Admitting it's hard. (open)

[tardisgirl]

I look up from my work to see Dallas calling to me. I stand slowly, and my back crackles as I stretch it out.

"Brookside, get yourself up and out to the Bengals, they're due to The Capitol in a month!" Dallas reminds me impatiently as I walk toward him in an easy gait.

"Sorry, Dal, but reptiles aren't my thing." I gesture to the 30 foot python wrapped around my torso.

He snorts, "As if ANY animal could be not your thing! You're a trainer born and bred! I don't accept excuses!" He gestures around us at the other 34 pythons in the cage, "Do you think that they'll understand if this shipment is late because 'pythons aren't your thing' ?!" He mimics angrily.

Heat rises into my cheeks and it's all I can do to keep my answer calm. "Reptiles."

"What?" He asks, pausing in his rampage, a confused look on his face.

"I said that reptiles weren't my thing. Not pythons." I state quietly, and as humbly as I can manage.

He opens his mouth angrily, and then chuckles, his face softening. "I know you hate reptiles girl, but you are two hours behind on your schedule, and it won't be easy to make up. You're better'n this. You've NEVER been late before. Not since your father..." He trails off, looks me up and down, and then quietly adds, "It's about Finn, isn't it?"

He's right, it is. But I don't want to admit it. I sigh and slump to the ground, resting my head in my hands.

He sits down beside me. And while Dallas is at least twenty years my father's senior, at 64 years of age, he's still the closest thing I've got left.

Dallas, with his salt and pepper hair that's about as long as horse hair and about the texture of thin barbed wire, his big nose, piercing grey eyes, that only seem to show kindness once in a blue moon, his stocky build, and the kind of friendliness that'd give chills to a rattler, sad but true, is the only person who's ever come close to filling the gap that was left when my father was murdered.

"So, now that he's dead you took his shift for two weeks because? It can't have been that you felt the animals needed you." He asks.

"No." I say, trying to keep inside the tears that so treacherously want to leak out.

"Then why?" He asks.

"His family needed the money, and it was only two weeks, I thought I could do his part and mine easily..." I trail off when my voice begins to crack.

He shakes his head. "Only you girl, only you."

Anger flairs up in me at his tone, the kind that spills forth from repressed emotions and to much practice at keeping them to yourself. "What? Only I'd be dumb enough to think I could do his work and earn his money? Only I'd be foolish enough to think I could do his part and give the money his family needs to survive to them?!" I hiss, enraged.

"Nope." He states quietly, "Only you would care."

I halt, unsure whether this is a compliment or an insult.

"Only you would think his meager salary would actually help his family, that you could help, and only you would feel the need to do something like that, not out of guilt, but out of sorrow." He shakes his head. "Ever since you're dad died you've taken death, even the animals deaths, kind of hard."

I nod, because I know he's right. While I may seem awesome for doing this for his family, it's just me, trying to fill the hole in my own heart, by doing things for the families of deceased, that I couldn't do for my own.

He sees the look in my eyes and shakes his head. "You look so self-sacrificial, and on the inside you feel like a crud all the more because of that, am I right?"

Yup, he is. "Yes." I whisper.

"Well, you're neither, Iris, you're not a saint, or a sinner, just a kid who's lost her father." He holds my chin and looks into my face, "That’s nothing to be ashamed of, and if I know one thing about Connor Brookside, it's that he went out on a high note, one that most of us couldn't dream to achieve. And if I know one thing about Iris Brookside," he smiles fondly down at me, "it's 'like father, like daughter.'"

He gives my shoulders a squeeze and then pulls me up. He may be gruff, but no one could have made me feel better, even if he did it in a harsh, tell-it-like-it-is way. Maybe that way is best.

"Now, there's a newbie here to take over Finn's shift, so you're back to normal duty. And," he straightens my uniform and goes from dad to ornery army general, "since you've already managed to waist five and half minutes of our days, so GET BACK TO WORK!" He practically yells in my face.

As he turns to go, I just catch a wink out of the corner of my eye, and then he's gone.

I feel something wet on my cheek and look down to see Jimmy, the python I'm training, looking up at me. "Sorry, buddy, I forgot you were here." I disentangle him from my torso. "I suppose I'm pretty sappy, huh?" I ask with a grin. Jimmy looks up at me with his beady black eyes. "Well, anyway, thanks for listening so patiently," I set him on the ground, and then walk to the door. I wink at the snake as I close the door to his cage, "And thanks for the 'good luck' kiss. You're not so bad, for a reptile." I add and turn to go.

