cloistered {day 3 - leticia vs. unsaid}

Her dreams are filled with hazy hallucinations, transcending between vibrant and painfully bright shapes to a shadowy darkness that feels as though it's swallowing her whole. She comes close to downing the entire canteen multiple times, but forces herself not to, shaky hands pushing it to the bottom of the mail sack. Out of sight, out of mind. But her dreams make for a sleepless night, and as morning envelopes her surroundings, she can guess that she probably got anywhere between half an hour to an hour's sleep, at the most.

After running from the fight at the rock, she'd put space between herself and Ronan's alliance and found somewhere relatively hidden for the night. A boy's face, someone she did not know but distantly recognised, illuminated the night sky, and all she could think about was how antsy the Capitol will be after the second day. Only two corpses have been pulled from the arena so far. It's despicable, to them at least - she can only shudder as she thinks of what they'll have in store for the tributes today.

Maybe they'll focus on the larger alliances. They've spared her so far, aside from lynching the mutts on her and the other tributes the previous day. Even then, she emerged from the battle with just a minor graze across her shoulder, one which seals itself up overnight. All that remains of the mutts is the darkened bloodstain adorning her poncho. The more she looks at it, the less it bothers her; it's nothing like what she got in the bloodbath.

Firewood is her priority. She worked on making fires during training, and she knows that boiling water will purify it. Once it's boiled, she can drink. She ate the cheese after fleeing yesterday, sating the hunger that had festered within her stomach. She doesn't know where she's going, but it's dry - no signs of water around for as far as she can see, making her ever more grateful that she filled the canteen to the top.

It looks like there hasn't been rain here for decades. The earth is cracked, and something about the heat of the arena and the dryness of her mouth makes her even more dizzy than usual. She's never felt dehydration like this before. Sometimes she's been working non-stop all day, no time to eat or drink, in the humid heat of the bakery, but it's pathetic compared to the hallucinations of the night and the way she stumbles blindly around now, trying to find any signs of firewood.

Her saving grace comes in the form of what she's looking for, and she rushes over to collect it, hand still pressed against her chest as less of a defence mechanism and more of a way to remain grounded. She crouches down, head foggy and vision clouded, and reaches a hand out-

-only to feel a sharp, burning sting in her back as her flesh is torn into.

She stumbles, and falls forward, but her body regains itself before her mind can even comprehend what's going on, and she's turning and swinging the scythe blindly before seeing what hit her. That's.. her delirious mind slurs its own words, and she focuses her vision on the person - is that a person? 

It's nothing like a person. It's - am I hallucinating? It has to be some sort of hallucination. It looks like some kind of horse, but with wings? She doesn't understand what she's looking at or what she just swung at, but she knows one thing; she killed a winged mutt before, and she can do it again.

As blood flows freely from the wound on her back, she remembers the words that have been keeping her going even as dehydration encases her being-

Survive.

She feels flames within her chest. Maybe it's the wound burning, maybe it's dehydration, or maybe it's something more; something meaningful. The initial shock of the mutt's attack wears off quickly, turning instead into rage. The beast had interrupted her. If it wasn't for its untimely arrival, she could have boiled the water, been able to drink-

She lets go of her empathy. The beast does not deserve her pity.

Her scythe does not cut deep. In her shock, she must have failed to put enough strength into the attack. She braces herself for the recoil, the creature to attack back, but its hooves meet air and she is unscathed. Pain shoots through the gash in her back, and she wishes she could hold it the same way she held the one on her chest, protect the blood that so visibly stains her poncho. It could have been worse. She could have been facing the beast when it attacked.

No cannons have fired so far. She thinks of the twenty-one other tributes, fighting their own battles, both within their minds and in the arena itself. It's hard to fight people. She tries to imagine how she'd manage to fight the other tributes - she thinks of Ronan, she thinks of his ally who is barely older than her, she thinks of the girl whose ear she took off all that time ago at the bloodbath. She can't imagine killing any of them. She hasn't even seen a corpse yet. She's behind most of the tributes in many ways, and this is just another one.

