talk some sense to me. | jules meets hei-hei, day four.
Mar 14, 2020 2:55:29 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Mar 14, 2020 2:55:29 GMT -5
When night falls I am in too much pain to sleep soundly. Blood keeps curling up in the back of my throat and every time I try to cough it up my day-old wounds protest, battling the rest of my body for small saps of dwindling strength. The dizziness still lingers, although it's too dark to see if the world is tipping or not. I feel it in my frontal lobe, heavy and losing its fight with gravity, and in the way my feet stumble blindly into what I think - or rather hope - is grass.
Everything hurts, everywhere. It's like I'm on fire but the blaze is underneath my skin. Trust me to get so close to the brink of death and refuse, preferring to suffer in the days that come than let it happen. Jamie would've killed me if I chose any differently, I know that. Maybe it's why I did it, not to piss him off. I'm trying not to question that moment. Not to think about it. I might vomi-
Up comes the blood and the sour citrus of pineapple. Down I go, into the grassy bank, and collapse into the ground.
Heaving in air through my nose, it smells like earth and blood and fruit and blades of grass. It smells like summer, sipping lemon-and-sugar water in the kitchen with all the windows open. It smells like home, when we were small and Bailey and Sid and Saoirse weren't yet with us. Green, I've found it again. I don't think I'll ever leave.
On the exhale the sky opens up above me, anthem blaring in my ears as it demands my attention. It takes a few moments but I manage a lazy half-turn of my neck to catch the face of the boy who stood on the stage with me before he vanishes into the night.
Figures. I didn't pin him as someone who gave a fuck about living or dying. I didn't want to think about it back then, couldn't quite process it, but I think in some sick, sad way he wanted to die. His sister came back. Maybe that was too much for him or not enough for her. Maybe it'll be too much for mine and not enough for me. Maybe I'm falling asleep in the grass. Maybe the heat is drumming music in my head, maybe it sounds like running water, maybe I've finally found it, maybe I just need to close my eyes and....
...I awake to the moon in the morning sky.
A yawn stretches out my mouth with my muscles, how funny. The moon in the sky, big and white. The sky around it is yellow and red, the sun must just be rising. But how strange for it to be that large, shimmering in the light.
The moon closes its eye and I do too-
A gasp, a clamp of my gloved hand over my mouth - it's not the moon it's not the moon it's an eye it's an eye it's a giant eye oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck not again not again-
Don't move, Jamie in my head. Just in the nick of time, milliseconds away from jolting up and scrambling to collect my things. Keep still. Keep very, very still.
I obey the echo of my brother - he's right. It might not have seen me. A naive thought cast aside immediately as its giant iris swivels toward my frame in the grass and stops like the lens of a camera. Perhaps it is a camera, the Capitol mocking my petrified state. Making a joke out of my fear. I shake at that thought, both angry and terrified. Little sips of oxygen through my nose, enough to keep my chest as still as possible - it'll have to do. It can't know I'm alive. My own eyes stay wide-eyed and watering as I stare back at the thing, praying to whatever saved me yesterday to spare me once again.
It blinks once more. I stay still. It blinks a third time and I can't take the feeling of acid in my skull any longer, slowly lowering my eyelids back down to keep myself from screaming.
Don't move, Jamie again. Don't you dare.
Trembling, I hear the blood-curling cries of another tribute in the distance and clamp another hand over my mouth for good measure.
jules discovers a friendly hei-hei!