[.} Voices of Friends {.][South]
Jul 5, 2011 16:06:30 GMT -5
Post by WT on Jul 5, 2011 16:06:30 GMT -5
((I swear to Ripred that this will this will never. happen. again. I'm so sorry. D: I think a lot of this thing is less of a post and more of a character study. Feel free to ignore everything but the last couple sections.
In other news, this girl needs to get over second person. Using it with her feels weird. =/
Thank Blue October for the lyrics. ("Voice of a Friend" is the song.)
Pre-Reaping because I'm too lazy to deal with timetables? :D))
Light the fire in this castle
And watch it burn into a glow
By the river fear of quite sincere
There's a draw bridge life support.
And there's a plank we'll have to crawl upon
But dare not look below
Where the water scene is crystal clean
And the clouds are raining snow
Before the Games, you never remembered your dreams too well. Sometimes you would wake with an afterimage on the back of your eyelids, as incorporeal and undefined as the colours that sometimes drift across a person's vision after they stare at someone for too long. Sleep was a source of fascination for you, a mysterious realm that you set foot in nightly but could never hold on to. Other people's dreams acted as a door of sorts, but only if you found someone willing to tell you about them, and you were never allowed to cross the threshold. All you could do was close your eyes and listen to their words, envisioning this strange, beautiful nexus of worlds without ever finding a way to know it.
Most things are more fun to wonder about and slowly unravel than to actually know. Sleep, until it was replaced with death, was always the greatest exception.
You still don't understand it, but you remember your dreams now.
---------------
Come to think of it, you remember a lot that you'd rather not.
--------------
Whoever finds this:
Don't worry if I don't turn up for a bit. I promise I'm not doing anything stupid; I just needed to get out for a while. I'll be back before too long. Definitely before the Reaping, probably within a few days.
--Aranica
---------------
Last time you ran off, your brother had only been dead for three days. Every waking moment since Arbor found you and swatted the pills from your hair had been spent in the company of at least one other person, just in case. Unable to accept the protection or the multitude of reasons behind why it was genuinely necessary, you waited until you were with someone who didn't know you very well and then just left. You bound your long hair up in a cap, smudged up your face, snatched a Capitol-made dress, and took to the streets.
When they pulled you back into the Training Center that night you sobbed and begged them to leave you out on the street. You wanted to press yourself into the pavement for the rest of your life, murmuring and sobbing into the stone ground. Maybe then, only then, all the words in your mind and all the pain in your heart could be purged. No more pleas would rattle around in your mind, no more futile bargains or things that you forgot to say (be careful, your hair looks nice today, I'm going to miss you, I love you). Everything would be gone. Not even clouds would be able to touch you anymore, because all the bad things that let them get through to you would be gone, and even if they found a way in you would no longer understand their words. To hurt you they would have to kill you, and you wouldn't mind that. Not anymore. Not if everyone else was going to go and do it anyway.
By the time you were sober you recognized that that wouldn't work. It was still an appealing idea, though.
In many ways, it still is.
---------------
"You guys can always eat me for food. Beats me how much meat you'd get out of me, but it's something, right?"
You weren't kidding, but they thought you were- still think you are. Long ago this became a monthly conversation, and for years now you've desperately tried to rework your words so that it turns out differently. Words change as you beg them to kill you, consume you, attempting all the while to explain why they have to, but the outcome is always the same. Laughing, but with pursed lips, they shake their heads and say no, they won't do it, you're not ever to talk like that again. Nothing you say will get through to them. They do not believe that in less than a week they will descend on each other's throats, will not allow you to speculate that less hunger would lead to less hysteria or that removing one person from the equation would decrease the variables, make it easier for them to coexist a little longer.
Once in this dream you tried to kill yourself, to force the decision on them. Immediately they turned on each other, fighting viciously even as you shrieked, pointing out that there was food right in front of them now and devouring each other was pointless. Pain woke you that time, or perhaps the screaming protests of clouds who wanted the pleasure of killing you themselves and rocks who wanted their sister to live, or perhaps the sight of your teammates twisting into hideous muttations as they leaped at their teammates' jugulars. Sometimes in the confused dark (blankets throttling you, face pressed into the floor, hand around rock too tight to feel other hand scratching into wood ow fingernails ow brain ow heart), it can be hard to tell what exactly ends your nightmares, let alone whether or not you should be grateful.
---------------
This time isn't anything like that.
Okay, it sort of is. You aren't foolish enough to deny that you're just as scared now as you were then, and just as desperate for some kind of escape. Even if you were, the clouds would never let you; every time you start to think you're healing, they remind you all too clearly why you aren't. Often they don't need to, for your own memories are perfectly capable of fulfilling that purpose. A piece of you now hopes, just as some small, irregularly-functioning piece of you hoped then, that in leaving surroundings familiar enough to remind, you will also leave behind memories painful enough to suffocate.
But there are things about today that are different. For one thing, you're not running off to find a nice place to die. That was all you wanted then, the one thing that guided all your actions. Responsibility might have stayed you for a while, but the other District Twelve tribute was already dead, so once the final paperwork was done with that day there were no other duties for you. Since constant surveillance kept you from getting a hold on anything even vaguely deadly, you took the remaining option: fleeing everything familiar, and hoping it wouldn't follow you. Today you can't claim that that's the last thing on your mind, but it isn't something you really want, either. Anani's death, like the others, has faded from raw, paroxysmal torture to a throbbing ache, allowing you to think clearly enough to know how bad of an idea your death would be right now. Whatever the clouds sometimes claim, none of the dead would want you to join them. Moreover, the living need you. Miss Charise could hire anyone now, so popular has she become through association with you, but you're the only one who knows what she means when she starts to speak in riddles, let alone how to reassure her when she asks for her long-dead children. District Twelve needs all its victors for morale, and the three of you need each other for protection as well as the sort of support that only an unlikely victor can offer. Even if there was nothing else worthwhile to do, you could offer Heron advice on prosthetic limbs and it would be reason enough to live- but there's so much more to do than just that. Working, talking to your fellow Twelvers, preparing for the Games, tending to the little garden in your backyard...
In old footage of the 55th Games (no, please no, don't put that on the screen the Games have been lost why are you putting everyone through that again let this ceremony end now please stop, this smile is about to drop, pleasepleaseplease enough), commentators called you strong. Resilient. The wisp of a girl from District Twelve, surprising everyone by not just fighting but fighting well, even killing. Surviving everything her team went through- fights, panic, separation, violence, betrayal. Surviving her soul mate's death. Then later, they said it again- in interviews during Anani's Games, people asked what kind of strength it must take to even try to fulfill all a mentor's duties without breaking down under the pressure of possibility.
