LYRIELLE’S PARADE - ‘ ‘ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴘᴇʀꜰᴏʀᴍᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ꜱᴛᴀɢᴇ ’ ’

Instructions

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Parade SRP ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ They stand on the steps in the station, staring blankly ahead. Their heart hammers in her ears, taking over everything, taking up everything. Oh, sure, there’s the moments in between, when the train whistle blows too loud to hear anything else. She doesn’t know what makes her feel like her heart will leap out of her chest. She knows the stage, knows the spotlight, knows all the excitement of a crowd like the back of her paw, because that’s her job, and that’s her purpose. She hates the smell of smoke so much he wants to scream. The train whistle is foreign to her, and the crowd wears outfits flashy enough to outshine the tributes. She tries to calm herself down by keeping her paws on her dress- she’s so glad they gave them a dress- as she waits. She runs them down the fragile material- not fabric- but paper- she didn’t know you could make a dress of paper, and his mind seems to take the opportunity to run far away enough from the world for words to fill her head. The world still buzzes around them, but he’s too focused on trying to read the words on the dress to hear it. There’s only snippets to go off. On this fold there, ‘a rose by any other name is still a rose’, and in the next section, he can barely read the word ‘Nevermore’. Another displays a longer poem, it’s been scrunched, but they manage to piece together ‘two roads diverged in a yellow wood-“ and ‘the road less traveled-“. A snippet of something that appears to say something or other about a someone washing their shadow. That one makes her smile. It’s a funny poem. And she’s enchanted. A dress made of poems and ballads and songs. She’s a poet too. She wishes his own poems could be beside these. They wish he had paper to put this dress into words, so they could be for forever- but his memory is all he has now. Snippets of a poem drift through his mind, but nothing sticks. A dress of stories. A patchwork of poets. A map of a thousand words. Crumpled paper. Wastebasket of bright ideas. Hope, for maybe a future. A feeling of euphoria. The smell of old books. Turning the page in the summer. The quiet peace of a library. They don’t fit together yet, the words, and they don’t rhyme, but they could make it work eventually. It’s a worthy thing to write about. He tries not to think about what she has to survive to finish the poem. They’re calm now. Poetry is helpful, like that, for him at least. She steps onto the platform, and she’s in view of the Capitol. The world is back now, and she introduces herself to the cats still watching from the platform as “Lyrielle Atwater, your lovely lady from District Four, here to keep this here parade from being a bore!” Their voice is clear and steady as she waves and smiles, and smiles and waves. He’s rehearsed that intro in their head. Everything made to rhyme beautifully. Because that’s the persona she needs to have. A poet, but nothing deeper. They will not be vulnerable to these cats. She hopes this makes him memorable, and not some silly caricature of a tribute. She swishes into a bow, which is only somewhat awkward with the paper crinkling. It’s not meant for dynamic movement, his stylist had stated, very sternly. The train moves beneath her feet, there’s a rumble in the tracks, but it doesn’t matter. He waves to the crowd, and the smile on his face is fake. He hopes they can’t tell. Calls out greetings and pleasantries, and makes up rhymes, and pretends to be happy to be here. But just before the train chugs out of view, she sticks her head out to call to the Capitol, and the cameras, and maybe what little bit of him that still had hope to see home, “Lyrielle is saying adieu, and wishing a happy Hunger Games to you!” She bows with a flourish, and the train chugs out of sight, the final whistles of the engine drowning out the crowd’s applause.