Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of Vermillion Shorelines, Chapter #6: Breadbasket Full of Nothing. Welcome everyone to the reapings! *jazz hands* Yes, ladies and gents we are the reaping stage of Vermillion Shorelines, where you met six of my OC's that will have P.O.V's in the story alongside our tributes. I plan on giving each tribute at least two P.O.V's before the games, and I'll try my definite hardest to stay true to that. I do my reapings in a random order instead of going in numerical order, so we are, due to RNG, starting at District 9. We get to see our first two tributes of the Hunger Games, a Mr. Milner Dempsey and a Miss Cassiopeia Barley. I generally alternate who gets the leading P.O.V, so male first then female and for the next reaping it'll be female first and male second. I generally try my hardest to make each reaping chapter as original and 'good' as possible without making it boring as I have twelve of these to write and twelve you all have to slough through... so yeah, it's hard. I also make sure not to give too much info away from your character and will even write them in ways that may be different from what the submitter intended, because I cannot always see what's going on in y'alls heads. Thanks for being patient with the wait, as I'm three days late to getting the chapter out, but nonetheless we'll get there. My reaping chapters sit somewhere between 4k-6k, so they will be quite long and game chapters end up around the same 5k medium if not longer. Enjoy Chapter #6: Breadbasket Full of Nothing, the first reaping.
Milner Dempsey: District 9 Male P.O.V (15)
Warmness spreads over the boy's hand as he runs his fingers through the waves and waves of grain piled up in the field by his house. Fifteen year-old Milner Dempsey walks through the plethora of honey wheat, barley, oat, and rye plants which reach up to his nose and tickle the pale skin. He sneezes for the thirteenth time that morning, neck sore from the constant reeling back and thrust forward, but he's used to it by now with so much pollen in the air. Milner gasps for a breath amongst the flies, one buzzing too closely to his ear as he squirms uncontrollably, cringing his shoulder to his neck.
Not even the sun is bright enough to lighten his dull brown eyes, a brown that resembles the dirt packed between the stalks of grain, where adorning his head is a mop of dirty blonde hair, halcyon streams cut through by a hue of mahogany, like burnt garlic bread with salt crumbles on them. However, from a distance, one can see that his face is freckled, a mild version of chicken pox that allows Milner to get to his knees and pray to whatever god above that he's happy there's no acne blossoming in sweaty pockets all over his pores.
Milner knows - the thought rests in the back of his head like a disease, sneaking through eye sockets and clambering around an empty skull - that his parents will be looking for him, standing on the porch with the all too familiar grim look in their eyes that spells certain doom, a doom he's been spared from for quite some time. There they'll be, holding up a sky blue button down dress shirt that he's to run back inside the house to change into. By the bedside will be a pair of his father's loafers, shoes that do not fit his feet as he and his father have quite the body difference, but it no longer bothers Milner like it used to. Now, he's happy to slide his feet into them and parade the dusty things as a pair of clown shoes. They're only used for this special occasion.
Problem is, the occasion is not that all special.
He can see them, his parents actually, from across the rows of bread stalks. His mother has a look in her eyes that Milner is unable to pinpoint, but it is fierce and ferocious, the bearing curse of the Capitol ever so slightly putting the districts in a chokehold making her stare the evermore terrifying. Milner tosses his glance over to his father and for a split second he feels like he's seeing himself.
Blackened eyes that never smile, hair murky and messy as a sunlit plain covered in a restless fog, freckles dotting over glistening cheekbones and cracked lips. Milner's father is lucky - or at least that's what Milner himself hears his father tell the district -he has someone in his spitting image parading all around the district. The boy snorts at night at the thought. How can he possibly 'parade' around the district? He never goes far. Milner does not cross over to the other side beyond the town square and out of sight of the train station's tall bell tower that gleams in the distance.
He does not, he thinks aloud to himself when the rational thought is there, that he is unlike his father in every way other than looks. His father is strong, Milner can hardly lift a bay of hay in its smallest packaging, a weight no heavier than ten pounds, without struggling. His father bleeds, sweats, and cries the toil of a hard working day, Milner hates the working lifestyle and prefers running from the load into the field where he can blend in and never be caught. His father thinks through things, Milner despises rational thought. He feels like there's a contradiction. How can one person decide what is logically sound and what isn't? Only people who think they're privileged, Milner whispers into the bed sheets one cold and wet December evening.
