smile like you mean it / day 4 [d/wt/e]

Georgie squeezes some skin on her hand between her thumb and index finger. Hard and long enough to feel a sharp pain but it doesn’t trigger the wake up that she intends it to. Then she scratches her fingernail against the palm of her hand but still nothing. She is truly awake. Inside of a cave. Staring into the face of the wyvern. The dream with the humanoid frog feels a little too real now. Did that really happen? Is right now really happening?

”Are you real?” Georgie asks the ruby red wyvern who is curled up in the middle of the cave. Georgie is leaning on her knees with her back towards the exit. The wyvern, who she has nicknamed Strawberry lifts her ginormous head with her irregularly long neck. Strawberry opens her mouth slightly, as if yawning and then rests her head once more, closing her eyes. ”You are very real!” Georgie shuffles on her knees across the cave’s floor. She delicately reaches out to the wyvern’s neck; her fingertips confirm the very real rough scales. ”I’d curl up next to you too but you don’t seem very comfy.” She tries though, resting her head against the wyvern’s torso as she faces the entrance of the cave, hoping that a familiar face will walk in.

She does wonder where Umber and Noah are but she’s a little reluctant to leave behind this newly hard sought friend that she is resting against. Hopefully they’ve found their own wyverns and not become their suppers.

A silhouette stumbles into the mouth of the cave. Strawberry’s head snatches up from its comfortable resting position and her long neck extends out past Georgie. ”It’s just the wizard Umber, calm down!” Georgie tells the wyvern as a drenched looking Umber becomes more visible as he walks deeper into the cave.

”Check out my dra-wyvern!” Georgie jumps onto her feet as she shows off Strawberry who is still resting. ”She’s red like my cloak. I think she was being protective of me then! I call her Strawberry! Don’t tell her but…” Georgie lowers her volume as she whispers into Umber’s ear, ”her neck looks a bit funny! I think she’s young, I hope she will grow into it…”

Georgie rejoins her comfy/not so comfy spot with Strawberry as Umber explains his encounter with another wyvern. ”I hope Noah found one too and he is not out there hunting down the stone knight.” She says but at least the career is not hunting them, it seems a lost cause going after the cursed knight though. Especially without Umber’s magic.

For the first time, Georgie has a restful night. REM sleep must have been at zero as there was not a single dream or even a nightmare playing in her mind. She wakes up when the scaley cushion she has been leaning against starts to shift and plod out of the cave. Okay so sleeping on the scales was comfortable after all. Georgie scrambles all her belongings together into her shell purse as she hurries after Strawberry. ”Wait up for me!” It doesn’t seem like Umber has waited for her either, she must’ve really been in a deep sleep.

Strawberry waits outside of the cave; the sun bounces off her ruby scales and in this light it’s so clear how bright they are. It’s a welcome reunion seeing the sun through the clouds. Strawberry points her nose towards her back, just past where her wings are.

”What?!” Georgie asks, the wyvern is not moving her feet. She continues to point towards her back. ”Oh you want me to…” Georgie doesn’t need to be asked again, she climbs up the legs of the wyvern and onto her back. Just like the heroes in her books, she’s a dragon wyvern rider now!

”I’ve never done this before, please go steady!” Strawberry plods along the ground first before picking up speed into a full gallop. ”Slowly!” Then she pushes her feet off the ground and spreads out her wings. Georgie closes her eyes and clings tight to the spikes along Strawberry’s back. It takes a few moments for the rigid girl to start to relax, to finally breathe and open her eyes. The first thing she see’s is another wyvern soaring in the sky ahead of her, it’s much larger than Strawberry and it’s black like the one Umber described. It’s him and his new friend.

Georgie can’t keep her eyes off the scenery below them, there really is A LOT of different trees in the arena. They’re over the bay right now but there’s a bunch of tall VERY wide trees ahead of them. Georgie looks up, they’re just inches away from being in the clouds. If they keep going up, where would they end up? To space? Another realm in this fantasy land?

The wyverns start to descend and they enter the flight path of another, ”Noah!” Georgie calls out. She’s not sure if he can hear her this high. His dragon is bigger and more proportionate than hers, but Umber’s is definitely the scariest looking one.

”Keep flying!” Georgie begs Strawberry, she’s grown a little braver now but the wyvern has other ideas as the three of them land amongst the climbing trees one by one. This is the same place where she left D’Arcy a few days ago. Hopefully she is far away from here.

