where the lines overlap {aya clover chime}

[✨ zozo.]

SAFFRON LOWE

“but there are some things, child, that you should steal. that you must steal, if you have enough love and courage in your heart. you must snatch freedom from the hands of the tyrant. you must spirit away innocent lives before they are destroyed. you must hide secret and sacred places.”

✖ - ✖ - ✖

Friend is a term I'm on uncommon grounds with. The plural is even more of a stranger to my lips, hardly ever needing to be uttered. But in this Game I need real allies, not empty space or the comforting confinements of abandoned homes. (Who I really need is my sister but she's not here and it's my job to get back home to her, not the other way around.)

So I play a game of hide-and-seek, watching kids from the corner of my eye. They dart about, some experts with weapons and some fumbling with nervous hands around everything they touch. At the sight of a Career kid mauling a head off of a dummy my hands clench in shock, bursting the berries that sat between my fingers. Red liquid pours down my palm, tracing the marks in my hands - I'd be painting the insides of my limbs with more than just berry juice if I were stupid enough to ally with any one of them. Knowingly dying in my sleep at the hands of a trained killer seems like cheating, and cheaters never win. At least not in this game.

As I wipe my arms clean against my uniform, the need to 'borrow' itches underneath my skin and a small bottle of red paint slips into my pockets. I simply cannot afford to loose my undetectable fingers at the hands of a Career (or worse). Perhaps I need to borrow the friendship - or at least respect - from one of the girls here. Borrowing, I can do. The ones who get out of this godforsaken place alive form alliances strong enough to take out the rest but easy enough to slip out of to lead them onto victory.

With a light finger I tap the girl next to me. Blue-eyes and blonde hair, she's not harmless; yet I don't want to be too wary of her. I point across at the dark-haired girl I'm more intimidated by and another at the other end of us with her pencil and paper, and smile. "They're quite good, aren't they?" I announce, my intentions lingering underneath my words in the hopes she'll grasp onto them sooner rather than later. Tracing a finger from one girl to the other, I continue. "Look - she's got dedication, and she's got brawns."

I smile at the girl from Twelve - her District number clicking into my memory - and introduce myself. "I'm Saffron. I've never really had any friends but I think they'd be good ones here. Don't you think?"

[Ivana Vox [Chime]]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 376px; height: 32px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 15px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-width: 3px 3px 3px 3px; border-color:#D2CDD1; border-style:double; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 300px;] The training centre is a very particular kind of chaos, the kind that’s carefully measured and somehow contained to distant corners. This leaves my eyes flickering between every individual station, prompted by the clatter of spears or the yelp of someone falling from a net, has my head spinning from the sheer amount of information it has to take in at once. This is nothing like class where I just take notes and have the rest of my mind to wander with thoughts. Still, I jot down everything. Every trip, stumble, slip of a hand that has an arrow that hits its mark. Even if it’s just one out of an entire quiver. Which tributes avoid which stations and gravitate towards others. (I fill a separate page while I’m at it, lining up times with lights that go dead for less than a blink before flaring up again, seeming to burn brighter for it’s failure to be steady.) My pages are stained with berry juice and my wrist keeps sticking to my words. These mysterious dyes won’t recreate the dimpled and imperfect knots of an oak tree, not under my hands, but I’d promised Trina to go to all the stations, right after I told her I’d try to actually talk to one of my potential killers. A place where we all got to play with paints and colourful mud seemed like the only one in which I could at least attempt a conversation. My lips are tied together, sewn maybe by the determined brunette from Three or the lovely doll from Twelve. Even the girl from Ten looks like she was crafted from embers, all fiery hair and slight hands, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them hands that slip glass away from prying eyes. At least, I think it was her; after all, I was unlucky enough to blink, just surprised enough to see that a bottle had disappeared. It’s another note to join the rest, letters spilling out across a line before I even instruct my hand to write. She points and I hold my breath, wondering if I’ve gotten caught, if I’ve just made my heartbeat the next thing this fox wants to make disappear, but nothing happens. I hold my breath for seven seconds and nothing happens. My reports still fall to the table with a faint rustle, golden-edges staining with purple that I only see out of the corner of my eye. Blink and you’ll miss them. Maybe that’s the whole theme of these pre-Games game. My gaze settles on Three and a desperate thought filters into my head: maybe we can bond over quadratic equations. I want to slap myself and laugh at the same time, but what I end up doing is probably even worse. My mouth opens and I hear my own voice, my own raspy, scratchy voice that’s gone rough with underuse, and let vowels tumble out. "What do you think the arena will look like?" I suppose it's a legitimate enough question, considering we’re trying to find a way to blend in with what will be our surroundings, but it was stupid nonetheless. She can’t know any better than I. It’s in my head now though, and I’m powerless to the itch of curiosity that makes me carry on in the kind of mess that occurs with inexperience. "There’s lots of red and purple dyes - I’m Ivana, by the way - but I don’t know if that means anything, the dyes, not my name, my name means something along the lines of 'a gift from Ripred'. I don’t know how you could have an entire arena the same colour as raspberries." This is what happens when you hardly speak. I probably should have written her a note instead.