Now it is the middle of August and the heat is sweltering above the hazy line of sight, the winds bitter and stark, there's no warmth in them despite the air being humid and muggy. Milner does not like the summer months as they transition into fall. It causes the television signal to go out, and he has no idea what he's to do when he's not being coerced into work or watching the screens. Milner understands at times, though the actual acknowledgment is only skin deep, it never fully hits his brain, that watching the Hunger Games is a fascinatingly horrifying obsession.
Milner blames his mother. He always blames his mother.
He likes to forget her name, which is perfectly okay, as she's even more Games obsessed than he is. Milner thinks of a word when his mother comes to mind, and that perfectly sculpted word is gambling. After the terror of the reaping has passed, and Milner is safely back at home with an empty fireplace and a full plate of food, his mother will turn on the television and watch away as the reapings take place. Careers with muscles the size of Milner's entire lower body take the stage and bellow into the microphone. Weak twelve year-olds with colds who sniffle and hiccup for their mommies are slaughtered from a moment's eye. And yet his mother is the first to point the finger and either declare them a victor or a winner.
She's gotten every year she's guessed correct, as far as Milner can recall back. All the way to the 173rd Hunger Games, twenty-seven years ago, if he does the math correctly. When he's a year old, Milner's mother has picked March Larson to become the victor of the 186th Hunger Games, and sure as shit the auburn haired girl wins and his mother has collected a sum that she is unable to hold in her pockets. When Milner turns twelve, his mother grabs him by the shoulder and places him in the living room. He watches, with a horror that is somehow a mix between stupefaction and total terror, the 197th year take place and the tributes are ripped apart by ravenous dogs that hunt in packs, or the foolish Career who accidentally triggers a trap that gets a Gamemaker spawned earthquake to crumble an entire ruined city, leaving the Career alive out of sheer luck. Yet, once again, the Dempsey family gets a large sum of cash in their pockets the next day, and he loves that his mother has the gift.
But, he notes something, Milner does, at dinner when their conversations turn sour. "Mother," he asks one evening, age thirteen, "If I'm ever picked for the Hunger Games, will you bet on me? Won't I win if you do?"
His mother smiles back wryly, fork stuck in her hand as if she's prepared to stab her own son with in the heart. "Yes, Milner. Of course I would." Only his father senses the venom and the lying that slips through her teeth, and Milner's still sitting in the District 9 fields like an idiot believing his mother would bet on his own life.
That's something Milner cannot do. He's unable to pinpoint what a lie is, everything sounds truthful and spoken out of the mouth of babes. He learns the skill from his uncle when he's young, around seven or so. His uncle, as he'd hear the escorts from the Capitol say on the television screen at home, that his uncle is some Leonardo Da Vinci of sculptures, though Milner has no conceptual thought as to who Leonardo Da Vinci even is. His uncle takes the compliment - apparently it's a compliment, Milner japes to a friend of his at school - nicely, and then with renown fame and wealth never speaks to Milner or his family again. His mother sniffs in the air disdainfully any time the loathsome rat's name is dare mentioned at the table or anywhere in her presence for that matter, as her brother turned her son into a boy who always tells the truth. That'll kill him, she knows it deep down.
Milner likes it when he's with his parents around the district, begging to only stay in the section that feels like home, which they oblige. His father's hands are scuffled up and clamp down on his son's shoulders like iron restraints from the hours in the field. Milner observes from a distance, as he finds his father's ideas to be stupid and illogical, the workers petitioning for a holiday, a national holiday for Panem in District 9 that the day after harvest should be taken off. Apparently, over in District 6, President Dermure gives the workers in the transportation industry a day off for those who worked on building the trains used to traverse between the districts. Milner wonders why his father is so connected to District 6, passionately thinking mind and body like those who toil on iron machines of industry and capitalism. Perhaps it is the oil slicks across the workers' heads and stained jackets, or the blistered fingers from hot metals and days out in the son. Regardless, Milner thinks it'll bring death to his father. Jade is to arrive on a scented cloud of black and viciousness, put a bullet in the man's skull, and fly away, cackling.
He doesn't like thinking of it.
