Hello! New story y'all!
I'd just like to start this off by saying that the main character in this story has schizophrenia (and pyromania) however it's not going to be completely medically or scientifically accurate. I've exaggerated or deemphasized some things for the sake of the story.
I just wanted to give you guys a heads up :)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
The people of District Seven weren't too upset when Sylvia Morris was reaped for the Sixty-First Hunger Games. Pitied her, yes, like they pitied all their tributes, but the only people who actually cried and wailed for their loss were her family.
Sylvia was infamous in the District for her extremely unsettling and worrying behaviour. Many people knew about her, and stayed far away from her, not wanting to be wrapped up in the craziness that surrounded her. They even kept her whole family at arm's length, just because they were guilty by association.
There's something seriously wrong with her, her neighbors would whisper to one another over their fences. She's got a crazy look in her eyes.
Sylvia had never really understood why everyone avoided her like the plague, but to be honest, she didn't really care. She was fine on her own.
It was because other people didn't see even half the stuff that she saw regularly by the time she was reaped for the Games. She was by herself in this regard, a lone girl witnessing two different worlds at the same time. All its inhabitants and eccentricities were unknown to everyone else in the other.
She was a girl of few words. She had gone from a shy, but polite, child to someone who rarely spoke at all. Her answers were brief and to the point. She had never sat down with someone and had a proper conversation with them. Never discussing her fears, hopes, dreams.
It didn't really matter, anyway. Sometimes, when she was in the middle of talking, her thoughts of what she would say next would suddenly disappear from her mind, like they had been snatched away by forces unseen, leaving her without anything more to say. She would just abruptly stop talking.
She called this phenomenon Mavrorin. Only she seemed to understand what it meant and how it felt, however. And because of Mavrorin, she limited the things she said, not wanting to be caught off guard by her thoughts vanishing like they never existed.
Sylvia was a born loner, never once having a single (normal) friend since she was younger. This didn't bother her. No one really understood all her thoughts, feelings and everything, anyway. What point was there in making friends if they didn't understand, anyway?
Such solitude made the neighbours feel uneasy. "It's not right for her to be alone all the time," they whispered in the privacy of their own homes, "why doesn't she make some friends, interact with someone else for a change?
Even Sylvia's appearance was enough to put people off. Her light and fluffy blonde hair was always wild and unkempt, her only effort at tidying it up being for her to absentmindedly run her fingers through it. She often went days without a bath. Her brown eyes sometimes took on an eerie, glazed look, as she constantly observed both worlds around her.
To other people, it looked as if she was staring into space, her line of sight appearing to transcend time and space, staring out at that which only she could see. If the eyes are a window to the soul, then District Seven wished Sylvia would shut the curtains. No one needed - or wanted - to see what was inside.
The once shy, well-behaved and mild-mannered child had turned into an unrecognizable teenager who spoke to things that weren't there and had rare but violent outbursts.
She had evolved from normalcy to someone nobody wanted to be around.
And no one could figure out why.
Then it turned out she also had a passion for pyromania.
From an early age, Sylvia had discovered the deadly beauty of the flames as she, then nine years old, had attempted to touch the fire in the hearth in her home. She was rushed to the local doctor with the skin of her right hand burned. She did not cry, only staring at her hand with something like awe in her eyes.
The burn was painful, yes, but that didn't matter to Sylvia. She was enamoured with the raw power of fire and its ability to spread, destroy, injure.
Even kill.