creases in their footsteps [anise & gabby -- day 3]

[shrimp]

anise himura

The stars reflect and refract through the water, illustrating worlds that are so close but yet so far apart; Anise wonders how much more dangerous the other side is - maybe the worse side to be on is their own. Above them, whales soar lazily against the sky, their silhouettes casting subtle shadows on the water's edge.

Her boots are soaked. She sighs, staring at her right leg that's jutting straight outwards - the piece of wood that Gabby tied to it seems to be working well enough. Her ally sits with her, back to back as time ticks by. The silence all around them is heavy, but Anise's mind has been making dots in her brain: a chatter of logic amid the fatigue.

"When you said you hadn't seen someone die in a while, you didn't mean yesterday." It's not a question, not really. From behind her, the little movements her ally had been making still. "No," she sighs after what feels like a small eternity, "I didn't." Anise feels Gabby's spine flex as her head turns to glance at her, a note of wariness in her voice, her actions lacking their usual carelessness. "Is it a problem?"

Anise turns, an eyebrow raises. "Should it be?"

A dry laugh, caught almost halfway in her throat. "Depends who you ask." Anise chuckles slightly, hoarse from the day. "Well, I'm asking you."

"Then... I don't know, to be honest." Gabby's fingers fidget by her side, her knuckles brushing absently against Anise's hip. "There's a story behind it. If, uh, if you really want to know."

The silence is deafening, steeping into her pores. Anise feels Gabby's fingertips as they twitch ever so slightly. She's struck a nerve, she supposes.

"Only if you want to tell it." Bellamonte's secrets are her own, it's her call.

---

At dawn the music starts, an orchestra combined with a synchronized dance as animals fly in coordination, Malachite being the first face shining down on them. Anise glances downwards, slowly shifting her weight as they walk. The sky whales and flying fish stare back, trapped on the other side of the world. Her skin grows cold as she sees Malachite's hair swimming through the air.

The forest shimmers even in the dark, and the horizon brings with it purples and pinks intertwined with goldenrods and neon blue branches. The light reflects and refracts off of the swirling scene above them, fins and flippers etching themselves into eyebrows and teeth, pupils that look too weary to be fake. And then the sounds, small cheeping back and forth that makes Anise wonder just how loud the vortex must be, the communication required between all of the animals must be gamemaker controlled. But no, it's just a whale. Cheeping in her ear. That's new.

She turns her head and quietly alerts Gabby to the situation. The two of them are surrounded by four pocket-sized whales, swimming freely in the air. Anise holds out her hand and watches as an orca approaches it, making loop-de-loops around her index finger before nuzzling itself into her palm. How strange, Anise muses; she wonders if they know why they're here, if they're more dangerous than they appear, if the Gamemakers have something up their sleeves. She stops walking as the orca glides along her arm before slipping its way into her coat pocket.

Maybe it just wants a hug.

But something strange is afoot, as a rumbling surrounds Anise and Gabby, and she watches with eyes unblinking as a shadow of holographic shards slowly rise out of the forest, the noise become a caucophony. The whales are in a panic, their swimming becoming erratic before and diving into the smallest pouches they can find. She feels the orca straining against her coat pocket, desperate.

"Run," she whispers. And they do, to a land devoid of color. Anise swears that the land is made of paper, expecting to hear crinkling every time she sets her foot down. The land is barren, not a sign of life anywhere and she wonders if they've fallen off the face of the planet and wound up in limbo. The orca shifting in her pocket reminds her that she hasn't.

And same for the creature that appears from around the corner, seemingly made of glass. Anise tenses, her hand clenching.

"What is that?"

[sadniss everdeen]

Gabrielle Bellamonte

It's strange, how some things never leave you.

You're in a place so far away from where it happened, and yet, the sand underneath you is the same and so is the salt that cakes your lips. You listen to the quiet ebb and flow of this shallow sea and remember somewhere else, an unassuming island off the coast with a sound just like this one.

Anise's breath brings her back against yours, in and out. It's comforting. Soothing, almost. It loosens the sutures you sewed into your lips what seems like a lifetime ago.