The heat out in the field is unbearable, Milner starting to sweat quite heavily, beads trickling down his forehead and into his eyes which sting and burn. He races out of the field and back over to the house, panting. His thin frame is covered in a coat of shimmering perspiration, shirt ruined. His mother hands him the article of clothing, he bids a quiet thank you, and races inside.
The fifteen year-old, though the action is seldom, fancies the thought of killing someone. It isn't there all the time, and Milner does not view himself as an insane psychopath like the wickedly evil District 12 male tribute a few years ago who had sex with all of his victims, which ensnared a few male Careers and even the tribute's own district partner. However, Milner gives it a quick thought. Place a dagger in his hand and he'll try his hardest to inflict a wound. Nothing major - the boy isn't very adept to the sight of blood, and he's okay with that. Not everyone is born into Panem with the feeling of withstanding such a grotesque sight, and not everyone leaves Panem able to still hold in their lunch at the very glimpse of it either.
Milner steps down into the bath drawn for him, a elongated and iron wrought tub. He stares down into the reflection of the water, a brown ceiling etched in pencil above, cloudy eyes staring back at him with sadness dripping off eyelashes into the lukewarm water below. He's freezing, even though the windows are all open. His mother and father are talking in hushed whispers at the door, and it's the same banter that it has been for the past three times Milner's been offered up to the gods of Panem at the behest of an escort who cannot tell their left foot from their right.
He closes his eyes and sinks beneath the rippling pool, the smell of copper lucidly flowing through his brain. Milner regrets opening his eyes, corneas stinging and irises burning. He resurfaces, gasping with a loud breath as the water droplets trickle and go split splat off of his arms into the tub. He grabs a soap bar by the side and begins to scrub, quickly, and speedily. So fast, he feels his skin burn underneath his arm, blistering and erupting with hot fire as he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs. The old is to be washed anew, he thinks doggedly, as the torturous pain lets a hiss leech from his lips, lingering around like curdled milk.
The buzz of the all present fly passes by an ear, and Milner raises an arm out of the tub to smack it, instead missing and whacking himself in the ear. The pain is not worth it in the end, as he catches the lobe and part of his neck with a resounding slap. It echoes around the wooden house, and he's biting down on his lip, a low draw of breath passing in and out as he submerges. The water dulls the pain, the soap leaves his body, and now the water is a pearly pink mist he can no longer see through, blurring and blinding, Milner shakes his head like a dog, the surface of the water breaking as his knees pass the threshold from moist to dry.
It is time for reckoning. The phrase rests on Milner's lips and the chills of the bath return, the stinging of his slap dissipate from his neck, and the fear once again resonates.
Cassiopeia Barley: District 9 Female P.O.V (14)
Cassiopeia Barley does not hate that much in her life, that much is certain, but the one thing that rises to the top of the list and beats her down constantly is the smug look of her sister as the two stare each other down at the breakfast table. Her sister, Dahlia, with ferocious amber eyes and hair as black as the spooky night, leans in, hands stuck to one end of the piece of toast that is also firmly gripped in Cassiopeia's.
"Give it to me! I saw it first!" Dahlia argues, pulling on the remaining piece of either's breakfast.
"As if!" the other girl's face mirrors that of disbelief. "You've already had two! I haven't had one yet!"
"Well that's because I have my first reaping today! I have to keep my strength up!"
"And I'm on my third year! How do you think I feel?" Cassiopeia snaps back.
The two girls both give a vicious tug on the piece of toast which then falls out of both of their grasps and collapses to the floor, crumbs going with it, neither Barley sister getting a single sliver. Dahlia whips her head back up, face twisted in a scowl. "Look what you've done! Now neither of us have anything to eat!"
"This isn't my fault! Only if you were to share like a normal person!"
"You're so stupid..." Dahlia mutters underneath her breath, and she spins off her chair and storms into her room from across the kitchen in the house.
Cassiopeia watches her sister go, and at age fourteen, she wonders why the world must be so cruel to her. As if. "The worst I have to deal with is getting reaped once every year, and the occasional argument with my sister," the girl ponders optimistically. "That probably pales in comparison to what actually happens with the tributes who get picked. Least I'm not one of them."
