a{m i l l i o n}pieces in a{b i l l i o n}places

a{m i l l i o n}pieces in a{b i l l i o n}places Jun 26, 2012 23:30:08 GMT -5

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Post by gm bourgeois decadence [aya] on Jun 26, 2012 23:30:08 GMT -5

With every sun that sets I am feeling more
Like a stranger on a foreign shore
With an eroding beach disappearing from under me

Stark Harper —

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Due to a combination of a lack of enemy tributes, the treacherous weather, and, to a small degree — though Stark would never admit it — seasickness, it was decided that the District One girl and her lackey would head back to the mainland. Honestly, Dante wouldn't have had much say in the matter had he disagreed, but Stark was willing to give him input in the discussion to placate him, to make him feel as if their alliance was a team rather than a dictatorship. Considering the amount of dominance the blonde exerted over her companion, it was a miracle that her pet cyclops hadn't done anything to rebel yet.

The entire swim, however, Stark allowed her mind to wander away from the choppy ocean, away from the tepid rain that met the top of her head every time she came up to draw a breath. She permitted herself to escape from the tropical realm that had been her home for the past three days and some odd hours, to ignore the Hunger Games entirely. After all, swimming was a menial, basic task, even for the career that hadn't spent much time around water in her life, and Stark could use the break from swimming to dissect the fever dream she'd had the previous night.

For the heartless, soulless girl, dreams were an exceedingly rare occurrence. It made sense, of course; the large part of her imagination — conscious or unconscious — was dedicated to inventing new and interesting ways to fight with, maim, or murder her targets. But the previous night, her waning fever had left her a labyrinthine nightmare as her body slowly cooled. She spent her swim pondering the strange dream, convinced that it meant nothing, but deeply curious about what piece of her mind had concocted the vision.

She stood alone in the middle of a field of wheat. It didn't matter how she got there, and as far as she could see there was nothing but grain. It was a sea of blonde, and had she not been as tall as she was, Stark would've been swallowed up by the wheaten waves without a second thought. In the palm of her hand was an ornate clock, a miniature grandfather, constructed out of mahogany, with a dozen brushed silver numbers — though they were not sequential — each of them a different style than the others, as if they'd been plucked from other machines. A single skeletal finger replaced the clock's hands, and it spun wildly around, cycling counterclockwise through each or the digits: Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Four, Four, Three, Three, Two, Two, One.

Finally, the instrument settled on one of the twos — the blocky, rugged number, as opposed to the elegant script that preceded it — and a hollow clang emanated from somewhere outside the small clearing, sending a shockwave of reverberations through every inch of her body. For a brief moment, everything was too quiet, too still, too tense. The air was palpable for a moment, and every stalk of wheat froze straight up as if she was standing in the midst of a movie that had suddenly become paused. Suddenly, the clock's arm began whirring again and the square 2 dropped off of its face at the very instant that Cyclops Ramadar burst from the surrounding grain, bleeding profusely from the temple. She opened her mouth to reprimand him for being a little girl and getting hit in his useless head, but she was promptly interrupted by the second chime of the clock.

The numbers nine, ten, one, and three fell off in turn, a corresponding gong echoing through the vast space, despite the fact that there was scarcely any surface for the sound to ricochet off of. All around them, the grain began to shift as four figures circled them like sharks prepared to strike. As the boy with the sunglasses from District 9 burst through the grain, Stark hurled the demon clock at his head, but although it appeared to fall somewhere in the grain, a glance downward revealed that the device was still in her hand, still whirring and chiming and summoning the rest of the arena. His allies — Mini-Mace, Reyes Jr. with his stupid anchor, and the little girl all rushed into the clearing, pointed teeth and wicked claws bared like mutts. In a panic, she tried to bury the device, because while she was Stark fucking Harper, she couldn't fight off eleven others with no weapon with only a single ally — or, she decided, glancing at Dante, who was as good as useless when he wasn't wounded, effectively alone.

She knelt on the ground, hurriedly pawing at the dirt, desperately trying to drown the clock in the earth at her feet. Clang. That District 7 girl who was with the boy Stark had taken her coconut from pushed her way through the wheaten curtain. Clang. Clang. The boys from Three and Four — Claws and Fits, she remembered — joined the expanding fray, with — clang — the klutzy boy from Six tumbling in behind them. The tributes seemed to meld together, the outlines of their bodies blurring as they fought and as they pushed their way towards her. Clang. Clang Destiny — the Career pack one — and Pandora, that surly boy from Eight that had pulled a 9 in training, danced into the battle behind them. Stark stood, brushed the dirt off of her knees, taking a step backward as the amorphous ball of shadow comprised of indistinct tributes pressed towards her. It followed her movement, acquiring speed and consuming its surroundings much like a snowball that had been pushed down a mountain, forcing Stark to keep stepping backwards in retreat, refusing to take her eyes off of the adversary before her. However, she didn't know how long she could keep running from, and was bracing herself to fight the enemy when she backed into Penelope Libertine's harpoon.

At first, it seemed as if the world was melting all around her, slowly dripping into nothingness, like a wax city over a flame. But as she looked down to survey the spear that had been jabbed through the space in her chest where her heart would've been if she'd had one, Stark realized that she was the one who was dissolving. The air around her swirled around in a vortex that melded into a whirlpool as she became a sand sculpture cast into the depths of the ocean, her entire existence falling away, grain by grain…

[onward to the cove!]

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