breathe in {anise day 5}

[shrimp]

anise

Did the world get a little bit colder
Not wiser just a little bit older
So slow we were bound to fall over, oh

There's a finality to it that settles deep in your stomach and roots itself into your bones. The water's long since stilled, the pool long since emptied. The violets and wine have faded to an indigo cloud of silk, drifting underneath the surface. You remain where you've stood for a half hour, feet planted against the tile, skin turned clammy instead of soaked, hair still damp, the shell around your neck heavier than you realized. The silence is deafening.

You've done all you can. You know that. But when you turn to leave, your knees buckle and you find yourself on the ground, palms resting against the surface with your lungs heaving as if you've run against time itself (and perhaps you are, perhaps you have). The knot in your throat final erupts into a gasp, a silent scream as you grip onto your new reality with fingertips that turn white from the sheer mass of it. Your stomach flips upside down and inside out.

You lie there for a while. The water waits.

Up. Slowly, you work your way to a sitting position instead, cross-legged with your hands in your lap. Your shoulders shake like tapioca jelly. Breathe in, breathe out. Feel the oxygen flow into your lungs (they quake, you feel her shaking beneath your grasp as her heart beats out and her eyes glaze over), through your bloodstream (her lips are heavy on yours and your hands grip hers as if your life dependent on it, joints rusted over and locked into place), feel the synapses in your brains firing off (you land in her arms and fall through the earth, a scream bellowing from your throat and an embrace so tight you swear you'll meld into one when you're spit back up)--

You exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale she's in your veins and you know she won't leave, even if  she's dead and gone. Exhale.

Your knees tremble as you stand up, but don't crumble into dust. You gaze at the ground, noting wax scattered across the tile. Periwinkles and violets, gold and deep aquas - remnants of the ocean. Again, you tell yourself to stop thinking. There's nothing else you could have done, no words that would have made her passage to forever (nevermore?) any easier. You think of the hand that reached out to you in your youth, shaking with frustration, and know that Gabby's passing was better than that.

Thoughts trace back to the moment you threw the knife, the glint as it soared through the air, the crunch as Riven Fowley's spear embedded itself in her neck. You throw them aside as you threw the girl from 10, and walk; slowly, you know you don't have the speed you used to, probably will never have the speed you used to. But the brace holds firm, yet another parting gift from Gabby

She gave everything, and the only thing you did was cause her death. You sigh, and take another step; time moves forward and you must as well. The light fades from the walls, the rose storm having covered up the sun. The house quakes again and you stumble, grabbing hold of the walls. Baby steps. The air feels heavy, thick, clawing at your throat and grabbing at your heels. For a moment you think you hear Raven Barker laughing. "Tacky".

Your hand touches the metal knob of the door and you turn around one more time, staring at the glassy sheen of the pool. Something tells you that you won't be back again; This sanctuary is not meant to be disturbed. You pause, eyes locked on the water's edge. You can sense her smile in the air, the rose petals nested comfortably on the ground.

Does Gabby have anyone to bury her?  Or will she have a simply marked plot and a groundskeeper for company? A rock that denotes her name, her games, devoid of the fire that sparked from her eyes and the snarl that emitted from her sarcasm, the tears that rushed down her cheeks.

"Four," you speak to no one, everyone. "She deserves to be mourned."

You turn your head, the knob, and push the door open. You don't look back.

Did the heart grow a little bit harder
Too much, too late, too far, too gone

The air is cold, and the whales huddle in your right pocket for warmth. You bend down, surveying the hall as you tighten the brace. Nothing on your left, nothing on your right. The paintings on the ceiling are geometric and confusion, optical illusions that zoom in and out of frame. You grab some of the herbs you grabbed yesterday (it really was only yesterday, wasn't it) and cram them into your mouth. You take a crayon and shade your legs, forming a film that hardens and protects, sleek and smooth.

The weapons you sketch on the ground are like today's but better, a different blade and a different hilt as they erupt from your hand and onto the ground. Perhaps your throwing knives weren't aerodynamic enough, you won't make the same mistake with your set of throwing axes, curves sharpening into points and danger laced into every mark. Blades that can chop through timber and sinew and bone. You don't realize how heavy you've been making your marks until you finish drawing, your crayon having shaved itself into a nub.

