we're taller than that, you'll see | ambrosia day 1

"He's safe with me, always would have been if he'd just stayed. People don't do that though, do they?" Ambrosia asks, "They don't stay, no matter how hard you hold on to them. I know that, I know it better than anyone,"

Ambrosia holds Titus crumpled in his fist, safe there. He mutters to himself as he picks his way slowly across the terrain. His head feels hot, sweat beads there and drips slowly down his back and forehead, dripping down and down further and further and it's like he's melting. He stops to wipe an arm across his brow and then continues doggedly on, eyes on the rock formation ahead of him. Ambrosia isn't on the same journey as everyone else in this place and he knows it, he always has because he's never been.

The goal has never been to win, not even to fight or not fight, any of those things. The goal has always been to simply live another day, "Just one more goddamned day," he whispers. Ambrosia stops and looks over his shoulder, eyes always on someone who is not there and hasn't been for awhile. Still, he feels Cickle, his twin sister's, eyes on his back every day.

"Can't run from me, Ams," her voice comes for him on the wind no matter how fast he runs, "I know all your favourite hiding spots."

He picks up his pace anyway, hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife that he picked up at the Sheriff's office. The sun has a heartbeat over his head and he can feel Titus' eyes on him, always on him, judging. "Stop fucking looking at me," he growls towards the blue, blue sky over his head. Ambrosia picks up a rock and hurls it as hard as he can at it, hatred hitting him harder and faster than it ever had before.

"You stupid fuck."

Ambrosia licks his lips, he needs water. He's been thirsty before though, plenty of times. The feeling of a dry mouth and an empty stomach has been normal for a long time. Still, he would actually kill for just a sip of water right about now.

"The hunger games," he says, looking into the eye of the empty canteen he grabbed, "They should call it the thirst games, what with all the fucking going on."

He laughs then, short and happy. There's a boy in there somewhere still.

There always has been.

The rock in front of him loombs. It looks like a thumb pointed up, probably a monument to the Gamemakers and their own deluded thinking that made them feel like gods. Ambrosia knows that they aren't gods, none of them are. No matter how much they alter their skin, no matter how many fences they build, they bleed red just the same as the people in the Districts.

Not that Ambrosia cares about that, "I'm no revolutionary," he mutters, while scrambling over the dredges of the thumb's formation, "Honest, I'm not a hero and I'm not a villain, I'm a kid you idiots."

But this place made a mockery out of anyone and everyone and that was only proven by the paper still crumpled up in Ambrosia's hand. There'd have been no murders at all if it weren't for the games. If anyone should be wanted for murder, it's the Capitol. It's a tired song but somebody has to sing it and Ambrosia's been practicing his yodelling.

He scrambles up onto a rock and surveys the land around him, staring as far as he can see but there's not another person or thing in sight. Ambrosia has never been truly alone before this. He grew up in a bustling district, his knowledge of the concept of being alone is limited. It begins to creep up already, a lonliness, so unsettling and foreign that it burns where it touches.

He shudders, shaking the feeling away. He doesn't need anyone.

If he doesn't think about it, about anything, he doesn't need anyone. Ambrosia shuts his eyes, lets a slip of a breeze wash over him and he thinks it's Cickle's breath on his neck. It never is, she's dead. He always forgets but she's dead and there's only half of him left now. Half was still better than nothing.

When he opens his eyes, a parachute is landing gently in front of him, carefully timed for the most elegant effect. A note is pinned to the outside of a capsule and Ambrosia ignores it. He can't read. Well, at least not without sounding it out with some difficulty first and no one has time for that.

Inside the capsule are a number of useful items, one of them being a bulletproof vest that Ambrosia shimmies over his head. Another is an instax camera with a packet of film, just like the one he has at home that he robbed from Titus' grave. Even deeper inside, there is a baseball bat, wooden and filled with nails. It appears to even still have specks of blood on it. Ambrosia weighs it in his hands and then stands and gives it a couple of practice swings.

"Titus' bat, huh?" he asks no one in particular, "Sick fucks."

He stands then and gathers up the items in the capsule, including the note to sound out later around the campfire. He hasn't finished climbing the thumb yet and there had to be water somewhere over them/thar hills. Sentimentality could wait.