts with just a little seed. You see someone walking by and notice how pretty she is. But as time goes by and you see each other more, it grows. Then it's too strong to stop, and the more you put into it, the bigger it gets, until it's an entire tree, all from a little acorn."
"It really means all that?" the man asked, looking closer at the acorn necklace like it was gold.
"Not only that. This one was blessed by a shaman in Seven," I said. "He said anyone who wears it will see themselves the way the one they love sees them."
"She always says her stomach sticks out," the man said wonderingly. "I keep telling her she's beautiful."
"Sometimes people need a lot of reminding," I said. The man put out his hand, and I set the necklace into it.
"Tell you what. Just because she sounds like she really needs it, I'll give you a deal. And I know you don't believe it's really a deal and we both know you're right, but it's more fun to pretend," I said, quoting a price that was three times what I paid for the necklace but still the kind of money people threw away on a cup of coffee.
A minute later, the man had a necklace and I had enough money for a cup of coffee. I could probably be rich if I really did my best and saved my money, but… more money, more problems. I had a ratty apartment, instant noodles, and coffee. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Klaus: Klaus has pale skin and dark green eyes. His hair is copper colored and has curls. He is not muscular, but is rather tall.
Meenah:
Meenah's a mix of Italian and Japanese, with short, feathery black hair and lukewarm sort of muddy hazel brown eyes. Physically, she's extremely boring looking in every respect, so she glitzes herself up in every way possibly- suits, ties, big gold earrings fastened from dyed tin she found in a gutter somewhere, etc. Usually chills in a tuxedo she spent a hell of a lot of time making that looks like s*** if you examine it up close but no one does, and said dyed tin gold earrings.
Meenah had an anime person (I think?) listed as inspiration, but I, an intellectual, immediately thought of the classic Twilight Zone episode "One for the Angels"
Klaus' in particular turned out short. It was such a distilled scene I didn't want to ruin it by adding more, so I'll keep it in mind for their next POVs.