Georgie slides off the side of Strawberry, there’s so much the princess, wizard and peasant must catch up about. Like what Noah has named his wyvern but of course Georgie’s luck plays out and their reunion is disrupted. She scrambles through her shell purse, hoping to pull out her slingshot. Instead, her hands find the silver daggers that are now stained with the decaying beans that have spilled in her purse, it must’ve happened during the turbulence of the flight.

”You don’t want to mess with us!” She says to those approaching. It’s two girls she’s met before, two careers. One that she practiced knife fighting with in the training centre. ”Look! I got something better than a measly knife!” She tells Florentine as she points the knife back towards Strawberry. Then she speaks to Andromache. ”I got something better than sponsorship too, all three of us did. We all got wyverns so you should back off!” Strawberry’s nostrils flare and the wyvern extends her wings, showing off her might. Little Georgie shows off her not so silver dagger that is drenched in decaying slime, showing off her might. If only the wyvern breathed fire like dragons do but there is a flint somewhere amongst her hoard of treasures. Noah is her fire mentor; she looks back at him as she pulls out the flint. It’s like how they practiced in the Training Centre, using fire to their own advantage.

Georgie exhales, flames heat up her cheeks, making them turn a rosy red that matches Strawberry. She looks at Florentine, her weapon mentor. She’ll show her all she has learnt.

Dars.

Of all the things that could've woken him, it was the heat that finally forced Umber's tired eyes open. His clothes were stiff from air-drying against his body as he slept in the dark, damp cave. Moisture collected in a thin sheen on his forehead, hastily replaced each time he wiped it away using the edges of his cloak. Not for the first time in this arena, the world as Umber had left it when his eyes closed was not as he found it again once they opened. The storm had gone, the fog burned by the brilliant sun shining above. He told himself in that moment to be prepared for anything should he live to see another morning in this place: swarms of locusts, a whirling blizzard, or perhaps a drought so harsh that it evaporated the very ocean he and his friends had to cross to get to this island in the first place.

His friends.

He'd found Georgie before nightfall, but there was still no sign of Noah. Truth be told, with the thunder hammering in the sky he couldn't be certain in the least if there'd been any cannons fired. Truth be told as well, he wasn't sure he would've noticed anyway, as he'd been a bit preoccupied staring at the sleeping face of that wyvern for so long before finally finding the nerve to slip away and hide in this cave. When he'd stood, some of the smaller ones had snapped in his direction, little sentries trying to rat him out to Mummy no doubt, but once Umber had begun moving he was too afraid to stop. He'd practically rolled down into the mouth of the cave, scurrying off to a corner and pulling his knees up against himself to ensure he wasn't being pursued. And he wasn't. Or so he'd thought.

After enough time had passed, he dared to venture back up to the mouth of the cave. Immediately, he locked eyes with Georgie in the distance, waving him down. She stood next to a wyvern herself, scales of brilliant red glistening like a sunset in the daylight. Umber came to recognize it as the one that he'd seen the day before, identified by its abnormally long neck. He stared at her, mouth agape. She treated it like it was a pet. More than that, it was letting her. Excitedly, she climbed down and over to him.

"She’s red like my cloak. I think she was being protective of me then! I call her Strawberry! Don’t tell her but…" the younger girl stretched up onto her toes to whisper something in his ear; he ducked down to make it easier for her. "Her neck looks a bit funny! I think she’s young, I hope she will grow into it…"

Umber could think of about a thousand things he would've sooner done than insult a creature so large. He did agree with Georgie, though: the wyvern's neck was undeniably different from the others he'd seen.

"I saw the one from when you went missing again, covered in her little fledglings." He looked up and shrugged when he didn't see anything flying through the sky- she was the sort of beast that would've been difficult to miss, he foolishly assumed, "I guess I wore out her patience."

He thought about it again now, the next morning, standing outside the cave and viewing this different world he woken into. If the wyvern had wanted him dead, she could have swallowed him whole in a single bite. But she'd chosen instead to sleep in front of him. In truth, the warmth of her long, steady breath kept away as many shivers from the cold as they caused from fear. It was the sort of thing he had a hard time believing had actually happened. Now, it felt like it was a dream.

As if on cue, directly behind him, so close that it shook the ground beneath his feet, a loud THUMP sounded. Umber's shoulders tensed, and then his hair was flying in his face from a blast of wind coming from behind him. No, he realized, not wind- breath.

