Mellow (Day six)

[jimmylost]

Mel wander through the island trying to make her path as hard to follow as possible. Not that she knew how to do that very well being from district three she had never set foot in any kind of nature let alone had to caver her tracks. Despite the fact that she was yet again clinging to life with a pack of careers probably hot on her heals who wanted her dead she felt pretty good. Maybe she had gotten used to being constantly in pain for one reason or another, or maybe it was because she had just popped three pain-killing nuts from the pharmacopeia island into her mouth like candy.

Everything was felt good right now, even the oppressive heat felt more like a comforting blanket to Mel right now. The knowledge that with the two kills she had just witnessed she was now in the top three made the smile already plastered on her face grow. Halfway through her increasingly random journey Mel decided she was done walking and sat down. She had to almost lay down under the short tree-like plant nearby to gain any shade but once she had she was greeted by something nice. She had never had the chance to notice this but the little spaces between the leaves of trees were beautiful, the way the light shone through them when you unfocused your eye just the right way was like having every light on the grid finally working and pointing at her.

The only thing that upset all this was the now very distant reminder of pain. She frowned turning her eyes away from the light show the leaves where putting on for her and pulling herself up slightly. She pulled the remaining plants from the pharmacopeia island out of her pocket and used the to treat her wounds. She moved to lay back down under her tree but found there was still a nagging reminder of pain coming from somewhere in her body.

“What else is wrong” she said to her body but it didn't answer.

She slid back down deciding to ignore whatever it was and just enjoy her leaves. It was then that she saw them, little clusters of nuts hiding under the leaves as well. She reached up and grabbed a handful and focused on them for a second. An identical picture formed in mind from a book of plants. Underneath was the label 'edible'.

Mel spent the next few minutes, or possible hours, slowly eating the nuts until her stomach was full. She then began to stuff her pockets completely stripping the plant.

Now everything was perfect there was no more pain, the plant she sat under was providing her with amusement, and this whole thing was almost over...

Boom...Boom!

Two cannon shots, did that mean Semper was now lieing dead off in some unknown location, or was Mel down to half as many careers chaseing her? It didn't really matter though she'd find out soon enough.

[cinder]

Dru had been searching the area for awhile. She had abandoned Ara, (a small part of her mind told Dru that abandoned was a rather strong word, when she was planning on coming back to Aranica) Why had Dru left the relative safety and comforting presence of Aranica Petros? Why had she taken only her falchion with her, in addition to a throwing on a new tank top, which was sandy, stained and frayed at the bottom, but in better shape than her bloody, torn-to-shreds excuse for a shirt (Everybody aimed for her chest when they attacked her. What was with Tributes and aiming for her assets? It wasn't like Dru had a heart beneath her fragile skin, and if there was a heart it was a block of ice or stone, not something you could stab) Over the tank-top was a Capitol made vest that she had taken off the body of her fallen comrade. Oh! Dru had also been reunited with her handy-dandy face mask, which protected and annoyed her. Couldn't the Capitol have come up with a way to make the material see-through? Dru was nothing without her pretty face...

Anyways, forget her attire. Remember the falchion she was clutching in her hand, occasionally using to hack away at plants that got in her way. Dru was not an expert tracker, but she had been following Mel’s footsteps like a trail. She knew it would eventually lead to the girl herself. The work was tedious, and often Dru had to stare at one spot for what seemed like hours, unsure whether she was still hot on Mel's trail, or she had gotten lost.

As she walked through the thick forest, Dru contemplated Mel as a person. She felt obliged to do so when Dru was so deliberately about to attack the girl who had once told Dru they might have been good friends. She did not know much about the girl, even her last name had slipped Dru's mind, but she recalled Mel was of the nerdy District. District Three, home of the technologically advanced geeks who usually never made it so far in the Games. The girl had guts, she was clever and knew when to run and hide, when to attack and when to roll on her back. Dru grinned a twisted little number, her face scrunching up beneath the mask. That fact alone convinced Dru Charlesburg that maybe, possibly there was a chance they could have been buddies.

Finally Dru heard something, the sounds of a person. She stopped moving, willing herself to stay absolutely still. Her eyes searched the foliage for signs of movement. There was the sound of a person, but it came from above. Dru slowly turned her neck up and noticed a person in a short tree a few feet away. Clever she breathed, silently enough that not even Dru heard herself speaking the word. Was that all Mel Clark of District Three would be remembered as, Dru thought as finally she recalled the girls last name. Dru thought about it. Being remembered as the Clever One could not be too bad, could it?

Of course, Mel had to be dead in order to be properly remembered in the way that Dru meant. So a flurry of motion later, Dru was running toward her target, scrambling halfway up the tree and slashing at Mel carelessly. She grunted with effort and tried not to think of how if everything went as planned, Mel’s lifeless body would collapse on top of Dru and leave her a sore, bruised mess on the ground. Maybe, if Mel was lucky, the impact would kill Dru and Mel would die with more than just the word clever used to describe her.

ATTACKS MEL [dice=156+3653000]

[rand=824324000691165094600117751689773999171710763017155299478361001]

[jimmylost]

Mel fell, well really she just hit the ground she had spent the last year of her life falling. In reality she hadn't survived the accident that caused her brothers death, it had just taken her this long to hit the ground. Mel looked up at the face of death (it had to be death because she couldn't see a face and the rest looked like little more then a skeleton) and smiled.

“Hello again old friend” she said before pausing to take in the figure before her properly “Oh wait you're Dru, well I suppose you're just as well as death aren't you? Is it because of you that I'm dieing?”

Mel took in Dru's bloody sword and the limb that had been removed by it. With that question out of the way Mel thought she was ready to go but something else forced it's way into her mind. She wouldn't be falling asleep to an anthem tonight, she wouldn't know who had just died. She tried to verbalize her thoughts but found her speech was already becoming hard to manage.

“Did?” Did you kill that little girl? Or Argent?

“Who?” Who's dead?

Finally she managed a response that Dru would be able to understand.

“ Who...died?”

It was only after using the last of her strength in her question that she realized the answer didn't matter, she wouldn't even be distressed to find that Argent had won. She didn't care anymore because it was all over. She had fought, as Pystan would say, to the best of her abilities. Which was to say not fought at all unless she had to, she hadn't killed, betrayed, or lost, she couldn't even feel the pain of her own death thanks to her mercy towards Argent, and she had possibly saved a life in coming here. The memory of Pystan reminded Mel that she had just one more thing to say.

“Pystan...please...don't”

Mel tried to say more but found no strength left in her body. She kept her eyes locked on the spaces between the leaves and a smile on her face with the knowledge that she had managed much more then many who came to the arena had. She had remained a human being, remained herself for a whole week in hell.

The sunlight began to fade away from her but Mel couldn't allow that she pulled herself out of the dieing light of her dieing eyes and into the spaces between the leaves where she could live forever.