i should live in salt // [ lex + denali ]

God damn, turn around now
You're my A Team

— and that's when the trees start falling through the sky all around her. Redwoods. The petrified bones of an ancient graveyard, stone branches and shattered stumps dropping past oak saplings that float like feathers in comparison. Denali reaches for the young, familiar trees, running her fingers between the scalloped leaves as she tries to find something to hold onto instead of just plummeting. Her fingers finally wrap around one, only to find the limb has been carved away. Handfuls of tiny whittlings fill her hands: steaks and pork chops, chicken strips and sliced ham. "What a stupid thing to carve!" She exclaims, peering more closely at one of the slices of ham, trying to figure out how she even knows what it is. It doesn't really look like anything more than a chip of wood, but there's an undeniably recognizable hint of a diamond pattern at the edge and so somehow she knows. "But why? Why would anyone choose to carve this?"

An axe flips past her face and over her shoulder, as if offended by the question, barely missing her. She scarcely has time to gasp before a hamburger with much better aim thwacks her directly in the mouth, taking full advantage of her vulnerable moment of gaping distraction. Instinctively trying to spit it out, shredded bits of paper covered in very official looking writing and golden wedding bands are spewed out like streamers and... well, certainly not like confetti. Who would make confetti out of solid gold? That would be even more stupid than whittling teeny wooden replicas of sliced meats. "HNGGG!" She tries to complain around the mouthfuls of confusing nonsense stuck in her teeth. "HNGGGNUGHNUGH!" The trees whooshing past her merely shrug, not really understanding what's so perplexing about the whole situation. Seems pretty normal to them, as if this sort of thing happens all the time around here. "NGHHHHHHH?"

Turning back to the oak sapling, she gives it a pleading look for help and it murmurs something garbled in response. Leaning in a little further she manages to catch a few words. "— also hiking. Trees in general." Denali blinks at the darkness, her vision a blur. Although dried out from heavy, open-mouthed breathing, her mouth is empty and there's no lingering taste of metal on her tongue. Praise Ripred. "Yes, that's a different category from woodworking." Attempting to mutter something about how sliced ham... should never be made of... wood it comes out so soft and unintelligible that Lex doesn't seem to hear it over her own rambling. "And yes, I know I'm a walking caricature of someone from Seven —"

"— ate nine!" Seville cries out proudly, looking beyond pleased with herself, her mouth hooking into a rare, genuine smile. It's artfully compact on a face that's usually all cheekbones with no room for even this small moment of funny business. Flicking her eyes over to meet Zion's, he's doing a much better job of laughing along with the joke than Denali, who simply waits to see if that was actually a punchline or if — oh, please — there might be something legitimately chuckle-worthy yet to come so she won't have to switch roles with her sister and fake it over a one-liner she's heard too many times before. Instead of being offended at Denali's obvious deference, Seville makes her the unfortunate sole object of her attention as she follows up with the encore she's obviously being asked for: "Because it heard it should eat three square meals a day!" Frantically looking around in search of someone else who might provide a better laugh-track, Zion disappears abruptly and Denali tries to find someone, anyone, who might help to fill the audience. My dad... my friends...

You. The wind accuses her with a huff that forms a whirlwind around her, blowing her hair into her face and lifting her toes off the ground. Her surroundings blur, turn technicolor, and explode into an acid trip of children's coloring book shapes — as if all of the color was pushed out from her body, now silvery grey, and used to manufacture crayons. Before her is a giant eye, its pupil a tunnel large enough to walk through and so she does, feeling as if this is something she has already done before. Déjà vu. "I..." At the end of the tunnel sits a black cat wearing a birthday hat proclaiming IT'S MY 17TH BIRTHDAY! Before she can ask the cat what all of this is about, it promptly swallows her whole. "I think I already told you this story."

Denali yawns wide enough to swallow the cat right back and the sleepy whine that follows it has a mewing quality implying she might actually have done so. "I've always been like that, though. Used to get myself into so much trouble when I was a kid." There's a muddled half-giggle as Denali's sleep-trashed brain imagines a teeny tiny Lex with pigtails and ruffled socks, reciting her ABC's and getting most of them wrong. AYE BEE CEE DEE DEAF KAY GEE! JAY EYE EFF TEA ELEMENOHPEEOH! "Especially when you factor in how bad I was at thinking before doing or saying anything. I'm much better at that now — if that gives you an idea." ("Kay... gee..." Denali murmurs softly, an almost-snort of amusement sounding a lot more like an almost-snore. The highly probable inaccuracy of the image only makes it funnier. Yeah... kids are... so trouble... at thinking... "Mmhmm baaad...") "I just remember being in class — I must've been seven or eight — and absolutely dying of boredom. I could probably draw that classroom from memory, I spent the whole year paying attention to everything but the lessons."

At seven Denali hadn't yet tried to punch a kid for harassing her little sisters. Rio was only one, the twins were two, Seville was four... Zion was eight and only ever got picked last in kickball because everyone knew that he was scared the kicking might bruise the ball and so he only kicked it successfully on accident, doing his best to miss as often as possible. Even then he still usually got picked second or third — following Denali — because she was good enough at kicking things to compensate for him, but would only play if they got to be on the same team. Seven was a good year.

