See How Deep the Bullet Lies { Essence
Jul 9, 2011 0:27:43 GMT -5
Post by Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] on Jul 9, 2011 0:27:43 GMT -5
It had happened to fast, so stupidly fast. He had been taking the old bull to market to be butchered fresh. They rarely had beasts of his size, and the road to the market always made the meat just a little stale. No one in Ten complained and most of it went to the Capitol anyhow. Mace took some delight from the fact that they probably had no idea how much better freshly blooded meat tasted. But some of the herd, a very few, were just too big to be practical to carry so far. Very early that morning he had tricked the bull, whipped him into submission (literally), and tied a rope around his neck, which hung like a noose. He had been careful to lead him away before most of the house awoke; he didn't need any sentimental tears shed over the old useless bastard.
In hindsight, he should have at least enlisted Cygnus to help him. It was his own damned fault, except not really. It was the bull's fault. The troubling part wasn't his injury - although that was damn concerning - but rather that he didn't know exactly what happened. One minute they were walking down the road to the market, and then the next he had taken a kick to his thigh, the sort that he knew to be dangerous, knew to deadly. Immediately his flesh swelled with blood and it felt as though his whole leg pressed up against something vital deep within.
Mace didn't cry out eve as he hobbled off the road to the latest tree. The bull stood idly in the dirt, happy for a rest and oblivious to all else. Mace put his forehead to the crook of his arm, focused on his breathing instead of the searing, aching pain lancing through him. He tried to think of what to do. His leg could not be broken; people in District Ten didn't recover from femur fractures. The bull was old and weak, to be sure, but it was still a bull. And when he realized the path down which his thoughts were tending, he immediately walled them off.
Instead he considered his options. He had walked quite a ways towards the market, and yet he was not close enough to make it to the healer in town. He needed someone close, someone soon. He'd heard of a girl who could heal, liked it even. He didn't know if she had any experience with breaks, but it was as likely as not with all the farms around. Mace paid attention to thinks like healers, those with such tendencies. Not for himself, of course, but for his myriad of siblings. They were constantly getting sick, roughhousing, things children did. And their Ma's limited knowledge wasn't always enough.
He usually sent Cygnus though, and now he fought hard to remember what his brother had said about her house. He pieced together enough details through the fog of pain to turn off the main path. He left the bull there; someone else could deal with it, kill it and take the meager earnings, for all he cared. Mace knocked on one wrong door before the farmhand told him where he could find her. Essence. Sounded like a Capitol name to him, but this wasn't exactly the time to be petty.
He made it to her front door, but once there, whatever adrenaline he'd been running on faded. Instead of knocking, he fell against it, a body weightthud. His leg shuddered, the knee turning inward against the other, and even though he put no weight on it at all, he still felt a shuddering pain resonate from it, pulse in rhythm with his heart.
Blackness crept in so quietly, he didn't have time to wonder about it. He just sank, collapsing over his good left leg, one pile of muscle on Essence's front door step.
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