Iro Felix // Wanderer

The wild girl lets two easy breaths pass through her lips as she plans her attack.

She sits, perched atop a branch, her lithe frame poised as she stares down at a buck, its head bent low as it sniffs the leaves and the broken twigs pressed into the dirt. She readies herself, gently lifting her makeshift bow into the air, nocking an arrow into place.

She’s done this dozens of times before, but she worries nonetheless – she hasn’t had anything to eat in at least three days, and if the deer gets away..

…

(She won’t let it get away.)

And as she’s about to let the arrow fly free, just before she lets it go, something heavy and lightning-quick drops from the sky, and she panics. The bowstring snaps forward, and her heel snags against the back of the branch.

When she falls, she plummets backwards to the forest floor, with nothing to catch her but the dirt. Her body smacks against the ground and her head bounces with a thud, but she doesn’t cry out. She scrambles backwards and presses herself against the tree’s trunk, one hand flying to the sheathed knife attached to her belt.

When she looks up, this time she wants to scream.

The deer that should have been her kill – her meal - has fallen limp in the jaws of a mountain lion, whose teeth are clamped around its neck.

In an instant, the mountain lion releases the deer from its chokehold and is bounding toward her on deft paws. She finally screams – though nobody will save her out in the wilderness – and stabs forward with her knife as the beast leaps into the air, jaws opening in the hope of clenching around her throat.

For a moment, the wild girl and the mountain lion are like one creature, writhing through the dirt upon impact. The girl feels her knife tear into flesh, but the beast tries to reach her neck, its sharp claws scraping through both sides of her ribcage as it tumbles into her. It pins her to the ground as they fall, but it can’t reach for an attack – her knife is stuck deep in its throat, holding its head back. Blood begins to drip from the open wounds on either side of her torso, and she feels the beast try to struggle away, weary of the knife.

Her kill is not instant, but it is effective. Her knife tears deep through the beast’s neck as it pulls away from her, and soon the blood begins to pool at the animal’s feet.

A few moments later, it collapses to the dirt.

Iro Felix steps forward and bares her teeth, blood oozing down her sides.

”Nice try,” she spits, staring down at its limp corpse.

----------

Ever since that day, Iro Felix has sauntered through the forests like a warrior-woman. That’s not to say that she didn’t look battle-ready in the first place; she’s always been the type to take extra precaution to ensure her own safety, and you can see it in the weapons she carries along. A bow and quiver slung around her shoulder, an array of knives attached to her belt, and a dagger in her boot. Though it might seem excessive to an outsider, her weapons are her livelihood; she uses the bow to hunt and the knives to clean her kills, and the spare in her boot for emergencies only.

After her encounter with the mountain lion, she looks even wilder, at least when she’s wandering the woods. When she’s out in the open like that, Iro tries to look threatening to scare off any more beasts that might try to take her down, so she’s done the natural thing; she’s taken the mountain lion and most of its body for resources. From the beast’s pelt she fashioned a warm cape, and with its teeth she created a necklace and a spear tipped with the sharpest tooth. With a needle and thread she used its paws to create gloves, and even attached its claws to flaps on the inside. Its skull is a trophy in itself, but sometimes she’ll use it as a bowl.

When Iro finds herself sneaking into a district, she’ll have to tame down her appearance to appear normal and, even more importantly, draw attention away from herself to keep the Peacekeepers off of her trail. In the districts, she looks presentable. Nice, even. She’ll clean up with river water before she even steps into the fence line, short black hair all brushed and pulled out of her face. It depends on the where she’s going, really; nobody wants to look like a fool walking into District 12 all fancy and clean, and Iro’s not in the mood to get caught anytime soon.

If all else fails, sometimes she thinks she could flirt with a Peacekeeper to get herself out of a dangerous situation. She understands that sometimes men find her attractive (even if she couldn’t give a damn about them), and for good reason. Her eyes are big and brown, her body tall and willowy, and her clothes sometimes fit nicely over her brown skin, at least when she’s not undernourished. More than anything, Iro tries to keep out of trouble, and if that means playing up her best traits, she’s willing to do so. Problem is, after a harsh winter or a bad storm she’ll lose too much weight, and then all of her features will be sunken and sad, her ribs too prominent and her face too thin, making her look weak and vulnerable.

Vulnerable is something she can never be. It’s like the situation with the mountain lion all over again. People can be deadly too, and that’s why she’s more cautious than she even needs to be, holding her head low or flirting her way out of situations, evading danger at every turn. It’s not a matter of anxiety as much as it’s about necessity, about survival, and Iro is careful. She covers her tracks and smiles politely at people on the district streets so it looks like she’s their neighbor, and hides in the shadows if she’s stalking through a place she shouldn't be. Rather than stealing from the people of a district, she enters and joins the ranks of street vendors that line the main square, calling out cheap prices for meat or carved wooden cutlery. If all else fails, she can always sell other services, and she’s not ashamed. Scores of other starving girls do the same, and they’re all out to make a living. Who cares?

No matter what, she’ll depart a district in a matter of days, once she’s earned enough money to buy supplies. Iro rarely forms attachments because she knows that she can’t stay, or else Peacekeepers will be knocking at her door asking why she isn’t registered as a citizen of the district, and she isn’t in any mood to die anytime soon. Then again, it’s always been like that. She hardly shed a tear leaving her home in District Nine, and people don’t tend stay in her life for very long.

More than anything, Iro holds a certain amount of pride in everything she does. She’s got more self-respect than people can sometimes handle, ‘cause she doesn’t take any crap and she won’t bother with people if they try to get through her hard shell of self-confidence. It’s a blessing and a curse, particularly because people can see her as narcissistic if her first impression is lacking, but she doesn’t pay any mind. What does she care if somebody doesn’t like her? It’s not like she’s ever going to see them again. And that’s the most reassuring thing she has to hold onto; her life moves by day-to-day, and she always grounds herself in the present, taking in the scent of the trees and the feel of dirt beneath her boots, unphased by the harsh realities of humanity.

It’s easy to live in the present when you’re not troubled by your past, and that’s why Iro lives in relative peace. She didn’t leave District Nine because she had a troubled home like so many others; in fact, her parents were particularly kind to her, instilling in her a love for the forest that couldn’t be ruined by anything, teaching her how to hunt, as was customary.

That is, until even more factories and refineries started going up. Then, the district she loved so much became a dump of smog and gray skies and soot sticking to her skin, and she couldn’t take a bow out and hunt in the forest because she was forced to work in one of the stupid refineries, and she felt broken. Trapped. Not to mention, her last reaping was approaching quickly, and she didn’t want to risk the chance of having so many entries put into the bowl.

One day, she took her parents’ old weapons and ran. She hasn’t returned to District Nine since, mainly because she doesn’t want her parents to convince her to stay. And how could she stay? More than anything, Iro understands that she belongs in a place where she can make her own choices, and the law-abiding sections of Panem aren’t included. She didn’t leave any siblings behind because she didn’t have any, and what friends she had were temporary anyways.

Love is a language she does not yet understand, and that is why she feels so comfortable.