Mud // [Open]

[sbeeg]

Amaryllis Ainsworth

I don't watch the Bloodbath. Legally, I should be whipped in the public square and left to hang there until dark but there's simply too many people in the district to enforce such a rule. Even if they dragged me into the square and sat me in front of the giant television screens, I'd close my eyes or look away.

I'm tired of watching death. We see it every year and it is never any different. No gentle 12 year old ever pulls through, no resistance ever breaks through and saves all the children from their fates. It's the same thing only in different weather. This year it's spooky. How exciting.

It's chilly outside but I've outgrown my shoes in springs. It rained this morning, making the mud squish between my toes as I walk around the perimeter of the orchards. The sun is kissing the horizon but I don't want to wander home just yet. There's only a crust of bread and a crowded bedroom waiting for me there. I need some fresh air, some time to feel alive among the heavy clouds and scent of death I can smell all the way from the Capitol.

I glance down at my feet. My mom would kill me if I dragged them in onto her clean floor at this time of evening anyway. She couldn't stand filth but living on a farm it was unavoidable. That didn't stop her from yelling at me every chance she got.

"Amaryllis! Wash your face!"

"Amaryllis!! Don't track mud inside!"

I wish I could yell at her like that. "Hey Mom! Treat me like a person!" but you know I do like being able to walk.

As long as I wasn't dirtying up her house she didn't care. I'd stay out after district curfew, maybe get escorted home by a Peacekeeper. I probably have two strikes against me on the books, what's a third? Maybe a trip to the detention center was exactly what I needed. A nice vacation away from District Eleven. I bet they don't put T.V.s in the cells there even if the Games are airing.

I crouch down on the road side and stare at the mud caked to my feet. It's cold against my skin and, without really thinking, I dip my fingers into it. It's gritty and thick. The dirt immediately gets underneath my fingernails and into the crevices of my palms.

I slap my hands into the mud, sending the dirt splashing into my face, onto my clothes and on the sad looking fence marking off the orchards.

What was that game I used to play with Kord? Mud pies. We'd slap mud into bowls and pans and pretend to bake cakes and smearing each other in the filth. I didn't understand the reaping then and I wish I could forget it now.

I grab two handfuls of mud and smack them together, trying to form a little pie in my hands.

Maybe, for tonight, I could be a naive kid.

[Bella 🌻]

N O R Ihalliday

The rain in the morning and then the afternoon sun had made the air heavy, and even as the sun was close to setting Nori could feel the sweat dripping down her spine under the old t-shirt she’d been handed down from Ezra. She didn’t mind; they were used to the sweat around here and she liked the hand-me-downs; she liked knowing she could withstand something, and that she was saving her family some money. As she was walking home down the dirt road she made a game of tiptoeing over the cracks in the mud. She could be a child, still, when no one was watching.

The Hallidays had approached Reaping Day with mixed emotions. They hadn’t been ready to “get it over with” exactly, but the weeks leading up to it had been achingly quiet as they considered the gravity of possibility. Though they had done alright for themselves since they’d been old enough to make at least a meager living, Nori and Ezra both had to take out tesserae when they turned twelve to help feed the others. They could have easily had their names called this year. But the with Reaping, if you survived it, came at least another year of certainty, and Nori could sleep better knowing she only had two more years until she was free to grow up and be an old grump like Nana.

But she hated the grave atmosphere in the house just before it. Why did they have to spend that time contemplating and moping, thinking about how one of them might be taken away? If it were up to her she’d want to make sure she was making as many memories as possible before that day, that way there would be good ones that stuck in her head if the unthinkable happened.

Fun was hard to come by, though. Kids grew up too fast here, and they had to even if you weren’t likely to be reaped--you had to grow your skin on thick and freckled before the heat made it blister, and the tree bark tore it away from your hands when you climbed, or the Peacekeepers whipped it off of you. Nori didn’t mind being strong, but she wondered sometimes what it would be like if her skin wasn’t rough and thick but smooth, like the inside of her forearms but all over. Like Jade, who in her eyes was still a baby. But then if she was soft, she wouldn’t really be Nori.

