Embelia thinks she may have fallen asleep at some point. But never completely, always on a cusp between resting and waking, too frightened of being ambushed and untrusting of their watchman. She sits now amongst her sleeping allies and a wide awake Venus, who has taken the second watch, sipping slowly at her water and staring up at the rising sun.
She knows it's fake, and the beautiful colours that it paints the sky are completely man made, but she doesn't care… Well, she cares a little bit. It's fair to say she half-cares. She knows that things that are man made can be beautiful, like the glittering lights of the Capitol skyline, glowing a million different shades of pink and green and orange, the layers of stained glass that cover the buildings reflecting off into a cacophony of coloured light. It's just like this sunrise. Man made, but imitating a beauty made by the earth.
She laments that she can't watch this false sun arise over the flat horizon like she does at home, but the thick treetops suffice. She doesn't notice Venus' eyes on her until she looks down at her water bottle, spotting the tall girl from the corner of her eyes. She glances up, seeing that her ally doesn't seem to be watching her with any sense of maliciousness. She surmises it's curiosity, or just some sort of silent analysis. She surprises herself by not looking away, not dropping her gaze and just looking right back at her.
"What does your mother do?"
The murmured question seems so loud in the quiet of the waking jungle, it almost makes Embelia jump. She knows she must look like an idiot, staring so blankly at Venus, but she can't get over the confusion of hearing her voice at all.
"I heard you talking with Emerald," Venus elaborates. "You said you had a mom back home."
"Yeah," mumbles Embelia, quiet so as she doesn't wake the others. "She's a maid."
Venus nods slowly, glancing toward the others, who all sleep quite soundly beneath the lean-to. Emerald is splayed out, taking up quite a bit of space despite that she's the shortest of their group. Embelia can't say she blames her; it's awful trying to keep cool in this humidity.
"And you work in an orange orchard?"
"Since I was ten," Embelia confirms. She wishes she could say that she hasn't noticed that it's been near a decade that she's been pulling twelve hour work days out in the burning sun, but that would be a lie. She's felt each and every gruelling day of the last eight years.
"They don't work," says Venus, eyes still on the other careers. "They're not like…"
Us, Embelia wants to finish. But she doesn't want to give voice to the idea that she's anything like Venus, a trained warrior who can kill without a second thought.
But then, apparently Embelia can do the same.
Venus clears her throat and continues, "My parents work in a quarry. I work part time at a brickworks. Cassius is old money, like before the Dark Days money. Emerald and Plaid… I don't know. But I don't think they've needed to work much."
Embelia nods, not responding otherwise. She wonders what exactly drove Venus to tell her this. She can't seem to gain any understanding of the girl's motivations. She's not as mercurial as Emerald or Plaid, she's just as driven as Cassius but not as irritable. She's level headed and determined, and she's younger than all of them.
"I'm gonna go piss," Venus says abruptly, standing up and grabbing one of her axes. "Don't kill them in their sleep. Or do."
Embelia thinks she means it to be funny, but she doesn't laugh. She just nods. She doesn't think that she would kill any of them in their sleep, even if she could. Not because it's cowardly and dishonourable, she doesn't care about that. (She'll probably need to unpack that later.) It's just because one of them could wake up before she finished the job. Then where would she be?
Dead, she'd be dead. Rather painfully, she imagines. And slowly, if they can manage it. She decides that if she does do so, she'd have to kill one of the boys first. She can't tell if either of them are really down with torture, but she knows that Emerald at least likes her enough to maybe give her a quick death.
"Where's Venus?" Cassius asks suddenly, sitting up and glaring right at Embelia.
She resists rolling her eyes at his waste of energy– if Venus was dead, they'd have heard the cannon, and if not that, then the hovercraft coming to pick her up.
"Relieving herself," she answers.
She wonders when it was that Cassius' eyes stopped looking kind, stopped looking akin to a puppy's. There was a certain kindness in his eyes when they had met in training. Had they never been a puppy's eyes, but instead a grown dog's? Had his eyes always truly been akin to that of the cane corsos that bark at her when she walks past the small cattle ranch on the edge of her neighbourhood?
(She only ever wanted to look at the cows, but those massive dogs had seemed to be specifically trained to frighten girls that just want to look at the cows.)
Had this coldness always been there and Embelia was too naive to see it?
No, she doesn't think so. She's never once trusted Cassius entirely, she wouldn't have been looking at him with any sort of rose tint. He must have just been putting up a front of kindness, of a laid back nature just to hide how ruthless he truly believes himself to be. She thinks it's a strange choice. She can't really imagine being anything but who she is. She may be lying about her intentions in this alliance, but at least she never pretended to be someone different.
