baleful woes // karl&haze, day 2

[Deleted]

"Don't panic," Pierce whispers in her ear, "but someone's here."

The four of them had found some sort of peace at the far end of the springs, far, far enough away for the blood not to follow them upstream. A second cannon had sounded and she tried not to play the guessing game of who it was - just simply grateful it wasn't one of them. It's hard to delude your senses when there's so many reasons to freak out, reality barging in at every reminder that your life is on the line. 

Everyone around you will die.

So instead, she tries not to think of it. At the springs, she received one sponsor, two items: a piece of flint for starting fire, and a bag of peach candies she shared with her new friends. It's from District 11, the brand name's a local family and she's as familiar with the taste as she is with its logo. Her favorite candy; she wondered if her mom somehow got these to her. How expensive it must be just for candy, something she didn't need. But she had everything she needed, everything besides her mom, so she was grateful for it altogether. 

Ama had been teaching Haze how to play with the ball and stick toy she'd taken from the wealth, her friend being much better at it than she was. She was in the middle of a laugh when Pierce came from the side, nodding to an unmoving figure a safe distance's away. Alarming as it was, the figure wasn't threatening - just looming. She knew exactly who it was. 

Me be back, Haizea signs brokenly to Amaterasu before kneeling to her bag, grabbing a handful of shuriken and starting the trek to him. Her district partner, creepy as he was, she wasn't afraid of him. He hadn't given her any reason to be, just enough to keep distance now that it was her against the world - him included. She approaches with her knives to her side, three in one hand and one in her right, about sixty feet away and he doesn't budge at all as she confronts him. 

"What do you want," she speaks with a backbone, pointing her shuriken at him to get the point across. A second goes by and he blinks, twice, she clears her throat, "I'm not playing with you, Karl." The games stopped when she wanted them to, she scans behind him for Johnny or Yael but he seems to be alone. That guy is like a bad omen, and whenever he comes up, something in her gut drops. She approaches thirty feet away and stops herself from getting any closer to him.

"Why are you here?"

[tick 12a / calla]

◆

Karl wanders away from the pyre, lacking the kind of embarrassment he feels like he should have.

Aed follows him even when Karl stops to swipe at it. It floats just out of his reach and stays there, its already learned its lesson from being whacked out of the sky and repeatedly poked at, squished, nearly stabbed even. Still, it's there, floating lopsided and creaking gently like it's perfectly content in its horrible state.

Karl's still pretty sure it's carrying some kind of disease.

He doesn't even realize how far he's walked until he hears the voices. Laughter. The smoke from the pyre still burns his eyes and he has to stop with a hand on his chest until his skull clears again.

Haze is there in front of him then, her allies as sentinels in the background. Karl stands with his heels in the water, unflinching in the distance. He doesn't even realize she's talking until she's finished. She's like a little beacon, standing there with a star in her fist. Looking at her for too long hurts.

He stops at the edge of the bank and crouches down.

Funny what she must think - they ran before he could even draw blood, now he’s covered in it from fingertip to elbow.

It flakes off of him and floats merrily down the stream, he just lets his hands sit in the water and watches the red swirl. He can still feel Dyno’s hands on him, and the warmth of Johnny’s leg under his palm, he rubs his hands together twice to get rid of it all but it sticks under his nails like tar.

There was a camaraderie in kneeling over the body, holding the skin while Johnny held the needle, but then it curled up and died after the sake was gone and the fire smouldered down, and now he's here.

Now the chest’s just empty, ashes, gone.

"I did something."