You are not strong. It's a wonder anyone still thinks that. You are far too feeble for all the things you want and need to do. Never have you been able to save someone- not your father, not your teammates, not your friends, not your siblings. You are so weak that you have wanted to die, and so frail that when you tried you failed in even that. When bad things happen you make it through them and then collapse in on yourself immediately afterward. You are not strong enough to drag yourself from self-pity, whichever of its many forms you have chosen in any given week.
But you have strength enough for one thing: pretending that it's the real thing. With the rocks' support you have picked yourself up and, though you haven't found it in you to brush yourself off, you have at least moved forward. However much time your mind spends looping through the past, looking for another way out, your body is living firmly enough in the present to do everything it needs to do. In the night you curl into yourself and clutch your rock until you're sure it will break, but you have not cried more than a few tears at a time in public for months, and sometimes when the skies are clear you even manage a smile.
Right now there are no smiles, but there are no tears either. As your bare feet slide over the road to the mines, gently kissing the dust as thanks for carrying them, you feel a strange sort of weightlessness. The clouds are silent, and in the darkness of midnight you can't tell whether the space you stand in is open or enclosed. That ought to scare you, but somehow it's comforting. People have told you that lots of victors are afraid of the dark, because if they aren't looking at something it's hard to keep visual memories at bay, but for you who grew up in near-perpetual blackness such an idea is strange. Light reveals colours (red blood orange boat yellow vomit green food blue sky, ocean, rain). Darkness and cool outside air offer sanctuary, together forming a reprieve from the constant reminders and ever-present pressure you have become used to.
There is still guilt, accompanied as always by anxiety and all the other little pangs that go along with the life you've come to know. But as long as you're running, it's just a little harder for those things to catch you, and as long as your fingers stay wrapped around your acorn rock it can murmur into your mind, softly banishing your own thoughts with depictions of a rock's steady, uncomplicated life.
You won't be able to run forever, and eventually your fingers will have to slacken and let the stone acorn return its weight to the necklace. Eventually you will have to give up safety. For now, though, what little refuge you can find will be good enough.
---------------
Who was she?
Do I have to stay here?
I like it here, but I miss you.
When is he going to come see me? You said it would be soon.
Please don't go. I don't need food, I need you...
Anani, please stay.
---------------
You spend the night in the caves, pressing yourself so tightly into a crevice that you may as well have been another outcropping. Though you're almost vertical and you wake three times, you sleep more comfortably than you would in any Capitol-made bed. Surrounded by friends, rocks and mice and abandoned mining tools with whom you carry on whispered conversations until you drift off, you can almost go back to believing that the world is the beautiful place you saw as a child. This is the first night in a long time that you sleep with only one nightmare.
---------------
The next morning, you drag yourself out of the fissure with a sad farewell. Spending the night among those you trust made you more cheerful than you have been in some time, but now you're undoing all of that simply by moving on. Far from hardening you, years of deliberate and forced abandonment have left you frighteningly vulnerable to the idea of leaving, and you're finding that it's even harder to walk away from a friend than it is to be left. It makes no difference that these rocks will last for millenniums after you, their adopted one (what are you now that sister and child are too painful- you still belong with them, right, right?!), have crumbled to dust. All that your tumbling emotions can register is that you are leaving friends, and bad things happen to your friends if you don't treat them like glass.
I love you. You know that, right? I'm not leaving because I don't like you or I don't trust you or the rocks somewhere else are better or the clouds have-
Aranica, we know. We trust you. Go on, cousin.
(Cousin. Cousin, cousin. You're family. Is that safe for them? Down here, are they secluded enough to claim such a relation without putting themselves in danger? None of the others were- they all died, one two three four each after the other dropping likeflies stones...)
Shaking, you take off at a run. This time, however, the mere motion of fleeing doesn't help. These underground roads, though lined by relatives of your loved ones, are unfamiliar to your feet. You do not stumble, for you know rocks and how to move with them when they shift, but you nearly run into more than a few walls and must stop to apologize to the stones you dislodge. Shadows jump about unpredictably, making you jump even though you know it's only your headlamp making them behave so erratically, not a trick of the clouds playing across the sunlight.
Though you spend a lot of time enclosed in rocks, most of the caves you frequent have some sort of lit opening. Caves similar to the one you grew up in are your favorites- or at least, they used to be. Nowadays sheltering within them is bittersweet; every bit of comfort is matched by a faint memory of your old life. Most things have become like that, you find. Everything you once enjoyed or drew consolation from is now tainted somehow; even your rock has to be careful with what it says, lest its mind-voice bring to mind the kind of memories that you have to scream to drown out. While these tunnels cannot do that, they are strangely discomfiting. Each time a stalactite falls or the sound of running water hits your ears for the first time in a while, your heart kicks into overdrive and your good hand reaches against your will for something it can use as a weapon.
Because it's really the only option if you want to stay sane, you try to distract yourself. As it turns out, this isn't as difficult as your terrified self expected it to be. Lightning conversations with the rocks you pass take care of your thoughts, and there's plenty to look at besides the shadows. Beautiful things reside here, causing you to slow several times as your headlamp illuminates some fantastic sight. Chasms that disappear into true blackness, tiny reptilian creatures that have never seen the light of day, towers and streams and butterflies of stone- all of this captures you and holds you in thrall.
But you reside here now too, rock-cloud. Shouldn't that be enough to keep you on your toes?
Clouds can't reach you down here through the endless layers of stone and earth. Idleness must give your imagination too much freedom.Shaken Shaking your head, you tear your eyes from the walls and move.
Running doesn't get you far, don't you know?
Together the rocks rumble into your mind, breaking up whatever connection the clouds have managed to form. Grateful, you press on, knowing that at this point the only relief will be stepping outside and looking at a clear sky.
---------------
Hold on. Please, hold on!
I'll get them out. Just hang in there...
I don't want you to die but I can't-
Come on, you're strong, you can do it!
There's the girl I know and love.
I'm so sorry, Dru...
---------------
How long does it take you to get out? You can't seem to recall. Nor can you quite determine how long ago you slipped from the Victor's Village and slunk through your District. The mining tunnels stopped long ago, but how much uncharted territory have you covered? Finding your way back shouldn't be too hard- you remember the landmarks, if not every turn and every mineral formation- but will it take a long time? You think the second time will be easier on you, but it will also become easier for the clouds to find ways around your family's protection and you aren't sure if you can handle that.
