amicable animal / (karl&yael, day 1)
Feb 22, 2023 22:15:54 GMT -5
Post by calla on Feb 22, 2023 22:15:54 GMT -5
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They loop back through the sand as it starts to get darker. Johnny’s been complaining about his bladder loud enough to attract every damn career in the arena, but the garden’s too open to stop for good yet. They all follow Calamity instead, trudging their way across the landscape, and that's just fine with Karl. He figures that their god must be giving them alright directions, because they haven't found trouble yet.
But there hasn't been any cannon-fire yet either, which means twenty other bodies out there they have to watch out for.
It should be making him twitchy, but he's nothing but lax. It's a habitual kind of mindset. He exists in a numb haze, one foot in the conscious plane and the other somewhere else. He drags the butt of his broken scythe through the sand-lines and watches the patterns break.
The blood's all been cleared away, either from the rain or from the sand shifting or from some kind of arena clean-up crew obsessed with keeping their garden tidy. Maybe the Capitol's developed a new kind of worker ant that burrows up from the ground and drags away every little crimson-soaked grain to be scrubbed and redistributed.
From up ahead, a bright flutter shifts in the sand near Yael’s heel.
It's not blood though, and it isn't one of his little janitorial ants.
Karl walks up behind Yael and taps her shoulder to get her attention. There's a heartbeat of a moment, then suddenly his back is slamming against one of the rain-slick boulders, sending shockwaves up into his jaw, and the blade side of Yael’s glaive comes to rest under his chin before he can so much as blink again.
He goes rigid in his boots, pressing away from her and feeling the cushion of damp moss against his neck. The little paper crane that he’s picked up sits limply between two fingers and he lifts it slowly, bringing it cautiously up to her eye line.
"You dropped this."
But there hasn't been any cannon-fire yet either, which means twenty other bodies out there they have to watch out for.
It should be making him twitchy, but he's nothing but lax. It's a habitual kind of mindset. He exists in a numb haze, one foot in the conscious plane and the other somewhere else. He drags the butt of his broken scythe through the sand-lines and watches the patterns break.
The blood's all been cleared away, either from the rain or from the sand shifting or from some kind of arena clean-up crew obsessed with keeping their garden tidy. Maybe the Capitol's developed a new kind of worker ant that burrows up from the ground and drags away every little crimson-soaked grain to be scrubbed and redistributed.
From up ahead, a bright flutter shifts in the sand near Yael’s heel.
It's not blood though, and it isn't one of his little janitorial ants.
Karl walks up behind Yael and taps her shoulder to get her attention. There's a heartbeat of a moment, then suddenly his back is slamming against one of the rain-slick boulders, sending shockwaves up into his jaw, and the blade side of Yael’s glaive comes to rest under his chin before he can so much as blink again.
He goes rigid in his boots, pressing away from her and feeling the cushion of damp moss against his neck. The little paper crane that he’s picked up sits limply between two fingers and he lifts it slowly, bringing it cautiously up to her eye line.
"You dropped this."