I grin with a newfound resolution, and turn toward the hallway that leads to my Bengals.

[WT]

I'd like to claim a post here for Akshara, if I may? I'm working on it now and it should be up by tomorrow.

[tardisgirl]

Sure. I can't rp for more then a few days on this thread though, becausse Iris Brookside just got picked in the reaping.

Sorry. I had no idea she'd be picked or I'd not have made an open thread for her.

However, I'd love to rp with you while I can, if you'd still like to. (I totaly understand if you don't.)

Sorry about this, and thanks for offering to rp with me.


-Rose

[WT]

(OOC- Last Hunger Games, open threads in the Districts were still allowed to go on if they were made before the Reaping... surely it's still the same? o.o

Even if we have to cut it off, don't worry about it. It'll be fun while it lasts. ^^)



Lay your head
Down to bed
Let your slumber sweep your cares away
In your dreams
Chase moonbeams
All the way across the Milky Way

No one else could hear the words that went along with the melody. However, it is well-known that it doesn’t matter if others don’t understand an artist, the artist will continue to create; in the same way, the humming continued despite the odd looks she was given as she walked through the streets with her box.

Part of it was that she was trying to calm herself down. It had been a while since Akshara had been among so many people, and she wasn’t really enjoying it; she had to do it, because the place where she was going was almost directly across the District and she wanted to be home in a reasonable amount of time, but she was still a little edgy. It wasn’t that she was afraid or expected anyone to attack her (she had gotten over being paranoid a long time ago), but she wasn’t really comfortable, either. She was glad that the harsh winter gave her an excuse to wear a puffy coat, as well as a hat and scarf; not only did they hide her pocked skin and patchy hair, they made her feel isolated from the busy world that flurried around her even more quickly than the recent snow.

However, she reminded herself as she hoisted the box up while trying not to jostle it, she was also trying to sooth her charges. The mice inside the box had settled down a lot since she had begun this journey with them, but she could still hear them getting up and scurrying around at times. She didn’t want them to be afraid; sure, she was might be taking them to their deaths, but she also might not be, and even if she was it didn’t mean that they should be miserable in the meanwhile.

As she left the more urban areas and entered the spaces kept for animals, she paused to check one more time on her mice. She opened the lid of the box just far enough so she could see into it; the mice, about ten of them, were curled up together in one corner. The bread and fruit she had put in with them was all gone, though they had replaced it with scattered droppings on the side of the box that wasn’t taken over by tiny furry bodies. They all seemed to be asleep. Smiling and still humming, she closed the lid and stood up straight again.

Now, the question only was... where to take them? Despite living in District 5 for a long while, Akshara wasn’t overly familiar with any places outside of her neighborhood and her clearing-garden, and she definitely didn’t know anything about the places where people worked. It was times like this that she wished she still had a voice that could make words; she would have loved to call out, ask if there was anyone around.

A girl came into view, and Shar began walking toward her quickly, hoping to get to the stranger so she could find out who to ask about the mice. She started to wave her hands to get attention, then realized that she couldn’t without dropping the box and its mice, so she settled for taking long strides and hoping the girl saw her.

[tardisgirl]

I walk rapidly down the hall toward my Bengals. They're my pet project right now. I'm working with two Bengal Tiger cubs, and teaching them how to be the perfect pets for wealthy capitol citizens.

The two of them are so cute, both girls with the normal orange and black coloring, and from the same litter. Sindra, the older of the twins, is bossy, but she's also a total baby if she gets hurt. Once when she stubbed her toe she cried and cried until I came and told her she was a poor little thing and gave her a treat. And she still went around limping the rest of the day.
Lila, the younger of the two, is compliant to Sindra's face, but she will act up and make fun of her sister the second she turns her back.

I hurry on even faster, looking forward to my work with the two little devils, and doing my best to ignore the fact that they're leaving for the capitol this week and I'll almost certainly never se them again.

I hear footsteps behind me and turn to look. A girl, or young woman, (it is hard to tell how old she was, as her face is partially covered by a hat and a scarf), is rapidly approaching me. Obviously she wants to ask something, so I turn and walk back toward her.

"Hi, can I help you with something?" I smile.