---------------
Hunger has always been part of life for you. As a child with no source of sustenance in your cave, you learned to space meals, but even then you longed for food all too often. Eventually the deliveries stopped coming, and you almost withered away before the rocks convinced you to brave the outside world. After your emergence, it was little better; you knew nothing of the human world, and its logic didn't make sense to you. It took a long time to learn about money, jobs, and all those other things that have to lead up to purchases- not as long as it might have, if you were less clever, but long enough for you to become used to the idea that starving happened even when there was food everywhere. This curse, one of the few shards of pessimism on your bright mosaic, was one of the things that would become your salvation during the Games. Used to not eating very much, your stomach complained only occasionally and did almost as little to slow you down.
Not too far into the future (past, past, why is it so hard to keep these things straight?), however, you made the shift from involuntary hunger to uncontrollable rejection of food. Right after your own Games, vomiting became a problem. Eating was a chore, and keeping anything down a fight. The rocks told you that the Capitol healed you too much, throwing your systems out of alignment with each other; you knew they were lying to protect you, but they only said those things while you were doubled over, gagging, and ready to cling to any solution, any explanation, that was offered to you. You had your own explanations, but they centered around things you didn't want to think about- victims eating their hands, allies refusing to eat meat that offered itself, Dru's skeletal frame. Fleeting, horribly misplaced joy as you picked up the first edible plants you'd seen in days and pressed them to your lips, sure that the rest of the day would go smoothly...
After a time your digestive system learned to cope. Once Anani showed up, the vomiting vanished almost entirely, springing back only under the most duress- usually arguments, sometimes interviews, occasionally bad nightmares. But then he was Reaped, and suddenly it was impossible to keep anything down anymore, if you could even force it past your lips in the first place. So you stopped eating, and got used to hunger and all that came with it.
No one else was as fond of that plan as you were. Always a little slip of a girl, you started off skinny to begin with, so it took a while for anyone to notice. One hundred seven to one hundred three, 103 to an even hundred- right around there, Bellezze started noticing. If anyone was going to, it would be her, since she had to help you into some of the more complicated costumes. But she didn't say much, just gave you this strange look and tightened the strap on your dress a little, so you let it go- until ninety-four, when Anani noticed how thin your fingers were getting and reproached you. After that you had to eat again, because he couldn't worry about anything but himself just then, couldn't- but you couldn't keep anything in your body and it hurt so you just stopped trying...
As soon as you hit eighty-seven Bellezze ripped into you. It was far from the first time you had ever seen her angry; indeed, no one else (besides the clouds, who were in a class all their own) made you cringe as often with their temper. But it was the first time you had seen a Capitolite enraged about someone losing weight, and that frightened you into accepting pills to help with your nerves. After all, it wasn't like you wanted to starve yourself- you just couldn't seem to manage anything more than a couple pieces of bread.
Those same pills, a few weeks later, would become part of the first attempt (at least, the first since the ocean). But Arbor would find you, and all would be- not well. Nothing would ever be well again; you were no longer even sure that anything had been so beforehand. But between the rocks looking after your mind and the rotating escorts looking after your actions, you would be safe- no matter how hard you tried to make sure you weren't. Even when you defied the rocks' steady stream of please and stopped eating again, involuntary rejection becoming conscious deprivation for the first time in your life, they made sure you stayed alive. You were wrestled back into the habit of eating, You don't eat often or much, but you consume enough calories to keep functioning easy for your organs.
Now, you suppose, you're grateful that so many people put all that effort into keeping you here. Less for yourself, for you would gladly trade your life for another set of events in an instant, but for the people around you. Incredibly, confusingly, you are needed, and as long as there is something useful to be done for the world you will accept your continued existence as a useful evil, and do what you need to do to sustain it.
Apparently, that doesn't extend to remembering to take some bloody food with you when your house scares you and you go running off in a state of panic.
---------------
Other people have recurring dreams of running or falling. They tumble forever into a darkness broken only by hideous creatures, or try to flee from a hideous adversary with legs that don't work, or chase some impossible desire that moves away faster and faster.
In yours, you swim.
You don't know if you're back in the Arena, but you can only presume so, because there's no land to be seen and the blood-streaked water around you is roiling with more than the force of the rain hitting it. Bodies bob through the water around you, starting out so close that a few brush by you but then drifting further and further away. Every one is so limp and bloated it's obvious they're dead, but you still try to chase them, sure that you can find a way to save them if you can only catch up. As you strike out against the water they begin to drift further and further apart, forcing you to abandon people one by one. This is where the dream changes every time; sometimes as the field is narrowed you see Papero or Nachele, sometimes Kale or Ocean, sometimes Arbor. Every now and then, you even catch sight a large shape with vague features that you think belong to one of your parents.
This happens often enough that even in your sleep you recognize it as a dream and know your efforts are futile. Still, you have to try.
But it always ends the same. Sooner or later you see Dru in the mix, and no matter who slides past you, no matter how much it rips at you to leave them behind, you abandon everyone. For her, only for her, you swim and swim until your arms feel like they're ready to fall off, and then continue to swim after they do. Refusing to cry, because you cannot afford to have your eyesight compromised any more, you force yourself to kick harder and harder- but it's not good enough, she's slipping under the water, and then Anani appears from nowhere and grabs you. He has a life vest and you know he's trying to protect you, keep you afloat, but Dru is sliding away into the water and you thrash, trying to free yourself to reach her. Unseeing, Anani holds you right, so tight, too tight please let go I need to save her. You scream to the ocean, pleading for help. As soon as you do Anani lets go, staring at you for a single moment with the coldest expression you've ever seen before turning to leave. Gasping in pain, you try to reach out in apology, but your arm is still missing. You never would have made it anyway; a huge muttation rears up from the water and grabs his head, giving it one sharp shake before tearing away from the ocean with its newfound prize.
Sobbing now, you turn to find Dru, but she's gone. Only your rock is still with you- but then it betrays you, growing heavier and heavier until it drags you down into the water. The ocean, oblivious to your plight, babbles cheerfully against the backdrop of the clouds' laughter.
Around you, the raindrops scream.
---------------
Somehow, you emerge into a forest. Glancing back at the entrance to the cave with an uneasy flicker of worry, you wonder once more how long you meandered beneath the earth. Did you sleep more than once? You don't think so, but your own mind has been suspect in the past. Rock? you ask, putting a hand to the pendant as you do so. I don't suppose you noticed how much I slept?
It buzzes, confused. What do you mean, Aranica?
