Take what the water gave me // [Day 2 Baby]

Baby watched the slowly setting sun from the flat of her back afloat in the murky pond.

She hadn't meant to immerse herself in the water. After the other tributes had fled - perhaps to chase after the something - she'd made up her mind to stay put. If they were ambitious enough to take on the muttation, she wished them the best. But she wanted to stay, to rest, to drift...

She sat the edge of the pond for the remainder of the afternoon tending to her wounds. Patched as best she could and with the spectre of fatigue dogging every movement, Baby slowly removed each layer of protection: armor and clothes and self doubt. She laid them at on the rocky embankment and slipped beneath the greenish gray waters of the ponds.

When she surfaced, gasping, hair dyed a pale teal, she found herself surrounded by curious pairs of eyes. A dozen or more koi spun and dived around her, never quite within reach, but etching figure eights as Baby twisted in the shallow water.

As the sun turned from dandelion yellow to peel-of-an-orange Baby found herself laughing. She chased the tail of a koi, never intenent on catching it, and then found she could no longer quite reach the bottom of the pond.

For a moment, she gasped and graped, seeking the drifting weeds and algae. And then she remembered: she only needed to fill her lungs and she would... float.

Arms and legs and splayed, she formed the only star beneath the weighty sunset, turning slowly round and round in the arena's pond.