in the distance when i look [cowboys]

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pogue
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Pronouns: He/Him
last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5

Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

in the distance when i look [cowboys] Jul 5, 2022 20:38:05 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Jul 5, 2022 20:38:05 GMT -5

T E X

The arena goes quiet for a single moment as his spear touches flesh touches bone, carving into the flesh of the beasts that circle around them. They're primed for the slaughter with fangs bared, hearts pounding and muscles tense underneath torn through flesh. His own spear points towards their demise and salvation, into the mist as it erupts with the sounds of shrieks and howls one last time, the smell of iron and rust piercing the air and the grounds below.

Then it is still, ominous and painfully still.

His own breath breaks the silence first, stammering up from from his lungs and caught heavy in his throat as he stares out towards the shifting silhouette of the forest, a thousand cracking limbs swaying softly in the arena's wind. It's like the world around them breathes a sigh of relief and then a sigh of indifference, the fog clearing and the facade of safety trickling back into the view around them as they stand, weapons still drawn and eyes still focused on the shadows that flicker and dance amongst the trees, waiting for whatever is next to come after them.

After an eternity and a half, all shattered heartbeats and bleeding wounds, he realizes nothing is to come of the two of them anymore. They've given their entertainment and received their punishment in turn, in reds and blacks coating their skin and new wounds dotted against the landscape of their flesh. Pain comes in wave as he finally lowers his spear, the tip of it dropping into the foliage that coats the forest ground beneath them and the adrenaline beginning to seep from his veins. He should consider himself lucky, the way all of his limbs are still there, that there's still a heart beating inside of his own chest, that two brown eyes can still look into the dead spaces of the forest and see everything he has ever lost staring back at him. Luck, he repeats the word in the back of his mind and feels it cut deep. So twisted and strange, so unfair in a place like this.

"Kip." He finally breathes out his own partner's name, eyes still focused on the forest ahead as he reaches back behind him to make sure the boy is still there. He accidentally finds a new gash on the other's arm, feeling the warmth of blood coat his fingertips and hearing Kip gasp in pain. "Fuck-" The expletive slips from his lips as he spins around on his heels, skin still stained red as he throws the other's arm around his shoulder, the one between them worse for wear falling into his side. It'll be alright, he nearly says, but his own silence has never faltered to stupidity before and it wouldn't start then, wouldn't give way to false promises in a place like this. "We're alive." He finally settles on, omitting the last piece of the statement that claws at the edge of his tongue: for now.

Time moves slower in a place like the forest, with shadows darting behind the trees and the occasional rustle of the trees seemingly reacting to the way they hobble forwards. His spear sits lzaily out in front of him as they walk, pointed towards their death and their destiny as if he had any hope of defending himself against it. They stumble forwards for what feels like hours, until finally the forest gives way to a clearing and the next illusion of safety, light breaking through the trees in rays and illuminating the ground as if to highlight their own coffins. He wants to keep moving forwards, stifle the words and the worries and walk until their feet bleed and their legs snap, until they can't look back to what has followed them anymore.

Instead, he looks sideways to his ally and accepts whatever fate they have for the day, drops his bag in defeat but keeps his weapon laced in between his knuckles. It's only when he takes a seat against the nearest stump that the adrenaline drips from his body like a new kind of wound, slipping to the forest floor and causing exhaustion to wire itself into his bones. Amongst the soreness and the aches he looks back to Kip, watches the other examine the blade of his sickle again and again, as if to admire the new blood stains that stick to it.

He knows something sinister should write itself into his veins and his words as he stares at towards him, can see that the Capitol wants their loyalty to disintegrate by the way the cameras in the trees have turned red eyes onto the clearing they sit in. And to an extent he gives it to them, narrows his gaze and lets the thoughts in his mind seep forward in the wake of Cain's sudden death. He had heard Cain rustle and rise in his sleep, had heard Kip ask him a question that he never had the answer for. He knows Cain is dead and gone, a cannon in the night and a body not found.

But he knows that he is also alive, can feel his heart still hurting inside of his chest. If Kip had done the killing, would he not have dragged that blade against his own throat just to make sure the job was done?

"Who do you think killed Cain?" He asks, words awkwardly slipping from his mouth. It's accusatory on accident, untrusting simply due to the circumstance, and as he looks towards his ally he sets his gaze and stares absently as if a defense mechanism, writing stoicism back into his form.