You sigh, disappointed but not surprised. True rocks have trouble with some human concepts, and sleep is one of them; for objects that spend their entire lives aware and observing, it's hard to imagine a state in which the consciousness cannot connect with its surroundings. Even dreams are easier for them to wrap their minds around, for imagination and memory are necessary for some objects to survive without going mad from the boredom. Nothing. It's all right.
If you're sure.
When are you ever sure of anything? Though it probably hears anyway, you don't voice this to the rock, instead just nodding. I am.
At least you aren't in the Capitol, you point out to yourself, smiling slightly at this flicker of your old optimism. If you're going to wander through some tunnels and get lost, there are much worse places to end up than a perfectly lovely forest. A deep inhalation reveals a number of smells you don't recognize, but none of those that you associate with humans. Cheered by this, you go forth from the cave entrance, greeting various plants and stones as you pass them.
Ara, weren't you hungry?
Startled that it took your rock to remind you of this (although you probably shouldn't be), you nod and glance around. Some of the plants here are unfamiliar, but you can't be too far from Twelve. Sure enough, when you pay attention you recognize some of the trees around you from the woods around your home. It takes a little more searching to find one that's edible, but the hunt isn't too difficult, especially since you like running your hands through leaves and along branches. Touching others has always helped you feel more connected, and it's nice to not have to feel alone.
Soon enough you find something that you're positive will be safe to ingest. Keeping on your toes in case the tree turns out to be less than friendly and you need to flee, you step close enough to lay your right hand on the trunk. Warm beneath your fingers, the wood all but sings, assuring you that you are welcome here. Smiling a tiny bit, you open your mouth to speak out loud for the first time since you left your house. "May I-"
Your voice is so rusty that you're startled into dropping the smile. Immediately you pull back your head, as though trying to find it floating on the air so you can patch it up and shove it back in your throat. It's stupid- you know what it's like to have a piece of you cut off, and there was no pain involved here- but you can't help yourself. Is that creaking, spindly noise really you...?
Apparently not offended by your underused voice, the tree makes an encouraging noise. With a small cough to clear your throat, you try again. "May I take some of you to eat?" Definitely clearer now, your voice also picks up in volume. "Only a little, I swear. I don't want to hurt you."
Sorry, dear. The leaves sway slowly in the breeze and hum together into your mind, sounding genuinely sad about their parent tree's words. We need to work together to store up sunlight for the winter.
The next three plants are more or less the same- one more has already started saving for winter, another is ill, and the third is planted in a waterlogged spot and needs as many leaves as possible to use and exhale the water lest it down. Finally, though, you find a hardy evergreen that readily agrees. Thanking it, you gently remove a few low-hanging fruits and set off. The tiny harvest is hardly pizza, but when you bring the first piece to your mouth, you're sure you've never tasted something so exquisite.
---------------
One of the things you love about rocks is the fact that they all seem to be one huge family. Never have you met a stone that did not know you or a pebble that had not shared words with your acorn at one point. As much as you enjoy talking to humans, the rocks here know you better than anyone (or anything) else alive. They know how to protect you and do so, talking over the clouds whenever they try to get into your head. They don't breath a word about the Games unless you bring it up, but it never once feels like they're trying to dance around the subject.
Here, at least, is a family you will never lose, and who will not be hurt by your eventual death even when they mourn for you.
---------------
"Do you mind if I lie here for a while?"
Going by the position of the sun, it's only mid-day by the time you've finished eating. Still, it's been a long day and a half (a long couple of days?). You're exhausted by the heat and drained by the conversations, and you're getting slowly but surely banged up by all the bruises you're getting from constantly tripping. Nothing sounds quite so appealing as a place to curl up for a while. The dreams are chasing the edges of your subconscious, so you don't think you'll be able to sleep, but even waking rest might help ease the weariness. Perhaps not; much of the fatigue is borne from your everyday life, rather than your little adventure, and just thinking about everything and everyone that will be waiting for you upon your return is enough to make you tired again. Even so, it's worth a shot.
The tree you've chosen rustles its leaves just a little. Of course not, rock-friend. I'm not going anywhere. Stay. Use the shade. Speak if you need to.
"I'd just like to rest. Thank you very much."
Any time.
Gently you bend your knees, allowing them to bring your entire body to the ground. For an instant you hesitate- you love getting to snuggle with dirt, but you don't want the clothes you're wearing to get any messier. Cheerfully but tenderly they point out that it would be difficult to put them in any worse condition. Smiling just a tiny bit, you take this as permission and lower yourself onto your side.
Leaves crunch under your weight as you wriggle into a more comfortable position. Beneath the dense canopy of this tree little light reaches you, but the air is fresh and a soothing temperature. You cannot see yourself, but you can see enough of one partially-obscured arm to imagine that you must look less like a creature of the earth than a piece of it. With grey clothes and tan skin mottled now with brown, limbs nestled among leaves and twigs, and hair streaked with leaves and dust, you appear to be halfway melded into the ground.
Some small part of your mind reminds you gently that you cannot stay here forever. Back home there are people who will worry about you and who you will worry for in turn, and the approach of yearly duties that you must return for, especially now that hope has been proven to lead a resilient if twisted existence. Objects sitting in your bedroom will miss you, and you're no more keen to willingly abandon them than you are to dump all your responsibilities on Arbor and Heron. Not to mention that from a strictly technical standpoint, there are laws that would forbid even this short peregrination, let alone a full-fledged attempt at running away.
All of this feels far from you, though. There is something calming about simply lying here and listening to the sounds of the forest around you. Cities don't speak very much unless spoken to (no doubt a result of being created, shaped, and ultimately destroyed by humans), so it's been a long time since you were able to immerse yourself in an environment they way you used to, before you lived among your birth species. Now, humming quietly along to an ancient oak lullaby and gently petting the tuft of grass beside your head (A little higher, a little left, there there there!), you realize that you almost forgot how much you love the world you live on and in and beside.
You are not happy, and still don't know if you ever will be again, but threading your pained mind through the veins of the forest's life is akin to putting ice on a laceration. The wound is still there, ready to spring up the moment it's irritated, but as long as you don't focus on it you can notice other things around it.
The clouds still try to whisper to you, calling forth the dreams that haunt the corners of your mind. Tears begin to leak from your eyes and run down to the dirt below, though you try not to pay attention. Luckily, the rocks come to your defense, raising their voices in chorus to blot out the clouds. Through the tears you smile, glad even in your anguish that you still have such wonderful friends.
