wanderlust [phresh]

[sadniss everdeen]

The first time Alyssa saw the sky, she was twenty years old.

Bloody-knuckled and gritted teeth, up and out the barbed wire, the turrets, slipping away from the coal and concrete prison that had been her home, and her father's, and her father's father. It was dark and quiet and her breath turned into clouds that escaped from her, condensed in front of her eyes and drifted away just like the remnants of her old life. Like her dreams, her memories, all her friends who had left one by one until she was alone. Just like then, just like now, her beaten sneakers slip-sliding down the embankment and away from the bunker with a promise not to cry and the necklace Bentley made for her when they were thirteen clenched in her trembling fist.

Don't think about it. Don't talk about it. Just swallow, breathe, move forward.

A life in a man-made hole left her ill-equipped for crossing the vast forests between the Districts. The wind on her face feels like fingers, always looking over her shoulder for the person who ruffled her hair. Water soaks her torn-up backpack when she crosses the river and nearly ruins the single faded photograph inside, nipping at her toes and chilling her skin. It licks at her a little like fire, if she's being honest, just a little less violent and a little more steady. Just like--

No.

When she tries to sleep, the forest is too loud. When she wants to stop thinking, too quiet. Figures.

The night is too dark, the day too bright. The sun burns her near-translucent skin and it peels from her shoulders in all the places her hair doesn't cover. Each new step introduces her to insects she's never seen, traps she's never fallen into. She sleeps in a tree to avoid the ground and wakes up to a squirrel chewing through her already-broken backpack. The bark is sticky on her hands and cements her fingers together until the river washes it clean again.

But she gets by. Her father didn't raise a quitter, nor a whiner. Alyssa just breathes and bares it and forages onwards; her shoes fall apart and her clothes don't fit right but she just. Goes. Everything else is manageable now that she doesn't have to exist in a place that smothers her. Now that she's free. The stars are beautiful and the clouds are huge and drift lazily, shedding shade onto her unfortunate back, and when the rain comes she tilts her face up to the sky and opens her parched mouth until she chokes.

It's not all bad, but fuck she's hungry. A run-in with a bad mushroom on what was supposed to be her birthday (happy fucking birthday, liquefying her insides and sending them outside) has left her wary, and the forest is bountiful, she just doesn't know how to collect.

But while Alyssa knows next to nothing about nature, she knows a lot about people. So when she finds the smouldering fire next to a bursting backpack, she doesn't hesitate before pilfering it. Whoever owns this knows a lot more about nature than she does; they'll figure it out.

Three-quarters of the way out the clearing, her mouth full of leaves and berries and a weird looking tree-nut, the hair of her nape bristles. Alyssa leans to the side just in time for an axe to whistle past her face, blowing air against her cheekbone and embedding itself in a distant tree. She blinks, watching it vibrate, before turning.

"You know," she says, swallowing slow and obvious, "you probably should've kept that on you." Her knuckles crack all at once like crushing a stone. "Now you have nothing to stop me from beating you to dust."

[xov thao 12b [Bella]]

P I P E R

Was she a girl or an animal?

For eight years she’d lived in the shadows of the forest, hiding in the branches and in the hollows of caves. To eat Piper had to learn which berries meant death and which meant life, which flowers were nightshade and which ones signaled wild carrots, how to tell the directions by the way the trees were growing, which caves belonged to the bears and which could belong to her. Living here you had to think like an animal or die. Piper learned she wouldn’t survive on berries and roots, so she needed to hunt for protein. The only way to do this well was to learn where the squirrels and rabbits would hide when they got scared.

She remembered the first time she’d seen Rhonan pull back the skin from an animal’s body as easy as the rind of an orange, exposing red and white marbled flesh underneath like an ugly secret—she’d gotten sick as soon as she saw it, retching into the weeds, to Rho’s disappointment. Back then she’d never seen death happen on purpose. It was just another thing she’d grown out of, her fear of blood and death and the ways of things, the way all meat looks the same with the skin taken off (even people), the way it decays into the dirt when the forest floor is warm and hungry and ready to get on with the cycle.

And now rabbits and squirrels were more than cute and fuzzy forest friends. She’d snagged one today right through the neck with a thin cedar spear, and at the moment it was roasting on a spit over the fire. She made her fires as small as possible during the day so that the smoking meat wouldn’t attract wolves or bears, but she had made this one a little too small; after 30 minutes the log was in cinders and she had to leave to cut more.

The evening sun had burned outlines in her skin where her clothes clung to her body, and it didn’t let up as she labored with a fallen log, trying to make new firewood. Holding the handle of her axe in two clenched fists, she brought it down with all her force into the end of a log, cleaving it in two with a loud crack. After a few more rounds of this she could feel the sweat pooling on the small of her back, and her arm muscles twitched when she rested them. She remembered she’d forgotten to eat breakfast, and immediately her stomach rumbled for the berries she’d saved in her backpack. Gathering an armful of wood, Piper started back towards the fire.

Her backpack wasn’t as she left it, full of the things she’d foraged; it was half-empty and lying in the dirt, like a raccoon had been at it.

Or a girl, a stranger with dark hair and a nasty sunburn. This was unexpected.

Nerves suddenly on end, Piper placed her wood quietly on the ground and fumbled with the axe at her belt, although she knew it was meant to be a tool and not a weapon. Anger boiled in her chest and as she moved forward, she took aim for the first time at another human being. Her hands shook; a voice of reason rang distant in her ears. She aimed again. She breathed in, let it go, and watched as it stopped in the trunk of a tree.

Relief?

Her spine tingled as the girl turned around on her heels. “You know, you probably should have kept that on you. Now you have nothing to stop me from beating you to dust.” Maybe it would have been easier if she had aimed at the girl’s head. But could she have done it?

Piper hadn’t spoken out loud in a few days, and her voice sounded foreign and wrong when she bit back. ”I’m going to need that back,” she growled. ”If I get it with a busted lip, I’m still going to get it back. It’s mine.”

She lunged forwards and swung for something; the backpack or a fist full of face. 

(attack, unarmed)

CXQeMDMBunarmed

(block)

unarmed

[sadniss everdeen]

Alyssa grinned, full and feral, as the girl swung.

This she knew. Bentley had dancing and she had fighting, a one-two step more desperate but just as beautiful if only you looked long enough. Within the first half-second, she knew the girl was better-fed, angry, but not a fighter. Her wrist was cocked at the wrong angle, her shoulder pivoted too far for a good hinge. Her feet weren't in the right place. Alyssa had no doubts that she was a survivor, yes, but so was she. So was her entire District.

She caught her wrist neatly and kept it there, trembling between them. Her nails dug into the girl's skin and left deep, red moons.

"Oh, honey," Alyssa purred, "you're in for more than a split lip."

After so long with nothing but her own rotating thoughts for company, it felt... good, to talk to another person. If talking was even the right word. Alyssa felt the familiar prickle of anticipation race up her spine, white-hot and thrilling, flexing her feet and fingers and making her eyes gleam. She shoved her away and kept up as she stumbled back like the panther stalking the prey.

One, two, heel planted and body twisted, momentum charging into her clenched fist like a hammer falling from the sky. The grin never left Alyssa's face as she let it fly.

hC6G6Ucxunarmed
[bruised right foot, 2 + 2 = 4]
(I'm gonna say bruised right shoulder, bc how the fuck would Alyssa punch her in the foot?)

unarmed