bleeding pinks and reds . the troupe, day 1

[pogue]

C A L L U M

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They were lucky to be alive.

He'd watched Bird flee and he'd watched the girl drive her weapon into Kes's knee, a deafening crack thundering through his mind as his ally had fallen to the ground, cloaked in red from the open wound in her chest. He doesn't remember most of the bloodbath, wildly swinging his arms and his weapon and shoving whatever items he could find into his bag, but he remembers scooping up his ally's body into his arms, thanking whatever being that was watching from above or below that the tributes left had turned their weapons and attention to the poor girl with the broken knee, limping her way through the Bloodbath. He doesn't know if it is her screams or his own that are looping themselves within his brain now, etching their words into the back of his mind and burning their stories into his conscience. Behind him, the cannon booms and laughs through the arena, mocking the stories of the damned as they scattered through the arena.

His arms shake as Kestrel's body presses into his chest, feeling the blood that dribbles and pours from her wounds soak through the cloak draped around his figure. Truthfully, he doesn't know if the girl wrapped in his arms, the same girl whose melodies had echoed through the hallways as he walked, was even alive at this point. So much blood and so much pain, he has to force himself to focus on the oasis of reds, pinks, and whites that occupy his distance as he stumbles forwards. Each glance he takes at Kes his heart hurts and his body begins to shut down, muscles melting and morale bleeding from wounds laced underneath his skin. His voice is broken when he speaks, falling from his mouth in sweet little whispers as he clutches Kes closer to his body, throwing his voice into the soft winds that begin to wrap around them.

"It'll be okay Kes, just keep breathing..

stay with me, Kes..." Please, he thinks.

Their path is anything but silent, and as his ears strain to listen behind them for any following footsteps pressed into the red and pink ground beneath them the wind suddenly picks up, going from a soft whisper in his ear to a blasting howl that swallows the world around him. The ground they run on is swept up and gutted completely, tattered remains swirling through the air they breathe until the only thing he can see is a strange blur of pinks, reds and white hues crashing into one another. As his breaths heave and his heart thumps deep inside his chest something snaps within his mind and he remembers the same song Kes had played within the Training Center halls, hopeful tune a stark contrast to the haunting melody that they now drown in.

"Focus on the song of the wind, Kes. Just focus on how it sounds." He says to his ally as they run further into the petal storm, raising his voice to compensate for the hissing of the wind storm they run through. When he breathes he feels his breathe thin and catch in his chest, the storm pushing and pulling against his lungs.

"Why is it that every time you find me I'm sprawled in a mess on the ground?" A breath caught in the tunnels of his lungs suddenly releases as his ally speaks, a small grin forcing its way onto his face as he breathes another sigh of relief, then a slight chuckle.

"I guess it's becoming an unfortunate tradition now, huh?" He responds, trying to force a small laugh to complement the joke. It falls dead instead, slipping into the winds around them, and ss Kestrel's blood slides and trickles between his fingers he wishes he could join it.


Soon, you will.                              his heart whispers.


It is like walking into a wall, and with every step forward it feels like he is lifting dead weight that is rooted within his feet, his arms shaking and quivering beneath the weight wrapped in his arms. His teeth grind together as he presses forward, body near diagonal as he forces their combined weight into the wall of wind and bloody petals that pushes back against them. A laugh before Kestrel's body cringes and cuts her breath short in his arms, and he has to strain his ears to hear her as the winds further pick up.

"How am I ever going to dance again, Callum?" Kestrel's words drive daggers into his heart and he has to force himself not to meet her gaze as he presses his tooth down onto his lip, biting it to contain whatever venomous words might slip from his tongue. Her question does not fall on deaf ears, and with each second that passes as he ponders his answer he can feel his heartbeat growing louder, the silence between the two of them distinctly similar to the same silence he'd shared with his own brother. He hadn't had the words to speak to Elijah back then, swallowed them whole instead of choose to say them.

"You'll dance again, Kes. You'll just need help. I- I promise." It is like a knife pressing into his heart, and the words slither from his lip as he makes a deal with Kestrel Volant, memories of every lie he'd told his brother and every lie he'd told in the form of a fairy tale flooding into his mind.

He was good at weaving stories. He was good at breaking promises.

"Okay. If you promise, then... I trust you." and the knife is twisted in deeper.