We're a submarine submerging
We're simply smiling at the earth
We're sending roses to the loved ones
Who had a hand in our rebirth
But still another day I'll cling to you
For faint directions home
Where we all will sit with open arms
To try to block the rocks we've thrown
In other news, this girl needs to get over second person. Using it with her feels weird. =/
Thank Blue October for the lyrics. ("Voice of a Friend" is the song.)
Pre-Reaping because I'm too lazy to deal with timetables? :D))
Light the fire in this castle
And watch it burn into a glow
By the river fear of quite sincere
There's a draw bridge life support.
And there's a plank we'll have to crawl upon
But dare not look below
Where the water scene is crystal clean
And the clouds are raining snow
Before the Games, you never remembered your dreams too well. Sometimes you would wake with an afterimage on the back of your eyelids, as incorporeal and undefined as the colours that sometimes drift across a person's vision after they stare at someone for too long. Sleep was a source of fascination for you, a mysterious realm that you set foot in nightly but could never hold on to. Other people's dreams acted as a door of sorts, but only if you found someone willing to tell you about them, and you were never allowed to cross the threshold. All you could do was close your eyes and listen to their words, envisioning this strange, beautiful nexus of worlds without ever finding a way to know it.
Most things are more fun to wonder about and slowly unravel than to actually know. Sleep, until it was replaced with death, was always the greatest exception.
You still don't understand it, but you remember your dreams now.
---------------
Come to think of it, you remember a lot that you'd rather not.
--------------
Whoever finds this:
Don't worry if I don't turn up for a bit. I promise I'm not doing anything stupid; I just needed to get out for a while. I'll be back before too long. Definitely before the Reaping, probably within a few days.
--Aranica
---------------
Last time you ran off, your brother had only been dead for three days. Every waking moment since Arbor found you and swatted the pills from your hair had been spent in the company of at least one other person, just in case. Unable to accept the protection or the multitude of reasons behind why it was genuinely necessary, you waited until you were with someone who didn't know you very well and then just left. You bound your long hair up in a cap, smudged up your face, snatched a Capitol-made dress, and took to the streets.
When they pulled you back into the Training Center that night you sobbed and begged them to leave you out on the street. You wanted to press yourself into the pavement for the rest of your life, murmuring and sobbing into the stone ground. Maybe then, only then, all the words in your mind and all the pain in your heart could be purged. No more pleas would rattle around in your mind, no more futile bargains or things that you forgot to say (be careful, your hair looks nice today, I'm going to miss you, I love you). Everything would be gone. Not even clouds would be able to touch you anymore, because all the bad things that let them get through to you would be gone, and even if they found a way in you would no longer understand their words. To hurt you they would have to kill you, and you wouldn't mind that. Not anymore. Not if everyone else was going to go and do it anyway.
By the time you were sober you recognized that that wouldn't work. It was still an appealing idea, though.
In many ways, it still is.
---------------
"You guys can always eat me for food. Beats me how much meat you'd get out of me, but it's something, right?"
You weren't kidding, but they thought you were- still think you are. Long ago this became a monthly conversation, and for years now you've desperately tried to rework your words so that it turns out differently. Words change as you beg them to kill you, consume you, attempting all the while to explain why they have to, but the outcome is always the same. Laughing, but with pursed lips, they shake their heads and say no, they won't do it, you're not ever to talk like that again. Nothing you say will get through to them. They do not believe that in less than a week they will descend on each other's throats, will not allow you to speculate that less hunger would lead to less hysteria or that removing one person from the equation would decrease the variables, make it easier for them to coexist a little longer.
Once in this dream you tried to kill yourself, to force the decision on them. Immediately they turned on each other, fighting viciously even as you shrieked, pointing out that there was food right in front of them now and devouring each other was pointless. Pain woke you that time, or perhaps the screaming protests of clouds who wanted the pleasure of killing you themselves and rocks who wanted their sister to live, or perhaps the sight of your teammates twisting into hideous muttations as they leaped at their teammates' jugulars. Sometimes in the confused dark (blankets throttling you, face pressed into the floor, hand around rock too tight to feel other hand scratching into wood ow fingernails ow brain ow heart), it can be hard to tell what exactly ends your nightmares, let alone whether or not you should be grateful.
---------------
This time isn't anything like that.
Okay, it sort of is. You aren't foolish enough to deny that you're just as scared now as you were then, and just as desperate for some kind of escape. Even if you were, the clouds would never let you; every time you start to think you're healing, they remind you all too clearly why you aren't. Often they don't need to, for your own memories are perfectly capable of fulfilling that purpose. A piece of you now hopes, just as some small, irregularly-functioning piece of you hoped then, that in leaving surroundings familiar enough to remind, you will also leave behind memories painful enough to suffocate.
But there are things about today that are different. For one thing, you're not running off to find a nice place to die. That was all you wanted then, the one thing that guided all your actions. Responsibility might have stayed you for a while, but the other District Twelve tribute was already dead, so once the final paperwork was done with that day there were no other duties for you. Since constant surveillance kept you from getting a hold on anything even vaguely deadly, you took the remaining option: fleeing everything familiar, and hoping it wouldn't follow you. Today you can't claim that that's the last thing on your mind, but it isn't something you really want, either. Anani's death, like the others, has faded from raw, paroxysmal torture to a throbbing ache, allowing you to think clearly enough to know how bad of an idea your death would be right now. Whatever the clouds sometimes claim, none of the dead would want you to join them. Moreover, the living need you. Miss Charise could hire anyone now, so popular has she become through association with you, but you're the only one who knows what she means when she starts to speak in riddles, let alone how to reassure her when she asks for her long-dead children. District Twelve needs all its victors for morale, and the three of you need each other for protection as well as the sort of support that only an unlikely victor can offer. Even if there was nothing else worthwhile to do, you could offer Heron advice on prosthetic limbs and it would be reason enough to live- but there's so much more to do than just that. Working, talking to your fellow Twelvers, preparing for the Games, tending to the little garden in your backyard...
In old footage of the 55th Games (no, please no, don't put that on the screen the Games have been lost why are you putting everyone through that again let this ceremony end now please stop, this smile is about to drop, pleasepleaseplease enough), commentators called you strong. Resilient. The wisp of a girl from District Twelve, surprising everyone by not just fighting but fighting well, even killing. Surviving everything her team went through- fights, panic, separation, violence, betrayal. Surviving her soul mate's death. Then later, they said it again- in interviews during Anani's Games, people asked what kind of strength it must take to even try to fulfill all a mentor's duties without breaking down under the pressure of possibility.
