yeah that's hot ( hotties, day 2

[tick 12a / calla]

I N G A

She'd left three days after her birthday. It had only been ceremonial in the end, the day was more for everyone else, especially since Hans had stalled and waited and bargained for as much time as he could before he had to sail. Even Lieke said she would wait a little bit longer. But Inga had been more than ready.

She'd started preparing months before the little mark on the calendar. She had it all mapped out. She had a timeline. She was going to be the youngest, and the fastest, and the only thing that stood between her and her goal was the whole expanse of the ocean and a breeze that never caught the mainsail.

Ironic, now.

She spits hair out of her mouth for the tenth time, tucking strands back up into her hat, away from the wind.

It was a long tired night of nothing, not being paranoid but being cautious, sitting up with her back against an outcrop - it doesn't matter if they're not careers, a knife is still a knife.

The sun hurts her eyes.

The edge of the lake is glacial, and the brightness is nearly blinding where the sun reflects off the juts of chunks further out.

The waters in Four had never frozen over, certainly not like this, and when Inga peels a glove back to brush her fingers against the stillness of water, it's shocking how cold it is.

Not something to swim in then.

Not something to fall into.

From the jagged piece at the shore, Inga can make out the shine of scales underneath the opacity. The bottom of the lake is glossed over, like wax-paper. Little flits of movement catch the light. She eyes the ice sheets warily. The whole surface seems to groan as they move, still only slightly, gently bumping against their puzzle-edges. She reaches to put her palm on one and pushes down, feels the water give as the chunk teeters languidly from the weight.

"Don't step on the ice-" She calls, and then abruptly throws the idea away as she turns to look at Idiot #1 and Idiot #2.

She wouldn't be surprised if they were hardwired specifically to do the opposite of whatever she said.

"Can either of you actually swim?"

ELEGANT

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

🌱

the shark's got jaws on my sleeve. Sage's lil guy, i mean. not Inga. that one actually has teeth.

he's a bit chonky, you know, real arm workout. i hold him towards Sage as he starts to gnaw on the hinge of my wrist with his gums. the fabric goes damp, then frozen in the cold air. he squirms a bit as he gets passed back.

it's more of the same old for miles. we keep walking until the ground splits into the jagged borders of a lake. sun's bright enough that it feels a little warmer away from the shadowy limbs of the woods, away from the strip of darkness of the bone pit. the water's blue-gray in the light, making bubbles in the places where the ice thins a bit.

i hold out my hand, wait for Sage. fell out a window, fell ten feet from the claws of a giant bat. we're not doing that today. i pull her a little closer.

the baby shark's still chewing away.

at the edge, Inga touches the lake, turns to look at us just as i take a step off the shore. and the wind whips strands of her hair out, like embers and smoke in the muted landscape. can either of you actually swim?

think our career's less mad now that she's been untied. still scowling though.

"not me." yeah, i'm more of a land girl. born on dirt, die on dirt, buried in dirt girl. the ever constant of the living. i've been to enough funerals. seen enough bodies. that's how it is in the end.

never been near a body of water large enough that i could actually sink in. never saw a drowning victim either, but we once picked up a guy with pulmonary edema from heart disease. the university wanted him, that muscle sticky with plaque. wonder if the lung injury looked the same.

frost glazes over the deep teal depths. look down where i stand. "a little too cold for a dip anyway."

i'm still standing at the edge of the slats of ice. turn back to her, grinning. "relax girl. no one's gonna fall in. c'mon."

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

S A G E

Bruises form a mottled pattern up my side. Weeping blood like watercolors, I can't help but press my fingers into the stain. The memory of what it felt like to fly before the falling.

Tried to keep myself from crying, face down in the snow drift. Dirt in my mouth, the sting of heat and salt helping the chill to settle deeper. They found me like that, I chewed on sobs and smiled with lips going lilac. Something about them made me want to be okay. I'm nothing if not an expert at pretending.

I'm fiddling with the edges of my hair, sticking up from sleep and split at their ends. Blunted scissors are not kind instruments. It's about controlling what you can in this big, vast, fuck-off nothing.