Kestrel's words hang in the air before the storm suddenly breaks and silence swallows them both, his view scattering across one of the most jaw dropping sights he had seen in his entire life. The pond in front of them shines with a silent beauty that betrays the howling winds that claw and collapse all around them. The water shifts and shakes as petals break from the wind storm and scatter into the silence, finding their final resting place on the top of the water. For the second time his breath catches in his throat and he nearly drops Kes, the only thing snapping him out of his bewildered gaze being the sudden return of the strain and pain of toothpick arms struggling to hold his ally. He lowers he to the ground as softly as the falling petals, sands of the shore clinging to the still wet blood that has found its home on his hands. 

"It's beautiful here Kes...

But we can admire that later yeah? We need to get you fixed up." He doesn't know if the last part of his statement is even possible, looking at Kes's mangled knee and gashed open chest. She had always shared a hope that he didn't know if he would be able to match, and as his curls the sands into his fingers he gulps. He would find out soon.

"BIRD! WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE!" He screams hopelessly, listening to his voice quickly get swallowed and drowned into the howling winds around them. He gulps, praying for their ally to find them. 

___

[ I'll put my trib stuff in my trib maint! Mwah :* ]

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

 

bird ivy

Moments are fleeting. There's a rush inside me and I know that the hardest storm to weather in the one inside, and that feeling only jumps to the forefront of my mind when I run as fast as I can, for as long as I can, but find myself in the same place as before. The bloodied and bruised are figures in the distance, an army preparing to infiltrate each and every valve of my heart with their weaponry, mangling into their plaything, into their prize for playing the people who play the game. I stop close to the cornucopia and comfort feels a whole world away - but running as all I can do. All I have is myself and these aching fists, a sharp mind, sure, but what good is that in a sword fight?

Over time, things start to fall into place. They float to the ground like they are feathers from a bird that has died in the sky and watching the dust settle is a trauma I will replay over and over until I die. There's no longer the agony that hangs heavy in the air, the throb in my ear from my own adrenaline desperately trying to mask any fear, there's no longer the echo of a cannon booming, no more supersonic tragedy to escape from. The peace is unsettling; if there's anything I've learned from going into the forest, it is that the quiet is a fragile thing. So easily broken, and once broken, impossible to replace.

I close my eyes for a moment. I take it in. Who knows when I'll feel this again? This emptiness, the loneliness of fleeing something so awful only to stand on a line in between one hell and another. Good is no good and to be bad requires being worse than ever. Stone, I stand in the silent storm that surrounds me. Acceptance of fate, sure, but it's more a case of dying before I've actually died. I know how these stories go; Panem is no place for fairytales.

That's what I keep in my mind when I leave, and when I think of it for the forty-seventh time, something shifts. 

There's a wind now: the soft kind. It's the kind of breeze that blows a curtains like an ocean wave, relaxing and calm, the type that could lull you to sleep as it whistles through the cracks in a wooden window frame. A bed of petals are sprawled across the ground, eccentric in its beauty, but I have loved and lost enough times to turn a blind eye to the dangers of something, or someone, just because it is pretty.

Mom told a story of a queen who was the envy of all other women: everyone swooned over her, she was powerful, she was elegant, she was regal in her reign. But the face disguised the sting of a black window and she murdered everyone in her life until there was no one left. She was alone with the destruction she had caused becoming her only company. She was okay. She was still beautiful, but she was a broken kind.

That is what I expect from this arena. Perhaps there will be pretty views. Sunrises and sunsets. The glow of the moon on a tranquil body of water. Spritely creatures making homes in sweet vegetation. A masterpiece of a sky. Perhaps there will even be something in here to fall in love with - but my trust is too crooked to be bent into place by the hands of any gamesmakers.

The petals whoosh into the wind; they take flight and become a flurry of colour, a prism of every shade imaginable. It's a sight to behold, there's no way it isn't, but illusions are trickery to hide the truth. I turn my head over my shoulder but where I came from has faded into where I thought I was going, and all sense of direction is lost. A compass would be drugged by the magnetism of this rainbow swarm because I can't stop looking at it. Entranced but enveloped, the wind sings an opera into the storm and it borders on a scream.

It sings and sings and sings and then it screams, and I hear it, louder than ever. 

"Bird! We're in the middle!" Callum's voice becomes torn by the strength of the storm. And it feels impossible to locate, but I keep walking because it is all I can do, and I keep trying because Kestrel and him are all I have. 