She hesitates between reaching down and picking up the piece of toast or to leave it there for someone else to pick it up and then berate the sisters for recklessness and fighting at the breakfast table. Err... breakfast counter moreso. Cassiopeia sighs, giving the decision a two minute thought, reaching down and exerting herself far more than she's used to. On the surface, anyone who knows her can tell dead straight to a Peacekeeper's face that Cassiopeia Barley is lazy, through and through. She's used to an hour in the fields, tops, as the heat gets to her and she's done for the day. Cassiopeia is used to Nile Dempsey's disappointed gaze as she stifles through the wheat and grains. All she knows about Nile Dempsey, her boss, is that he's fathering some wench who she'll probably dislike if ever given the misfortune to meet.
Cassiopeia picks up the toast and cringes at the crumbs all around the floor. She probably will have to sweep those up, or it'll be once again another fight with Dahlia on that chore, and neither would like their parents to assign them a role. Her semi-curly chestnut hair bobs against her neck as she throws the piece of toast in the trash, swiping it with her hands. She looks at the clock resting against the counter in the kitchen. It's about twenty minutes from noon, and she knows soon it'll be time to face the starkness of the town square, look into the absurdist eyes of the escort who she hates even knowing for a split second, wait with bated breath at the drawing, and then sigh in contentment that she's given another year of distant happiness only to be wrought right back around for selection again.
The girl opens the door to her house and settles down on the porch. She gets a few minutes - though it really feels like seconds in her mind, time passes by too quickly - to herself when the door is flung back open and dark haired Dahlia Barley is sitting next to her, and of all the people Cassiopeia can name as good company, her sister never gets put on the list.
Dahlia has her hair up, and she turns her back to her sister. "Please?" she asks, and Cassiopeia smiles. The edge in her sister's voice has vanished from before, in just a few slighted seconds, and she happily goes to braid it. The Barley sisters sit in a muted silence, and Dahlia peaks the question. "What's it feel like?"
"What's what feel like?" Cassiopeia repeats the question, frowning, while her hands skillfully work at the braid.
"How do you feel when you're stuck standing there, waiting for the reaping to take place?" Dahlia elaborates.
Cassiopeia chews on the inside of her left cheek, pondering at the question. It's quite the process, as she's seen it twice already before, and it also is boring and unnecessary, as there can be the whole taking of blood and stamping done way before the morning of, as all it does is make the anticipation grow to heights that none of the kids want it to be. "Scary..." she admits. "There's always a chance, no matter how small that it'll be you. For the kids who have their name in there a lot... it's also a small chance that it won't be them, so we hold onto the smallest of chances to make sure we get through okay. And afterwards, when you're safe and sound, you pray that those taken to the Capitol make it back pain free."
"But aren't the tributes we get back dead?" Dahlia makes a face as her sister finishes tying the braid.
The other girl pauses. "Well... at least when they're home the pain has already passed. I mean, we've had District 9 victors before..."
"And they all suck."
"No they don't. Pilvent and Vee are perfectly fine."
Dahlia snorts. "One tribute is a man who lost four fingers on one hand and the other is a woman who can't even look at sunlight without having PTSD."
Cassiopeia turns her sister around at the snide comment, eyes ablaze in a furious winter. "They still won those accursed games, Dahlia, whether we want to believe it or not after looking at them."
"Death sounds like a better option."
"You're just saying that for how Pilvent and Vee are."
The two sit and chat, idly moving fingers to their hair as they discuss the next scariest thirty minutes of their life. Around some time when Cassiopeia thinks that the sun has reached its peak in the sky, she takes her sister's hand and drags her along. She misses her parents, but they'll be seen after the reaping. Dahlia complains that she's too old to be taken by the hand anywhere in the district, but Cassiopeia sticks her tongue out and drags the dark haired girl with her. No ifs, ands or buts about it, and she means it.
Cassiopeia's legs are jelly by the time the two walk to the town square, nothing more than a fifteen minute walk, but the heat and her dress and the fact that she's dragging what feels like ninety pounds of dead weight makes up for the fact that the excursion is not all that bad. She thinks, she mulls over the world, and Cassiopeia wants the day to already be over. She wants everything to be grander, bigger, and definitely work free. She hears the snickers and japes tossed behind her back like a game of baseball, that Cassiopeia Barley's head is filled with stupid little dreams and that she'll never learn. Cassiopeia Barley wants to live in the Capitol, she wants friends who actually stick by her side when the world gets tough, she wants serenity and tranquility. Nothing's off limits. If she dreams it, she can do it, and she'll one day achieve it.
That is if her actions were to ever match her words.