"It was three years ago," you murmur, raking your fingers through the sand at your side, "I was fifteen. There was a... cruise, off the mainland. A party. I don't even remember why I was invited anymore."

You know the Capitol has switched all the cameras by now. The only thing they hate more than disobedience is knowledge; keep the Districts stupid, in the dark and isolated, and you'll never have a reason to fear. You blink the salt from your lashes and glance up at the fish making lazy loops around your heads. What you'd give to fly with them.

"I should have known it was too good to be true, but I was younger then. Too trusting. I went, and... the first little while was good. I made friends. One or two turned into friends with added benefits."

Cold fingers touch your face and you gulp back the knot in your throat. In the water's reflection, you see the pair of blue eyes you've been carrying around for three years over your shoulder, shrouded in a swath of golden hair. "But it, uh. It didn't last. Things went bad pretty quickly."

Even after all this time, it's easy to bring up her face. Long and narrow, beautiful in a fragile kind of way. Thick, dark curls and expressive eyes. Nyx didn't have the face of a killer, but maybe that's what made her so dangerous. Her horror as she watched that man swing from the ceiling by his neck was so genuine that you didn't even think to suspect her. No one did until it was too late.

"People started dying. A man hung from the ceiling, another speared to the wall. He was still alive when I found him. He begged me to kill him, to make it quick." Your breath swells harsh and hot in your lungs, and for a second you think you imagine Anise pressing harder against you to keep you upright. You rake your hands through your hair and become infinitely glad she can't see how they shake. "Everyone was hysterical, but we were trapped there. Hunted. I laid under the body of a girl I--"

You press your forehead into your knees until it hurts, but it doesn't take away the memories. Nothing does, not even the morphling. Your gut twists in and out of knots and you aren't even sure what's doing it anymore - the withdrawal, the grief, or the hunger. Or perhaps something else; a longing for a life you lost the second you stepped onto that boat.

I forgave you three years ago. There's nothing to hurt over anymore.

You sit there, quiet and hurting, until the hitch in your breath settles. Q's hair brushes against your cheekbone but you won't turn to look your ghosts in the eye. Maybe, but I can't forgive myself.

"I killed her, in the end," you sigh, tipping your head back until it rests on Anise's shoulder, "with my teeth, because I didn't have a knife. It was a mercy. She bled so much I nearly choked on it, and I felt the second her heart stopped against mine."

A sardonic smile. Sometimes, you can still taste her veins on the back of your tongue. "All that fighting to survive, and you're still better at using a weapon than I am. Seems I'm just fated to be at the mercy of pretty girls."

---

Day Three comes on the tail-end of fever dreams. Talking about things bring them into the light, but you could've gone the rest of your life without seeing Qilena's tear-soaked face staring back at you from the undersides of your eyelids. Sometimes you beg her to leave, and other times to stay. Today you didn't say anything, just let her fingers touch your jaw in the same place you bit through the last living part of her.

Anise woke you from your thrashing. She didn't say anything, but her eyes tell you things that her mouth never might. You wonder if she thinks less of you now, and why that stings more than it should.

The two of you start walking with the glowing faces of the fallen tributes above you. Anise won't look up to watch them after Malachite's face flows into view, and you take it upon yourself to track the dead and wish them safe passage. A few of your own district appear, but there are still plenty others roaming like animals who have lost their pack. Sometimes you think you see your own face, but when you blink it disappears.

When the whales come, you think you're hallucinating again. You've been seeing strange shadows in the corners of your eyes, hearing things that don't exist. Your throat is sandpaper and sticks together in a way you think will suffocate you - Anise is so heavy across your shoulders but you have no choice but to bear it, to walk on step by step in tandem to whatever may come.

The orchard will have water, you promise yourself, but the whales tremble as a great, thundering roar swells up from the direction you're heading, the pilot whale cheeping as it hides between your temple and helmet, its tail curling against the shell of your ear. It's already impossible to put one foot in front of the other but Anise breathes run and you have no choice but to follow, half-dragging her and her broken leg over what seems like miles of shifting sand. If you look back, you see a strange animal that looks stretched out like someone took it and lifted the body away from the ground, but - that can't be it, can it? That horrible, deafening boom, coming from something so unassuming... you must be seeing things again. That's right.

