dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7]

wimdy
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(While On a Horse) I Met a Hot Girl Who Reminded Me of a Plant

dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7] Jul 25, 2020 0:03:29 GMT -5

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Post by wimdy on Jul 25, 2020 0:03:29 GMT -5

The figure is too slight, shoulders too narrow to be his.

Kahinta doesn't waste her time looking at him any longer than she has to. Without a word, she turns and walks away, Oberon and Callum at her back, and Daemon six feet under.

---

Her fingers twitch around her urn, and she has to take a deep breath, closing her eyes to try and center herself. It's growing dark, and they've kept their fire as low as possible to avoid eyes. She's sure Dom and the other girl are still lurking around, and whoever came out of the-

Kahinta cuts off the thought, tightening her grip and lifting the container to her mouth so she can drink. There's no use in thinking about it, about him. It doesn't matter anymore.

There's a beeping from above, faint against the wind and flutter of the butterflies that still swirl around them in their flight from whatever had driven them across the arena. Across her arms, and in her hair, and perched on the edge of her urn. She dips a finger into the water and holds it out, one of the butterflies sucking the droplet little by little from her skin. Her eyes remain down until the beeping grows closer, twin sounds, until there are two packages dropping nearby.

"I got it," she mutters, voice low as she stands, jostling some of the butterflies from her body as she goes to pick up the packages and bring them back over. One gets tossed toward Oberon, and she opens the other quickly, pulling out what seems like several tubes that could interlock, and then the head of a shovel. A shovel? She blinks, face screwed up in confusion as she lifts the final piece out from the package and hefts it up for the others to see, her own eyes turning outward to the expanse of graves that stretch around them at all sides.

"You're joking," she breathes, shoulder slumping as she drops the head of the tool back down into the earth between her knees. Oberon's own package has a chisel and small hammer. An ask, if she ever saw one. Yesterday, bakers. Today?

She stares at the grave off behind them, blank slate stone and undisturbed plot, all dirt and grass and time long past. It's just the arena. It's not real. And yet... How many bodies had she seen fall, and how many remained? What would they find, if anything, beneath the earth?

With a sigh, Kahinta pushes up to her feet, still crouched as she pushes the pieces of the collapsible shovel together until it's complete. She scoops once, twice, smelling fresh turned earth so clear it settles something deep in her stomach, reminds her of hours in the yard building castles from crumbling clay, but she's not at home. All around her, death, spreading it's gossamer threads over them and obscuring them from sight, taking everything from them in the space between breaths and leaving them alone in the dark. Her eyes find Oberon and Callum once again, frown set heavy across her face.

"I hate this fucking place."

---

Hours later, a grave dug and names carved into stones all around them, Kahinta sits by the embers of their fire, fingers twisting around and around and around but never finding purchase. She's already popped the blisters that had formed while digging through the earth, sores spread wide in the cradles of her thumbs, in the palms of her hands.

She hardly feels it.

Callum and Oberon sleep, heavy in the thrall of their dreams, but Kahinta cannot bring herself to shut her eyes. Each blink feels like sandpaper scratched mercilessly across her cornea, but every time she closes them, she cannot bear to keep them closed. A wet gasp breathed against the dirt, a threat to send her somewhere after death, a hope dashed against the rocks and scattered amongst the butterflies.

Daemon is gone.

All night, she's been avoiding the thought, but she's felt it lingering at her back like the hazy shadow that skulks on the edge of her vision. Digging had let her focus, if only for a while. Taking the night watch helps her focus, if only for the second between the boys waking and sleeping. Her eyes fix on the sky, trying to wash the projection of his face from the record, but she still sees it etched into the stars far after the anthem has ended.

Daemon is gone.

Kahinta stands, quiet as possible, careful to walk around the deep pit in the ground, feet carrying her far enough away that the embers disappear from sight. Her hands shake where they're clutched against her upper arms under her cloak, the sharp reminder of her sores little comfort. Despite everything, she's still alive. Her hands hurt, and her head buzzes with thoughts, and her foot is sore from where it had driven into traps, but she is alive and she can feel it thrumming in her veins as sure as the sun rising, and he-

It's a quick, mindless move, to shove her fist into her teeth to muffle her sob, her lungs seizing with the force of it as she hurriedly ducks close to the ground. She tastes copper, but the sting isn't enough to tug her into the present, not when she opens her mouth to let go of her skin, and instead keens into her palm. He's gone; Daemon is gone, and she feels he loss settle heavy behind her ribs, a bubble she cannot burst, even as she sobs and feels the saliva pool in her mouth, the mucus in her nose. Tears sting at her eyes, and she can do nothing to stop them as she blinks once, twice, and shuts her eyes tight, twisting over her knees and curling into a ball on the ground, entirely exposed, entirely unaware of the arena around her.

