96th Reaping [District Six]

dars
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96th Reaping [District Six] Jan 27, 2024 0:09:36 GMT -5

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Post by dars on Jan 27, 2024 0:09:36 GMT -5

The microphone kept getting feedback which screeched over escort Silva Delacruz's voice. He sounded indiscernible for most of his speech, before the volume control was finally fixed off stage and people beyond the first row could actually hear him. Mentors Teddy and Flynn both watched close-by, construction on a new Fenwick building could be seen in the background as the cameras flashed to them standing next to each other. "It is time," Silva said as he stood over the impatient people of the District, "To once again send two of our own children to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. Let us begin the Reaping!"

He did not look to see the reaction of his district before reaching into the glass ball that held the names of the children. "First up," the Escort announced, pulling out a slip of paper. He unfolded it and read out to the crowd, "Isolde Owens!" He then reached into the ball again, selecting another name. "Jair Hottun!"

OOC - RPing is allowed. If you wish to volunteer, let the tribute post first either accepting or stepping down from their place for volunteers, and then post. If the tribute doesn't reply by Tuesday, January 30th, a staff member will post saying that volunteering is open. Please do not post until you see this staff message. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.

Tributes, please do not make your acceptance or denial of your spot in character; instead, please leave an ooc note at the end of your post stating whether they accept or are stepping down for volunteers.

^{I AM A GARDEN OF BLACK AND RED AGONIES}

fox
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but a butt ?

96th Reaping [District Six] Jan 28, 2024 17:16:54 GMT -5

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Post by fox on Jan 28, 2024 17:16:54 GMT -5

🌱

painting my nails is a bit of a sisyphean task when we're knee-deep in a freshly dug grave every week.

there was dirt there again, the blue was chipped off. better than the morgues though, sometimes they’re still a lil bloody.

he had a nice shirt on, fabric felt soft to the touch, buttons like pieces of softened glass under the flashlight. there was a watch on his wrist too, looked like it could've been real gold, but the back of it was flaking off, and the buckle was turning green on his skin. we put the clothes back in the grave. Sera folded them as i took the watch off him.

we always leave the belongings. i don't know – just seems a bit shitty to rob the guy too. one crime at a time.

i'm not religious. but we were there at his funeral, watching the casket go down as i laid flowers for a girl we've never met. lilies for Hana Sawyer, buried a couple of feet away from him, and the grass was growing fine-tipped and slender over her grave. she died young. born in the year of the seventy-fourth. a little dove carved in the headstone.

his wife was crying. inherit the kingdom prepared for you, an old man was saying, could hear him reading out of a book, voice carrying in the wind.

so before we put him on ice in the box, i was patting his shoulder and saying hope Ripred's the shit.

died from a tumor in the liver. didn't have the money to operate. he was a lab tech, that's what we gathered from reading the files. yea, i remember thinking he had careful hands, long-fingered but sturdy. he didn't have the smell of formaldehyde, just the tones of earthly rot. we made sure he wasn’t being embalmed. that's what they asked for this time.

usually we don't call them by name. feels like bad luck.

he got picked up by the truck outside the butcher's stall, a transporter with the Capitol insignia. fresh meat, the sign read on the window. the people came, handed us a wad of cash, and loaded him up like there was nothing in there but vacuum-sealed cuts for stew. half went to the owner of the shop for letting us use it as a drop off point. then we went home and put the rest of the money in the cookie tin.

we bought an old TV a month ago. then a dvd player. then old tapes off the black market.

in the early morning, we were watching a grainy movie about a corpse come to life, and i was painting my nails beneath the light of a wobbly lamp. looked like shit, but Sera wiped them with acetone and did them again.

red this time.

Reaping day.

i was thinking of watering our plants before we left the apartment, but we were running late. so i kissed my big-leafed boy goodbye on the way out, name's Figgy. Sera said i should give him a better one. guess i was never really good at that. when i was little, i called my stuffed bear Beary.

after, i just let her name the calla lily and the pothos and the ferns.

the escort's mumbling now. i'm staring at my nails. the red's a little messed up on my right. don't have the patience for it to dry, you know? it's okay though. i'll try again another week. that's how it be.

the crowd shifts a little. i look up, and Sera's staring right at me.

Isolde, he's saying again.

well fuck. no one's called me that in so long.

weird, how I'm suddenly thinking of Emma. wonder if she's in the crowd, wonder if this is the first time she's thought about me for a long time. and how her book's being used to balance the dresser leg right now, the floor's so fucking tilted at our place. and then i'm thinking about the watering can that's empty, Figgy in the living room, the pot always leaking with the hairline crack in its side.

"hey Sera –"

yea, no one ever tells you when the last time is gonna be the last time.

his name was Arty Mora. the man we dug up.

"water the plants for me?"

izzy accepts
trib wall x

pogue
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Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

96th Reaping [District Six] Jan 30, 2024 11:38:08 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Jan 30, 2024 11:38:08 GMT -5

J A I R

There's a boy that stands on the shoulders of his own giants, carved from the flesh and bone of the lives he has taken and the lives he has granted.

"Young, innocent thing."

Solitude comes and goes as he stands, nestled in the ebbs and flows of his counterparts, drowning in a sea of red and crimson, blinking back the images of rotting corpses and charred flesh that seem so prevalent in the front of his mind.

