we've all got demons [sisterhood vs 3 buffalo; day 1]

owen {♔} bowers-fox

As the sun begins to set over the dusty, golden fields, the longing for home sets in. Everything about my simple home now seems so elegant, so welcoming compared to the bed of sand that promises to invade every sense of personal space with its presence. There’s nothing I want more than the creaking frame of my own bed, matched by Cody’s grumbling as he turns over in annoyance of the noise. At this point, I’d even take Duncan’s incessant door slamming at three in the morning over the silence that’s only interrupted by noises of things I don’t want to see in the light (not that I’d want to run into them now, either).

Thoughts of home and the comfort it would bring are disturbed by the blaring of the anthem, its bright light cutting through the darkness like a diamond-edged knife. Faces flash, five in total, though I don’t recognize many of them at all. The boys from three and six and the girls from five, ten, and twelve. However, even more stirring than the faces that do appear are the ones that don’t. The nineteen of us left include myself, Charlie, Aelia, and Darius. But this also includes Leon, and the thought of his wandering along almost brings a bit of sadness to mind. Almost.

Our surroundings aren’t pleasant, but we’ve made ourselves as comfortable as possible for what we have. Aelia and I have laid our things in the same central location, and I pull my knees to my chest as I watch Charlie, who has made herself comfortable out just a little ways from the rest of us. Aelia’s churning stomach has seemed to calm down a bit, and I’m glad for it, because the last episode left me a bit sick myself, and I wasn’t too eager to follow up in her footsteps.

The anthem is long gone for the night, and darkness covers the sky again as night engulfs us like a blanket, suffocating us further in the already warm environment. Even though the night has brought about a slight drop in temperature, sweat is still leaving me in an uncomfortable state of humidity, but at this point, there’s little to do about it. So as Charlie mouths off more profanities and Darius settles himself in the corner, I stretch out in the sand, looking to the sky and pretending there are still stars to wish upon. The void of nothingness that sprawls across it leaves the entirety of the stars to my imagination, and I imagine shining specks of hope dotting across it, and the one that almost falls to the earth as the one in which I can cast my wish upon (my wish of not dying here, of being able to go home and hug my brothers and feel anger radiate from Saffle, but I can’t experience any of that if I’m hidden behind the confines of a wooden casket).

My thoughts spin around me and twist themselves about my body to the point where they’re choking me, along with the shirt that’s sticking to my skin and the humidity that hangs over the air, and it’s all simply suffocating. All I wish to do is escape it in whatever form is available, but my choices are limited. So I choose sleep, and I lay my head against my hands and I shut my eyes as tight as I can because that’s all I can do. And there’s some point in which it works, for I pass into the cover of night and I don’t wake until the morning sun shines across me, waking up each and every muscle as I stretch myself in an attempt to alleviate the tightness that’s overcome me.

My eyes squint at the overwhelming sight of blinding light that’s made itself visible about the entire arena. As I rub my eyes in an attempt to clear them, Charlie’s still sleeping form crosses my line of vision, and I take a step towards her to wake her up, but quickly decide against it. Now wasn’t the day I wanted to meet my death, especially not for that reason.

Aelia’s already heading off in a different direction, trying to make some use of the area we’re still in, and it looks like she’s having a bit of luck. I jog off to join her, doing my best to not slip in the shifting sand as I throw my bag over my shoulder and match my pace to hers. The wood she’s found is the same as that which I gathered yesterday. I turn to grab my bag and examine it again, falling a few steps behind Aelia as she continues again. However, her screams cause me to almost drop my hold of the wood, and I’m about to call out and ask what she’s seen (though I really don’t want to know). But as I lift my eyes, the question that’s crossed my mind is answered, and if it wasn’t for my voice catching in my chest I’d scream too.

Before any process of actions can filter through my mind, she’s swinging at the beast, and better judgment gets the best of me as I fling myself at it too.

owen {♔} bowers-fox

My knife flies wide to the right side of the animal, and profanities would leave my mouth if I wasn’t struck silent by my own incompetence. The thing was massive, Owen, how the hell did you miss it? The answer was simple, I had never been trained to use the metal objects that lay in my hands, and it was only by chance that until this point the knives had made some kind of contact with my target. However, this is the actual sense of reality that sits defeated on the ground next to the beast, and it’s fabricated again in words as Charlie turns my way and shoots out words between attacks, “Just hit the damn thing.” As if wasn’t apparent, that was my goal, even if I wasn’t quite accomplishing it.

I whirl around to face her momentarily, letting my gaze turn from the animals to the back of her head as I shout across the small distance between us, “Oh really, Charlie? That wasn’t what I was trying to do or anything!” I realize that she does not hold me on the same level as herself, and she shouldn’t, for she was the strong, charismatic, some-kind-of-career from district one and I was the clumsy, inaccurate, volunteer-for-his-brother from district eight. We were opposite ends of the spectrum in every way possible, so for us to have banded together strikes me as some kind of crazy. It was even crazier to think we would get along, for Charlotte Brownings did not answer to me, nor Aelia Vanderwell or Darius Radler, nor death itself, and hell would freeze over before she did.

My attention turns back to Darius as he slices at the buffalo again, but unlike his last show of strength, this one falls short, only nicking the animal on its back (not that he’s really falling short of much, for I completely missed my target). I begin to raise another knife in preparation to attack, but I drop my hand quickly as two of the buffalos turn to retaliate at Darius and before I can blink an eye he’s left with a deep gash on his back and a smaller one to match on his neck. I swallow my fear as the third turns towards Charlie, and common indecency tells me to run to her aid as the animal slices a deep cut onto her chest. However, my feet have frozen me to my place, and instead of being any help whatsoever, I can only stand in the shifting and call out softly to her. “Charlie?”

Despite the heavy blows we’ve been receiving, I seem to be the only one caught up in the latest of these, and my thoughts shift constantly between Darius, Charlie, and Aelia. They’re all in much worse shape than I am, and I shudder a bit as I attempt to imagine the pain that they’re in and how I would deal with it. I had never had much of a pain tolerance, and even the shallow cut that crossed my bicep was causing painful heat to surround the area. I touched my finger to the fresh blood and winced, quickly wiping it on my already weathered shirt before watching Aelia swing again at the beast that we had been so incessantly trying to kill.

Her hit is solid, cutting long and deep into the meat of the animal’s thigh, and it wails in pain as she draws her knife back. The buffalo that Darius and Charlie have been attacking seems to be on its last leg as well, and it can’t take much more to push either of the two over the verge to death. I let out a shaky breath and pick up a knife hesitantly, remembering my previous attempt at valiancy and remembering the blow it had done to my self-confidence as I take aim, and the world falls quiet for a moment as I focus on the area in which I would like my knife to land.