We've found a peaceful place, sunlight spilling like omen. At least I think it's sunlight - are they really killing stars up there? Either way, I fucking hate it. Why bother making something beautiful if it's not meant to be ruined.

Fish keeps chewing on Izzy. Hard not to pity the poor thing. He lives a life of starving, of wanting and never having. When I catch Isolde in my peripheries, I start understanding him. So then I pity me too.

Dunno why Inga stayed with us, but I feel a lot safer with her scowling at my face instead of at my back. Easier to watch the blade descend. I'm trying really hard not to be so utterly incompetent she decides to leave. Only tripped over my own feet thrice during this hike, so I'm pretty sure I'm killing it.

"I can! Here I'll-" Izzy's grip tightens when I pull toward the water, remembering the stench of stagnant lakes and the buzz of minnows nibbling my nape. The depths blink back at me, lapping at the jagged edges of the ice. Waving, laughing, jeering. "Swimming's a bad idea, though." The realization comes a little later, after Izzy's turned her back and I've rubbed the embarrassment from my cheeks.

"I wouldn't want to drown. Too slow." I say, when the wind's teeth are too familiar. I'm so cold I'm basically nothing at all. "So if I'm ever drowning, kill me another way first." It's good to have a plan, right? They just might care enough about me to care about how I die.

But, like, I really should have read the room.

"That was morbid. Sorry."

I look between them both, sheepish and smiling. For some reason I'm always smiling when I look at them. "We could play a game? Or something?"

Anything to move on from tombstone talking.

ELEGANT

[tick 12a / calla]

I N G A

"Not me." Idiot #2 says, almost exactly as Idiot #1 pipes up with "I can!"

Inga glances up at them flatly. Their hands.

She slowly rises from her crouch, shaking the water from her wrist and sliding her glove back on before her fingers freeze off. She flexes her fist a few times, just to get the warmth back into it.

When she tunes back, Sage is still talking, impossibly - "If I'm ever drowning, kill me another way first."

Inga smiles prettily, agrees too quickly, says "You wouldn't even have to ask," and the way it settles tastes like syrup.

Her face falls back into a neutral scowl. She stares out at the horizon line, trying to gauge just how far the lake goes. There's probably nothing at the other end. Tthat would be the cruel thing, and so it's probably the real thing. It's just that she was born staring at the edge of the water and then continuously told that it would be her fate, her duty, to get there someday. To get there and survive.

"We could play a game-"

She immediately bites out a “No.”

But then she's suddenly thinking of Lore.

Odd person to think about at a time like this. Little Laurence Murdock.

She remembers him shrieking and chasing her down the docks, then she remembers chasing him back with a crawfish primed in each hand, him still shrieking.

She remembers telling him about the sunken city of Saeftinghe, rich but doomed, all because one of their fishermen had caught a mermaid and then refused to let her go.

She remembers when her and Lieke’s birthday came around and Inga wanted nothing to do with the event. She ditched halfway through the cake and Lore met her under the dock and gave her a little mermaid carving with the hair painted red. She’s pretty sure she threw seaweed at him.

And here she is. Volunteered for his cousin.

She hasn’t seen Lore in a while. She’d put the mermaid on her nightstand and Lieke had seen it and thought it looked cute and so then she drew ugly garish makeup all over the face.

Inga starts glaring at the ice.

She could get rid of at least one of them like this.

“My friend’s family used to play this game every year.” She says, straight-faced, “In the water. We could try it.”

ELEGANT

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

I S O L D E

you wouldn't even have to ask. she smiles, our career. wonder if they're all like that.

as in a little vicious, a little bloodthirsty.

or if we got, like, so lucky to pick up the best of the bunch.

that's the difference, isn't it. how hunger's satiated. steal under the hand that feeds, it's what we've always done. hadn't really moralized it. because a girl is sorry, so what? repenting's never made a crime less guilty. i don't judge. but desecration of the dead's a bit different than learning how to kill fresh, isn't it.

