rush of blood to the head [jasik!]

Sweet relief was Addy's the moment she'd left the crowd behind and reached the edge of the District Square. Exhaling slowly, she allowed herself a few seconds of relaxation, trying to rid herself of accumulated nervous tension. Hopefully, she thought, all this ridiculous anxiety could just...leave with the carbon dioxide. The thought amused her slightly, the notion that one could purge hours of stored panic just by breathing out. However, it seemed to be working passably well; the tight space, source of her claustrophobia, was no more - she could breathe.

Though it shouldn't have, the hand on her shoulder really surprised Addy. Startled, she jumped just slightly before blinking and mentally reassuring herself that it was nothing to worry about, the stress of the crowd had reached an end minutes ago. The logical conclusion followed that it was Drynis who'd found her, presumably by accompanying her out of the crowd as she'd hoped. His words of concern made her smile slightly, and she glanced up to meet his eyes. Drynis' questions were rather reasonable; it made sense that the girl should have to offer some explanation as to her strange (in retrospect) actions. Biding time as she attempted to come up with words that would adequately describe her behavior, she shrugged nonchalantly and smiled more genuinely. Out of habit, the girl's right hand wrapped around her left forearm as finally she spoke.
"Oh, uh...sorry, Drynis." A nervous laugh punctuated Addy's speech, and she grinned. "I'm not- I'm not exactly great with...groups of people." The sensation of being pressed in on all sides, still fresh in the girl's memory, returned; she suppressed a shudder, though her next words were rushed and considerably less cheerful than the last ones. "They kind of freak me out."

At this point, Addy turned slightly, her back to the Square. This action could have been interpreted as embarrassment, and perhaps the girl ought to have been embarrassed, but truthfully she was not. Wistfully, she looked upon the fence, which was not so far; and beyond it, the woods, so alluring. Not being a particularly rebellious teenager, Addy had never ventured beyond the fence, never felt its appeal in the slightest. But something about today, something about the smell and the people and the need for escape - something about the light, tentative scent of autumn on the wind, the whispered call to action as it brushed chillingly against the exposed skin of her forearms - something was calling her out of the district from without, or maybe pushing her out from within. Either way, today was the time, the opportunity: today was the escape, however temporary.
"Do you know how to get outside the fence?"
The whisper of the words could hardly hide the anticipation and the excitement that should have been masked.

For the first time in her few conversations with Drynis, Addy was feeling a twinge of annoyance. One of her eyebrows raised involuntarily at his response to her mangled explanation; he didn't like crowds? How could he possibly compare that to her, she who nearly decompensated simply from feeling the physical prescence of more than a few people at a time? Of course, the girl hadn't exactly told him that, or even begun to convey her panicked sense of claustrophobia to him; add to that that neither of them really knew the other well, and the fact that this even bothered Addy at all was preposterous. Unfortunately, she'd never been a very logical girl.

Luckily, Drynis' next words broke the girl from her trance of introversion, and her face lit up eagerly. Easily she followed him, silently observing the sound of his feet on the worn streets of District Five. A chilled autumn breeze teased a few strands of Addy's hair out of her ponytail, and patiently she worked them back behind her ears without breaking pace. Just as the boy stopped walking, she gasped slightly. Comet - didn't I - is he still tied up at the square? Of course, the horse was fine being tied, and she didnt really need to worry right now; but she couldn't exactly embark on an expedition into the woods without tending to the gelding. Nervously the girl's eyes darted around, eyebrows clenched together in anxiety. She paid almost no attention to her acquaintance's next words except for one: the name of her horse. Addy looked up eagerly, meeting the boy's eyes. "Yeah, I'll go get him right now. Be right back!"
Without any hesitation, she turned and headed back the way they'd come, reaching the Square in just over a minute. It was nearly empty now, and the girl paused for several long seconds to regain her breath and rest her throbbing legs. Then she walked over to a post on the other side of the Square, a safe distance from where the crowd had been, and untied his reins before throwing them over his head. With practiced ease, Addy pushed herself up onto the gelding's back and swung her right leg over. His sides were tense with stored energy and the girl didn't waste time; she simply allowed him to trot off at a brisk pace, doing nothing but steering him. Instinctively, the girl wound her stiff, cold fingers into his coarse mane, enjoying the slight bit of warmth it granted her.
In no time at all she'd reached Dryis again. It felt awkward, sitting so high above him; but, as memory served her, he had a horse as well. "Do you, um - you have a horse too, right?..." What was the horse's name? Addy shook her head slightly in frustration, but still couldn't remember. She blushed and looked down at her hands, focusing on the patterns they'd created when woven into her horse's mane. "...I don't really remember its name. ...Sorry. But, are you bringing him too?" Addy dared to raise her glance enough to make eye contact with Drynis, hoping he wasn't offended. It had been a year, after all. The blush was still fresh in her cheeks, and she tried to hide it by bringing her hand up and brushing a few more rogue strands of hair behind her ear. But even though she was concerned, Addy also hoped that this would be resolved quickly, as she did not want to delay. Her previous anxiety returned; the girl needed to go, she needed to get out of here. For once, she wanted an adventure, something exciting, something stupid. Something...illegal? Yes. That was it.

Few things calmed Adelaide Fulten like riding her horse; and nothing, absolutely nothing, freed her like riding did.
Throwing her head back to the sky, Addy anchored her left hand in the tangled tendrils of Comet's mane and began the rather brief process of relaxing her mind and body. First throwing deep sighs to the wind to expel her breath which had so long been held, then stretching her legs straight and relaxing them again, the girl was able to soothe her tightened muscles and lungs. It felt so good, so incredibly good, to succumb to the brisk wind as it washed over her and sink her muscles into the familiar rhythm of the horse's gait. Allowing herself to be rocked gently by the sway of her gelding's back, Addy finally found herself serene. Even being spoken to by Drynis (whose existence she'd nearly forgotten in her euphoric state of calm) did not startle the girl out of her reverie; rather, she soaked up the words, allowed them to permeate her, and accepted them.
Whether she would have ordinarily engaged in a petty act of rebellion and followed Drynis was debatable; his mysterious request for her to stay back aroused some curiosity in the girl, but she was rarely one to disobey.

Several minutes she spent were in total quiet as Addy unconsciously matched her breathing rate to that of her horse. Her legs absorbed the expansion and detraction of the gelding's ribcage and his slow breathing soothed her. More cold breezes began to grab at the girl's hair, making her eyes itch and her dry skin sting. Deliberately winding both hands into Comet's mane now, she slowed her breathing rate once more and willed her body's relaxation, even in the cold. It worked; Addy spent several happy minutes with her legs hanging down loosely, her hands wrapped in abrasive warmth, and her face averted skyward. Sunlight pierced through the wind in fragments of warmth, but this was not the reason Addy found the day glorious; she reveled in the perfect azure of the sky, the wispy elegance of clouds far over her head.

WIP CAUSE I WANNA GO TO BED, KBYE