buried in water [wild things! vs sk] day 2 / 2:30PM

It’s comfortable sitting in the alcove of the wall opposite Umber. Knees tucked up to her chin and the toes of her shoes just inches away from Umber’s as they both just about fit in the hole. Given how much taller Umber is than Georgie, it’s a good job she’s small as someone would’ve had to take the bottom bunk on the cold floor. But Georgie is snug, quite complacent despite all that is going on outside of the little fantasy that is playing in her head.

There’s little reminders of what is really going on that creep into her mind though, ”What is with you and Eulalie?” She asks Umber whilst struggling but persevering to put on the stone leg guards she picked up during today’s travels.

“She was trying to intimidate people in the Skills Assessment and I made a joke in front of everyone. It’s been war ever since! Did you see what she said in her interview about me? I think she cares more about making sure I’m dead than she cares about winning at this point.” Georgie sighs at the trauma from the skills assessment that comes back to her as Umber talks about it. The whole thing was as stressful as the private training session. Timed writing essay exams at school used to be less triggering than the hell of being assessed on a hundred different training stations.

“I heard about the interview; I got reminded about it when I talked to Seraphina about allying with you…but oh well! If she really cares more about killing you than winning, how are you still here? She’s clearly not a very good killer. She gifted you a sword to defend yourself!” Sera was a little hesitant, Georgie could see it when she mentioned his name to her. The mean career’s finishing words during her interview kept getting repeated in Six’s apartment. Seems like she’s all words though, Umber is still here. Snug as a bug opposite Georgie while Eulalie is probably pacing around somewhere losing her mind about him.

Umber laughs and Georgie smiles at the sight of the shiny sword that a so-called deadly career no longer has in her possession. “Still, I’d rather avoid her if we can help it. Something tells me she doesn’t like when she fails, and I don’t want to find out what happens when she succeeds.”

The first day in the arena for Georgie has been a contrast to Umber’s. Unmarked but still a sense of worry, not just for herself either. “I ran into D’Arcy after your little fall. She’s all by herself! I am so pis-annoyed that they didn’t get her an ally! She said she’s okay being alone…I hope I don’t bump into her again, y’know, just in case. She’s been like a little sister the past few days.” Georgie frowns as she tugs at the cloth of her skirt. D’Arcy is wearing the same clothes as her, a different colour but the same tunic. A little princess but she’s alone and Georgie’s not. Their stories are being written on different pages.

“She’ll figure something out. She seems pretty bright, that one…”

“I suppose so. Seems weird to leave her behind but I. MUST. Stop. Worrying! Just chill vibes from now on.”

They both talk on until the first falls asleep. Georgie drifts into her own sleep. Her mind is filled with images of her dad, the victors, D’Arcy and Umber. But her wizard friend and princess little sister fade and are replaced with metal. Crumbling walls are suddenly rebuilt, and an empty dead world is filled with life. Shadows dance along with the candlelight and a conversation is held that Georgie can’t quite hear. There’s no easy dialogue for her to read on the pages. Just a puzzle of sentences that she finds impossible to piece together.

Even when she wakes up. Georgie doesn’t open her eyes to check if Umber is still there, she fights her brain to try and remember what happened last night. Whether it was real or a dream. Her eyes open and the walls are still ruined, there’s no candle lights and no metal. No words filling the room but there’s Umber.

”I had a really weird dream about this place last night, like there were people here…” She just can’t shift the feeling that they didn’t spend the night here alone.”We need to go and head south…NO north!. Like right now!” Georgie leaps out of the hole in the wall and nearly trips on the sponsorship packages that must’ve landed here while they slept. ”There’s some stuff here with your name on it.” She picks up whatever has her initials and tears open the packaging. New leather boots and a neat looking slingshot to add to her collection of silver daggers. ”Thanks Sera!”

They don’t wait around in the castle, the pair skip breakfast and head where they assume north is. She’s sure the dream mentioned heading in that direction, if it really means anything.

Georgie doesn’t have to worry about ruining her fancy shoes. They’re left behind in the alcove and now she’s wearing watertight leather boots that were kindly sponsored to her.