You are not strong. It's a wonder anyone still thinks that. You are far too feeble for all the things you want and need to do. Never have you been able to save someone- not your father, not your teammates, not your friends, not your siblings. You are so weak that you have wanted to die, and so frail that when you tried you failed in even that. When bad things happen you make it through them and then collapse in on yourself immediately afterward. You are not strong enough to drag yourself from self-pity, whichever of its many forms you have chosen in any given week.
But you have strength enough for one thing: pretending that it's the real thing. With the rocks' support you have picked yourself up and, though you haven't found it in you to brush yourself off, you have at least moved forward. However much time your mind spends looping through the past, looking for another way out, your body is living firmly enough in the present to do everything it needs to do. In the night you curl into yourself and clutch your rock until you're sure it will break, but you have not cried more than a few tears at a time in public for months, and sometimes when the skies are clear you even manage a smile.
Right now there are no smiles, but there are no tears either. As your bare feet slide over the road to the mines, gently kissing the dust as thanks for carrying them, you feel a strange sort of weightlessness. The clouds are silent, and in the darkness of midnight you can't tell whether the space you stand in is open or enclosed. That ought to scare you, but somehow it's comforting. People have told you that lots of victors are afraid of the dark, because if they aren't looking at something it's hard to keep visual memories at bay, but for you who grew up in near-perpetual blackness such an idea is strange. Light reveals colours (red blood orange boat yellow vomit green food blue sky, ocean, rain). Darkness and cool outside air offer sanctuary, together forming a reprieve from the constant reminders and ever-present pressure you have become used to.
There is still guilt, accompanied as always by anxiety and all the other little pangs that go along with the life you've come to know. But as long as you're running, it's just a little harder for those things to catch you, and as long as your fingers stay wrapped around your acorn rock it can murmur into your mind, softly banishing your own thoughts with depictions of a rock's steady, uncomplicated life.
You won't be able to run forever, and eventually your fingers will have to slacken and let the stone acorn return its weight to the necklace. Eventually you will have to give up safety. For now, though, what little refuge you can find will be good enough.
---------------
Who was she?
Do I have to stay here?
I like it here, but I miss you.
When is he going to come see me? You said it would be soon.
Please don't go. I don't need food, I need you...
Anani, please stay.
---------------
You spend the night in the caves, pressing yourself so tightly into a crevice that you may as well have been another outcropping. Though you're almost vertical and you wake three times, you sleep more comfortably than you would in any Capitol-made bed. Surrounded by friends, rocks and mice and abandoned mining tools with whom you carry on whispered conversations until you drift off, you can almost go back to believing that the world is the beautiful place you saw as a child. This is the first night in a long time that you sleep with only one nightmare.
---------------
The next morning, you drag yourself out of the fissure with a sad farewell. Spending the night among those you trust made you more cheerful than you have been in some time, but now you're undoing all of that simply by moving on. Far from hardening you, years of deliberate and forced abandonment have left you frighteningly vulnerable to the idea of leaving, and you're finding that it's even harder to walk away from a friend than it is to be left. It makes no difference that these rocks will last for millenniums after you, their adopted one (what are you now that sister and child are too painful- you still belong with them, right, right?!), have crumbled to dust. All that your tumbling emotions can register is that you are leaving friends, and bad things happen to your friends if you don't treat them like glass.
I love you. You know that, right? I'm not leaving because I don't like you or I don't trust you or the rocks somewhere else are better or the clouds have-
Aranica, we know. We trust you. Go on, cousin.
(Cousin. Cousin, cousin. You're family. Is that safe for them? Down here, are they secluded enough to claim such a relation without putting themselves in danger? None of the others were- they all died, one two three four each after the other dropping like
Shaking, you take off at a run. This time, however, the mere motion of fleeing doesn't help. These underground roads, though lined by relatives of your loved ones, are unfamiliar to your feet. You do not stumble, for you know rocks and how to move with them when they shift, but you nearly run into more than a few walls and must stop to apologize to the stones you dislodge. Shadows jump about unpredictably, making you jump even though you know it's only your headlamp making them behave so erratically, not a trick of the clouds playing across the sunlight.
Though you spend a lot of time enclosed in rocks, most of the caves you frequent have some sort of lit opening. Caves similar to the one you grew up in are your favorites- or at least, they used to be. Nowadays sheltering within them is bittersweet; every bit of comfort is matched by a faint memory of your old life. Most things have become like that, you find. Everything you once enjoyed or drew consolation from is now tainted somehow; even your rock has to be careful with what it says, lest its mind-voice bring to mind the kind of memories that you have to scream to drown out. While these tunnels cannot do that, they are strangely discomfiting. Each time a stalactite falls or the sound of running water hits your ears for the first time in a while, your heart kicks into overdrive and your good hand reaches against your will for something it can use as a weapon.
Because it's really the only option if you want to stay sane, you try to distract yourself. As it turns out, this isn't as difficult as your terrified self expected it to be. Lightning conversations with the rocks you pass take care of your thoughts, and there's plenty to look at besides the shadows. Beautiful things reside here, causing you to slow several times as your headlamp illuminates some fantastic sight. Chasms that disappear into true blackness, tiny reptilian creatures that have never seen the light of day, towers and streams and butterflies of stone- all of this captures you and holds you in thrall.
But you reside here now too, rock-cloud. Shouldn't that be enough to keep you on your toes?
Clouds can't reach you down here through the endless layers of stone and earth. Idleness must give your imagination too much freedom.
Running doesn't get you far, don't you know?
Together the rocks rumble into your mind, breaking up whatever connection the clouds have managed to form. Grateful, you press on, knowing that at this point the only relief will be stepping outside and looking at a clear sky.
---------------
Hold on. Please, hold on!
I'll get them out. Just hang in there...
I don't want you to die but I can't-
Come on, you're strong, you can do it!
There's the girl I know and love.
I'm so sorry, Dru...
---------------
How long does it take you to get out? You can't seem to recall. Nor can you quite determine how long ago you slipped from the Victor's Village and slunk through your District. The mining tunnels stopped long ago, but how much uncharted territory have you covered? Finding your way back shouldn't be too hard- you remember the landmarks, if not every turn and every mineral formation- but will it take a long time? You think the second time will be easier on you, but it will also become easier for the clouds to find ways around your family's protection and you aren't sure if you can handle that.