Dahlia blanches at seeing the kids getting their blood drawn, and Cassiopeia coaches her through it, hands at her sister's face while she instructs. "Don't think about it. It doesn't hurt, I promise. The sections are shown by the markers along the ropes. We stand on the left, and I'll only be a few yards away, okay? It'll be over before you know it and we'll go back to braiding each other's hair. Okay?"
"Okay..." Dahlia agrees, but the girl still stutters a cry of pain as the needle goes in, the crimson river of life is drawn out, and the world starts to spin.
Cassiopeia stands firm in her spot, eyes following Dahlia and the pain goes unregistered. Her bedroom is calling her name, soulful sheets and pillows, and an azure night sky to stare at the stars whenever she gets bored. One arena, she remembers, when she had to have been younger than the eligibility for the reapings, had a starry night sky regardless of time of day, and Cassiopeia yearned to be there, her mother's face grief stricken and she's pulling her daughter away from the screen, grip hot as iron, and Cassiopeia's cries echo in her head.
The doors to the Justice Building open and out walks the two remaining District 9 victors, Pilvent and Vee. Pilvent is an aging man in his late sixties, coherent enough to speak and lecture on the games, but forever haunted by the loss of his fingers. Wire like wisps of pallid hair stick from his ears, head entirely bald, and Cassiopeia cannot have a gorgeous life in the Capitol with all her hair gone, as a wig does not seem ideal to her. Vee is another matter altogether, much younger, at eighteen and a victor from only six years ago, the 194th year. The girl is heavy, having put on a lot of weight since her victory, and Cassiopeia cannot see over the crowd's head at what the other victoress looks like, as her appearance changes with the week.
What she can see, and it sours her very core, is their escort, the bumbling Winston Jewel, a seventeen year-old boy, it's always the fact that he's just another teenager like all of them being forced to reap people of his own kind to their death that gets her. Winston stands tall, and there's not an ounce of muscle on his body. Pilvent places the microphone stand in front of the escort, and yet the poor - though Cassiopeia herself does not view the teenager himself to be poor, quite the opposite - boy trips over it still, collapsing to his hands and knees. Winston's hair is a stunning navy blue, like the starry skies Cassiopeia stares at when it's night, and it's perhaps the only redeeming quality she can find in him.
Winston's face is flushed a sparkling red, and he straightens out the smooth velvet leather of his jacket. "Happy Hunger Games, District 9! You all should know who I am by now, I'm Winston Jewel, this district's escort," to his credit, no one claps, not one and his face flushes again. "This year is the 200th Hunger Games, our eighth Quarter Quell! How exciting would it be if District 9, in a short six years brought home another victor! You guys could join the ranks of being a district with a Quell victor too, and that'd bring so much fame to you guys, wouldn't you agree?"
"Just got on with it!" some teen from the fifteen year-old male section calls out. "We don't want to be here, just as much as you."
The escort's face goes pale. Winston's never had, not in his training, nor from his two years of prior District 9 experience, been yelled at to move the reaping along. "Right! However, it seems that this year the Quell twist has not been revealed to anyone yet, and I'm told that this'll happen sometime during the week of training... but I digress! We'll start with the ladies!" Two massive bowls stand on each side of Winston's body, and Cassiopeia goes dizzy trying to count how many slips of paper must be in there which spell certain doom for someone.
Winston reaches in and grabs two. He tries dropping one, but a gust of wind blows a slip out of his hand, the one he hadn't dropped. The escort shrugs, snatching the one he had dropped back into his hand. Cassiopeia wants to reach across the other girls near her and reach her sister, just for one preemptive squeeze before the syllables pass over and someone's life is ruined.
She never expects it to be hers.
"Cassiopeia Barley!" Winston Jewel reads, face triumphant.
In her corner, something gut punches Cassiopeia to the ground. Heads spin and twirl towards her own, but she's unable to process anything except the dream. It begins to vanish from her, distant at every second where her luxurious life lays wasted and desolated at the bottom of a cliff, her friends gone, the starry night skies that she loves blackening into crimson star ways bathed in blood. She holds her hands over her ears as her name will not stop echoing around, and it's shattering every fiber within her body, painfully breaking apart bones. Will she ever be able to get out of this?
