Swept Away [Mohs/Muffin]

Thin fingers stop, clutching a powdery piece of chalk as the female just sashays into the room. Her companions look older, the youngest being around fourteen as they sit, clustered around in a lopsided semicircle. In the back of the class he stands beside a fourth chalkboard, covered with lines both thick and small.

His form moves, parting the small pond of students as he approaches his own desk at the front, a few papers haphazardly scattered around the smooth surface of the wood. His digits point down as blue eyes flicker from name to name, ignoring those scratched off. Three untouched remain, and his gaze rises to meet the new girl's expression, a sigh passing through his lips. "Rhythm."

Not a question, nor an inquiry- simply a statement. He scratches her name away without any second thought. "My name is Professor Aurum." He limps forward, favoring his left side, snagging a silver cane from the desk he abandons. "You're about... Fifty minutes early to the next class." he adds, sarcasm thick in his voice.

God damn, they pull these kids younger and younger every year. Wait- that last name... Morales.

For a split second he is torn, his hands trembling as he leans upon the metal pole, breathing heavy for but a moment. Morales... One of their lost tributes.

He himself never saw her face outside of the Arena, but he could see the apparent relation in the curve of her jaw, the softness of her eyes. He inhales roughly, gaze slipping to the lines in the back that seem to make sense from further away- various cuts and gashes cover the body of a female as if laid out for autopsy.

"Just this once, Morales. You get one freebie. This is it. Don't be late next time." The ego deflates as he cringes away from her and wanders back to the chalkboard while the other students in the class turn and watch him leave, making eye contact with each other and mouthing words like 'What the hell was that?'

"John was late last week and Aurum physically threw him out of class. What the fuck?"

"Probably cuz this girl's so young. You know he has a soft spot for kids."


"How about you all shut up and get back to fucking work eh?" he snaps, slamming a fragment of chalk onto the wooden frame of the board, shattering it into a cloud of dust. The other kids jump a little, and get back to their notes, scribbling furiously, copying various terms from the front chalkboard.

"Don't apologize. Accept it. Learn from it. Don't do it again." he grumbles as he finishes.

His hands rise, coated in a thick layer of chalk dust to run through his jet hair as he again turns, and sighs, allowing the exhale to catch in his throat. "Well right now, we're probably going to go over this." he nearly stutters, gesturing to the drawing on his board. "It's... A little too late for you to get the information up there, so we can deal with it later. Just try and focus for now. And you-" From his left hand, a thick eraser flies through the air and strikes the male to her left right in the face. "Erase that smirk off your face."

The class stifles laughs and snickers from behind hands flipped to their lips. "Seriously, shut up." he snaps at the kid who spits out tiny clouds of dust while the male crosses his arms and leans against the blackboard.

"Before we look over this corpse and how we could have saved her, I want to talk about what happens when you die." His eyes flicker down onto the pale color of Rhythm's.

"Isn't that all just speculation though?" a girl questions, her hand in the air as she asks the question.

"... Yes, but it's something that's been debated and studied for centuries, even before Panem was around. So I wanna talk about it with all of you since you'll be throwing yourselves away into the arena anyway."

Tension grows, a thick, unpenetrable fog in the room as the students glanced at each other, then to the newcomer. Whispers slip between some of the others in class, while their teacher continues to stare at them.

"Go ahead, share." He stops, voice laced with sarcasm.

"No, we were only saying... Isn't it your job to teach us something useful?"

Icy eyes narrow as he points towards the still-open door. "You can leave. Get out."

"But-"

"I SAID GET OUT." His voice raises to the ceiling until the kids scurry away, grabbing their bags and notes, hissing about crazed professors as they leave. The class, finally silent, watch them go until Mohs' shoulders relax. "Alright. So, it's been proven that when you die, your pineal gland releases this... Chemical called dimethyltriptamine into your system. Now we consider it a class one narcotic- it's hard to get, even down in dee-six. DMT is probably the most potent psychadelic we currently know of, almost like Tracker Jacker venom. Your body, your brain will produce this stuff almost every day. Get the drift?"

He inhales sharply as he steps gingerly upon his right leg, and guestures to one of the girls. "Stop that, don't take notes on this. Shithead was right- it won't help you in a life or death situation." The girl shrinks into her chair, pencil resting lightly on top of her paper.

"Right, so, this DMT shit. It's what causes us to dream. Why is it important to know then, if it won't save you? When you die, your body releases all of its stores into your blood stream. When you sleep, you get these... Tiny droplets, not even mililiters of the stuff in you. But when you die... You dream. That's it. The 'White Light' everyone reports is just you. But here's the kicker- for the last few moments after what we consider 'Death', the brain is still functioning, still firing."

"That means kiddies, when you die, you go to exactly where you would expect to go."

Blue eyes focus intently upon Rhyme, lips twiching in a downwards frown.