exsilium | 1st story. (voice.)

( there's a bit of a pause before anyone speaks. when the voice does start, though, it's pretty low. flat, almost, like the speaker is tired, and her voice sounds pretty rough and husky-- and distinctly australian. she sounds decidedly... detached from what's just happened, considering it's her first entry. )

I remember, once when I was a kid. One of the shearers bought a kangaroo to the farm – not alive, though. It was roadkill. I couldn't tell you if... he hit it, or if he just found it. I don't know if that matters.

Anyway, he brings this dead 'roo over in the back of his ute, and hauls the thing off his trailer. I'm surprised he got it on there, to be honest. He and my dad, they took it over to one of the sheds and started butchering it. It was already dead, but they still went through all the steps they use for lamb or cattle if we're gonna be using them for food. Slice the throat, first. They took the whole thing apart, until there was just this... steaming carcass, and then they froze the meat for dog food, buried the guts so that the foxes couldn't get at them.

That's a bit what I feel like right now. Like I'm a carcass that someone picked up and dropped off here. It doesn't matter if I was alive or not when they found me. ( She laughs a bit, but it's a bitter sound. ) I'm here now, aren't I? Either I've gone bush crazy and I'll be dead soon, or I'm already dead. This Initiative bullshit is just-- Jesus.

( A sigh, and a long silence. )

My name's Ellie. Ellie Linton. I don't know if names mean much to the dead, but that's it.

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Great. If this was Heaven, I was going to write a strongly worded letter of complaint.

( Not, of course, that she thinks she'd be someone destined for Heaven. At best, Purgatory. She was never religious, but maybe some of Robyn's lessons rubbed off along the way. )

[Religion has always been a non-entity in Panem. Ellie may not be religious, but Katniss has hardly heard of it at all. So that concept, whatever she's talking about... it strikes her as almost completely foreign, apart from an expression simply used to refer to the sky.]

Heaven?

Heaven. Pearly gates, Saint Peter ready to meet you if you lived a good and virtuous life? Angels floating around with harps and... I don't know, clouds and stuff.

( Then again, she just saw a guitar that had lightning powers, so: ) Christian ideals, you know? If you're good then when you die you go to Heaven, bad you go to Hell. And then the Catholics reckon there's Purgatory where you go and deal with some flames biting your backside for a bit until you've atoned enough to get upgraded to Heaven.

[Pearly gates. Sounds like something someone in the Capitol came up with. Only in the Capitol would they care about having some fancy place to go when you die. A fancy place, which only happens after you've burned enough to suit them.

Seems fitting.

The girl who was on fire. She knows where her place would be.]

That's what people believe?

Some people. I don't know if I do. Mostly I think people want something to comfort themselves with when they think about the reality of dying. Like a security blanket, I guess. So long as they're good in this life, then when they die they aren't really dead and stuff. They've just moved onto another place, somewhere better. People they love aren't just gone, they're at peace.

( She sighs a bit. That was what Robyn believed, and it did make it easier. Thinking that maybe the people that were gone had ended up better off somehow. It was hard thinking there was anything peaceful about being blown up, smashing your car to bits or taking a shot through your skull. Life was just there, and then it got ripped away. )

But that's a Christian thing, and there's more religions than I could throw a stick at. And then there are people who aren't religious, a whole mess of them who don't have a clue what they believe.

( Ellie is silent for a moment, but letting out a breath that could almost be a laugh. ) That doesn't really clear it up much.

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