"oh swooning, mercy kill me too, babe." cup a heart from my hands in her direction, but Inga goes back to scowling.

yeah, aware that she could. hasn't yet though.

wonder if she's gonna try again today. my back still hurts from the ridges of bones that dug into it from in the pit.

because she's staring at the ice, you know, and just as i'm thinking she's no fun, girl pipes up.

game. "in the water. we could try it."

i'm looking at her, tilt my chin up an inch to stare. i could laugh.

because yeah, i have terrible taste in people. very mindful that red is, in fact, my favourite colour. and i'm thinking how Sera once said my type's just women who could kill me (common), and men who are funnier than me (rare). but even then, i don't suddenly go fucking stupid.

move a bit closer to Sage again, tuck her to my side, arm over her shoulders, lounging.

"yeah, we could try it."

no one moves.

i nod towards Inga. "so why don't you demonstrate." as Panem dictates, i'm gesturing in a half-bow, "upper districts first."

ELEGANT

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

S A G E

Trust.

I roll the word around my tongue, tasting. Kind of like raspberries that are too ripe, when the sweet gives way to sweeter decay.

Most of my life I've not been a person worth trusting, but that meant I didn't need to worry about the other way 'round. I always had an ace up my sleeve and a losing hand. Getting hurt didn't matter when I was hardly me at all.

Now I'm all bare faced, bare skinned. Sunlight sears down my spine as Inga speaks without a smile. Of a game in the water. I've heard girls from Four sit on rocks jutting out from the ocean, singing songs to the sailors til they turn the rapids red.

Izzy drapes her arm around me again, pulling me in. Bear trap, wire cage. With fingers that could fit around my throat and steel in her pocket that could do the job quicker. I bare the skin anyway, leaning into her.

I revel in the taste of trusting her, rot and all.

Inga, well, I trust her intentions. You wouldn't even have to ask. She'd kill me now if she could. Baring fangs dripping with saliva, the sight of starving. There's something in me that wants to pry her apart, piece by piece, to see the difference in the way our hearts beat.

Izzy tells Inga to go first. I'm stupid but I'm not stupid, they're speaking between words right now. I think, instead, about the glass still lodged in my skin from playing killer with killers. No dirt or dried blood remains, Fish liked the taste of those. Perhaps he's not the only one.

I'm tense, Izzy isn't. I look between them, holding an anxious breath.

"Or we could stay away from the water. As planned." I mumble, too quick for the words not to bleed together, "Just a thought."

ELEGANT

[tick 12a / calla]

I N G A

She glances away from them both, holds herself still. She can feel Izzy's stare on the back of her neck, beneath the hood of the jacket and the flannel, precise as ever.

"We could try it. Upper districts first."

Inga eyes her.

She steps lightly, closer to the edge of her ice chunk. It dips a little under the weight. So she pushes her heel down a bit harder, just to test it. Gentle little rocking motion. The front dips, and then the back goes, closer to where the other two are. The water sloshes up against the cold lip.

Hm.

"Traditionally it goes oldest first." And that's directed to Izzy, in a blasé, innocent sort of way. "You don't even have to be able to swim."

You do sort of have to be able to drown, though. Half of being in the water is accepting that the water might kill you. And it might be right for it. Sometimes the only way to hold your breath those extra few winning seconds is to let a little of the dying in.

Idiot #1 intercepts the web, and Inga shrugs. Tries to make it look nonchalant. It's not like she really wanted to play. It's not like she really wanted to drown them.

It's not like she's trying to gauge how slippery the ice makes their perch.

She looks over her shoulder and they're huddled there like stupid fucking penguins.

Inga's a half step away from either cleaving them in two or throwing up.

Something in her jaw grinds.

"I mean, if you're too scared. That's fine. We can keep going, maybe try and find another group."

ELEGANT

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

I S O L D E

sun shines on the lake in a mirror, glows in faint reflection over her face. not even someone from Four could swim through the sheets without freezing to death. she tests the ice, tests the water. middle of all of this, i remember that she volunteered too.

explains the kinda games she played growing up.

i've still got the rope.

and the handle of the pickaxe in the bag over my shoulder, bumping into my side, knives lining the bottom of it. i give her a smile, wait for her move, fuck's sake, what's a third time of trying to jump each other?

can feel Sage stiffen. she mumbles, Inga turns around.

if you're too scared.

ha, i'm not fucking ten. is she about to say triple dog dare to get us to wade out? and i'm laughing now, for real, because "what's the game called, girl? drowning?"

the formaldehyde's not burned all my braincells yet. occupational hazard. remember the first time cavity gel leaked through a body, soaked my sleeve, didn't notice the chemical burn until a long time later while washing my hands of dirt. funny that funerary customs could kill you.

never want a cemetery to flood.

the water contamination's gonna be so bad.

guess drowning's not really been on my radar on the list of things coming to kill me. i've got a long one.