He turned to see the same red eyes he'd seen twice before already peering back at him. If her patience was gone, the wyvern left no evidence of it in her expression, which seemed as at ease now as it had been since she'd stopped baring her teeth the day before. What did she want, though? The beast lowered herself again, the tip of her wing arching over toward him, exposing her shoulder and back, where several of the smaller fledglings blinked at him curiously. They were as varied as a color wheel, some red, some green, some blue. There was one which was slow-moving, stark white scales with pink eyes. Umber looked to the mouth of the cave for Georgie to come help, then his eyes caught on the red wyvern curled around her. He looked back once again to the wyvern.

"She thinks I'm one of hers," he said aloud to no one in particular. The brood mother lost one of her babies, and for whatever reason, she seemed to think of Umber as the missing piece to her family. The same way the red one- Strawberry- thought Georgie was hers, maybe. It sounded as much like a question as it felt when Umber said the words aloud, though. Gingerly, he stepped forward, easing himself toward her. She made no move to stop him, and the fledglings only backed away as if he might possibly be dangerous to them. He slowly climbed up onto its back, and then hastily seated himself between two of the horns jutting from her pitch black shoulders before she could buck him off and he broke his neck or something. "Easy, girl..." he said, bewildered. And then she took to the skies.

"Georgie!" he called.

Luckily, his friend managed to catch up only a few minutes later, Umber holding on for dear life, horrified to move an inch in any one direction. She was big enough that she could flap her wings without disturbing where he sat. The fledglings stood against the wind, their wings half opened, chins raised as if flying themselves. He knew already that they'd been learning how; seeing them from up here, though, was a different perspective. They seemed less... toothy now, somehow.

A third wyvern joined them in the skies, a green one with gold markings and thick, sharp-looking claws. When Umber saw Noah sitting on its back, he smiled for the first time. Okay. They were wyvern-riders now, all three of them. He slowly loosened his grip on the horns, then raised his hands into the air. Just like the fledglings, Umber pretended to fly.

They stayed like that for quite some time. When they finally touched down, the massive trees Umber had escaped from Eulalie into loomed before them once again.

"Why are we stopping?" he asked. Of all the places he'd been, this one scared him most. Something about it seemed so ancient that it felt older even than the remnants of the castle they'd risen into on the first day. Trees this massive must've lived for centuries. That, or they'd been so genetically modified that they could hardly even be considered trees anymore so much as mountains. And the fall from this high up would have meant an unavoidable, completely certain death.

He supposed it was a good idea at the very least to let the wyverns rest. His alone was carrying at least a dozen passengers, and the others weren't quite as large so their wings must've gotten tired more quickly, right?

Georgie didn't answer, hands deftly digging into her purse to produce a set of throwing knives. His wyvern turned her head in the same direction Georgie was looking. Some of the fledglings began to hiss. "What is-"

Oh.

He'd almost forgotten.

Other tributes. Worse- familiar faces. Careers. Friends of Eulalie's. Instantly, Umber began scanning his surroundings for the missing blonde. If she was here, she hadn't made herself apparent. The other girl from One did, though. As well as the girl from Four, and another Umber couldn't place immediately. He recalled her being from one of the upper districts, though. Even as they closed around the hilt of a weapon, he could also see a softness in her hands to prove it.

"You don't want to mess with us!" Georgie called, "Look! I got something better than a measly knife! I got something better than sponsorship too, all three of us did. We all got wyverns so you should back off!" And it was true: a wise person would have.

They attacked anyway.

Umber's wyvern instantly took to the skies, flapping him up about ten feet above the ground. The fledglings swirled around her hissing and snapping. At first, he thought she was going to try and escape. Then something worse happened.

She swooped down, claws and fangs bared, and let loose a roar so loud it hurt Umber's ears and sent birds flying from the nearby trees. His wyvern was attacking their guests.

"N-no!" he called, but she wasn't listening. Her children seemed to understand it as well. You mess with one, you mess with the brood.

The girl with the soft hands moved out of the way the slowest.

[umber attacks esther, sword (but ic with baleriya the wyvern)]
Hj3Yt7yS1fsword
[3.5]

I rest against the wyvern, under the wing, to keep myself warm and cozy through the night. It's been a long day, and maybe it's because I cannot find any relief from everything. Now, I don't feel so alone anymore. Not with Shadowpine near me. He keeps me company, and I know he'll alert me if anyone comes to me. I spent time looking for Georgie and Umbra, but I couldn't find them. Maybe I'll find them tomorrow, or maybe everything was too good to be true. I don't know which one, but I hope they'll remain my friends.

