Among the Roots [Kerfluffle vs Mutts] Day 2

You spent the night playing in the paints that had been sent to you. You didn’t even think about what was going on in the arena, even though you had to be honest with yourself, you hated just how muggy it had been. You hadn’t experienced anything like this in eleven, even though you did know what it was like for it to be humid. That was not a surprise to you. It was like they had cranked it up to max though, and the neon camouflage you had been dressed in had started to feel more and more uncomfortable. However, the hole in the shirt did help let some of the air out of the outfit. The game maker that chose this outfit must think they are fashion forward or something like that. You wished you could have had a word with them, but alas, you wouldn’t.

They were running the fate of your life after all.

Instead you ripped out a piece of paper from the sketch book and began to pass it around to everyone as you all tried to rack you brains around what was going on around here. It was obviously a forest, a jungle that you had never seen before. You had no clue what to expect here. The amount of bugs should have caused you to wince, but you were used to that back home. Not to the level of severity here, but enough to at least make you push through the discomfort. After all, you did have a whole paint set now to distract you from the little bugs probably feasting on your blood.

You hoped they thought it was delicious.

---

The first thing you painted was an Izar star in the deepest black that came in your paint set. You took the time to place it around the biggest tree you could find in the area your alliance had been occupying, but you didn’t say anything much about it after that. They probably figured that it had something to do with the love you had for your family. ”For protection. May Salome or Iago or Gabriel watch over us.” those were the first three that had come to mind after all. There had been so many of you at this point that it did surprise everyone else. No one had seen a double Izar reaping before, and of course, you had to be the first.

You had to be the example after what Tio Vasco had done right?

You didn’t blame him though. You wouldn’t blame him for standing up for the people of district eleven. The last couple of games had been rough as a whole after all. Save the 82nd when Kassandra Nerys had found her way back home, even though she had to kill her own district partner in order to do so. You had to push the thought of that out of your mind right now. Sarina was nowhere near you after all. A part of you wanted it to stay that way. The thought of having to decide what to do about your own family in the arena was scary enough. Of course you would never harm her, because she was the one that needed to go home, right? You were the one that was destined to die here, that is what you were resolved too. However, you didn’t tell anyone else about that, because it was none of their business. They wouldn’t understand the thought of being a scapegoat of course. A martyr for a cause that had to be greater than you at the end of the day.

The thought depressed you, but with the broad side of your blade, you hammered the picture into the tree and simple chose to not talk about it.

---

Of course, the night had passed, and everyone had taken turns trying to sleep so by the time the morning had come, they would at least feel a little less nervous then they already had been.

The time you had spent sleeping had been nothing different. Right up until you started falling into a deeper sleep. That’s when the dream started, at least, you felt like it was a dream. You had a sword in your hand, and the faces of many of the tributes had been coming towards you. They had their own blades and weapons drawn, and most of them had come at you with open arms. You had found ways to push them away from you, and with each deflection, another had disappeared. You had felt a bit uncomfortable with this of course, but nothing that you couldn’t handle. That was until you finally saw Sarina running towards you. You placed your blade at your side, waiting for her to pierce you through the chest like you had always said you would let her do. However you hand instead swiped down as she got close, slicing off her leg in the process and then it was like you had no control over your body. A slice turned into a stab, and cry had turned into a scream, and the whole scene had been painted with a tint of red that you had never seen before.

The only thing you could see was Sarina’s lifeless face.

And that’s when you woke up.

[Insert cute gay scene between Absolam and Alfonso]

---

The night did not pass quick enough, but it did help that Abs hands had been around you for the rest of it. Something about his heartbeat had been soothing enough to at least keep you asleep. Maybe it was the fact that you had felt some sort of safe, or maybe it was the intimacy of the gesture that had kept you calm. You didn’t know, and honestly, you didn’t know how to really explain it without using words that you didn’t even understand. It was just nice to have someone in here that wanted to at least try to understand you and your quiet demeanor. It helped.

That was all you could say.

But morning broke, and you all knew that you had to start moving. You looked at Abs and simply smiled as you rubbed his forearm a bit. ”We need to get moving.” you stated clearly towards everyone. ”Im dying of thirst myself.” You smiled as you finally moved Abs arms from around you and stood up. The amount of sweat on your skin made it shine in the sunlight. You wanted to roll your eyes, but you would have to get over it. It was muggy.

You grabbed your paints and supplies and set out to find your next adventure.

---

That’s when you finally heard running water. You had been thinking about how parched you had been since you had gotten in here, and the sound of it made you feel a little more inspired to move a little quicker.