"So lost, so lonely..."

The pattern is rhythmic, clockwork, thumping heart and bleeding veins. Year after year, life after life, dying again just to be reborn once more with wings of bedsheet and satin. There's a corpse on the stage now, sharpened claws fluttering above a bowl of names for the taking. Unflinching, unmoving, silence dawns on the crowd.

"Did you really think I would not find you again?"

Jair, his name. Hottun, his calling. And the eyes bore into him once more, eternity etched into the irises, calling out his name again and again in the back of his mind. There's muscles tense beneath tissue paper skin now, mind begging legs that refuse to move.

"Did you truly think this was the end?"

A voice, a volunteer.

[Naurrrrrrrr ; volunteer post incoming]

pogue
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last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5

Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

96th Reaping [District Six] Jan 30, 2024 12:06:27 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Jan 30, 2024 12:06:27 GMT -5

Six could convince itself it was healing in the wake of a plague, slowly and unsurely, polishing what it could to a shiny new and ignoring what inevitably comes with it all. There is death in the streets, a dark underbelly that grows faster than rot and deadlier than the roses that dot so many of their cheeks. First thought and second nature, getting mixed up with the right people and the wrong crowd became an inevitability, or at least that's what he's told himself to get by.

Always running, waiting for it to catch-up.

The night prior was a warning, garden of blacks and blues planted in full bloom underneath his flesh, cigarette burns and scars waiting in the wings to form. There's still blood left to dry from the cuts on his arms, a smile on one and a frown on the other. Pay up or cash out, the options carve themselves into his mind as he stands in the crowd at the reaping, shifting nervously on tired limbs and broken soul. He'd awoken in a puddle of red, creaking floorboards stained crimson and pain threaded into his bones. Spray painted messages on the walls represent a countdown, a deadline. Bent, tired, broken and bruised and alone and all he could think about was six years old and standing in the doorway of his parent's room, nightmare had and nightmare continuing, clamoring for an affection that wasn't there.

Each year since he left home he has watched his parents search for him in the crowds post-reaping, hands threaded loose together, purple on the knuckles and bruises on the heart.

The curse of a broken parent, to not recognize the ghosts of the children you've made.

The curse of a broken son, to never remember the child you one were.

Maybe that's why Sawyer ran first, in the right way, men in white with fingers on the trigger and broken faces behind the helmets. Maybe that's why he followed suit, clumsily following in footsteps too large to fill like all little brothers do, hopelessly trying not to stray from the beaten path, hopelessly failing just to feel the rock and the brush underneath ones soles.

Innocence caused him to try the first time, pounding heartbeat into slick pavement in the wake of a storm, convinced the only way out was through the brush and the wire. Funny where something like that gets you, slammed to the gravel by a brother you never knew, pulled into a new life and a promise you know you'll never keep- "You can't ever do that again, Axyl.".

Cruelty is finally getting a taste of freedom only to realize how bitter it is against one's tongue.

Realization is that it always will be bitter no matter what you mix it with. Selfishness naturally comes next, the dark side of a half-shined coin, even ghosts can leave wakes of destruction in their path. It's why the second time succeeded and exactly why it failed, too, why Sawyer pulled strings and sewed him back together at the cost of his own, why misfortune of his own design has followed him ever since he got back from the detention center, why he's waking up in an empty apartment with a black eye and a bruised lip and something broken on the right side of his ribcage, why the only company he has is the ghosts.

There's a recognition that needs to be faced on his own somewhere in there, sheltered between shattered heart and toxic veins, teenage wrecking ball with none of the guts to back it up. Because who is he kidding, the walls are closing in faster than he can process now, misdeeds and poison crawling from his shadow and rising up to finally meet him again. And all he can think to do is-

Fuck it, always been one to run first and ask questions later.

There's something sinister behind him, a heartbeat and a moment before he does it, familiar and foreign all at once. He's met it before, in grey eyes and a storm of a personality, one-off conversations separated by frosted glass, in the cracked mirror reflection of a brother. Sharpened claw and bared fangs and he'd be damned if it caught him now.

Not today, not yet.

There's a twitch in his thumb, anxiety and nerves carved into white knuckles of the bone, finger to finger, muscles tense, deep breath out.

Deep breath in. There's a stolen cigarette in one hand and a lighter clenched in the other, metal pressed so heavy into his palm if only in a desperate attempt to stop the shaking. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug, flooding the veins and killing the mind, dangling wants and dreams just out of reach before vanishing completely.

It's hours after he climbed beneath the fences of Six, shadows of the trees swallowing a broken boy whole, taking what was left of him and spitting it out into the brush and the fog. And all he can think about is the next step forward, hastily packed bag dropped to the ground next to him.

Light the flame, watch it flicker and dance against the sounds of the forest, let it kiss the end of a cigarette and destroy it slowly and surely.

There's a hush, then a silence. Nature calls once, then vanishes completely- footsteps coming closer. Rusted pocket knife pulled into your hand and pointed at the sound, tracing a path against the throat of a man your eyes say you do not know but your shadow pleads otherwise.

"Got a light?"

[Axyl Willoughby volunteers ; Iiiiiii will find a trib wall pic for you Dars <3]