Better Than Words {Rave//Drought Plot}

At first, the announcement of district three's participation in the drought calamity barely caught Aceline's attention, since she could probably aid the same at home as she could in the middle of arid lands. Omitting her restful vocal chords, likely it was she would have signed up without loath; however, regardless of her resplendent attempts of overcoming the lousy voice that withdrew from her, achieving anything worthwhile would take twice as long with her tagging along. Nevertheless, Esrooke would find it unwarranted for her to go unaccompanied, so arguing was futile. Perhaps, she could convince him if she threaded her theories together for him at least, because they both ached for ways to find Spades. Of course, it ceased to matter with either or, since the butterflies raved in her gut everytime word of the drought reached her ears.

Winsomely, however, her hands sketched the thoughts of her brother's whereabouts into her notebooks in substitution to whatever variables and theorems were supposed to take its place. Spades loathed crowded places, so any districts save for the lower five were absurd guesses, and the smog that litered their home mimicked that of district eight's and nine's residency. Thankfully for her, that left only districts ten, eleven and twelve for guess's work, and two of those being free rides for her if she took up a capitol's overture. Guess work was a proper mistress, but Spades fell in love with animals in pop up books and tales instead, and even with a handful of year's difference, his realm of thinking likely differed slightly.

With a little gumption, the constellation of evidence building Spades' location in district ten secured itself together properly so well, she even believed its flawlessly absurdity. Despite the enormity of Panem, Aceline's pompous face gleamed with the prospect of actually piecing together the trail her brother left behind, even with Esrooke's averting squabbles rivaling her surmises. The desperate postulates of her brother being tangible to her once again were refined in the air as the flaws in her diagrams became more apparent with every self-evaluation of her reasons. Regardless, her older brother permitted her ideas as long as she found someone to chaperon her, per usual, yet Aceline was contempt with the dandy images of cattle, and her mirror male image, and chapping ground, and winds scraping her skin like sandpaper.

Of course, few people's names were scrapped onto the list of familiars she could ask to accompany her; a boy she was friends with as children, named Balthazar, would have came, but he simply didn't desire to. Her cousin, Vivian, would have joined her trip, yet her parents refused to allow her, as her memory faltered like the skin layer of the lower districts, while her close friend, Staci, refused to go, as her mom had it going on. Eventually, the list waned down to the embodiment of brash and eccentric stars. Unlike the dismaying associates, he agreed to pair at the train and Esrooke agreed to walk her down to their rendezvous.

Delightfully, Aceline soaked in the atmosphere of the silver-plated train station, with the chrome tinted air filling her lungs like nostalgia, while pages ripped jaggedly from her journal padded the rim of the satchel hugging loosely at her hips. Esrooke wrapped himself around her with the smell of warmth and beer thrashing with a wave against the steel scent, as he grasped her tightly like if he let go she wouldn't return instead of coming back duplicated. Regret plucked at her internal strings like chords as her brother choked before releasing her, but she pranced onto the train nonetheless. Like a lovely ghost, her own reflection smiled back at her while she wrapped her bag around her seat near the back of the train in her own solitude watching her brother slug back to his part-time shift at the candy store around the corner from their house.

Scrumptious dissolved sugar coated her tongue as she lunged a handful of the peppermints Esrooke smuggled into her bag, of course, as he was prone to during times where they weren't able instantaneously, such as when he knew he wouldn't make it back from work by the time Aceline returned from where ever she went off to occasionally. It became more of a flamboyant reminder for Esrooke than for Aceline, with his nerves cringing at the thought of Aceline leaving like Spades, or Tesla, or Eve. Anonymously, her partner for the time being slunk beside her, while his bag slide under the chair adjacent to her's. Panic rose to her cheeks in the form of red as she realized that the hour long train ride meant talking to the boy, which was for misses in their last endeavor out in the outskirts of the district.

Burrowing her face into the cooling window evolved into an entire realm of solitude for her to toy with, while the boy's gaze behind her trekked the resplendent parallel world shown to them through the dimensional glass. Somewhere in the trees, her brother's hand prints lay as tattoos on the environments like a breadcrumb trail, reading his story to Aceline as mute as she. Blurred trees coated the landscape like melting mint on her tongue with the smog from their district dissolving so far away, until the dark walls of a tunnel suffocated the train like the smoke and nicotine that confined her like she was swimming by simply existing. Encased by darkness save for the dim lights built on the floorboard, the existence of anything beyond her clear portal seemed irremediable, while the synchronized swishing of Brady's swinging legs beside her ring as ambiance with the muted light.

Enthralled by the simplicity surrealism surrounding her silenced companion, her eyes mimicked his restless legs, trailing his image from the calloused hands to tawny cheeks unlike her's, which again morphed into a variant of red. However, his eyes traced the reckless wave of bangs and the shortcomings of his valiant breaths to guide them elsewhere, until a hoarse chuckle ripped from her throat on accident, revealing the white and red painted streaks behind her sealed lips, and embracing him from the dream like stance. An awkward grin grew like an apology across her face, while Brady's matched, except for it lit up the seats between them brighter than any of the lights scaling the floor could, as the word "dork" burned into her mind with another chuckle.

As if on cue, the tunnel brokeway to the open area of district ten, as Aceline's heart beats grew more rapid. The last time she and her brother met was before even reaping age, so how did she know he even wanted to see her, or that she wanted to see him. Panic rose like gravity to the top of her body as the anxiety shot through her body, that maybe she'd rather have the fact of knowing he was alive, then actually seeing him alive. The ground no longer felt like home, with it chapped like frozen lips, while the atmosphere was livid, but with the lingering decay of purpose. With the halting freeze of the train, the stampede of district three citizens rushed to the door in floods as Brady's hand grasped onto her arm, besides the one not so fluent movement to unhook her satchel, the pair of them current out the door.

Absurdly, her feet caught the ground like a match, igniting the butterflies jetting through her arteries, because this isn't where she wanted to be, no longer did she wish to be caught in the crowd of disten ten and district three and district one and district six. Aceline wanted to be with Esrooke and Brady and Vivian back in three where she was off wishing and not knowing. She didn't want to know anymore about Spades, and the synchronized beating of her heart and feet across the chaffed the ground drowned out the voices of the people escaping the bus and Brady and the verge of crying because she left Esrooke, and Spades wasn't going to be in district ten because everything was dying.