[WT]

Sighing a little in relief, Akshara picked up her steps so that she reached the teenage a bit faster. She would have stopped and waited, but she needed her hands to speak, and she figured it would be easier to get this over with quickly so that the girl could get back to whatever she was doing.

She set down the box carefully- she was beginning to hear sounds in there again. She nodded brightly at the other girl's words, and her hands moved in automatic response to sign yes, thank you before she remembered that most people who didn't know her didn't really speak sign language. She met the stranger's dark eyes and held up a finger, figuring that the "wait" signal was pretty universal, then reached into the inside pocket of her coat to get her chalk and tablet.

"Sorry, can't speak" was written there already; she kept that message on there at all times, so that it would be ready when she pulled it out. She displayed it now, then pulled her scarft down so that she could smile apologetically. After giving the girl a minute to read it, she erased the message with her sleeve, positioned herself so that the stranger could read as she wrote, and began writing. The chalk flew over the board; it had given her a little bit of trouble when she first started communicating this way, because writing on a tablet was different from writing on paper, but she had gotten used to it and eventually become the fastest writer she knew.

"I have mice. In here," she started, and nudged the box with her toe for clarification. They were in my garden and I didn't know what to do with them, so I brought them here. I used to know someone who had pet mice. Are mice popular in the Capital? Perhaps you can feed them to the reptiles? If there's no room, I'll find somewhere else." She barely managed to squish the last couple words in there before running out of room, so the last bit was cramped, but it was still pretty legible. She slid the chalk into its holder on the side and waited for the other girl to read and respond. While she was waiting, she used her foot to open the box and peek inside; the mice that had begun to wake up a moment ago were starting to move around now, looking just as confused by their confinement as they had when she first put them inside. She giggled a little as one mouse tried to nibble at a corner, then looked back up at the dark-haired girl, wondering what she thought. Hopefully she'd take them, because Akshara had no idea what else to do with them; she could put them back out in the forest, but she felt bad doing that in the middle of winter, and besides, they'd just find their way back to her garden and start eating her food again.

[tardisgirl]

OOC: Sorry I took so long to respond.


The woman picks up her pace and walks to me.
She sets to box down and I hear noises inside it, which leads me to guess that she's donating some kind of animal to the facility.
She starts to do something with her hands, I'm not sure what, but then she stops and holds up a finger for me to wait. Then she reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out some chalk and a tablet.
There's something already written on it, but I can't tell what until she holds it up for me to see.
"Sorry, can't speak." is written on it in pretty handwriting.
She pulls down her scarf and smiles apologetically, then she holds the tablet up for me to see for a few seconds, and then erases the message with her sleeve.
She writes something down on it at an amazingly fast pace, and I wait patiently for her to finish.
I wonder why she can't speak, but figure it'd be impertinent to ask, so I simply smile at her and wait.
She finishes writing quickly, and holds it for me to see. The message reads "I have mice. In here," she nudges the box at her feet with her toe. "They were in my garden and I didn't know what to do with them, so I brought them here. I used to know someone who had pet mice. Are mice popular in the Capital? Perhaps you can feed them to the reptiles? If there's no room, I'll find somewhere else."
The words are a little squashed at the end, but perfectly legible.
The woman opens the box with her foot, and I glance inside it. There are several cute, healthy, bewildered looking mice in there. One seems to be attempting to escape by eating the box. The woman giggles a little at the spectacle and I smile.
She looks up at me for an answer.
"Yes they are, popular, that is, especially among children,” I answer. "In fact, the fluffier, cuter, and smaller the better, and these little mice are quite cute, fluffy, and tiny."
The mice in the box are quite cute, and sure to find homes in The Capitol very quickly.
I look over at the woman and smile. "I can take them over to a cage in the rodent department for you if you'd like." I glance down at the mice again and then add, "I'm Iris, by the way, Iris Brookside."

[esmer]

I need someone to RP with. Anyone?

[tardisgirl]

Hi esmer! I'd love to rp with you, but now that the Games have started I'm not allowed to rp with Iris anywhere but there. Sorry. Do you have any other Districts you'd like to rp in?

[esmer]

Trudging to the grizzly bear cage with a bucket of raw meat in her hand, Christine sighed. Bears weren't her thing. She was scared to death of them, especially at feeding time. They rammed each other and bit and scratched to be the first at the raw meat. She wouldn't miss them when they were gone.