I wake up the next morning and mount the wyvern and start flying through the arena. I keep an eye out for Georgie and Umbra, and when I see them, I slowly have Shadowpine bring me to the ground. "Okay, I'll come back for you later. I care for you man. More than anything. You're incredible, and I can't risk losing you. I'll come back okay?" I grab my stuff and walk away and watch him fly off. He's safe right now, and I want to keep him that way. I walk a little further, and I see Georgie and Umber, but it's not before people start striking at me. I ready myself knowing what I am capable of. I am a career, and it's time I show it.

I look up and see Shadowpine in the sky flying around ready to swoop down at a moments notice if I were to call for him. I know I've only met him not even a full day ago, but I still care for him, and I know he cares for me. It's a shame we met in a place like this, but I know I won't die alone. No, I'll always have a friend, and it makes this much better. Everything about this is perfect. I give him a nod that I'm okay, and I turn back to those around me. I just focus on this if I want a chance to survive.

For a fourteen-year-old girl, the past few days have been an adventure. A fantasy journey filled with a new twist every time she turned the page to the next chapter. Now on the fourth day, the pages are a little more crumbled, the ink is bolder, and the words are underlined. The theme of this chapter is REALITY. Georgie has been playing the game, now it’s time for the hunger part.

All this time, she’s been using her knowledge from the library and now it’s time to use the nonsense she was forced to learn in the actual training centre. At least her first proper opponent is the first person she ever used a knife on. It’s just a shame they’re a whole trained killer and Georgie is just a…She’s not just a anything, in this realm, she is THE Princess!

Georgie’s first blazing silver dagger leaves no impression, she pulls out another from her shell purse. If only the Wizard Umber had a spell to conjure an infinite amount of the fiery blades.

i'm not scared of your stupid beasts,

Georgie frowns. The unimpressed face is almost permanent as she looks back at Strawberry and then towards Florentine. ”Excuse me but Strawberry is NOT STUPID!” A smidgen of rage rolls from her tongue. She’s only known the wyvern for less than twenty-four hours. Georgie can list some flaws, like the odd neck and lack of fire breathing but stupid is definitely not one of them!

Florentine wields a knife. Georgie survived a stone knight swinging a mighty sword by running circles around it, now she’s got a whole wyvern as back up. Georgie tries to back away from the knife, they’re not on the training mat now. Even if she puts a distance between herself and the District Four, she can send the flaming dagger sailing through the air.

Around her the wyverns make themselves known. Noah is battling against the arrows of Andromache and the glaive of the District Three girl; he’s got back up from Umber though – the guys can look after themselves and so can she!

All she’s got to do is summon the girl that delivered a whole presentation to the gamemakers. They gifted her an oversized tortoise, minus the shell but with added wings. Now would be the time for Strawberry to reveal her laser beams!

”Is that knife, the only thing you’ve managed to find?” Georgie asks, pointing her own flaming dagger that is she’s careful to not extinguish. Maybe Florentine is just trying to prove her point from their knife sparring lesson. ”If you did a lil less killing and lil more exploring around here, you could’ve got yourself something a bit better…” Less talking and more throwing, Georgie thinks to herself. She’s facing a career after all but at least it’s not the one who declared Umber as public enemy number one.

Dars.

Very quickly, Umber's dreamlike morning had morphed into a nightmare. His head swam in the fog of it, trying to make sense of the chaos as it was unleashed all around him. People were talking, their voices indistinguishable as they overlapped below the flap of the wyvern's wings. Noah was fighting two of them all by himself, and Georgie seemed to be playing a game of cat and mouse with the girl from Four. Umber desperately wanted the wyvern to land again so that he could try to help. If she had a name, he would've called it. Strawberry seemed much more keen to listen to Georgie, after all, though that could've just as well been because she seemed to be a younger wyvern.

Large, looming wings carried him around one of the massive trees before circling back to the group oncemore. Umber considered jumping for a moment, but then a single glance down at the forest floor far below was enough to dissuade him. One misstep would've made his the first cannon of the 98th Hunger Games.

The fledglings were all riled up, the frills of their necks risen like brooding hens. They hissed down at the other tributes with strings of saliva hanging from their knife-like teeth. The time for running came and went. The other wyverns kept their wings tucked. The other tributes kept their weapons raised. Umber realized, tears clouding his vision, that a decision had already been made. This fight would only end with a death. It was a cruel, harsh truth that would've been impossible for anyone to accept. The last few days had felt like such an adventure, like all the stories his father had read when he was a child. In those stories, there was always a happy ending. But this- this was no storybook. And as unbelievable as it was, it was real. A horror.

If he wanted this fight to end with Georgie and Noah and himself all still alive, he had no choice.