"next you're gonna tell us hand to hand combat is a friendship ritual in Four."

ELEGANT

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

S A G E

"Cruel games are still games, I guess."

I think, a little bit, about my girls. Not mine really, but I certainly don't have anyone else now. What's the harm in making them more familiar in my thoughts? They're less lonely that way.

"But it kind of explains why you ended up like... this." I giggle a little, equal parts apologetic and mocking.

Brittle tension is tiring, as are threats of frigid baptism. Neither Izzy or I stand a chance at surviving Inga's game, but there's still a part of me that yearns to play. To see if I can make the shadows in her eyes burn. Ashes beget blossoms.

"Personally my siblings and I opted for more normal shit." My childhood was far from adjusted, but we worked together to survive. The careers are at each other's throats, aren't they? Crowns aren't meant for sharing. Glory is the easiest virtue to steal.

Inga knows how to win, but first we should figure out how we're going to survive.

That's the stuff you can't do alone.

Or maybe you can, but why would you want to?

"Hide and seek... truth or dare." Lit up with a little idea, I smile and it suddenly the warmest part of me. "We can play that! And then Inga has to be a little subtle about the attempted murder."

I nod, sagely even.

"We can still make watery graves if you're attached to the idea. Just for people who aren't me or Izzy. Deal?"

ELEGANT

[tick 12a / calla]

I N G A

Inga's face doesn't quite change. She gets a little solemn with it, scout's honour hand over her chest.

"Drowning." Izzy accuses.

"I'm hurt." Inga dead-pans.

Took them long enough.

But, in her defense, it's only true if she acts on it. There's a reason why premeditation is worse - do it right the first time or don't do it all. Make it clean or they're going to come crawling out of the ground looking for you. Nothing fuels a body quite like revenge.

Just look at Inga, and that stupid hat.

And. And, Idiot's not exactly wrong. Inga's wrestled out of an argument before. Pulling hair was a middle school custom, the only rule around starting fights was that you had to finish them too. She was never one of the girls who sat in the gossip circle at sleepovers. When Lieke had people over, Inga stated up in the attic.

She doesn't have friends, but she does have accomplices. She has compatriots.

Lore doesn't count. She beat the heart-eyes out of him too.

It explains why she ended up like this.

The glare turns real then. Sage laughs through it, probably not even realizing how the cold air gets a touch colder.

Terribly self-conscious thing; Inga makes a noncommittal noise in response to their deal. It's a little stupid to promise that she won't kill either of them, especially this early.

It's not that convenient to drown someone anyways. Too much flailing.

"The game should be called 'Shut Up and Find Shelter.' I'm not sitting here waiting to be sniped."

ELEGANT

mount
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denied x

1-4

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

🌱

Inga's a bit funny, our career's got that sense of humour, you know. feels like standing outside the funeral homes, little jokes in the cold while i smoked cloves, waiting for the procession to start. lies right under the laughter, the taste of it.

explains why you ended up like this, Sage says. i try not to laugh again.

yeah, could just be her personality though.

used to go to school with a lot of the similar types. papa didn't love them enough, so they kicked around other kids. always thought that was stupid. my parents are like so very gone, and never once did i think shit, i need to fight someone to make up for it. wasn't about to make being brooding a personality trait.

the trauma only made me funnier, actually.

my girl strikes a deal, beaming in the winter gray. our career responds with half a hum, dampening like a cloud. she glares. the wind whips around us.

"oh, don't worry Inga. we'll call this symbiosis. if alliance with the lower districts isn't your style."

i put my free hand up, away from the handle of the pike, smiling still. "you can even call me parasite, if it makes you feel better about the deal." and the getting jumped twice. and the being dragged around.

grew up with the idea that's what we were to people like her. i don't mind what she thinks. heard it all by now.