Either way, you don't want to find out.

By the time you're far enough away, the knots in your stomach have turned to a vice. You stumble to a stop and lean over in a desperate attempt not to retch, sweat dripping down your nose and making little dark circles on the ground beneath your feet. Your head buzzes and your fingertips are numb and god, what you wouldn't do for some--

Ice?

You didn't realize it because you were seeing right through it, but in front of you is probably the strangest creature you've come in contact with yet. It looks almost like a maggot, but it has little hands with fingers (ew) and a snout that bobs in and out as it moves. It must hear your gasp and turns to face you, but as it does, you catch a glimpse of a canteen deep inside its translucent body. Can you maybe...

"Hey buddy," you croak nervously, inching forward until you're a few feet away. It stays still, that same snout disappearing and reappearing, but this time you see the ring of sharp teeth that lines the inside. Anise's whispered careful flies over your head like a strong wind. You crouch, gingerly offering your hand for it to sniff. The narwhal chirps and pokes his head out of your borrowed tuxedo jacket, unsure whether to be nervous or curious. "C'mere. There's a good, uh... boy?"

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

Eyeless but not without sense, Mr. Malcom P. Brimblebush is wary of the creature creeping towards him. Though the treasure in his belly is on full display, Master Brimblebush has little to fear from poachers. Such is life for invulnerable immortals. Curiosity piqued, he teeters over to the two.

His snoot noots, sensing caution, but no ill intent. The hand offered to him is warm beneath his tubular snout, as gentle as the Hey buddy, in sharp contrast to the scent of old blood beneath the fingernails.

There's a good, uh... boy?

He is a good boy! With gusto, the giant tardigrade nuzzles his head into the hand he's been sniffing with enough force to bowl over a creature of that size. He noots his snoot again, a string of pearls the size of hazelnuts emerging from his mouth, attached to the treasure within.

[shrimp]

Anise has no idea was a "cruise" is; the two weeks she was at District 4 was filled with sneers and blades parrying and red lights and fault after fault after fault, her confidence rusted over with the salted sea breeze as the train sent her back home - without a medal, without her honor. The few bits of 4 she got to see looked "cruise-like" though, waves lapping at the shoreline, the swimmers jumping into the ocean at dawn for practice. The sky was cerulean turned emerald, persimmon and honey-lavender. Like a dream.

Gabby's story is a nightmare. Herded like sheep, forced to kill or be killed. Anise focuses on Gabby's breath, which hitches and hums, shakes and reverberates through her bones and into Anise's. When Gabby stops speaking, Anise doesn't push her for more. The two sit in limbo instead, watching the reflections in the ground. Gabby's back is pressed into her own, their muscles rising and falling in rhythm. In the silence, Anise wonders how similar their own situation is to the one on the boat; forced to kill or be killed, lured into traps by a Gamemaker. It's not different at all, Anise supposes; except they've chosen their fate today. At least here, everyone knows death is approaching, snapping its jaws and cutting their veins until the blood runs through everything.

For a moment Anise sees her lying in the water, crimson painting the waters. For a moment her breath stops. For a moment her stomach plunges. Breathe in, breathe out.

Gabby lays her head on Anise's shoulder. They sit like this, for a while. Anise hopes the girl's death was quick. Their hearts beat. Anise leans her head back as well. The sky is breathtaking tonight, the deepest of blues and the crispest of starlight. Anise doesn't remember when she grabbed Gabby's hand, but the feeling is surprisingly colder than she can recall. Her touch is soft, tentative, jittery. "All that fighting to survive, and you're still better at using a weapon than I am. Seems I'm just fated to be at the mercy of pretty girls."

Anise smiles. Maybe use your- 
The smile fades. She wishes she could take thoughts back.