"I actually wound up having to make a replacement desk at the end of the year since mine was basically a giant chip carving and totally useless as a writing surface — I guess I was seven, cause I remember carving that giant Cornucopia that came alive and started fighting people, you know, with the spindly legs and all of the weapons? It was really geometrical, which made for a very satisfying chip carving." Denali tries to give a small nod, her wobbly head attempting to confirm that she remembers and also that, yeah, it was kinda neat. ("Mhmn... leg-pons... nnn... eat.") It was easy to think mutts could be neat back then — they were like mythical monsters in stories parents told their children to scare them into behaving. That Cornucopia boogieman wasn't real. It was little more than a bedtime story or a nightmare ghost. Denali probably doodled it in the margins of her notebooks too. "Anyway... where was I going with this?"

"Pencil shavings!" Lex exclaims victoriously, her voice forceful enough to cause Denali's eyes to jolt open in a fleeting moment of shock. "The class was reading some boring book about kids churning butter or something," the mere mention of a book about churning butter is enough to invite drowsiness to weigh down her eyelids once more, but Denali takes a deep breath and blinks back the idea of falling asleep again, "and I was checking to see if I could get away with tossing a paper plane to my buddy on the other side of the room. He was too distracted with the reading, but the girl who sat behind him — I don't remember her name at all, but I do remember declaring her my nemesis at some point —" Lex starts laughing and Denali drowsily tries to laugh along, but sound is hard so she settles for hanging her mouth open a little and pretending the noise of Lex's laughter is coming out from her own throat. It ends up being pretty entertaining in its own right and finally a soft giggle manages to match it. "— was sprinkling pencil shavings down the back of his shirt. So I got right up, marched across the room, pulled her chair out from under her, took her pencil and snapped it in half."

Now there's the little Lex that Denali's imagination should have conjured up to begin with, throwing herself into other people's battles with the enraged silence of a threat twice her size. There's an itch in the back of her memory that tries to remind her that she did think something like that up once, but it's too difficult to recall the details, so instead she envisions the kind of giant bow in Lex's hair that her own mom sent all of the the Lyons girls to school in and declares the mental image perfected. Hilarious. "She cried, but after school she pulled my hair. I got in so much trouble... I didn't know why at the time." Blinking the sleep from her eyes so she can take the cue to roll them at the obvious answer to that conundrum, her face mostly gives an awkward, slow motion twitch, but afterward she feels more awake. "But now I know it's because I'm not subtle." No kidding.

Lex stifles a yawn, but Denali catches it anyhow, her head slipping against its resting place as she stretches slightly. There's a damp spot on Lex's shoulder where Denali undeniably drooled on her and so she tries to settle her cheek on top of it to hide the evidence as Lex adjusts her legs and glances down at a face now trying to feign both sleep and innocence. "Arthur wouldn't even pretend to be mad at me over it. Mostly he was mad at the teacher for bothering him with that nonsense." Whether she's too tired to notice or too tired to care, Lex nudges Denali's head back up to a less precarious position, yawning as she begins to drift off as well. "I'm glad you get to go back home to them," she murmurs, causing Denali to stop squeezing her eyes shut and glance up. "Your sisters, I mean. It sounds like it'll be..." Yeah, Denali smiles, feeling so warm despite the way the words trail off unfinished, it will. "It all sounds nice. Happy. And you..." Nestling her head against Denali's hair, Lex's breathing becomes thick and drawn out, as if the time that was stolen from them and then returned is truly theirs. Not just Lex's. Or Denali's. Separate. But as if this isn't their last night together. "Deserve..."

In the silence that follows, the corners of Denali's lips pull into a small, confused frown. Home will be nice... it will be happy... but although Denali may be going back with her life, she can't deny that this whole experience still ends with her losing something else. Somehow she made friends with people that were meant to be her enemies — with Lex. With Bette. With Wander and Temple and Eve. It's sad for all of them to be leaving each other. They all probably have other friends to go home to, but Denali —

It's sad that Denali just nodded off through several stories she could have kept with her even after Lex is gone. Scrunching her face up, she tries to pull words out of the haze of dream fragments and wakefulness. There were trees and meats? That were made of more trees? ("Yes, that's a different category from woodworking," says a voice, but it feels like metal. Twenty-four karats. Which should be wrong because walking caricatures of District Seven don't generally involve metal, but Lex did say that her dad works with it sometimes, so maybe.) There was also something about math and something about eyes, but all she can remember is looking down and being a knife, so that can't be anything real. Well, nothing that was real today at least. Then there was a cute old cat, except it wasn't that old because it was only Lex's age — who isn't as old as she needs to be yet — and suddenly everyone started getting smaller and smaller.

("Anyway... where was I going with this?" The voice continues, trying to get back on track and focus.) Denali blinks at the darkness. Once. Twice. Three times. Carvings, cat cannibalism, kickball, child labor being utilized for butter churning — "Pencil shavings!" She exclaims triumphantly, stopping herself before clapping her heavily bandaged hands together. In a flash she too is as small as small can be, remembering the smell of the sharpener attached to the wall above the classroom trashcan. Everything is wood shavings and purple glue sticks and fresh notebooks with shiny spiral bindings. In her head she turns to look out the window, staring at a place past the playground and beyond the streets, over fields and through a forest of oak trees. If she looks far enough then she can see it: little blonde pigtails and a giant bow on the head of a girl who was never taught the meaning of messing around — revoking chair privileges and snapping pencils without fear of consequences, because Lex Lionel is consequences. "Where's a camera..." Denali murmurs under her breath, still caught up with the confusion of dreams versus memory and present reality, "when you... need one?" Two districts apart and a decade in the past, the Lyons girl gives a cheer for justice being served, pumping her fist in the air. "I wish I had you... to help me... with my battles back then too." Trying to hold onto both the time they have and they time they could have had, Denali stops trying to untangle the difference between what was or is or will be. "Like... there was this one time —"