Daemon is gone, and Kahinta knew it would happen, she did. She knew it, because with some level of certainty, she had known she'd have to make the choice in the end. If it had come down to getting home to Temple, or saving Daemon, she would choose her sister without fail every time. She just hadn't expected it to hurt. He is nothing to her. He was nothing to her, but the lie burns the back of her throat as she muffles her crying against her knees, one hand lifting to press against the back of her head, feeling the rough shave and stitches at the base, feeling fingers pass through her hair gently, easing the panic and anger after a fight with Oberon by a pond. His hands had wrought horror on others, but he'd been so kind and so stupid and she had wanted to shove his face into the dirt when he had flirted with her. He wasn't supposed to matter. None of them were supposed to matter.

He does.

Last Edit: Jul 25, 2020 21:31:48 GMT -5 by wimdy

Lyn𝛿is
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does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? ✯

dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7] Jul 25, 2020 9:58:58 GMT -5

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Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jul 25, 2020 9:58:58 GMT -5

o b e r o n .

He leans against one of the empty graves, teeth gritted, fingers wrapped tightly around the thick edge of rough stone. Ripred, everything hurt. His broekn ribs felt like they were grinding against each other every time he took a breath, and when he closed his eyes, it felt like Dom was trying to stab his heart out all over again.

Pain was just that, though - pain. Something to endure until the games ended, one way or another; and if Meredith could fling a knife into Daemon's throat and end his life while bleeding out on the ground, then he damn well expected just as much from himself. And when he thought back on the fight, the humiliation of Dom getting the jump on him stung like yet another bleeding hole stabbed into his chest.

A mistake to let their guard down. A mistake to spend the night gorging themselves in cookies and drink; they had always been taught that Ripred frowned on gluttony and immoderation, and that punishment would come to those who followed those urges. The anthems ought to have reminded them of that. Their pair was, at least, still alive, while many others were not.

The Eight girl they'd fought was finally dead. Daemon was dead. Meredith was gone, too, and he's at least a little bit proud of Daemon and their teamwork in taking her down. He tries to count up the faces left, and manages to come up with: four careers, both the Threes, both the Fives, and the Seven boy before drawing a blank.

All the extra cannons adding confusion had made him slow to notice, but now he saw how the Gamemakers had been slowly whittling down the lower districts since the Games began, and at this point he was pretty sure the three of them were the only ones left alive. No one in the Capitol wanted to risk another 82nd Games, and at that thought he lets out a bitter laugh. Leave it to Eleven to make the entire lot of them look bad.

He grits his teeth in fury and determination. The three of them had prevailed, no matter how many ways Nilima Rao and Veronica whatever-the-fuck tried to nudge them towards failure. The first day they'd stuck him and Kahinta next to Johnwayne and his lumberjack minions, and they'd survived. They'd been pitted against everything from the slippery Kenji, to mutts hiding in the damn ground, to Meredith's alliance with their field of traps, and by now every Career that was still alive to fight them.

They'd underestimated him, and Kahinta, and Daemon, for two of those Careers had been sent to their graves by them, and at least one was - if you even trusted the cannons - gone for good.

Let the Gamemakers keep trying to stack the odds against them, he thinks. Their efforts would only backfire, for so many of their opponents were hardly a match for Ten's character and determination.

The items float down, one package for him, one package for Kahinta. Perfect. As Kahinta digs, channeling her own anger at the dirt beneath their feet, he channels his into the stones, carving the names of the remaining tributes into each of them as best he could:

Dominique Mermaidus

Bill Johnwayne

Jade Morris

Kengi

Xenia

J. Wolfred

Persimmon Leto

Kestrel

Terra

He frowns as he finishes. There were definitely a few names missing from that list - the Three boy who'd made some damn good pies for them in the training center, or the drunk from Five, but who carves stuff like pie boy into a gravestone?

He doesn't mind not knowing their names, though. Sure, they would not be satisfying to cut down like Dom or the other Careers, but that was no matter. They weren't worth thinking too much about, anyways.

Last Edit: Jul 29, 2020 2:19:02 GMT -5 by Lyn𝛿is

"Yeah… You have to be careful when placing labels on good and evil, Celice. Never waste your anger on individuals. Always focus it on the evil within all of us."
- Lewyn, Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

pogue
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Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7] Jul 26, 2020 23:38:25 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Jul 26, 2020 23:38:25 GMT -5

C A L L U M L E A R E

Hi a litta bit of a WIP for this thread! I have dialogue from everyone

will fill this in tomorrow

In the wee early hours of the morning Callum, Kahinta, and Oberon are just starting to get ready for whatever fucked up shit the day has for them.

kahinta
"Wonder what they'll have in store for us today..."

oberon
"Bet they're driving us towards Johnwayne's gang or something. The Gamemakers must be pissed we haven't died yet."

kahinta
"They certainly have their expectations."