"I'd say the opposite." Gabby is fluid, a wave in motion as it slashes and stabs. Instinctual. Everything Anise has ever learned is forced into her nerves through generations of practice, the rough tatami mats that dig into her feet, the late nights with the moon shining overhead. She looks at it now, wondering if this is the same one her father must be looking at.

She shifts her weight, her body rotating. Her chin rests on Gabby's shoulder, her hand wrapped around an arm. Gabby's back resting on her frame. She's fucked this all up, probably - the grip is too stiff and her muscles tremble with the added weight. A wave of discomfort rushes through her and her brain screams to abort - perhaps the kids were right when they called her a robot; Anise was never built for this type of functionality.

She does it anyway. 

"Thank you." For telling me. For saving me.

---

- anise sits down after gabby is glomped
- spies the necklace, knows that it's probably like dangling in gabby's face?
- sets Glaive at side, interacts with pocket whales
- a door appears! Wtf moment
- anise goes fuck it, I'll worry about that later
- anise drinks her coffee

[sadniss everdeen]

Gabrielle Bellamonte

You laugh. It's shaky and a little unsure, but genuine nonetheless. Anise is warm against you and her ribs press against yours, in and out and in again, and when she touches your hand with her own a strange little spark runs from your fingertips to your face. The hair raises on the back of your neck but for the first time in this forsaken place, it isn't due to fear.

"It's nothing," you murmur, even though you both know very well it's something; her hair brushes against your cheek and you swallow the sudden bruising lump stuck in your throat. Her fingers spread in the crook of your elbow, soft and steady, covering the track-marks that stretch up your skin. Her hand stalls where it settles, just for a fraction of a second, and it's enough.

You wait for the question that never comes. Anise's head dips, her eyes following her fingers before returning to yours - so close you can see the way they dilate in the dark, drinking in starlight until they burst blue at the seams. There's another story to be told and god your tongue is tired, but your blood has mixed and really, there's no closer bond.

"It started after Piscatus," you say, the cursed word falling from your lips for the first time in three years, "as a way to... forget, I guess. It's easy to sleep when your head is filled with clouds."

But it's not easy to drain the sky from your bones. Even now they shake, a trembling deep inside your core that might tear you apart. Your guts twist and turn on each other as they come back to life after years of stagnancy, and part of you wants to rip them out and cast them aside. It would hurt less. Your shoulder vibrates under her chin and if you listen closely, maybe you can hear her teeth rattling around in her mouth.

In another life, you'd turn away. You've spent so long feeling nothing that this is too much, every nerve-ending going down in flames where she touches, but this icy fist wrapped around your heart is spreading outwards and she's the only thing that keeps you warm. Now that you can count the time you have left in hours instead of years, such things seem so small and trivial in comparison to the fate that awaits you all.

So you sigh and turn until your side is pressed against hers, leeching what meager heat you can. Your veins feel empty, dusty and dry and split open to spit over the sand. Her body language isn't like yours, it doesn't invite the closeness that your frozen soul craves, but you're raw and open and just want to close your eyes.

Besides, since when did you ever let something as small as personal space stop you?

---

You go down with a bark of a laugh, the huge thing knocking you clean off your feet. Your body feels light, not like your own, borrowed from a stranger and given back broken. Its snout nudges at the underside of your jaw and you run your fingers along its strange glass body. It's cool to the touch, dense and slippery. You like it.

"Slow down," you chuckle, careful to avoid his ring of sharp teeth, "I'm not going anywhere." Out of the corner of your eye Anise sits down, more at ease than you've seen her since your first day caught in the liminal jeweled waters of the pool, and the rest of you unwinds the best you can despite the way your whole body cramps from dehydration.

The thing is with this arena, you're never sure if you're hallucinating, or if what you're seeing exists. Things flicker in and out of perception like ghosts, like souls that occupy the same space in another reality; the distinct feeling of someone else standing in your body only grows the more delirious you get.