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[aya]

I'm already born
I'm already wise
I'm already worn
I'm already wonderin' what am I

Cerise Mephistopheles—

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During training center hours, Cerise had begun preparing for her private session in front of the Gamemakers. She only had a set amount of time to perform, and the menial work of stripping bits of copper and aluminum from various weapons was so dull in comparison to her main event. She maintained her scowl, but had been glaring away all that approached her since day one, and was no longer in much danger of having to fend off irritatingly stupid comments.

As she darted around the training center, collecting the objects that were copper-rich and stripping them of their wealth, the District Three girl suddenly became aware of eyes on her back. She glanced up in time to catch a pointed finger in her direction, to see murmuring lips passing judgement on her. Reminded of the school lunch room that she would currently be occupying had she not been transported from that universe to this, Cerise felt her temper rising. The small social segment of the school was always abuzz with whispers of who was such a freak or oh my god you'll never believe who did what — it didn't even matter who the idle gossip and other whiny twelve-year-old drivel was directed at, it made the Fist's blood boil.

Angrily, she stalked over to the girls. Wagging the jagged piece of copper she'd just pulled off of a device from the fire making station at the offenders, Cerise hissed her stern warning: "You'll find that whispering behind my back is the quickest way to get a knife in yours. And that's not a threat, that's a promise."

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[florentine, d4b ❁]

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lucy peverell[/i][/color][/size][/url]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid eeeeee; border-right: 30px solid eeeeee; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 390px;] Filler, filler, filler. (God, I'm fillering already and the Games haven't started yet, but I will do this.) Lucy's admiring all the other girls, being lovely and sweet. Wow, aren't they all so clever and gosh it's a shame they'll probably all die. But, yeah, let's just be smiley and hope somebody talks to her because she's a bit shy. Oh, Saffron, friend, did you say friend? Lucy has had a lot of friends, but only because everyone is her friend from the dustmites to her teacher to her siblings to everything else in the whole wide world, and they don't really get a choice in the matter. (And everybody at school used to tease her and call her childish but they didn't mean to be that cruel, did they? No, of course not.) Oh, gosh. Ivana Vox - Lucy's memorised her name because she knows everybody's name, because she's over-eager and wants to please and likes people an awful lot. She starts babbling, which startles Lucy quite a lot because wow, she speaks, but also pleases her. Firmly she decides she likes them both (uhhhh, as if she would dislike anybody, anyway) and smiles. Smiling. Lots of smiling. Cerise looks pretty scary but also she's only little and she's probably scared, right? Lucy thinks everybody's scared, and she's most likely right, actually. Anyway, grumpy little Cerise throws Lucy off guard a little because she expects everyone to be bright and sunny and filled with joy. Always. "Oh, no!" Lucy cries, because injustice and cruelty that didn't happen and what if she possibly thought that... wow, no, nobody is mean. "She was just saying that she thought some of the people here would be good to have as friends." Completely unafraid, bubbly, and reasonably bold. (People are all good so really what could there be to worry about?) "I think she's right, too. I'm Lucy. You all seem awfully clever." She's not even sucking up she's just really nice and sickeningly earnest and a good person ugh what even. template by chelsey

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