"The past couple victors have been career districts. They're probably trying to course correct Twelve and Eleven won a few years back."

kahinta
"It's all bullshit. We shouldn't be here at all, Careers or not."

oberon
"They're probably out to get us because Eleven went and did some sort of stupid shit again."

Callum would literally go silent after Oberon says that but would also throw out a concerned side glance

kahinta
"What do you mean Eleven did some stupid shit?"

oberon
"Honestly? Probably blowing stuff up, or attacking Peacekeepers, or starting some other sort of trouble. You know."

kahinta
"As if they haven't earned it. How many people in Eleven have been beaten in the streets without a damn reason? How many in Ten?"

oberon
"So goes the story."

wimdy
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(While On a Horse) I Met a Hot Girl Who Reminded Me of a Plant

dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7] Jul 27, 2020 0:06:07 GMT -5

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Post by wimdy on Jul 27, 2020 0:06:07 GMT -5

It feels as if someone has taken a knife and twisted it deep in her stomach, Oberon's words splintering inside of her like ice and crystalizing in the spaces it hollows out. Surely, he has to be joking. Nausea doesn't even begin to describe the way her words feel like they curdle behind her tongue, all acid and blinding acrid taste when his face reveals nothing, even as she pulls his bandages a little tighter without care that it may be going too far.

"So goes the story? Are you joking? What fucking district have you been living in? I've seen it with my own eyes." she says, little thought between the spaces of her breath as she exhales disbelief, sharp with an anger that took root deep inside her the day she watched her sister die.

"Hard to believe they're the angels they claim to be when you've got people going around doing shit like, like painting pictures of the president getting violently sodomized on the wall in pigs' blood."

Kahinta gives half a derisive snort, the sound choked off and loud amidst the quiet of the pre-dawn, lingering in the air long after she's clenched her teeth with a painful snap. Her eyes move quickly to look around them, at the dying glow of the embers that had once been a fire, a safety that had once brought her some level of warmth. There's nothing to be said for it now, not as she sees fog start to build in the far corners of the horizon around them, thicker than it has any right to be, even before the sun hits it to wash it away. They need to move, but she can't find it in herself to say it, can't bring herself to warn them of what danger might be coming when instead she feels like there is suddenly far more danger right beside her than anywhere else.

Her hands stop working on his bandages, letting the loose edges go as she pressed back onto her heels, crouched before Oberon and looking him straight in the face. Everything feels heavy, a weight dropped inside of her that pulls her down even farther. A reminder that she's alone, really alone, Daemon or no. There are no friends to be found in the Arena, Bette and Temple and the others be damned. There's no comfort to be found anywhere.

"It doesn't fucking matter if they're angels or if they paint pictures that make you blush like a schoolboy because you haven't got a stomach. You think they deserve to be brutalized because they decided to tell a Peacekeeper, 'hey, maybe don't murder my child because he stole an apple because he's literally starving because out President is a literal fucking dictator?' Good riddance the man's dead!"

Each word filters through her mouth before she has the chance to process that she's even saying them, teeth clacking together in harsh syllables that bleed from her like the wound Callum has struck against Jade, like she had struck against Niko, like so many others, so many of them used as fodder for no reason. She knows she's saying too much, speaking too loud, running her mouth in a way she's never had the courage to before, but the ice inside of her sears so cold it verges on heat in a way she's never felt.

"What fucking district have you been living in? Have you really seen that happen, or are you just spit-balling off rumors?" he spits back, and Kahinta swears her vision whites out for a moment with the rage that surges through her.

How? How is it possible that the both of them live in Ten, and yet Oberon cannot see? How is it possible that he's walked through the same streets that Kahinta has used in the dead of night to ferry person and weapon alike to safe haven, and not wondered why the glass had been broken, or the building hollowed out, or the person dragged to the square and stripped of their dignity before the world for no reason other than control?

Her breath feels ragged in her chest, and she wonders for just a moment what Melora must think of her now, close to snarling fury, face flushed against the dew of the dawn, eyes bloodshot from crying. Each word spat like vitriol at the world, but Kahinta realizes they must not be showing them at all. It wouldn't do to have one of their own criticize them, wouldn't do for a girl who by all their expectations should have died in the Bloodbath had survived long enough to do real damage to their carefully planned presentation. She opens her mouth to respond, but Callum's voice is a firm reminder in the growing fog that she cannot justify complying with.