At a crossroads, you remain. You open the water bottle, the tint remind you of the crash of wheels and a spear flying through the air, attached to a young girl from One (you ponder over how Molly Malachite received a 10 in training, but you suppose it doesn't matter. Can't matter. She's dead already).

You turn left, and move, footsteps echoing through the halls. You keep moving, directionless. The walls turn gray and detached, sediment clustering the floor. Vines begin to burst into the walls, the rose garden having won its battle against man. When you gaze out of a window, you see that the roses have been damaged by the storm, the few remaining hanging by threads and scattered among the ground. Stories above, you spot three figures lying in the garden, one missing a leg. For a moment more you stare before turning your head. They're sitting in the eye of the storm.

On the outside of the mansion, petals slap against windows.

[presto] The hallways shift and change, rotate and spin. You're whipped around all four walls as muttations with gleaming screens roll past, an empty world echoed in their shells. Two cannons fire. You keep moving. Hands fold around arms as a breeze wafts in, and you realize how this hadn't been a problem when her body heat radiated, embedding itself into your cells (you always did run cold). The picture frames are cracked, rococo turning into skeletons, walls turning into chalk and melting around you.

You find yourself staring at a staircase of skulls, and climb up its teeth. Nothing in this arena surprises you anymore - you always knew that Cricket was strange, this only reinforces the fact. The highlights from her games showed her cunning, her ingenuity, things that Anise should have looked into before she stepped forward on reaping day. Yet underneath all the veneer, the lion that prowls through the corridors and the circus that came to town and put its foot down, she's just like all the rest of them. Only Careers would turn into Gamemakers.

But again, what do you know? You're one of them. Bred to fight, bred to win. The twist of the knife in your aorta every time you miss an attack to the moment that you slit Raven Barker's throat and left Gabby to finish the job. Don't throw stones in glass houses (even though the only stone you had is lying in Gabrielle Bellamonte's hand, or with her in the afterlife, or snatched away by a Games technician with too much time on her hands and envy in her brain).

The ground shifts as you move, down and up as notes ring out through the hallways and into the very soul of the mansion itself. A hallway of music, an increasing scale as you head straight towards the double doors that loom 52 paces away. You walk for seven octaves before pushing them open.[/presto]

You step into life. A greenhouse, withered and overgrown, ivy and lemongrass, rosemary and mint. A new age harmony of smells that attack your nose in a frenzy. Your a moment you see hydrangeas, and when you wipe at your eye it's wet and your breath is hitched. Fatigue finally overwhelms your senses and you settle in - if death lies here, then so be it; at least Gabby wouldn't have to wait long. The water bottle in your inventory is refilled by the spigot that lies adjacent. With one leg tucked under your body and the other sticking straight out, you lean against a wall and close your eyes, hands in your pockets.

The feeling of silk causes them to snap back open as you pull out the clump of petals she gave you hours ago. Still fragrant, not yet withered. You twist your hand, staring at each shade, every plane as it hits the light that shines through the wall-length windows.

It's here that you grab the crayon, glimpsing at the name - Bittersweet, how ironic - and you don't truly know why you've thrown caution to the wind but the etching on your left arm just isn't enough. You replicate the petals on your arm, now separated, a trail that winds from your wrist to your elbow. Outside the roses hit the window before falling to their doom feet below. A fleeting thought - you hope Riven enjoys the Batpack, someone ought to.

You sit for a moment before crafting a final item, made of paper folds and lines that stretch from wingspan to wingspan, a pattern that you've recreated a million times over with your sister, folding until dawn as your grandmother coughed up blood three rooms down. The sensation is familiar until you add a handlebar, a grip for easy handling. As with all origami, your crane hang glider collapses into to an object that can fit in your coat pockets. 3D turning back into 2.

As the day turns to sunset, as sunset turns to dusk, you sit.
Everything's changed, but for just one day you'd like it all to stay the same.
The sun glares through the window. You glare back.

But wasn't it kind of wonderful
Wasn't it kind of wonderful, baby
Wasn't it kind of wonderful, wonderful

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough, for me no