Something forcefully grabs her arm and Cassiopeia opens her eyes. The immaculate white of a Peacekeeper uniform is all she sees as she's lugged onto the back of the hulking man. She kicks and screams, she kicks and screams but no words come out, nothing breaks through and the syllables catch in her throat. She wants Winston Jewel to choke on his own spit till it ruptures in his throat, turning cardinal black and causing the escort to break out. Then the cry hits her ears.
"Cassiopeia! No! Don't take my sister away!" Dahlia's screams reverberate all around the town square, and Cassiopeia sees her sister in the throng of the other twelve year-olds. It is enough to cause Cassiopeia to burst into tears, and she's standing straight up, sobbing into her elbow as she's always loved Dahlia, she's never been able to truly withstand her company. She always thought, she's wanted to believe this ever since the two were old enough to speak, that her sister never really liked her, but now, in the moment drenched in emerald poison, Dahlia Barley has an unbelievable amount of love for her sister.
Winston's jaw locks, and his eyes look distant. "To whoever that is calling out in the crowd, you should've volunteered for your sister before she got put on the stage, darling," his voice isn't mocking, nor is it cold, but it is solidary and true. Dahlia's time has passed for her to save Cassiopeia from an unbidden hell, and now she's to stay, glued in place when doom overrides her. "Now, the gentlemen!" Winston claps his hands together, and a smile passes his lips. Careful to only grab one, Winston reaches in and is back at the mike. "A Mr. Milner Dempsey, please."
Cassiopeia's head flashes up and her eyes seize him, her district partner out in the crowd. Milner is looking down at his dress shirt, fussing over one of the buttons, messy hair looking dirty as it always does, and she recognizes the last name. So this is the slimy bastard she's never met? If he's anything like his father, she's going to hate him.
Someone pushes Miler, who whirls around on a heel and punches back. When the enraged boy from the section turns back to let the proceedings continue, a Peacekeeper is staring Milner down, gun in hand. Milner's smile of bravado vanishes, and it hits the boy a second too late that it is his name that's been called by the bumbling idiot Winston Jewel, and his eyes turn into murderous rage.
He stomps past the Peacekeeper, Cassiopeia's eyes forever following the boy who jumps onto the stage. Milner's hands are in a blazing fit of retribution, hands going straight for Winston's throat. The escort lets out a squeak, and then the same Peacekeeper sent to collect Milner slams the butt of his gun into the boy's head, and Milner drops to the stage like a sack of rocks, knocked unconscious.
A silence settles over the district, and Cassiopeia wants to cry again, her sister gone silent, comforted by a blonde girl in the same sector. She looks up at the sky longingly, and her eyes are saddened that there's the baby butt blue staring at her, a blank expanse of bone bleached sky with no clouds, no stars... nothing. Just like District 9, she realizes. District 9 never provides good tributes, a breadbasket with a lot to offer but nothing to really show for it.
District 9 is nothing more than a breadbasket full of nothing, like Cassiopeia's stupid dream, like her heart, and the future she foresees.
And there we are ladies and gentlemen! That was Chapter #6: Breadbasket Full of Nothing, the District 9 reaping, and damn that was fun. I love looking really far forward into the future of the Hunger Games, giving districts randomly assigned victors because I can, and all the fun it brings me. I started typing this at 7:30... and even with a dinner intermission in between, it is now 9:30 as I'm typing this author's note, so hell yeah, done in two hours like I wanted. So... we were just introduced to Milner and Cassiopeia! Who do you like better? How do you think they'll fare in the Hunger Games? Still any possible allusions to the arena or the Quell twist, as I don't think either has been done before, but I may be wrong. Remember, to make it easier on you guys as you review (if should be the culminating term), chart the tributes down on who you love, like, neutrally feel towards, dislike, and hate, and don't lose track! It'll help for later. Now, I just went to the RNG and it looks like the lucky souls who'll see their tributes reaped is District 12! Normally the ones reserved last, haha, it looks like they're freaking second! So praise the RNG Jesus. I don't know when I'll have that chapter, as I can say I want it by such and such date, but I always seem to miss my promises. I'll strive for no later than July 7th, which is a week from this Friday, so plenty of ample time. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you review, letting me know how it all went! I hope to see you all again for Chapter #7: Pickaxed Dreams and Deaths. You all have made such good characters, keep the energy and hype up. Hope you all have an amazing day! I love you all so much! Bye!
~ Paradigm