Everything feels heavy. Every time she lifts the scythe, swinging forward with as much force as her small frame can muster, it feels like she's carrying the weight of the world.

So she uses the force of it to send an attack directly towards the mutt, willing it to just leave her alone.

The metal barely grazes the beast once more, and disappointment swells in her chest, festering within the wound. The beast emerges, and it flies -

-she's certain she's not hallucinating anymore.

As always, the Capitol's creation is beautiful. It circles her, as though sizing her up, a small girl against a beast too mesmerising to be haunting this cursed place. As it circles, she feels herself grow dizzier, head spinning with each movement it makes, and she's so dazed and delirious that when the creature swoops down she makes no effort to stop it.

It is a spectacle unlike anything she's seen before.

She feels a dull pain in her arm, and for a moment she thinks that she's okay, that it was just a scratch, but as she looks down she sees an accretion of blood, a lake forming on her right arm, staining the poncho, and it's as though she is bleeding out before her own eyes. The pain is numbed, but the sight makes her want to throw up. She's sure that, if there was more in her stomach than the small bit of cheese she'd eaten the previous day, she would have done so.

Her body moves against her will. The adrenaline courses through her, causing her to act solely on impulse, body corrupted and controlled by rage and rage alone. Curse the beautiful creature for cutting deep into her flesh. The blood stains the poncho, and there's no mistaking how weak she is now. And it's all their fault. (She's not sure if she's addressing the horse or the Capitol, but she knows it's all the same in the end.)

She climbs atop the horse, swiftly and nimbly lifting herself off the ground.

"Hey, asshole."

She doesn't care about her family hearing her anymore. In the past few days, swearing has become some sort of strange solace for her. It separates the Leticia from now and the Leticia from home. In a place like this, she needs to separate from the sweet baker's daughter who wouldn't harm a fly. She leans closer towards the horse's head.

"If you're gonna fly, you're taking me with you."

For good measure, she brings the scythe down on the beast again. Fly, you beautiful creature.

She wonders where the winged beast will take her.

Her scythe cuts deep, and the world is blurry after that.

Even after the flight in the hovercraft before the bloodbath, which technically marked her first experience of 'flying' - even if she couldn't even look down at the expanse of land beneath like she can now - it's nothing compared to flying atop the horse. For a moment, she can forget that it's trying to kill her. That it was designed with the sole purpose of appearing in this place at this time and interrupting her quest for clean water.

Almost forgets, until she doesn't.

The beast becomes enraged by the disturbance, spinning and circling. Her hands immediately find a death grip on its mane, willing herself not to let go. She looks down, and holy fuck, she's grateful that she's not afraid of heights. The dry, hollow expanse of the land beneath her becomes evident all around her, and in the short moments she manages to take in her surroundings, she really can't find anything noteworthy.

She wishes she could tame the beast, even if she knows it's impossible. Flying horses would trump the regular ones that Ronan and his alliance had yesterday. She has a fleeting second to entertain the fantasy before the horse bucks forwards, bringing her flying off it.

Flying experience number three - falling experience number one.

The Dream comes back to mind, and she realises that it's happening. Back at the reaping, she'd been flying all through the night, her mind soaring, and she'd never had the chance to fall like all the other times before she'd woken up. Ever since then, it's as though she's been seeing life through a filter. She's not sure if her mind's playing tricks on her, but the edges of everything, even her blade, seem just a little softer than they were before.

When the horse hurls her towards the ground, everything jolts back into action. Her scythe has never look so sharp, so poised, and the bloodstains on it make her already unhinged mind descend even further into confusion. It lashes out at her with its hooves, but fails to make a mark on her. She has no time to think, no time to look around anymore.

With an upwards strike, she tries to catch the horse once more. No more flying. Her only focus now is to get it the hell out of her way.