heebie-jeebies | wild things [day 1]

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

georgie cham.

The spear leads the way through the hole in the wall, followed by the cloth on a stick and the girl dressed as a princess. Georgie looks back to make sure Umber is behind and she continues running when she sees him. Her little legs are hitting a pace they’ve never reached before, and her heart is suddenly catching up with the speed. She’s like a bolting horse that has left its brain behind in the stable. Where exactly is she going? The only plan was to get out of the claustrophobic ruined walls.

Now her feet are hitting crumbling cobbled stones. A loose stone causes her to trip, but the spear stops her from completely face planting the floor. The red wine cloak folds up over her head and Georgie spends twenty seconds wrestling with her cloak to push it back from her face.

Umber is right behind her and the hell they fled from is even further away. This new place is no improvement. Everything looks so decayed an ancient. There’s no sign of life but there are a few hints that there was once something living here before all the dead ended up under the gravestones.

”You’re a wizard, Umber!” Georgie points at him with her cloth on a stick, just after her fight with her cloak and catching her breath. ”We both have cloaks, I bet we look so cool together.” She didn’t imagine her damsel character being rescued by a wizard, a knight in shining armour was her first thought but she does love a story with a twist. ”You got a pretty purse,” Georgie smacks the end of the stick against a slab of stone, ”I got whatever this is…and a spear!”

A hopeful Georgie looks around, hoping there’s something worth trading hiding behind the headstones and piled up rubble. Her eyes shift, and she grimaces, there’s something about this place that makes her want to bolt again.

”I don’t like it here, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

↳ UMBERVIVUUS. 

Umber was eager to put the bloodbath behind him, rushing over to the hole in the wall and turning to keep guard while Georgie stepped through stick first. Once she was through, he quickly followed suit, ducking through as quickly as he could before righting himself once more. He was winded from the running already, trying to find purchase on the ruined ground they traversed through now.

What was left of the room they were in before seemed to be the most in-tact piece of whatever this once was. Because here, it looked more like forest. Plush carpets of moss climbed lazily up staircases which led to nowhere. Ivy twirled up everything it could grasp onto, even the looming stone columns which must've once been doorways, or support beams. There were haunting holes in the ground leading into complete darkness, and then above the trees grew so tall that Umber could scarcely see the skies. One glance at one of the trees nearest to him made him wonder how many people it would take to wrap their arms around its base. At least fifty- even most of the houses he'd seen back in District Twelve were smaller in circumference. On some, the lowest hanging branches were twenty or thirty feet up the massive trunk.

Whatever this building once was, it had died long ago. But it was the only thing from what Umber saw. He could hear the nature all around him: birds chirping, squirrels rustling leaves as they jumped from branch to branch. He could only imagine what more ominous things lurked in the darkest reaches of the place.

"You're a wizard, Umber!" Georgie said, pointing the large maybe-weapon in his direction like it was an accusation. For a moment he was confused, before he remembered what he was wearing. Right. "Not a very good one," he said, having already come to the conclusion himself, "I don't have a staff, or even a wand." In fact, he didn't really have much of anything. The clothes he came in with, a purse he'd used to shield his face from the careers shooting arrows across the room, and the ruby-encrusted knife held tightly in his hands. He realized with a concerned start that he didn't have any water, or food, or shelter- not even a blanket.

"We both have cloaks, I bet we look so cool together."

Umber repressed a smile. He was impressed with how well Georgie seemed to be handling all this. He tipped his chin up and to the side as if posing, held his knife out for dramatic effect. Seeing how well she was keeping her head on her shoulders made Umber feel more relaxed. That, and continuing to put more distance between themselves and the bloodbath. Still. He knew he'd been right about wanting Georgie as an ally; she was proving that all the other tributes were idiots for under-estimating her more and more by the second as far as he saw it.

"You got a pretty purse," she said, resolute expression. She was too earnest to hide the fact that she wanted it, too kind to ask. Umber was more than happy to part ways with it, anyway. Even if it meant trading the purse for the silly glorified walking stick Georgie had been accentuating her points with.

"And you've got my wizard's staff! Wanna trade?" He raised an eyebrow, hefting the purse out for her to admire. His own expression mirrored hers: Please don't make me walk around with this.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard the tumble of something- loose rocks resettling after falling from something. Georgie must've heard it as well, both their heads snapping towards the sound to investigate.

"I don't like it here, it gives me the heebie-jeebies."

He didn't want to admit it, but he felt exactly the same way.

"Well, if it creeps you out then I suppose we could keep moving..." He said, reluctance in his voice even as he took over the lead in marching them further through the field of overgrown rubble they were stuck in.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

georgie cham.

”Take it!” Georgie gets her own way as usual without even explicitly asking for it! Now that adds a positive page in her Umber book, Sera did well at sorting the fine print of their alliance with District Twelve. I want that one and she got it but it seems the feeling is mutual. In the short occasions that they’ve shared together, Umber appears to be the only tribute who genuinely cares and isn’t just putting a front on because of the age category Georgie falls into.

(Probably helps that there’s only months between them too.)

”A fair trade me thinks, a wizard’s staff for a princess’ purse!” Georgie signs off the exchange as she discards the stick in her right hand to Umber’s and takes the purse in her left hand. Oh, she knows all the secrets about trade, it’s a bold part of a mayor’s job. Most Districts want the basic medicines. Six gives with one hand and takes from the other.