When she swooped in once again, Umber did not protest. He simply hoped that his wyvern was hungry enough to make this quick; he didn't think he could bare to see what happened when she wanted to play with her food. Though the eagerness of the fledglings told him all he needed in that regard. Umber had been with them since the early hours of morning. He knew none them had eaten breakfast just yet.

He realized in those last moments that this was the girl his mentors had mentioned being blind back in the Capitol. Yes, it all came back to him now- the blind girl from Three. It'd been during the discussion where he told them he wanted Georgie as an ally if they could make it happen. They'd written the girl off as a nonthreat then. Umber wondered what they thought of her now, fighting alongside the career pack. Umber was lucky enough to have all of his senses, yet even he had wanted to run when the opportunity had come. Perhaps that was the most key difference that their ages caused. Perhaps if he were just a few years older, the fear would be more manageable. Then he looked to Georgie, fearless in her attack and at least a year younger than he, and Umber came to the conclusion that maybe he was just weaker than them all after all.

[umber attacks esther, sword (but ic with baleriya the wyvern)]
InWUyOkACxsword
[9.0+1]

For a moment, I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I need something, anything, to wrap my hands around to give me the courage I need to carry on despite all hope seemingly gone. But right now, my heart is racing, which means there's still a tiny bit of hope. It means the flame is alive, and I have the biggest chance of making it back to Shadowpine. I know he's waiting for me, and I have to make sure I get to him. But right now, all I want and all I need is the chance to find a weakness so I can survive. It'll give me the best chance to succeed.

I see Umber and Georgie fighting, and I see Umber fighting on his wyvern, and I smile seeing that it's giving him use, but it also makes me feel incredibly sad knowing that he's putting his wyvern in the face of danger. Maybe he doesn't care about it. Maybe he doesn't want anything to do with it. But why? Why fight with it? These wyvern's their so beautiful, and they deserve so much better, but who am i to say anything? It doesn't matter to me. I know what I'm capable of, and the most important thing is making sure my wyvern survives.

I look around taking it all in, and I'm not even sure what I'm capable of anymore. All I know is that I want to survive, to make it home. I have to fight. To prove I am strong and worthy, but even then, what if I'm not? What if everything crumbles around me? I take a deep breath and steady myself knowing that death is probably coming. I move around trying to get out of the way the best that I can, and even now, it doesn't make sense. Nothing matters, so maybe that's why I'm here, fighting and struggling and trying. I ready myself and everything else and remain silent. I know what I want; and maybe my soul wants something different.

It’s like an upside-down damsel in distress tale. A princess who has no need for a knight to slay the dragon for her. What a twist, what a page turner. This princess is no damsel. She is slightly distressed, but she is holding herself up, in this plight of survival. The only thing that is keeping her going is the truth. It’s a slippery truth, not one that she could confirm whilst in the Training Centre. Not one person in there could answer her but it doesn’t matter. Georgie is flinging flaming knives at Florentine with the risk of killing her.

She won’t become a killer. Was Wander Sibley a killer even though Parson Cham did not truly die? This is the sequel to that story. Her dad promised.

Georgie is still edging slowly backwards, with a flaring Strawberry behind her but the wyvern’s extended neck reaches past the girl. Unlike Umber who looks like he is having a great ride around on his wyvern with its children, the red pair face their battle on the ground.

Florentine has maimed her, just as the stone knight did. She bares down on the pain with gritted teeth and eyes that begin to water, her heavy breathing masks the yelps and her continuous yapping is a great alternative analgesia too. They’re just superficial tissue wounds – for now. ”Not just knick-knacks.” Georgie says as she pulls the third of her four silver daggers drenched in rotten bean juice from her purse. Noah is still lighting up the trees with his fiery spear, now that is how he imagined a career.

The only way she can get these three girls away from her guys is if a cannon fire is triggered. Unless she tries to throw a trail of crumbs, a hint of a path to treasure. Is that far more valuable than taking a life to two careers? Surely one of them is a little jealous of their prizes. Or maybe a command charm like the one Umber cast at the bay a few days ago.

”Umber used magic on a knight made of stone when we were at the bay. He made the knight surrender and then we found the wyverns.” Or did the wyvern’s find them? Georgie’s memory of the night at the mermaid bay is fragmented, she is not even sure that her memories are real. ”If you’re not afraid of me or even the wyverns then I’d be afraid of the wizard who is up there.” Georgie points her knife at the sky and tugs at her red tunic with her other hand. ”There’s a reason they dressed us up like this.”

Dars.