You pressed your lips together as you tried to lead the pack, even though you knew that everyone could keep up with you with almost no problems. The water looked dirty, but some iodine tablets that you had learned about in the training center would be able to do the trick for you. You knew that much. However, you realized quickly that you had been surrounded by mutts that had come out of nowhere. Your eyes though had been on the water, and when a fish came out of nowhere and snatched the iodine tablets from your pouch, you nearly lost it. ”Vete a la mierda.” You pulled your blade up as you cussed at the fish before you. ”Guys, be on guard.”

You knew you could survive this.

At least you hoped and prayed

Now and again, Absalom catches himself feeling the same sort of blues that had started that morning.

He wasn’t unfamiliar with the heaviness that crept up through his chest, out his shoulders, and down his arms so they hung limp at his sides. He knew this feeling, sure as the sun set flared tangerine across the horizon. Most of the time it set in after his father had said something particularly cruel about Absalom’s intelligence. Sometimes when he’d walk home from the gym late at night, alone in the streets and thinking that perhaps one of these days there’d be someone to walk alongside him. A friend, anyone that could keep him company so that when he reached the front gate of his house, he’d turn to them and say, see you tomorrow, so he had something to look forward to.

But walking alongside little Walter, and silent Eloise, he manages a smile. He won’t forget how Walter had leapt into playing with the bunnies back into the training center, not poking fun at Absalom’s idea. Or that Eloise had the kind of serenity that he wished he could carry in his chest all the time. Alfoson, too – the boy from eleven who’d seen him on the roof, and then hugged him so tight after walking away from Bill – his face turned a deeper shade of crimson when he looked over at him.

Theirs was an uneven rhythm. A strange collection of tributes – one, six, eight, and eleven – stitched together loosely enough.

Camping for the night, Absalom agreed to take turns with the others to keep watch. He didn’t take the lead, and was thankful that no one seemed to want to, either. Absalom set down his tarp on a patch of soft earth and curled up next to Alfonso. As they settled in for sleep, and Alfonso drifted off, Absalom stayed awake to watch the stars hanging overhead.

He put his hand on his empty wrist, and wondered if the Bill still had his bracelet tied tight. There hadn’t been a canon, which meant the boy had made it this far. Absalom thought it a mistake not to have stayed with him, but quickly tried to swat the idea away. He had three new friends now, and a safe space to sleep. Bill needed more help than he could give, and Absalom had promised these people his loyalty.

The boy from eleven stirs, fidgeting in his space across from Absalom, and mutters.

“Alfonso?” His name rolls off Absalom’s tongue easily. He’s laying near the skinny boy from eleven but comes closer as Alf fidgets. “Hey,” He brings his arms, coiling with muscles but slow, up in a gentle hug.

‘oh…. Sorry. I didnt mean to wake you.’

“It’s okay,” He thought of how Sarkine would wake him from a nightmare back in one. They’d sit in the dark a while, talking about happier things. Sometimes they’d go down to the kitchen for a glass of milk and a cookie. He couldn’t give that to Alfonso, but maybe he could still make him feel good. “I wasn’t sleeping much anyway.”

He felt the warmth of Alfonso against his chest, stomach, and undercarriage. He liked the boy’s body close to his, that he could hold onto him. “My sister helps when I can’t sleep, back in one. She would stay up with me sometimes, when I got scared.”

‘You have a sister too?’ He liked how Alf’s brown eyes caught the light, and how his hair fell across his forehead. ‘ My brother usually tells me to stop thinking about it go back to sleep.’

“Yeah, her name is Sarkine,” He says. The warmth fades as Alfonso twists forward. Absalom still held onto the boy, and began to trace a finger in circles on his chest. He couldn’t help but smile - maybe more for imagining Sarkine than feeling the boy’s chest - before moving his body closer again. “Do you have a big family back in eleven? What… what’s it like there?” He yawns, and stretches.

‘My sister, Sarina, is here with me ya know?’ Absalom winces, and wishes he hadn’t brought up his sister, even if she was all he could think about. ‘ Yeah, huge family actually. There have been quite a few of us in this same predicament.’

Absalom was too young to know Gabriel, and too disinterested in historic families to know the Izars. He could’ve admired them, had he taken the time. The boys and girls that put family first, that loved their district with their whole hearts, with a history rich and long as panem.

‘… Just as muggy as it is in here if I am being honest, but also, its mostly just crop fields… uh, its always hard for me to talk about home I guess.’