Something cold and damp dangles in your face. You glance up at the string of fist-sized pearls oozing from the mutt's mouth, his snout happily bobbing back and forth in front of you. Does he want you to take it? You trace its path through his throat and down into his stomach, wrapped around and around that very same water bottle you saw the first time. Your whole body pangs and you gingerly take it, tugging and fully expecting some kind of trap.

But it goes willingly, and soon you have it in your hand. You don't even care that it's covered in a layer of clear slime, ripping off the cap and throwing it back so quickly you almost choke. It's cold and clear and god, your throat unsticks and your eyes water (they'd stopped being able to yesterday) and you cough until you almost throw up, but you feel alive again. Rejuvenated. You don't stop gulping until its gone and wish for more, taking the mutt's face (you think it's his face) between your hands and pressing a messy, watery kiss just above his snout.

"You really are a good boy," you say, and the pilot whale tucked under your helmet swims around the two of you, cheeping in agreement, "thank you for sharing."

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

The withdrawal of Master Brimblebush's treasures always feels so much more peculiar than their deposit. But it is worth it — the walking safe is lighter on his eight clawed feet whenever he is relieved of some of his belongings.

Out come the pearls, and out comes the wax-sealed growler attached to the strand. It is an old, old bottle — the date on the label doesn't even exist on this calendar — certainly, it must've cost a fortune when it was first purchased.

It is still full of the vibrant red liquid that it originally contained, though the bubbly lettering has all but faded away from the outside. Were he a literate noot noot, Mr. Malcom P. Brimblebush would know that this was authentic Kool-Aid, 2024 vintage. As he was not, the glass-bellied tardigrade was simply happy to be rid of the liquid that had been sloshing around inside of him for the last several decades.

He pushes his head back into the creature's hand, as if to remind her that Just because you have a new toy to play with doesn't mean you can stop with the head-scratches!

[shrimp]

words "dialogue"; thoughts

Gabby's skin is cold, Anise notes: clammy, raised, bubbling under her touch. It's new, she supposes - when she was younger she used to tap her sister in tag, or sit on her father's shoulders. It's been a long time since someone else's skin has touched her own. Her fingers, slightly shaking, trail downward. Her heart beats fast and she tells herself to calm down but this is a different kind of breathless. This is the kind that you walk towards with open arms.

Her fingers reach a ridge and she halts, the barnacles telling stories that she never thought she was going to learn. Days of haze and a sharp pinch jab themselves into her eye sockets, and she glances downwards at the scars, a light rose constellation that spreads into a near line. Her gaze flickers back to Gabby's as she submerges in coffee and creme brulee, flickers of pistachio. She knows that she knows. But Anise says nothing, her lips as straight as ever.

After Gabby speaks, what's left unsaid hangs in the air, the space between them narrowing as Gabby leans against Anise's lanky frame. Anise is frozen, joints rusted solid and straining from the pressure. Her thoughts doublejump and crisscross, her hand move down to touch Gabby's, fingers trailing past the nail-beds. The silence is tangible, and for the first time in her life Anise wants to make it stop.

After a lifetime of buffering, she does. Her head tilts downward, her nose grazes her ally's, her heart pounding like she's back in the Olympics, defending herself against Kaiser Fray's smirk. Her mind is on the fence, her left side having run through the possibilities; all are bad. There's no future in this movement, no war to be won, there's no point. All paths lead to the end, to pain, to unnecessary burden.

Her lips, feather-light, graze against Gabby's. She can feel her breath against hers.

The right side turns to its other half, and flips the bird.

The distance between them closes.

--

filler filler filler

She crafts her next weapon out of the sea itself, tendrils and blades interweaving into a three-pronged staff. The handle is composed of gliding curves that interweave and overlap, confident and self-assured. After it curls into life, she lifts it. It's not a sword, it's not a blade, but the tips are just as sharp, the weight balanced. And it's good for a cane, she supposes.


[haha gay]
[anise draws a spear (is that what a trident is idk)]
[anise performs F/A on herself for -3]
[anise enters Paper Plains Prime]

[sadniss everdeen]

Gabrielle Bellamonte

She gets so close you can feel her breath rush hot against your face. Your skin erupts into shivers, your hair standing on end; you feel like an animal, every sense sharpened to a pinprick, every atom tangled with hers. Her nose brushes yours and you sigh in the way stars do before they collapse, venting their unbearable pressure into space.

