the star-child affair [and slayings] (open))

With a rock in her hand, Karina feels how rough her own thumb actually is, because the rock feels smooth as sand paper under her calloused, blood-drenched skin. She's rubbing circles into stone, and wanting to just throw it at a tree, hear a crack of wood split and see a vision of leaves falling all around her when the tree comes down on her head. A lightning-strike of death beats the days of hunger, no salvation, no Kade. He's the one she's fudging trampling across the woods for, where is he? Why isn't he here.

This is day three without rational, human-food and day one without hippie-dippie, veggie-loving food. She'd been living on cold blooded berries, just little, wrinkled things, for two days. She'd been missing food from home for a week, and started trading her clothes with anybody she met. She misses warm bodied delicacies like the ones at home, like the squirrel meat and stews that eccentrics of the forest devoured like poo and a hungry beetle.

She imagines now that if she does not find another berry bush, she will throw rocks at too-fast birds and bunnies, be sickened by the blood and throw up pools of mystery plants, then gorge her stomach all over again; maybe hope raw meat tastes more substantial than shriveled little balls of juicy fruit. Or she will eat like a beetle and go mad from lemon disease.

Her clothes grow larger every day, Karina rationalizes her nonsensical barter of winter coats for food by explaining, by winter time, I will have my boy and he will warm me. By winter time, I will be skin and bones anyways, so I will not need as much clothing, or evem by winter time, I will be dead.

Dead, dead, dead. The stone drops from Karina's hand, she associates the very word with her sister, little Astrid. Little bones in a cemetery back home, rotten as the still-embedded teeth that were smashed and chipped from the fights and the drugs. Astrid was the one meant for the wild life while Karina moved on to polished suits and pulled back pony-tails, a life as a Mayor or a shop-keeper, someone beautiful and typical with not-pink hair. Someone who wore black clothes for the somber effect, not the rebel's edge.

Astrid could bludgeon small creatures to death with her strong hands and rip through sinewy muscle, raw. Astrid used to step on bugs and hear the sickening crunch without wincing, while her sister's nervous hands shook around a box of cigs in one hand and a bottle of spirits in the other. Taking deep breaths of plant, loving the little gormless leafs like no other, Karina would nervously watch her sister and try to construe the meaning of her violence, but her head would numb and her eyes would freeze over so she wouldn't have to deal.

And then when Karina started to grow up at a faster rate than little Astrid, she'd throw rocks at her sister and call her a freak for enjoying the blood on her boots. Why're you smiling, Astrid, you just killed something! she'd growl and flick ashes at her sister's hair to intimdiate her. They'd smirk at each other, Astrid would nod her head and Karina would bury her secret fear of her sister.

Plants used to be Karina's friend, and Astrid loved to kill. Karina dyed her hair with berries and picked flowers for the hell of it. Astrid picked on children and snarled at mad dogs without an inkling of fear under her pretty, little cap of red hair. But the roles had reversed, in a way. Karina was the strong one now, Astrid was the girl weak enough to die in an alley way.

She's got something in her hand now, and she isn't afraid. She told me never to tell, but I'll give you a hint.

Karina knew about the fights, of course, but like anything else her sister did, she firmly ignored the negativity. Astrid was her little angel, as far as Karina could see.

It's not a gun.

Fights were bad, sometimes Astrid came home with skin blue as a berry and blood redder than her hair plastered to her skin, bits of crimson sprinkled on the white rubber of her shoes.

She's in the alley, not so far away from the hospital, but she's struggling for breath now and he's not kept at bay, so she drowns in her blood and dies by the time her responsible older sister finds an empty, red-haired, cold-blooded body.

The fights got bad, Astrid had it coming though. She really did, and it was no remarkable finish, not in the least bit. Nobody watched her die, Karina just walked down the alley a few times and paced like an angry patriarch until the blood is spread across the alley. She won't pace over her own blood, her blood and love. Astrid is her dead sister, Astrid had a shard of glass in her hand and it didn't protect her from the street fights, the heroine, the call of the wild, wild alleys. Ironic, really ironic. Here's Karina in the woods, the real wild, and her sister's got a little body of bones lying in the ground. She used to be taller than Karina, she's probably not anymore.

Karina wonders if bones grow though, and if they can, she prays to God that hers will sprout wings and take her up and away. She hesitates when she thinks of wings, wishes they would sprout now and then maybe she can die another day. But she wishes she could just live on, suspects even if she doesn't die, her hair will be dyed and her tongue snip-snip-snipped like all the wandering stories running round the woods. The zany, fur-clad occupants know more about those who lead Panem then it's real and legal citizens do.

It's all so ironic, Karina closes her eyes and leans against a tree, takes a shuddering breath that reaches into her lungs and pulls out all the wheezing, tired energy in her. She groans, kicks a rock, and feels eyes watching her. The rock tumbles down a slope, it's not too much of a decline from where she is, but the rock keeps rolling until it's knocking at two shiny boots doorstep, underneath the legs and the torso, the arms and the head of a man in a uniform.

That's not fucking right. Another reversal of roles, hadn't this been the way Astrid should have died, while Karina wandered down an alley and tripped and drowned in blood?

"Should I like stick my hands out in front of me, or put them behind my head?" Karina asks, and she hopes he tells her to push them into her pink hair, her imagination is already conjuring the sensation of a bullet ripping through her arms, placed in front of her dead heart. Chest is the kill-area, he'll pretend she was turning to run and he had to kill her. Head-shot's for executing prisoners and politics. Girls like Karina Dayieet get messy, bloody shots to the heart.

ooc- I'm sorry, she kinda didn't acknowledge she was supposed to be seeing a peacekeeper until the end of this post. I'm like, Karina please cooperate and for once in your life look around and notice something, but she didn't care. D:

more coding to come but im done!

