the edge of a blade (Zenia/Arabella) blitz

[k!ah]

a r a b e l l a .

***

Arabella had never held a sword before. She had in her dreams, in the fantasy worlds she gets consumed in. But never in reality. Usually she would be swinging around a heavy brach. Slicing it through the air, pounding it against her enemy, trees that stood tall and impassable. But never a real blade.

Her fingers curl around the hilt, as she pulls one from the stand. It was an elegant blade, decorated by hundreds of small gems. Her eyes danced over the metallic blade. Her fingers ran over the tip. Ouch. She pulls her finger away to see a small line of red beginning to form. She examines it for a moment before pressing it to her pants, gently wiping away any blood that my tarnish the beauty of the the hilt.

The first time she had entered the training room she had been too scared to touch anything, but today she had come in with the mission to swing a sword.

The blade was heavier than she had expected, the tips smacking into the ground. Hard. Arabella cringes, her eyes quickly scanning the room to see if anyone had witnessed her clumsiness. It all looked clear, so she lifted the blade again, this time handling it easier having expected the weight. She wondered if she looked like a warrior, with her fingers clasped around the hilt of the magnificent blade. She wandered if she looked deadly. Bracing, she tried to swing the blade at the closest dummy. A war cry escapes her lips.

She imagined she looked like a solider ridding into battle.

A few steps into her charge she falls flat on her face.

The sword clatters to the ground, and so does her imagination. Shattering her facade.

She didn't look like a warrior. No. She looked like a clown.

[pup]

z e n i a Gently rubbing her malformed right hand with her left, her eyes gaze around the training center. The pain in her right hand had long since dissipated, but the memory of her parents' anger always brought ghost stings back into her hand. Each time she looks at it, she's forced to remember how it never healed properly and her parents' screams echo in her head. Everyone else in the training center looked so well prepared, their hands working on various weapons. This wasn't what she had expected. But, then again, she wasn't entirely sure what she should have expected when she raised her hand in the air to desperately escape her parents. It had been the only way out, right? She was only now seeing that she had run right out of her parent's anger into death's vicious grip. It was only a matter of time. The bloodbath was quickly approaching and she was regretting her decision to rarely pay attention to the annual massacre. But at least she could save that other girl who's name was called in her quest to escape. She had saved someone else, and at least she found a way to break out of her parent's grasp. There was only a short amount of time left for her, and she knows. Might as well make a friend before heading out of this world. Searching the room, her eyes focus on the girl closest to her, screaming at a rubber dummy, brandishing a sword in her hand. Then she falls. Zenia knows that this is her enemy, that this girl will simply try to kill her in the future, but habit trumps her sense. Moving over to the fallen girl, she reaches out with her one good hand. "If it makes you feel any better, your probably at least better than me."

[k!ah]

a r a b e l l a .

***

Her hear beats in her ears as she lay facedown on the ground. She doesn't attempt to get up straight away, scared to see if anyone had witness her failure but then a voices drifts towards her, and she stops breathing for a moment, her face red hot with embarrassment. "If it makes you feel any better, you're probably at least better than me." Arabella turns her head slightly to see the girl from three. She extends a friendly hand towards her. Arabella regards it with suspicion for a moment. But just a short one before she reaches her it, wrapping a steady hand around the others girls as she is hauled from the ground.

"Ah, so I'm guessing you witnessed my major failure," she half chuckles, as she wipes the non-existent dust for her pants. "I have never wielded a sword before, not in reality. Only swung a heavy branch around at unsuspecting trees. Not quite the same." Quickly she bends down to pick up the sword that had cluttered to the ground, escaping from the grasp of her fingers. "You're the volunteer from Three, yeah? Zenia Shelby? No, Siella, right?" Arabella had study the list of tributes, her desire to learn more and more about them only growing as she observed many of them from a distance.

Something that interested Arabella about Zenia was her hand. Her eyes examined it now. The hand was malformed and she felt temptations hand caress her face as the questions begin to surge. "Your hand, does it hurt?" She asks instead on the most important one that buzzed at the edge of her mind. How did it happen? "Oh, yeah, and the names Arabella Shirley, District Eleven."

[pup]

z e n i a Shelby? I wish, Zenia thought. If only she could leave this last name behind her with the memory of her parents. It would make life so much easier, wouldn't it. The other girl, Arabella Shirley, she introduces herself as, pulls herself up and picks up the sword she had dropped. Then she asks the question that Zenia was all too familiar with. The hand question. But it wasn't the normal, How, from right off the bat. Maybe this girl, the one with the tree-branch sword who seems to care, at least a little, about those around her would make it out. It would probably be the best outcome for these games, Zenia decides. Shrugging a little, she brings her lips into a small, awkward smile, "No, not anymore. When it was first broken, it hurt a lot, but then it just didn't fix itself propely." The memories sting, though. They were the taser that had sparked her hand into the air and her voice to call out I volunteer. They were the reason why she had fled her home into the waiting hands of death. "I'm Zenia by the way, and you're right. Siella. And do you want to show me how you use the sword? I'm not entirely sure how but all the trainers here are too stuck up to listen to, and I bet your little bit of practice is a lot compared to none."