I open my eyes.
The Careers, a murder or crows, all clustered around a hazy campfire and the tangy smell of meat and dried food. Laughter, weapons glazed across the flames in lazy motions, jabs at the air above.
Close them.
Long lessons about mutts, the venomous Tracker Jackers and the small ready-to-dissect bodies on sterilized silvery plates. The guide detailing every single nightmarish effect with cold efficiency and a diagram.
Open them.
The Girl on Fire sleeping perched in her mighty tree, a silvery blanket draped across her shoulders and the sponsor gift cradled in her arms. So very high and so very safe, oblivious to the ominous buzzing surrounding her.
Or maybe she knows already.
Close my eyes.
Audrey and I shoved beneath an upturned sofa. On the other side of the thing, a mild buzzing sound- just one bee drifts lazily around the living room. I curl further into the mildew-stinking cushions and will myself into vanishing; Audrey peeks out occasionally to say that it's still there.
Open my eyes.
The Careers are discarding packs of food they maybe don't particularly like. An empty bottle of water. Unfurling heat-reflecting sleeping bags, getting comfortable within the silky black cocoons. The boy from One takes first watch, hefts a little lance just longer than his arm and slim as a finger and all slick metal-
A rabbit darts forwards. It halts dead on its small paws, pinned to the tree by the weapon and unmistakably food now. I shy a bit further into my oh-so-vulnerable hollow at the willow's roots, mindful of the cadence and volume of my breaths.
Even the wind blowing the long tresses sounds like it brings my death.
Close my eyes again. It's futile, I know- no sleep for me at all today. Not this close to practiced killers and in numbers. I want, desperately, to rush out and scavenge the rich foods they haven't consumed- despite the small number of supplies I've nicked initially, the leaves and bark don't really sustain me. And anyways, they don't even taste like food. I'm damn human, after all- greenery like that can only be a side dish, at the most.
Open my eyes. I see the moon's face quiet, the boy staring off into empty space and I realize that, for at least two hours, I've been safe and sound. Hunger and insomnia set themselves to work.
A thief, rogue, quiet girl I am. Sneaker queen, the fox, a being of night as Joel would say when he would wax lyrical. So why not be like so now?
They have supplies. Young Peacekeepers with their shiny weapons and too-obvious movements and man, my brain thinks, it would be just like home to slink after them and live off…
Not scraps. I could feast on their supplies with ease, if I knew where they were. I can steal from them- and it's not like anyone else actually does such a thing. They're all here- no guards.
It's so easy, memories lure. A little shop, at the most. You've done so a million times already.
I close my eyes. Open them. Close them. Open them.
The Careers, the girl in the tree. The Careers again, the slumbering girl in the tree, swaddled in a proper bag and tied to a proper safe haven while I have to content myself with a hole in the ground covered by shrubbery and willow leaves.
I want to sigh, to shrug the dull throbbing in my shoulders away, to get a clearer view of the encampment and siege. But I need to sleep-
Everything is getting hazy-
Close my eyes-
Open my eyes. I can die now, and anyways-
Close my eyes. If I doze off for too long, I'm dead- sounds, stepping, rolling-
Open my eyes- watch has changed, it's the girl from One and she simply shrugs and resumes her nap in a protective position and-
Close my eyes.
Open them. Sawing sounds. A sedate humming. The shutter of leaves falling displaced from their branches. One lands on my nose. Saw, saw, saw… a wincing mewl of pain.
More buzzing. Angrier, the snapping sound of-
Crack.
Breaking and I-
Snap-
So very slowly, I edge into the water. Faster- saw, saw, saw, snap, creak. The circular ripples form around my legs and I see the branches tangle thick underneath the water's surface.
A resounding crisp crack. Many more whip up in response, the buzzing grows enraged and swells and I muffle it with water and-
Screams. I close my eyes, open them and I really can't hear the pained shrieks and agonized cries over the ghost of the buzzing in my ears and the booming of my heart and-
Head over water, gasp for breath, swallow water, sink again. Fear, buzz, fear. A cacophony of buzzing, shrieking, stepping assaults my ears. I hear, then see, the boom-boom of feet rushing into the water. Clumsy feet from Lover boy, practiced leaps from the Careers who manage to stumble and stagger with less hitches.
They're still erratical- stung, then. Yet I dare not show myself, for fear the hallucination-inducing neurotoxin hasn't kicked in yet. For fear that just one wasp will see me. A long, ululating scream and I see the arm of the girl from Four sway from between thick shrubs, fingers nearly eradicated by the mass of stings.
I close my eyes. I don't want to see her face. Boom- a cannon and I see the disfigured arm drop twitching to the ground, even though she's dead. Hysterical laugh-cries from further away, then a lull- whoever else was stung is now in a deep, painful coma. I count faces-
Two. Two. One. Twelve. Three boys and one defiant girl, all bearing inflamed stings. Barbed ends protrude from the centers of the swellings. Grime and disheveled, they look even more dangerous. They're soaking wet, and I know that they have the plan to return to their base, wherever that is.
But first, once the angered buzzing dies out, they return to the camp. Mentally, I swear obscene words and curses and why did it have to be wasps and bees and Careers.
I soundlessly follow, paying obsessive attention to every single footfall, heartbeat, breath, thought, rustle. Lover Boy leads- they want him dead first. To break the challenger, burn Fire Girl out from the inside. Yet he still walks evenly, confident in the subsided buzzing and-
I wait, frozen still. The rest haven't advanced at the same pace and after a few breaths, it's the bull from One the one that follows Twelve into their clearing.
I hear confused steps, a smooth report of nothing. A couple words shot through the air.
I really hear "a rabbit"; it sounds incongruous, but I see the boy from One sway impossibly. Hear his mouth split open in nonsense calls and the girl from Two has her gaze fixated on her knife-laden hands and is screaming out numbers.
A poison kicking in. I huddle down, pinning myself to the trees surrounding me and pray long and hard and in my mind that they don't decide to fire off at their nightmares-
A searing blade chases past one of my hands, another so very close to my side and two more veer into nothingness. Ruby slashes peek from my skin in thin rivets and I lick at my hands to staunch the flow. It logically does nothing but increase the stinging pain.
They're shallow, a logical part of me says, but the rest of my mind is in fluttered panic. I'm wounded, I'm dead and if this is her muddled, conscious I don't stand a chance-
They all stagger and fall gracelessly to the ground. Just for my safety, I don't mimic them. But I keep rigorous watch, not ever wanting them to see me here.
And I'll walk their path when they wake, trailing behind them for supplies. I know from worksheets that, if not lethal, the effects might as well persist for days.
It seems like such a solid choice.