It feels like a long trudge in the autumnal air all morning. Occasionally Georgie stops, licks her finger and sticks it in the air. ”No! This way is north.” It’s something she read in a book, the lack of compass and map really doesn’t help with her sense of direction. Not that she has ever had it.

The endless climbing trees finally break. Georgie’s feet sink into sand and colour finally fills her vision. The sand abruptly ends ahead of her, turning into a lively expanse of water that ripples and bubbles. To get to the water, the pair must climb down a massive sand dune, but Georgie has a better idea.

”Race you to the bottom!” She shouts, not courteous enough to do a count down as she throws herself down the dune feet first along her back. All the sand explodes around her, further ruining her gold encrusted tunic and fancy red wine skirt. Georgie slides to the bottom and jumps onto her feet. ”All the trekking this morning was worth just that!” Georgie laughs as she watches Umber take the journey down to her.

Something else is journeying towards her too. A knight. Not in shining armour. It’s a figure in the distance encrusted in the same kind of stone that is strapped to her legs. Georgie plucks out the slingshot in her purse and loads it with the ammunition. It reminds her of the statues, something immortalised in stone. Or maybe memorialised. The Capitol does love its statues, there’s a whole garden full of them. Except this statue is moving and it carries a shinier sword than Umber that is aimed right at Georgie.

It swings the blade right at her, hitting her in the side and knocking her back into the sand. Georgie spits out sand particles but all she can see now is particles. Dizziness stalls her from getting back up onto her feet, so she shuffles back on her butt, scrambling to aim the slingshot that is still in her hand. ”Umber. We run or we crush that thing. It’s just stone!”

Dars.

His first enemy, light, bird-boned, falls to his sword and as her body folds, he sees two things seemingly at once. First is this girl, here and now, body crumpling into the sand. Second is a rag doll, small sewn hand entombed in the grasp of a statue on the king’s road, body swaying gently in the wind.

The memory flickers and fades, all that’s left is the enemy. She raises a weapon and aims it at him, but the knight has little time for her, the wizard makes his approach.

He turns his attention to the boy as the girl fires at him. He doesn’t notice it- no, he has no way of even feeling it when the shot embeds itself into one of the crevices of his armour’s stone facade.

All of the knight’s attention is on the wizard, every fleeting thought raging, trying to pin itself down within the knight’s mind.

It isn’t anger, it cannot be, it is only kin to it.

The knight raises his sword as the wizard approaches with a sword of his own, his staff left behind on the ground. That choice is strange enough that it gives the knight pause.

That moment of hesitation proves fatal.

His enemy’s sword digs into the knight’s free arm and the rock there crumbles. His spear then, will have to remain where he left it in the sand this fight.

So be it.

As the boy tugs his blade back, the knight drives his down.

The worst part of Umber's plan to get the statue away from Georgie? It worked.

"Shit!" He sneered, his barely post-pubescent voice threatening to squeak. Even as tall as he'd grown, he was still a boy standing before a man. Or, a stone which was chiseled into the shape of one and then given life somehow. Perhaps, Umber considered later, the advancements in Capitol technology had somehow made it so that magic really was real.

The stone knight raised his greatsword up high, higher than Umber had time to look as it sliced through air and time and cloth and flesh.

He gulped in pain, white light blinding the edges of his vision. He could practically see the disappointed shake of Marik's head, already hear Nico's taunting words: "Idiot!" His mentors had been perfectly clear when instructing him about allyship. Umber was to help as much as he could, but not without bringing unwarranted trouble onto himself. So stepping in front of a killing machine was maybe not the wisest thing he could've done, but the way he saw it, Georgie being alive was good for his game. He liked his odds much better with her than he did without, at least.

And besides, he wasn't a complete butthead- if the gods had wanted that then they should've reaped Terrence in his place. He would've had much better chances than Umber did with or without Georgie's help.