“Oh.” Absalom lets the thought linger. He’d known, and maybe in his tiredness or that he didn’t want to have to think about, forgotten the connection the two shared. He felt his cheeks flush and he wanted to disappear but he let the moment sit between them. “You ever think about, how nice it is to be with someone else, when you’re not feeling the way you want to?” Absalom couldn’t say what brought out the thought. Maybe Alfonso in his arms, or missing home. Maybe the momentary flash of Bill at the back of his mind.

“I’m sorry, that probably sounds… stupid.”

‘Like how nice this is right now? No. Not at all. I get what you mean Abs.
’ At the boy’s words Absalom could feel his face grow hot. ‘How do you feel in this moment?’

Absalom felt the warmth of the boy’s palm. He lingered in the spark between their fingers, small as it was. He could feel his heartbeat quicken, too, as the boy asked him how he felt.

“Free,” Absalom said the first word that popped into his head. He moved his free hand down Alfonso’s chest, arm then around his waist, with his palm coming to rest softly against the boy’s stomach. “Like as much as I could be anywhere else, I want to be here, right now. That it’s better, at least.”

‘I like that. Free is such a weird word, but fitting. Just short of the word infinite.’

He didn’t know what Alfonso meant, but he liked that he agreed with him.

“Hmmm.” Absalom moved to put his chin on Alfonso’s shoulder so he could rest his face closer to the boy’s neck. He wished he knew what to say to Alfonso. What did you say to someone you barely knew, but wanted to hold? That he felt as though there was a fire pulsing through his body that he’d not felt much of before, but now twice he’d been set aflame. Was this too much too soon, brought on by tragedy and exhaustion?

But it felt right, somehow. And safe.

“Let’s keep each other safe as long as we can,” Absalom whispered out. He’d failed once already and now he felt he could have a second chance. “I’d miss laying with you too much if something happened.”

‘Your safety, and everyone elses is my priority Abs. Lets only think about this and nothing else for now.

It’s funny, feeling so much all at one time. Absalom struggled to figure out why he could have yearned for Bill but wanted his arms around Alfonso. They each filled a different part of Absalom in a way that he wanted more. And where he’d left Bill to fend for what he thought would be the end, Absalom saw a new beginning in Alfonso. He could learn to feel for this boy what he’d felt before. Even now, the warmth of their bodies together, he stirred somewhere deep.

“Okay.” Absalom is short in reply. He hopes he hasn’t pushed too far too soon. “You get some rest, and I’ll stay up a while. You need it.” He wraps the boy in a tighter hug, his face pressed into Alfonso’s neck. “Goodnight, Alfonso.”

When he wakes in the morning, and pulls apart from the boy he’d held, he’s slow to start the day. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and imagines that he could’ve felt better. Not that he expected the weight to lift from his chest, or for him to look at Alfonso and feel the same sort of flutter he’d felt a few days ago. He folded up his tarp slow and steady, and tried to think less about the boys and more about how he needed to stay alive.

And so he thinks of Sarkine when the rag tag group passes down into the floodplains. He’s at the back of the pack, his machete in his right hand, at the ready. Not that it does a lot of good, when the creatures make their way out of the forest and toward them. He dodges in time to catch a glancing blow from the jaguar and turns to watch the others scramble.

Alfonso lurches and swings at one of the fish in the shallows, while Eloise finds their aim to be true.

Absalom takes a deep breath, and follows Eloise’s lead.

“HNNNG!”

[Abaslom Ottrel attacks gobble with his machete (sword)]

I didn’t want to kill them. Was I bad for hoping that someone else would before I would have to?

Apparently, it was bad.

Absalom fell back with a claw lodged in his eye and all I could do was watch. I had never seen anybody die before. There were shitty places in Eight, shittier than even I lived in, and I heard people keeled over on street corners all the time. I’d never seen it, though. It was so strange— it happened so fast, and so quiet. And there was so much blood.

I had to vomit.

Once I’d pulled myself back upright, puke dripping down my legs and shoes, I clutched my sword in both my shaking hands and stumbled forward. Walter was still behind me, at least. That kid was tough. I knew he could hold his own. Still, I worried. I worried about Alfonso too, and I had worried about Abs. I was supposed to protect them. I couldn’t. What the fuck was I supposed to do if I couldn’t even keep a single person alive?


[ eloise attacks lira; sword ]
Mfe|OUoRE7sword
1078 -- Block -- 0.0 damage

day 2 accuracy re-roll
sword
1086 -- Shallow Cut on Left Forearm -- 3.5 damage

i have to filler i’m very sorry


[ eloise attacks lira; sword ]
fhCdGXjrfxsword
1068 -- Shallow Cut on Left Calf -- 3.5 damage