“You both need to calm down before you get the wrong person’s attention and get us all fucking killed.”

"Callum's right. Let's all calm down.

Oh, if she could knock the look off of his face, something cautiously smug about him in turning the curve in a conversation in which he's shown his own ass. Kahinta stands quickly, legs shaking with how forcefully she moves, feet carrying her quickly to the side to make sure all of her things are in order. How this boy, boy, that she's spent days with, fighting and mending and yelling at, could possible think he has the right to tell her to calm down when he seems to find no fault in the mistreatment of their country, their district, their own families?

The sick feeling in her strengthens, and she wishes for a moment that Daemon was at her back, sure in the knowledge that he would go with her instead of sending her off on her own.

It's too late for regrets.

Lyn𝛿is
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does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? ✯

dig your own grave [UGG night 6 / morning 7] Jul 29, 2020 1:48:02 GMT -5

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Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jul 29, 2020 1:48:02 GMT -5

o b e r o n .

If there's one thing he doesn't expect, it's for Callum to be the reasonable one.

Here was the boy who'd attacked him in a murderous frenzy over a telephone not two days ago, who'd apparently spent the past several days wallowing in self-pity over his dead allies, and he was telling off Kahinta to calm down?

Well, not what he'd expected, but he'd take it.

"Calm down?" Kahinta screams back hysterically in response, and he looks back and forth between Kahinta and Callum, not sure which one of them she's directing her fury at. "How am I supposed to calm down? How are you so calm? You're just alright with being sent to your death because they said so? How is that okay?"

And then the words hit him, and he feels his own rage bubbling up in response. Here was Kahinta, standing there with not even a scratch on her, assuming this and assuming that. After all the arguments they'd had, he should have known she'd be a disappointment. He thinks back on all the days where she'd hung back and let him and Daemon face the blows from their enemies, and now she was telling him she'd been taking them for granted because she thought of him as wanting to come here and die?

"When the fuck," he snarls, "did I ever say I was alright with being sent here to kill people? Because I'm not. Is that really what you've been assuming about me all this time? That I want to be here?"

His words collide in mid-air with Callum's, who'd apparently appreciated Kahinta's outburst as little as he had. He doesn't miss how Callum's hand tightens around his knife, or the bitter shake of his head and laugh that erupts from his mouth before he unleashes his own retort at Kahinta.

“You think I’m okay with this? With the fact that I’m covered in the blood of my two allies and some girl from one?” Callum leans in to stare at Kahinta. “But what the fuck are we supposed to do about it? What has any tribute or victor done about any of this, Kahinta? You tell me.”

Mace had the right idea. That was what made folks look to him as such a solid beacon of leadership for Ten, compared to folks like Katelyn and Harbinger who seemed to just bring trouble for their district. Oberon sends Callum a small nod of approval as Callum turns away from her again.

“You play the game and, if you win, you go home. It’s not about everyone else in fucking Panem.”

"I didn't assume anything," Kahinta says, "not until you said that Eleven or Ten or any of the districts- the people in the districts deserve to be brutalized because their drawings hurt the Capitol's feelings." She's standing now, waving over-dramatically at Callum. "Maybe it should be about everyone in Panem! Why shouldn't it be?"

Kahinta's response would almost be comical, he thinks, if it weren't so pathetically predictable. So stupid, even, when she had so little to gain from fighting the only two people in the arena who had never meant to harm her, all for the sake of childish ideals. They couldn't just get along with all the criminals and thugs in Ten, and Kahinta insisting they were all actually innocent mothers or starving orphans wouldn't make that the truth any more than believing in fairies and dragons made them real.

Fix your own naive brain first, he thinks, before you start spouting empty ideas about the entirety of Panem. He doesn't get a chance to say it before Kahinta grabs her things and starts walking away.

"You know what, you can go your way, and I'll go mine. Ripred knows you'll die in a day anyway. Waste of fucking bandages." she mutters.

He shakes his head and just watches her go, with Kahinta barely taking two steps before disappearing into the fog beginning to roll in. She was the one who'd die in a day, he thinks. Arguing with her was like talking to a child of eleven, not to someone who was on the cusp of becoming a young lady.

Oberon turns to reach for Callum, eager to maintain his alliance with the boy who his opinion of had vastly improved in the past few minutes, but with one parting threat, Callum disappears on him too.

Last Edit: Jul 29, 2020 2:14:04 GMT -5 by Lyn𝛿is

"Yeah… You have to be careful when placing labels on good and evil, Celice. Never waste your anger on individuals. Always focus it on the evil within all of us."
- Lewyn, Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War