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heather - d2 [mylee]
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in the distance when i look [cowboys] Jul 8, 2022 9:24:06 GMT -5

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Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Jul 8, 2022 9:24:06 GMT -5

K I P T Y N

Bodies lie scattered at our feet, animal tongues lolling out between jaws that have had all the slack taken out of them. They’re not very large individually, but the swarm of them around us creates a sea of unmoving orange, still waters we must find the courage to wade through. I prod one with the tip of my glaive first, and then with the toe of my boot, as if the possibility of playing dead could exist. A death act of any sort still carries the illusion, as far as I’m concerned, and there’s a part of me that truly believes we’ll find Cain waiting for us, wherever we decide to make camp for the night.

It’s as I’m trying to replay the last moments I remember of him, which is really just auditory, which is really just useless, that Tex calls my name, simultaneously reaching around to find some assurance of my body behind him. His fingers find my forearm, and then a gash that’s been torn down it, his fingernail sliding, for a split second, along the underbelly of the tightrope separating my body from the outside world. I gasp at the feeling of it, of his intrusion and the light seeping out of me faster than dusk. Fuck, and I don’t know whose voice it comes from, maybe both of us, dizziness overtaking me as he turns to get an arm underneath me before I hit the ground. We’re alive, he says, and I don’t have the strength nor heart to tell him that I’m not confident in his assessment.

The clearing feels heaven-sent, or something greater, but language feels at its limits here, the light shattering the canopy of trees to reach the clear forest floor. Tex tries to lower me gently but I’m having none of it, crashing out of his hold to the ground and rolling over flat to my back. I want the warmth dusting my face to overtake my whole body, so I tear at the shirt on my back and strip it off, letting dirt stick to the edges of the wounds crossing my back while my chest soaks in the light as if it could somehow heal me from the inside out. My body is a crossway of unguarded entries--there are so many exposed paths leading straight to my heart.

Despite the persistent ache of yesterday compounding with today’s encounter, the sunlight feels genuinely restorative, and after a time I peel myself off the forest floor and scoot back to rest against a tree. I crawl out to retrieve my glaive, tossed away from my body in a moment of relief, and it feels heavier now in my hands, the blade and handle tantalizingly warm to the touch. Everything here: warmed and inviting, or untouchable, the only dichotomy I can think of that feels both pleasurably strange and universal.

Robin and I didn’t carry any real weapons when we carried out jobs. I insisted on carrying a hunting knife, more for the sake of cutting rope or plastic, those nonhuman barriers that so often got in the way. It was never our goal to hurt anyone, not like that, at least. There was one time that a family we’d been sure left each Wednesday just past noon broke their routine, or we’d calculated it wrong from the start, and their son had been home, a wiry, thin boy who must’ve been just a couple years younger than Robin and I. Robin had been in a different part of the house when I turned the corner into the kitchen and came face-to-face with him, and we locked eyes an arm’s length apart and stood there for what seemed like eternity. The second I saw his lips twitch, I’d shot around behind him and covered his mouth with my hand, my other arm locked around his throat. I remember the franticness of his breath, how the hot air fogged the palm of my hand and I felt his lips against it mouth, I don’t want to die.

Robin had eventually made his way through the house and found us frozen there, none of us moving.

Kip, what the fuck.

Robin, we fucked up. He’s been home the whole time.

Well. Did he get a good look at you?

Yes.

Well.

Robin, I don’t want to--

But Robin had already turned on his heel and taken our planned exit route, which was usually just the entrance point, repurposed. I remember the feeling of the boy's throat collapsing, my knuckles ghost white, how infinitesimally small his body seemed then in my hands.

When Tex looks at me now, there’s something of that boy’s first look in his eyes that’s visible all the way across the clearing. He asks, Who do you think killed Cain? and it’s abundantly clear by the first word that he’s getting close to certainty on an answer. I can’t blame him, but still I feel annoyed, knowing I could just as easily turn the question back to face him. We’re equally confused, and, consequently, uncertain of one another and where priorities lie. I mean it as a joke, holding out my stump of an arm and stabbing it towards him through the air, but it just make me look erratic, and a little deranged.

I didn’t do it, I start, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m sure he is, but I want to hear him say it, or apologize for thinking it. I haven’t quite learned how to be left-handed yet, especially not enough to be efficient. I can see the gears turning, suspicion rising, and I feel panic start to crawl up my throat. I didn’t do it--I know that, but I also know that I can’t survive right now without Tex’s help, and it’s that loss that I fear a lot more.

I want to be rational about this, and I think to say so, but slow myself down. I mean, we got swarmed by all those animals earlier. I think maybe it’s not who got him, but what, right?

[ table: pogue ]

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Last Edit: Jul 8, 2022 9:24:46 GMT -5 by heather - d2 [mylee]