Antibiotics for District Three’s computers.

Analgesia for Ten’s second-rate meat.

A reaped daughter for the Capitol’s pleasure.

”I’ll follow you this time…I don’t think I led us to a great place.” Georgie clutches onto her purse but still has to haul the jousting lance that’s intended for the knight and not her. This place she led them is out of a book in the restricted section of the library. A book that shouldn’t be read in the dark, but a naïve reader will fall for its trap. Every word of the page making the reader’s spine tingle and eyes shift before turning to the next chapter. Georgie has read horrors before; she’s promised herself not to touch them again after the nightmares, but blurbs seem to lead her to pick up another. Must be a curse on their covers.

Not all fairytales are sunshine and daisies, the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood after all. And who’s the one roaming round a rubble field in a red cloak?

Georgie’s almost clinging to Umber’s back, she’s not touching him but almost. There’re no ghouls in her sight, just the back of Umber’s head. She’s not even looking at where her feet are going, she’s so close to twisting an ankle on the loose stones beneath her fine shoes.

She blinks. Her wizard guide disappears. Not even a puff of smoke to follow his magic trick. Just a nightmarish jump scare of the biggest trees she has ever seen.

”Umber?!” Georgie panics, her heart rate is higher than it was even in the bloodbath. She throws around the jousting stick, hysteria is quick to take the lead after just a few seconds of being alone. She’s not meant to be alone so soon. ”WHERE DID YOU GO?!” The question comes out quite aggressively, she’s annoyed that she’s been abandoned so prematurely.

”I’m okay, but I don’t think I can climb back up from there.” His voice comes from below and Georgie’s eyes drop to a hole that her toes are inches away from tipping into too. ”Oh, I hope it wasn’t a hard fall!” A switch flicks to zen as Georgie calms seeing her new friend a few feet below her, victim to another massive hole in this crumbling horrorville except he looks alive and well. ”I think I see a way out though!” Georgie kneels over the hole, trying to get a better look of this new underworld that Umber has been captured in. He points the way. ”Head in this direction and we’ll meet back up!” That stick really is the key to navigation.

”Okay, see you soon…make sure you wait for me!”

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

↳ UMBERVIVUUS. 

“I’ll follow you this time..." Georgie decided, "I don’t think I led us to a great place."

Umber agreed that where they were didn't feel safe by any means, but it certainly beat where they had been previously. He still hadn't heard any cannons, but that didn't really mean no one was dead- sometimes so many people died that the officials waited until the fighting was over and sounded them all at once. In one of the old Games he'd watched out of morbid curiosity in the dead of night when his parents weren't around, 9 tributes died in the first day. Nearly half of them, gone as quickly as it started! So long as he and Georgie were among those who made it to the other side, he wouldn't have minded something like that happening this Games. Though it didn't necessarily make them any safer- Mace Emberstatt had still managed to get four kills by the end of it, and he wasn't a blood-thirsty career.

He decided the best course of action was to go where there seemed to be the most light coming from, carefully careening down staircases slick with mud, offering Georgie a hand to cross some of the larger gaps in the rubble, and slowly making their way further south from the room they'd all come in from. He had just stepped over what appeared to have once been a support column when he lost his footing. He tried to catch himself on the remnants of a stone archway with no success, silently and wordlessly slipping into a pit of darkness below.

Luckily, the bottom was sloped enough that when he hit the ground, he barreled forward several feet before a nice, flat piece of wall stopped his momentum with a sobering solid thud right across the back. He looked up at the pinpoint of light above him.

"Umber?!" He could hear Georgie's call, but his lungs denied him oxygen as he flopped onto his belly. Was anything broken? He took stock of his injuries: a nasty scrape on his left shin, both elbows taken to a grater, and surely a gnarly bruise growing its way across the flat of his back. "Where did you go?" He could hear panic settling in his ally's voice now for the first time. Finally, a groan escaped his lips and he found the will to stand. No dizziness. No broken bones. No severe bleeding.

"I'm okay," he called. He looked up in time to see her head poke over the edge of the pinhole, peering down at him, "but I don't think I can get back up from here." The walls were steep and solid. There was no hand hold or ladder in sight, and if there had ever been a staircase it'd rotted a away long ago or gotten crushed by some of the debris which now filled much of the otherwise empty room. He gave a knock on one side and it rang out at him, hollow-sounding, like a beaten steel drum. He realized he must've fallen into what was once some sort of water tank, or irrigation system.

"Oh," Georgie said, sounding relieved, "I hope it wasn't a hard fall!" He held his thumb up, though he wasn't sure she'd see it in the limited light. Speaking of, there were several large tunnels he could see light at the end of. He'd always been told that if something bad happened he shouldn't follow the light, but that's exactly what he'd have to do now.

"I think I see a way out though!" He stepped into the light and pointed, "Head in this direction and we’ll meet back up!"

"Okay, see you soon...make sure you wait for me!"

"I will! Be careful!" he called back, though what he really wanted to say was: make sure you wait for me too! The idea of a friend waiting for him on the other side of this was probably the only thing keeping him from losing his cool. After that, he moved forward. They needed to get a move on now, especially with all of this shouting. If there were any other tributes nearby, they certainly would've heard them by now.