(Anise is solid, strong and unmoving, but when your fingers touch the inside of her wrist she trembles like you've pulled her out of orbit.)

It's not earth-shattering. It's not fireworks and explosions, nor is it a tornado that sweeps over and leaves devastation. Her lips are dry and she shakes under you despite such a chaste touch - you remember the tides from back home, the comfort you found in something so constant despite the way the ocean loves to change. After searching for so long, the thing that finally stops the noise in your head won't ever be yours outside of this place where realities bend and meet and flow past each other, never quite existing anywhere else than this moment. The irony is bitter against the salt that laces her lips.

Despite all this, the knowledge that you will soon have to unclench your bloody hands and relinquish this hard-won solace to the sky, you don't pull away. Maybe this is all you'll get. A moment of peace in a place that's desperate to take it from you, a second of softness that you'll never see again. The ancient elements in your bones freeze this moment into their memory so that you can remember it when you have no more sense at all.

A phantom feeling settles over this one. Another girl, in another ocean, her hair blonde instead of black but her touch just as tender. The salt on Anise's lips tastes like blood: a ghost of a memory.

The two of you part and you watch her eyes leak starshine until you can see the aurora from inside them. It's a shame you'll never get to know what they look like next to the ocean, how dark can turn light and ground can become sea.

You suppose it's only fitting, as you lay your head against her collar and close your eyes, that if you speak aloud this fragile thing built between the two of you will shatter. It can only exist in this reality that isn't a reality at all - this mutual death-march has only one end.

But it isn't here yet, says the whisper, and isn't that what makes all the difference?

At least this time, when she lays herself down for good, you can follow the girl you--

You take a harsh breath. The thought is strangled and killed, left to rot in your throat. It balls into a fist and burns when you swallow; you don't know whether it's the dehydration or the could-have-been's that hurt more going down.

---

At first, you don't notice the door. You're too occupied with the friendly mutt and Anise's eyes on you and the way your throat doesn't feel like sandpaper anymore. The drink was strange and sweet and tasted old in a way that few things do - old Before, when people didn't used to live in fenced cages and waited to be harvested for entertainment.

There's a rumbling and a humming and a beeping; the first thought is that those strange mutts have come this way to trample you like they undoubtedly had your enemies: there was a barrage of cannons a minute ago, a six-soldiered salute to people devoured and destroyed. A white sail blots out the sun for a second and then a canister hits your mutt, bouncing off its glass hide and rolling in the sand. When you open it, three crayons sit on the plush surface; a meadow, a glacier, and a royal flush.

"Nice," you murmur, drawing it the best you can onto your right arm. Your left is still sloppy and stiff, painful whenever you flex it, but better than last night and the heartbeat that had settled itself into your marrow, between your bones. It seethes like a living thing, devouring until your skin disappears, and it's such a small area but makes you feel so much stronger. A sloppy mirror of the first, but functional.

When you next look up, you trace Anise's gaze to the simple, unassuming door that hovers over your heads. Its white and clean and a good foot above the ground - when you touch it, the wood is warm, bathed in the sun of the Plains. You've stopped being surprised here: logic is relative.

A chance to return to your first reality, to stop walking in the skin of someone else. Anise gets up and you hold her elbow as the two of you approach. Your fingers tingle where you touch.

Before you turn, you glance back at the tardigrade, standing forlorn opposite you. His snout bobs now that you've left and you feel a bit of a sad pang in your chest - there's very little here that's friendly, and after giving you such a gift, it feels wrong to leave him behind.

"You wanna come with us, buddy?" you ask, holding out your free hand. Your fingers wiggle enticingly even without eyes to see them. "It's not that high up, you can make it."

[gabby draws a royal purple vambrace (right)]
[gabby uses FA for -3]
[gabby drinks the koolaid]
[gabby enters paper plains prime]