Riveted // [Orville + Oz, Day 3]

an animation

"Av, I owe you one."

For all it cost Oz, the note Av sent that eventually led him to the Oasis was proving more and more lucrative.

Cool water splashes around his knees as Oz wades in, mud squishing between his bare toes. Gentle ripples wash away the gritty sand, gently saps away all the excess heat from his skin with its cold touch. On the soft bank behind him, songline kodomas -- or "Scouts," as Oz prefers to call them -- watch him fill his water bottle, waving at him with their stubby little arms, warbling amongst themselves. After the ordeal with the rhogs, Oz's first instinct when the kodomas approached had been to punt them into the air -- and then he remembered Av's Scout. Nice, cute little guy, practically attached to Avriel's hip. Scout's "brothers" in the Oasis weren't too different. They were kind enough to accompany him down to the pond here, nonetheless present him with a gift of leaves. Oz hadn't done very well at the plant identification station, so for all he knew the Kodomas were trying to poison him, but that didn't seem to line up with the Gamemakers' aggressive style, so it was probably alright. Or maybe they were just leaves. Oz hasn't really bothered to check.

One of them sings to him as he fills his water bottle. A soft, whistling note, like a gust of wind catching against stone and diverting itself -- haunting at first, but then more join, adding their own textures that make the sound more comforting. Nothing Oz would willingly listen to at home, but the little guys are so endearing, he can't help but enjoy it. Oz peers at them out the corner of his eye, the corners of his mouth creeping up into a little smile. A smile that lingers longer than a few minutes before wilting, clings on with no remorse or fear, only accompanied by a quiet afterthought:If only the fucking rhogs had been more like you guys...

Well, those little abominations of science were just smears on Fun Gun's barrel now. Oz clears his throat, idly feels the long line of puckered skin across his sown chest.

He straightens up, caps his bottle. Head tilts from side to side as hums a long with them for a moment. He's totally tone-deaf compared to the kodomas, but he doesn't care.

The pond ripples around his legs. He stops. Beyond, there's the sound of crashing, of rusty metal creaking and groaning.

The smile finally wilts.

Gasping, he darts out the pond, pushing past the kodomas and sliding into the safety of the tree-line. He presses his stomach low to the mossy floor, and watches.

The kodomas keep singing. They don't give a shit.

A mech bursts through the trees. Definitely none Oz has seen before. But the armor has an opening. He can kind of see the pilot. He squints. It...it looks like...

Something's in the pilot's hand. Like a little...gun, almost. The pilot raises it -- at the...at the other...Why is he...what in god's...

"SON OF A GAMEMAKER!"

The voice is what drives the recognition home.

a sketch

Weird little smiling critter, in the mud. All you can see his smile, all the rest of him is mud. He basically is mud, if mud could smile. Oz drew a little picture of his smile in his own mud. Mud Critter seemed...okay with it.

an animation

Orville!!

The smile regrows, blooming larger and brighter than ever. That's the relief -- only a really shitty person would dislike Orville King, I mean come on, it's Orville "FreaKing" King -- next comes the realization.

"Son of a Gamemaker," holy shit...

Oz can't help it. Especially now he knows it's Orville. He snorts, tries to bite his grinning mouth into his arm, but it doesn't help, his body's trembling but this time with much needed laughter.

Orville must have sensed Oz's presence. He shouts in Oz's direction: "I MEANT TO DO THAT!"

Down come the laugh-gates. He doesn't try to hide it at all anymore, it all just pours out of him as he flops helplessly across the moss. Gingerly, because now his chest irritates him (from all the motion and whatnot), Oz lifts himself up, happily strides out from the bushes, arms held out from his sides as though to embrace Orville. "Duuuuuuude, ORVILLE--" he trills in that deviously admiring way of young men itching for trouble and all its thrills-- "Did you just call the Gamemakers bitches?? You're gonna get your ASS handed to you if you keep talking like that, man!"

He stops suddenly, evaluates the other boy's condition. And the "decorations" on his mech.

"Looks like you already have, yikes...You doing okay? Your mech's all fucked, and so are you...kinda...like, no offense, I'm just...like...worried..."

Quoth the malnourished thirteen-year-old child with the bloodied shirt, stitches that he did himself, and walking around without a mech because his broke after he fell off a very high precipice. 

[drinks water]

[fills empty water bottle]

[receives kodoma gift]

There's something about Orville's eyes.

Oz never really noticed them before. Not in the light of the training center. In the training center, Oz focused on Orville's smile -- after Orville had temporarily transformed into the grinning "Mud Critter" for a solid hour at the camo station, it was hard not to. But now, under the slanting golden light, aglitter with swirling shifting dust, Orville's eyes seem to glitter too.

Because Orville sees far.

He looks at Oz -- into Oz -- as he speaks. "I know they told us something about that at the First Aid station, like not to trust the pain. But who trusts pain, right? And is the absence of something trustworthy?"

Really, the conversation isn't magical. Oz, with his fixation on pain, had brought up Orville's; Orville, being Orville, shrugged it off in his contemplative way. As logical as a valid syllogism. But middle schoolers aren't taught logic and deductive reasoning, so there's a sensation in Oz that something magical just passed between them. Thrilling but also sort of frightening, like a ghost breathing down your neck. Yet so much more. So much more.

Oz feels seen.

Not in that watched, studied way, like at the reapings or at the training center, or even with Peter's group. Or that worshipful, masturbatory way with the interviews. But -- really -- seen. Known. The way his mother knows him. Like the core of him has been made clear and intelligible.

Briefly, his eyes flicker down to the sutures on his chest. Remember the white-hot pain. Remember the knife on the floor...Glances at the pond, with its water-lilies drifting across the green water, having raised its tender snaking shoot from the soft mud and the pond's murk, now flaring its fire-red petals into the open light.

Orville's words settle into Oz's self, and they bloom. And that's the magic.

"But don't worry. They haven't found a way to kill me yet," Orville finishes his thought. Because Orville has been talking about himself the entire time. Right. Yeah.

"Glad to hear it, man," Oz has never been more sincere in his life. "We need to keep you around."

Which can all be roughly translated as: "Love yah, bro." Oz is a few heart-twinges away from just full-on blurting it out, one way or another. But that's weird. So to prevent embarrassment Oz glances aside -- subtly mimicking the cool, mysterious way Orville wistfully glances aside. But something tickles in Oz's throat; he coughs gently, trying not to lose the Orville-ish mystique he's appropriated, but after a sharp inhale the cough gets worse and now he just looks like a germy kid. He clears his throat. Rubs at his nose. Even Orville sneezes. "Mm, allergies," Oz remarks.

Magic allergies, that is!

The world's become a kaleidoscope. Fractured color and light, sown together, all glittering. Still somehow capable of shape -- but the shape's all just patterns of light, dazzling like little pretty stars. It's incredible. This place is incredible! Does he look like that??? He checks. Holy shit, he does!

"Hey...Kinda feels like we're back in the Capitol, doesn't it? Beauty everywhere," Orville drawls, reaching his hand towards Oz.

"Heh! Yeahhhhhhhhh...," Oz snickers, gazing at Orville's tie-dye hand with too-large pupils. "But bro, I'm just wondering how you got your hand in two places, like damn..." Vaguely, he gestures at Orville's left hand, and then at his right. "That's crazy, man, how'd you do that...!"

[Oz inhales Dreamtime Spore.]