She hadn’t expected to see anyone her age out here this late in the evening, but Nori saw a girl stooped down in the mud, squishing it between her hands, and she had to laugh. She recognized the red hair from school; there weren't too many redheads around here, and there weren’t many who ran around with no shoes on, either, so it had to be Amaryllis. Nori hadn’t talked to her much; she was a year ahead, but she’d always noticed that the girl had the kind of gumption that she admired, the kind that she liked to think she had herself.

Amaryllis was barefoot, and for a moment Nori wondered what Nana would say if she came home with her own feet caked in mud. But having worked in the garden every day, she was no stranger to dirt under her nails. What the hell. Nori walked up to her and took off her own shoes, plunging her toes into the warm, squishy earth. 

"I don't think you have enough mud there," Nori observed with a laugh. Bending down, she scooped up a handful and plopped it down right on top of Amaryllis's hands. "Here's some more! I'm Nori, we go to school together, do you remember me?" Nori let out another slightly nervous laugh, hoping her messy joke hadn't offended the other girl. 

[sbeeg]

Amaryllis Ainsworth

I'm making my mud pies when a pair of hands dumps more mud into my fingers.

"I don't think you have enough mud there,"

I looked back down at my hands and squished the mud together. I usually have words ready but I could not even find one. The girl seemed familiar. Like a stranger's face you see often enough that they feel like an old friend. I look behind to where she came from. The girl's shoes were discarded beside the mud puddle. So, she chose to join me.

That's... kinda of cool actually. In all of my adventures out the district- catching frogs, swimming in the murky ponds, climbing trees and the like, if anyone ever saw me they pretended to ignore me. No one had ever dropped what they were doing and joined me before.

It made my heart feel all happy and that's a dumb feeling to even describe. Like oh yay someone is going to play in the mud with me and now I don't feel so alone in life. Like it means a lot but I'm not gonna tell anyone that.

"I'm Nori, we go to school together, do you remember me?"

I looked up at her and her oddly familiar face. I must know her from school. She wasn't in my grade, but I could perfectly picture her in the halls of the school house.

Nori, what a nice name.

"I know you," I say, slapping mud together with such force that a few droplets fly out and hit my cheek. I flinch as it connects, then my head to free it from the dirt. "I'm Amaryllis."

I offer a mud caked hand for her to shake. A test of sorts. So far she was passing most of my requirements to be a cool mud partner, but I wanted to make sure.

[Sleepy Fluttershy]

*OOC: I hope it is not to late to join into the fun?*

Carmen Stirling




Every time the Games begin I feel like crying. They take two people from the district to kill them off. Every time that happens I almost collapse before I hear the names. And every single time one cowardly thought crosses my mind:

Not me. Not Cathy.

I can't afford ending up in that madness. I can't kill people. I just want to live my life in peace. I want to work, live with my family, be happy.

Speaking of work, the Games are extremely bad for business. Nobody can listen to me and I can't sing when all that fighting happens. Which means I can't earn any money and we had to save some food to last until the end of the horrific event. Considering that even before the Games we were barely able to make ends meet, there's not much food at home.

Hunger. Maybe that is why they call this "The Hunger Games"...

I am so freaking hungry all the time that I can't think about anything else.

I need a distraction.

Dead bodies are not the right thing to concentrate on - I don't need any nightmares in addition to the hunger. So I don't watch the games and just wander around district eleven, doing my best not to run into a Peacekeeper. Suddenly I see two girls talking. Looks like they are playing in the mud... I haven't done that since I was five. Maybe if I talk to them they will let me join them.

"Hello there..."

And naturally, that is the best I could manage. I am usually much more creative when I start a conversation, but right now I am too hungry to think about a hundred other ways to chat with those girls.