"I'm coming!" There's a break in the petals. An entrance, an exit - whatever - I bolt for it. As if the desperation in Callum's tone was gritty enough to scrape the storm apart, to crack its power in two for a split second. Maybe it's a sign.

The first glimpse of my allies reminds me of the story I am living. It's the hellish kind. The broken kind. The kind that wants you to get attached to people who aren't permanent enough. The kind where the writer is the cruellest enemy and they are a villain you can never face. Kestrel already seems to have her humanity clawed from her body, wounds littered across her like a sick graffiti. "What happened, is she okay? Kes, are you okay? Callum, are you okay?"

Blood covers them both. Her body, his hands. It's a stark contrast to the life of the rainbow petal swarm, because the red is royal, deep and daring. It has a certain aura of death about it. Surely Kes' story can't end before a page has even been turned? Surely, she can still be saved.

"I think we can fix you up," I say. It's a lie because I don't know if that's the case at all, but what else do you say to someone who lies on their deathbed? Goodbye? Goodbye doesn't try hard enough. "We can fix her up, can't we Callum?" I look at him and wonder if he realises I'm asking because I need the reassurance.

Because I have nothing. I have myself, sure, but I'm not worth that much. I only have him and Kes and they are all I'll ever have now.

[ actions in maint ]

[Stare]

Everything hurt.

Kestrel couldn't remember when she had fallen, or when Callum had picked her up. She was aware, though, that he could have just left her there. She was dying. She was broken and battered and useless and dying. But Callum had picked her up anyway, like she was a tattered doll that just needed a few stitches rather than a human being who could count on one hand the number of days - number of hours? number of minutes? - that she had left to live.

Through the haze of pain she registered colors, like someone had painted the world in all jewel tones. Was this death? She'd always heard that dying led you toward a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel, but perhaps it was actually more like this. Vibrant, overwhelming, technicolor. But then she heard Callum's voice, too clear to be something that had bridged the gap between life and death, and realized that the color must have been some part of the Arena.

"Focus on the song of the wind, Kes. Just focus on how it sounds."

Somewhere, underneath the roaring in her ears and Callum's rapid breaths, she heard it. It made her want to play a song about the wind. The pain in her wrist spiked at the thought and she hissed in a breath before lifting a hand to the hole in her chest to try to keep too much blood from getting on her ally. She forced a smile even though her mouth tasted faintly metallic. "Why is it that every time you find me I'm sprawled in a mess on the ground?"

To her relief, Callum smiled, too. "I guess it's becoming an unfortunate tradition now, huh?"

Keep smiling. Focus on the colors. Kestrel wanted to be strong enough to do those things. She wanted to be dancing at the edge of death still holding the hand of hope. But she was so scared, and she'd already lost so much. Her breath caught in her chest and suddenly she felt as if she was choking. They'd broken her. They'd broken her so badly. "How am I ever going to dance again, Callum?"

"You'll dance again, Kes. You'll just need help. I- I promise."

Promise. Kestrel had heard that word spoken too many times in the Arena, and she knew how it always inevitably ended. Promises were too fragile for a place like this. But if she was on her deathbed the last thing she wanted to do was deny Callum the hope that she was so rapidly losing. "Okay. If you promise, then... I trust you."

When at last he lowered her to the ground she felt her back press up against something soft. The fingers of her good hand shifted in the ground and she finally recognized what all the colors wear. Petals. What a beautiful stage. But she was no longer a performer.

That dream had been shattered with her bones.

She missed what Callum said next, but he called for Bird and their other ally suddenly appeared. Kestrel felt relief flood into her at the fact that the girl from Twelve was still standing, still alive.

"What happened, is she okay? Kes, are you okay? Callum, are you okay?"

No. Kestrel forced herself to smile, though, as if having her face smashed in and her wrist snapped and her shin shattered and her chest gouged open was just a part of her normal, day-to-day routine. Before she could say anything Bird continued on.

"I think we can fix you up. We can fix her up, can't we Callum?"

"'course you can. Besides, I've decided I'm not ready to die just yet," Kestrel said matter-of-factly before Callum had time to hesitate. She forced her tone to remain bright, upbeat. "And I just got a nice little lift from the Bloodbath. Didn't have to run or anything. So really, I'm going to be just fine."

Liar. But she was nothing if not a performer.

[actions in maint]