---------------
Hunger has always been part of life for you. As a child with no source of sustenance in your cave, you learned to space meals, but even then you longed for food all too often. Eventually the deliveries stopped coming, and you almost withered away before the rocks convinced you to brave the outside world. After your emergence, it was little better; you knew nothing of the human world, and its logic didn't make sense to you. It took a long time to learn about money, jobs, and all those other things that have to lead up to purchases- not as long as it might have, if you were less clever, but long enough for you to become used to the idea that starving happened even when there was food everywhere. This curse, one of the few shards of pessimism on your bright mosaic, was one of the things that would become your salvation during the Games. Used to not eating very much, your stomach complained only occasionally and did almost as little to slow you down.
Not too far into the future (past, past, why is it so hard to keep these things straight?), however, you made the shift from involuntary hunger to uncontrollable rejection of food. Right after your own Games, vomiting became a problem. Eating was a chore, and keeping anything down a fight. The rocks told you that the Capitol healed you too much, throwing your systems out of alignment with each other; you knew they were lying to protect you, but they only said those things while you were doubled over, gagging, and ready to cling to any solution, any explanation, that was offered to you. You had your own explanations, but they centered around things you didn't want to think about- victims eating their hands, allies refusing to eat meat that offered itself, Dru's skeletal frame. Fleeting, horribly misplaced joy as you picked up the first edible plants you'd seen in days and pressed them to your lips, sure that the rest of the day would go smoothly...
After a time your digestive system learned to cope. Once Anani showed up, the vomiting vanished almost entirely, springing back only under the most duress- usually arguments, sometimes interviews, occasionally bad nightmares. But then he was Reaped, and suddenly it was impossible to keep anything down anymore, if you could even force it past your lips in the first place. So you stopped eating, and got used to hunger and all that came with it.
No one else was as fond of that plan as you were. Always a little slip of a girl, you started off skinny to begin with, so it took a while for anyone to notice. One hundred seven to one hundred three, 103 to an even hundred- right around there, Bellezze started noticing. If anyone was going to, it would be her, since she had to help you into some of the more complicated costumes. But she didn't say much, just gave you this strange look and tightened the strap on your dress a little, so you let it go- until ninety-four, when Anani noticed how thin your fingers were getting and reproached you. After that you had to eat again, because he couldn't worry about anything but himself just then, couldn't- but you couldn't keep anything in your body and it hurt so you just stopped trying...
As soon as you hit eighty-seven Bellezze ripped into you. It was far from the first time you had ever seen her angry; indeed, no one else (besides the clouds, who were in a class all their own) made you cringe as often with their temper. But it was the first time you had seen a Capitolite enraged about someone losing weight, and that frightened you into accepting pills to help with your nerves. After all, it wasn't like you wanted to starve yourself- you just couldn't seem to manage anything more than a couple pieces of bread.
Those same pills, a few weeks later, would become part of the first attempt (at least, the first since the ocean). But Arbor would find you, and all would be- not well. Nothing would ever be well again; you were no longer even sure that anything had been so beforehand. But between the rocks looking after your mind and the rotating escorts looking after your actions, you would be safe- no matter how hard you tried to make sure you weren't. Even when you defied the rocks' steady stream of please and stopped eating again, involuntary rejection becoming conscious deprivation for the first time in your life, they made sure you stayed alive. You were wrestled back into the habit of eating, You don't eat often or much, but you consume enough calories to keep functioning easy for your organs.
Now, you suppose, you're grateful that so many people put all that effort into keeping you here. Less for yourself, for you would gladly trade your life for another set of events in an instant, but for the people around you. Incredibly, confusingly, you are needed, and as long as there is something useful to be done for the world you will accept your continued existence as a useful evil, and do what you need to do to sustain it.
Apparently, that doesn't extend to remembering to take some bloody food with you when your house scares you and you go running off in a state of panic.
---------------
Other people have recurring dreams of running or falling. They tumble forever into a darkness broken only by hideous creatures, or try to flee from a hideous adversary with legs that don't work, or chase some impossible desire that moves away faster and faster.
In yours, you swim.
You don't know if you're back in the Arena, but you can only presume so, because there's no land to be seen and the blood-streaked water around you is roiling with more than the force of the rain hitting it. Bodies bob through the water around you, starting out so close that a few brush by you but then drifting further and further away. Every one is so limp and bloated it's obvious they're dead, but you still try to chase them, sure that you can find a way to save them if you can only catch up. As you strike out against the water they begin to drift further and further apart, forcing you to abandon people one by one. This is where the dream changes every time; sometimes as the field is narrowed you see Papero or Nachele, sometimes Kale or Ocean, sometimes Arbor. Every now and then, you even catch sight a large shape with vague features that you think belong to one of your parents.
This happens often enough that even in your sleep you recognize it as a dream and know your efforts are futile. Still, you have to try.
But it always ends the same. Sooner or later you see Dru in the mix, and no matter who slides past you, no matter how much it rips at you to leave them behind, you abandon everyone. For her, only for her, you swim and swim until your arms feel like they're ready to fall off, and then continue to swim after they do. Refusing to cry, because you cannot afford to have your eyesight compromised any more, you force yourself to kick harder and harder- but it's not good enough, she's slipping under the water, and then Anani appears from nowhere and grabs you. He has a life vest and you know he's trying to protect you, keep you afloat, but Dru is sliding away into the water and you thrash, trying to free yourself to reach her. Unseeing, Anani holds you right, so tight, too tight please let go I need to save her. You scream to the ocean, pleading for help. As soon as you do Anani lets go, staring at you for a single moment with the coldest expression you've ever seen before turning to leave. Gasping in pain, you try to reach out in apology, but your arm is still missing. You never would have made it anyway; a huge muttation rears up from the water and grabs his head, giving it one sharp shake before tearing away from the ocean with its newfound prize.
Sobbing now, you turn to find Dru, but she's gone. Only your rock is still with you- but then it betrays you, growing heavier and heavier until it drags you down into the water. The ocean, oblivious to your plight, babbles cheerfully against the backdrop of the clouds' laughter.
Around you, the raindrops scream.
---------------
Somehow, you emerge into a forest. Glancing back at the entrance to the cave with an uneasy flicker of worry, you wonder once more how long you meandered beneath the earth. Did you sleep more than once? You don't think so, but your own mind has been suspect in the past. Rock? you ask, putting a hand to the pendant as you do so. I don't suppose you noticed how much I slept?
It buzzes, confused. What do you mean, Aranica?
You sigh, disappointed but not surprised. True rocks have trouble with some human concepts, and sleep is one of them; for objects that spend their entire lives aware and observing, it's hard to imagine a state in which the consciousness cannot connect with its surroundings. Even dreams are easier for them to wrap their minds around, for imagination and memory are necessary for some objects to survive without going mad from the boredom. Nothing. It's all right.