Speaking of, the young girl from Six was quick to recover. Already bounding back onto her feet, she began to raise her voice and taunt the stone knight by reciting some sort of nursery rhyme she must've known from childhood. Umber hadn't ever heard it personally, but he quite liked her delivery.

Georgie Cham, the bard of the 98th Hunger Games.

"Knight!" she called, in place of a name. Good, Umber thought: names should be kept for things worth loving, things worth remembering. "You're outnumbered! You've got to yield!"

Umber considered for a moment how lovely it would've been for the construct to follow her orders. To stop where it stood, drop its weapon, retreat. And in those moments, Umber did see the hesitation that came over its calculated steps closer to him. But it remained all the same. Umber used the opportunity to move around it.

"This is no knight, or at least not one worth having. Any good knight would've sworn fealty to a princess already," Umber declared, "This is just a ronin." A wandering rogue with a weapon, a scar, and a lack of any real purpose.

"Kneel," he called, striking out at the statue's knees with his sword.

[umber attacks the stone knight, sword]
9__LCsAN2Wsword
[9+1 blades]

[umber uses self defense on stone knight's attack]
3-8

”I don’t think it can kneel.” Georgie’s own attempt to get the knight to yield fails and Umber follows with his own taunts but still nothing. ”Look at its knees, I don’t think stone is very bendy…” And Umber takes on that flash of an anatomy lesson very quickly. His own mighty sword swings at the knight’s legs.

Her imagination plays a slide over reality. All she sees is the blade forcing the stone to crumble. The knight’s legs topple from beneath it and dramatically, it begins to fall piece by piece into the sand. Like a finely scripted sequence in a movie where the heroes finally defeat the villain during the final battle.

Instead, this is real life. Georgie is just a spoilt fourteen-year-old nepo baby of politics who has been plucked from her life and thrown into here. Not quite fully in tune with what the truth is.

The truth is that the stone knight doesn’t topple to the ground, it advances towards Georgie.

Every attempt at maiming this thing by herself has been less than spectacular. Her silver daggers are lost at the bottom of her purse, so she loads up the slingshot with the penultimate ammunition. So far, the ammunition has just pinged off the stone, or maybe just thudded as the knight hasn’t been honored with actual metal armor.

”I bet you’re under a curse, that’s why you’re stone!” Georgie raises her little slingshot in union with the knight raising its great sword at her. She closes her eyes, bracing for impact but her lips still do the talking. ”I bet the wizard could help lift the curse if you treated us a little nicer…” It’s just her attempt at trying to trigger a command hidden somewhere in the engineering. Inside is a robot, she is adamant on that. This is the Hunger Games after all, it has game in the title. It is just a game with a story and she’s making sure to play along. All while trying to not fall too deep into the story, she can’t forget what is truly real…

Georgie peeks through the barely open lids of her right eye, the end of the knight’s sword is within touching distance. She grits her teeth and the elastic of the slingshot twangs as she releases it.

Dars.

Time marches onwards, immeasurable.

A hundred years ago, the knight stands upon a beach, entrenched in this battle between maiden, wizard and knight.

Tomorrow, a hundred years from now, it will be the same. There is a routine to the knight, a strange tragedy written into the layers of the arena, almost like code. A sisyphean struggle created to add dimensions to these war-like people's entertainment.

And today, he stands here with his blade held at the maiden's throat, close enough to cut her and to bring an end to this, but her parry comes quick, pointed and deadly.

"I bet you’re under a curse, that's why you're stone!"

The knight goes still.

"I bet the wizard could help lift the curse if you treated us a little nicer…"

His sword falls.

The girl uses the opportunity to draw back the slingshot and shoot at him. The shot bounces off of the knight's helmet with a loud ping, but it makes no move to hit her again. It only continues to stare at her.

Shouting from behind the knight, it's the wizard mewling once again.

If stone could bristle, it would.

The knight gives the maiden one last look, if she holds up her end of the bargain, then perhaps the knight will too. But if it's all a trick, just a lie told to make their invasion of his home easier, he will return.

And next time, he will not be so kind.

The knight turns away from the both of them and walks steadily down the beach.