memories to burn . prj
Mar 3, 2022 17:14:30 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Mar 3, 2022 17:14:30 GMT -5
Wire and steel hang from his skin like a heavy memory as they walk away from the Scrapyard, the stench of rusted ghosts swirling in the air around them. This entire arena is a graveyard, he's come to realize, surrounded by abandoned pieces of steel and sin that litter the landscape. His heartbeat had dropped into his stomach when he'd realized he couldn't tell if the red stains that sat splattered on the heaps of scrap metal was rust or dried blood, the sign of a life gone too long or one taken too soon.
The whole thing, he realizes with somber reflection and grinding teeth and set jaw, is just a coffin waiting to be closed. When Kareem makes the observation that they should get to somewhere safer, eyes scanning the landscape of approaching tributes, Bowie had agreed in distrusting silence.
He'd insisted on taking the back of the pack as they'd set off, carved their names already half-forgotten into the the tombstones of steel and kicked up dust and dirt in a mechanical march. He knows what it means to leave a place that never felt comfortable enough to call home, knows what it means to watch it slip into the landscape and know that the memories you have there will do nothing but flicker and whisper into the dead air you breathe.
In the troupe, Sierra and him would always light up a cigarette and split a bottle on their way out from each District, to remember in smoke and clouded breaths what they'd lived through and to use amber and a burn in the back of the throat to just as easily forget. Now, the tradition feels like something of a mockery, his own brain laughing at the thought that he'd ever get to have something like that again.
His life now is nothing but an exhale of toxic breath and smoke, waiting to disintegrate into the nothingness of dead air.
"We can stop and set up shop in one of these yeah?" He motions towards the dead landscape that has sprung up around them as they'd walked, heaps of metal and scraps dedicated as makeshift homes, shadows cast against the ground looking more like shallow graves than a moniker of safety. The voice channel inside his mech suit crackles and snaps back at his voice as he speaks, as if to warn him that his words mean nothing here.
The sun begins to fall above them, sepia sky bleeding into the colors of the sunset as night comes. At one point he would have called it beautiful, hazel eyes would have taken in every inch of the swirling mix of pink and red that hangs above them. Once beautiful, now dangerous, he can think of nothing but the brain matter Isaac had wiped from his own hands when he looks up now. It's a spotlight that won't set, curling and bending against their skin and demanding a show with bared fangs and venomous bite. "I don't think we're gonna find a place safer than this tonight."
His gaze drifts from the sky to Izzy, lost in her own wonders, to Kareem and to the knife that is still clutched in his hand, to Isaac and the life that still clings to the boy's clothing, all red and crimson and everything vile.
The whole thing, he realizes with somber reflection and grinding teeth and set jaw, is just a coffin waiting to be closed. When Kareem makes the observation that they should get to somewhere safer, eyes scanning the landscape of approaching tributes, Bowie had agreed in distrusting silence.
He'd insisted on taking the back of the pack as they'd set off, carved their names already half-forgotten into the the tombstones of steel and kicked up dust and dirt in a mechanical march. He knows what it means to leave a place that never felt comfortable enough to call home, knows what it means to watch it slip into the landscape and know that the memories you have there will do nothing but flicker and whisper into the dead air you breathe.
In the troupe, Sierra and him would always light up a cigarette and split a bottle on their way out from each District, to remember in smoke and clouded breaths what they'd lived through and to use amber and a burn in the back of the throat to just as easily forget. Now, the tradition feels like something of a mockery, his own brain laughing at the thought that he'd ever get to have something like that again.
His life now is nothing but an exhale of toxic breath and smoke, waiting to disintegrate into the nothingness of dead air.
"We can stop and set up shop in one of these yeah?" He motions towards the dead landscape that has sprung up around them as they'd walked, heaps of metal and scraps dedicated as makeshift homes, shadows cast against the ground looking more like shallow graves than a moniker of safety. The voice channel inside his mech suit crackles and snaps back at his voice as he speaks, as if to warn him that his words mean nothing here.
The sun begins to fall above them, sepia sky bleeding into the colors of the sunset as night comes. At one point he would have called it beautiful, hazel eyes would have taken in every inch of the swirling mix of pink and red that hangs above them. Once beautiful, now dangerous, he can think of nothing but the brain matter Isaac had wiped from his own hands when he looks up now. It's a spotlight that won't set, curling and bending against their skin and demanding a show with bared fangs and venomous bite. "I don't think we're gonna find a place safer than this tonight."
His gaze drifts from the sky to Izzy, lost in her own wonders, to Kareem and to the knife that is still clutched in his hand, to Isaac and the life that still clings to the boy's clothing, all red and crimson and everything vile.
[ Collects fun shit! ]