If you're sure.
When are you ever sure of anything? Though it probably hears anyway, you don't voice this to the rock, instead just nodding. I am.
At least you aren't in the Capitol, you point out to yourself, smiling slightly at this flicker of your old optimism. If you're going to wander through some tunnels and get lost, there are much worse places to end up than a perfectly lovely forest. A deep inhalation reveals a number of smells you don't recognize, but none of those that you associate with humans. Cheered by this, you go forth from the cave entrance, greeting various plants and stones as you pass them.
Ara, weren't you hungry?
Startled that it took your rock to remind you of this (although you probably shouldn't be), you nod and glance around. Some of the plants here are unfamiliar, but you can't be too far from Twelve. Sure enough, when you pay attention you recognize some of the trees around you from the woods around your home. It takes a little more searching to find one that's edible, but the hunt isn't too difficult, especially since you like running your hands through leaves and along branches. Touching others has always helped you feel more connected, and it's nice to not have to feel alone.
Soon enough you find something that you're positive will be safe to ingest. Keeping on your toes in case the tree turns out to be less than friendly and you need to flee, you step close enough to lay your right hand on the trunk. Warm beneath your fingers, the wood all but sings, assuring you that you are welcome here. Smiling a tiny bit, you open your mouth to speak out loud for the first time since you left your house. "May I-"
Your voice is so rusty that you're startled into dropping the smile. Immediately you pull back your head, as though trying to find it floating on the air so you can patch it up and shove it back in your throat. It's stupid- you know what it's like to have a piece of you cut off, and there was no pain involved here- but you can't help yourself. Is that creaking, spindly noise really you...?
Apparently not offended by your underused voice, the tree makes an encouraging noise. With a small cough to clear your throat, you try again. "May I take some of you to eat?" Definitely clearer now, your voice also picks up in volume. "Only a little, I swear. I don't want to hurt you."
Sorry, dear. The leaves sway slowly in the breeze and hum together into your mind, sounding genuinely sad about their parent tree's words. We need to work together to store up sunlight for the winter.
The next three plants are more or less the same- one more has already started saving for winter, another is ill, and the third is planted in a waterlogged spot and needs as many leaves as possible to use and exhale the water lest it down. Finally, though, you find a hardy evergreen that readily agrees. Thanking it, you gently remove a few low-hanging fruits and set off. The tiny harvest is hardly pizza, but when you bring the first piece to your mouth, you're sure you've never tasted something so exquisite.
---------------
One of the things you love about rocks is the fact that they all seem to be one huge family. Never have you met a stone that did not know you or a pebble that had not shared words with your acorn at one point. As much as you enjoy talking to humans, the rocks here know you better than anyone (or anything) else alive. They know how to protect you and do so, talking over the clouds whenever they try to get into your head. They don't breath a word about the Games unless you bring it up, but it never once feels like they're trying to dance around the subject.
Here, at least, is a family you will never lose, and who will not be hurt by your eventual death even when they mourn for you.
---------------
"Do you mind if I lie here for a while?"
Going by the position of the sun, it's only mid-day by the time you've finished eating. Still, it's been a long day and a half (a long couple of days?). You're exhausted by the heat and drained by the conversations, and you're getting slowly but surely banged up by all the bruises you're getting from constantly tripping. Nothing sounds quite so appealing as a place to curl up for a while. The dreams are chasing the edges of your subconscious, so you don't think you'll be able to sleep, but even waking rest might help ease the weariness. Perhaps not; much of the fatigue is borne from your everyday life, rather than your little adventure, and just thinking about everything and everyone that will be waiting for you upon your return is enough to make you tired again. Even so, it's worth a shot.
The tree you've chosen rustles its leaves just a little. Of course not, rock-friend. I'm not going anywhere. Stay. Use the shade. Speak if you need to.
"I'd just like to rest. Thank you very much."
Any time.
Gently you bend your knees, allowing them to bring your entire body to the ground. For an instant you hesitate- you love getting to snuggle with dirt, but you don't want the clothes you're wearing to get any messier. Cheerfully but tenderly they point out that it would be difficult to put them in any worse condition. Smiling just a tiny bit, you take this as permission and lower yourself onto your side.
Leaves crunch under your weight as you wriggle into a more comfortable position. Beneath the dense canopy of this tree little light reaches you, but the air is fresh and a soothing temperature. You cannot see yourself, but you can see enough of one partially-obscured arm to imagine that you must look less like a creature of the earth than a piece of it. With grey clothes and tan skin mottled now with brown, limbs nestled among leaves and twigs, and hair streaked with leaves and dust, you appear to be halfway melded into the ground.
Some small part of your mind reminds you gently that you cannot stay here forever. Back home there are people who will worry about you and who you will worry for in turn, and the approach of yearly duties that you must return for, especially now that hope has been proven to lead a resilient if twisted existence. Objects sitting in your bedroom will miss you, and you're no more keen to willingly abandon them than you are to dump all your responsibilities on Arbor and Heron. Not to mention that from a strictly technical standpoint, there are laws that would forbid even this short peregrination, let alone a full-fledged attempt at running away.
All of this feels far from you, though. There is something calming about simply lying here and listening to the sounds of the forest around you. Cities don't speak very much unless spoken to (no doubt a result of being created, shaped, and ultimately destroyed by humans), so it's been a long time since you were able to immerse yourself in an environment they way you used to, before you lived among your birth species. Now, humming quietly along to an ancient oak lullaby and gently petting the tuft of grass beside your head (A little higher, a little left, there there there!), you realize that you almost forgot how much you love the world you live on and in and beside.
You are not happy, and still don't know if you ever will be again, but threading your pained mind through the veins of the forest's life is akin to putting ice on a laceration. The wound is still there, ready to spring up the moment it's irritated, but as long as you don't focus on it you can notice other things around it.
The clouds still try to whisper to you, calling forth the dreams that haunt the corners of your mind. Tears begin to leak from your eyes and run down to the dirt below, though you try not to pay attention. Luckily, the rocks come to your defense, raising their voices in chorus to blot out the clouds. Through the tears you smile, glad even in your anguish that you still have such wonderful friends.
We're a submarine submerging
We're simply smiling at the earth
We're sending roses to the loved ones
Who had a hand in our rebirth
But still another day I'll cling to you
For faint directions home
Where we all will sit with open arms
To try to block the rocks we've thrown