The ‘keeper seems a bit surprised and possibly amused by Karina. She can always tell, ‘keepers wear their feelings on their sleeve, right beneath the badge that certifies them Capitol trained and ready to kill, and above the awards that may or may not deck their arms. She can’t see from here how many of those badges he has, but if she saw, she could infer just how sincere he was. Often, they’re kill badges – kill badges on people like her. Wanderers.

She also tries to focus on the amusement, but she is scarily concentrated on his hands, so near a weapon. Her eyes strain to see both forward and sideways, because survival whispers in her right ear, there are trees you could dive behind located five paces to the right, and if you are quick enough you might live a few seconds longer than if he shot you down right where you stand now. Of course, if you dive depends on whether or not you value those extra minutes, I wouldn’t. Survival ends lamely with logic. Logic tells her she will die, and it is better to have her heart ripped than to have limbs and torso punctured by so many holes.

The thing about the ‘keeper is his words don’t match up to survival, survival or logic. They ooze compassion and sincerity like no other ‘keeper she has met ever has. The morally astute ‘keepers, the “bad” ones (ironic that those who defend the common people are considered “bad” by the establishment) at the most, they are the ones who watch illegalities for their amusement, or are easily paid off in sex, work, or money.

He falls into a.. different category. He is either a trader, a pretender, a chaser, or a helper. Karina constructs the words in her mind to describe him, because her head is utterly confused and she wants a label for this man to make the pounding roar of her pulse and the clashing voices of logic and survival shut up already. If he is a trader, she thinks, he wants information for her; whether he affiliates himself with other ‘keepers, or has truly gone rogue is not a matter for consideration, if he is a trader he will give her food and comfort, and expect something in return. Maybe rebel secrets, or sex or work (but not money, they’re in the god damned woods after all) If he is a pretender, he will lure her in with candied words and real, live sweets, watch her grow lazy and comfortable, then slit her throat. This is an undesirable outcome, to say the least. But a worse fate would be if he is a chaser, and he expects her to bolt right now and he will shoot at her and miss many, many times before his bullet holes slow her down enough for him to finish the job and gut her like an animal.

If he is a helper, he is unheard of. Karina can’t imagine it yet, but she suspects if he is a helper, there was some deep trauma associated with the ‘keepers, perhaps the death of a favored prostitute or forced murder of a small child, that caused him to go wild. He is unpredictable and insane, by the standards of the men he works for. He is dangerous, this is true – regardless of sanity. He is also salvation for the hungry girl with pink hair and a dying body (Karina, obviously).

She decides that she would rather risk it here, slightly upwind from the ‘keeper, than run now or even worse, give in and walk over to him. Her head nods to some bags without her eyes flicking away from those weapon-gripping hands.

”If you want to help me, you’ll throw me some food then, yes? I’m a bit – shaken, I’d rather not come down yet.” Karina smiles cattishly, feels pretty kittyish too. Is this why the tabby she used to own, the one that the new ‘keeper in her neighborhood had to fetch, felt. Karina recalls the tabby sat on an unreachable branch for a few minutes before the new boy ‘keeper could coax it into coming down, and then she bristled and hissed when he touched her, and climbed higher than she’d been before. All the while, keepers on the ground laughed and taunted him to just shoot the damned thing. But he kept at it, Karina doesn’t know why now and she certainly was befuddled then, but he kept at it. Now that faded memory is all her logic can deduce as reason for the anarchist ‘keeper. She clings to the memory and hopes she is the tabby to the ‘keeper, secretly thinks so because she is sometimes called Kitty, and feels linked to all things cattsh.

The thought strengthens her a bit; she hesitantly lets her lips twist into a shape like a smile, the same action performed in front of her cult of believers back home in D-1. But then, it had been a method of disarming their suspicions when she did something queer, now it was a motion to show she was instilling a bit of trust into him, so he would give her the much needed and desired food. ”I’d ask you your name, but if you are a helper, then you wouldn’t really be expected to give it to me. I might get caught by PKs who do right by their job and take me in for questioning, and then I’d trade your name for freedom, if I could finagle a deal out of it. I just don’t expect a real name, I mean. So I won’t ask, but I’ll tell you can call me Kitty because I’ll answer to that.” it sounds like her name a bit too, her real name that the people who mattered called her. Katarina, the fearless leader. The manipulative, heartless thing she left back at home. Kat, Kitty – it’s all the same.

”Or, you could give me the name of a rival, and then if I’m ever caught it’d be good for you, I’d tell them that persons name and they’d never advance up the chain of command, because having a possible treasonous act on your record would screw it up, I think.” Karina flushes at that, feeling like even if he is a sadist, it may buy her time to suggest futures where she is not strung up in a tree and shot/hung/burned by this man. Any possibility including her heart beating and her mouth and nose breathing is a win. Her limbs quake, her eyes water. Nerves are electrified, if he shot her down now, there would be a fizzle as metal hit scorching skin and small electric shocks would flick up off the wound and burn down the forest.

Katarina feels scared, and her head nervously cracks jokes, tossing them at the ‘keeper like they’ll extend her life or something, but some she keeps to herself because they have underlying trains of thought that disturb her, cut deep into her living heart like razor blades and tell her she might just die today.

Maybe this Kitty-Kat has crossed paths with the wrong ‘keeper today.

ooc- uncoded (colors, etc) but finished! written in 20 mins, FYEAH. I was going to wait till thursday to write this if I didn't do it tonight c: So happy I had a burst of something.