At least the boy from Four doesn't try to hide the venom in his gaze.
Cassius seems suspicious as he glares at Embelia– or maybe it's frustration that she doesn't seem so intimidated by it, like she had during the bloodbath. Embelia still doesn't speak, doesn't try to clear the air. She's not going to explain the obvious to him.
"She left you on watch?"
Embelia shrugs.
"I don't trust you."
"Good thing you're awake then." Embelia doesn't want to say more, but she finds herself compelled to speak by some traitorous urge on her tongue. "You were the one who asked me to join your alliance."
Cassius scowls deeper, aged years by the expression. He doesn't appear to enjoy being confronted by his own choices.
"I shouldn't have."
"Have you spotted any edible food so far?"
A beat. "I'm sure I would have managed."
"You got a 37 on the edible plants test," Embelia observes, unsure where her striking gall has come from. It may be the startling lack of sleep. "You'd be dead or starving by now. You can't rescind your invite. The others like me."
He scoffs. "Venus does not like you."
Embelia shrugs, taking a slow sip from her bottle.
"The Ones just tolerate you."
She doesn't even give him a shrug this time, she just watches him. If he wants to waste his energy trying to hurt her feelings, he can feel free.
"Fuck!" Venus' shout from the treeline snaps Cassius from his hateful gaze, and wakes Emerald and Plaid. While the two blondes are still trying to get their bearings, Cassius and Embelia are already on their feet, weapons in hand.
"Venus?!" Cassius calls, just as the girl in question comes tumbling out of the trees with a boy that Embelia only vaguely recognises as being from District Seven. Venus is bleeding from a cut on her cheek, but she's already gained the upper hand with the boy who's maybe half a foot taller than her. Cassius surges forward to help, but Venus damn near growls at him to back off.
"This one's mine."
By the time Emerald and Plaid have caught up and joined them, Venus has the terrified boy pinned beneath her, teeth bared in a snarl.
"Thought you could get the jump on me, huh? Little shit!"
She grabs him by the hair, ignoring his garbled pleas for mercy.
"Embelia, give me your knife," she demands. Embelia balks, eyes going to the knife tucked into her belt.
"But, I use this to cut up our food-"
"So?!"
"So it's unhygienic! We could get sick!"
Venus' gaze snaps up to Embelia, who looks petrified and won't let her gaze wander to the poor boy trapped beneath her ally. Embelia doesn't want to back down, though. The last thing they need is some sort of poisoning from getting that boy's blood all in their food. Venus bares her teeth, and Embelia's suddenly violently reminded of watching the victor Venus admires so much tear her opponents throat out. She's about to give in and hand the knife over when Venus' gaze snaps over to Emerald.
Emerald doesn't have to be told. She hands a knife right over, a wicked grin on her face.
"Please," the boy from Seven begs, voice cracking with a desperate sob. "I'm sorry! Please, don't kill me, I-I have-"
His voice is cut off with a horrible gurgle as Venus plunges the knife into the side of his throat. There's a brief moment where he's alive, where he's aware, where the pain registers in his eyes and he coughs blood onto Venus' face. Embelia forces herself to watch. She thinks, because he deserves to have someone see his last moments and not take some sick sort of enjoyment from it.
Then Venus pulls the knife free. Then blood goes flying, and then, before his body has even really gone still, his cannon goes off. Venus stands, wiping the blood from her face.
"I guess that's as good an alarm as any," says Plaid, stretching and shaking the last bits of sleep from his body. "How does a morning hunt sound?"
"That's the best idea you've had in a while," Cassius says, adjusting his grip on his sword. "We'll head in the opposite direction from yesterday. Embelia, you come with us and keep an eye out for food."
Behind Cassius' back, Emerald flaps her hand in a talking motion, rolling her eyes as Cassius once again tries to establish himself as the head of the group. Embelia would probably find it as funny as Plaid seems to if she wasn't still standing a few feet from a dead body.
Emerald tucks her hand behind her back when Cassius turns to them, looking as innocent as she can manage.
"Sound good?"
"You'll get no argument from me," says Emerald. Cassius nods, and doesn't even look at Embelia.
After what she's just seen, it makes her blood boil. But she doesn't speak up, stewing and cursing herself for ever letting herself consider that these people aren't her enemy– she knows, though, somewhere deep down, that they really aren't. They're her peers. But unfortunately, in this arena, her peers are the biggest threat.
So, Embelia lets Cassius dismiss her value, and she follows them into the jungle. She holds the spear tight, knowing she won't use it, and keeps her eye out for food.
As they walk, and Plaid is discussing some girl back home, Embelia lets her eyes go downward in search of any berries. Her eyes fall onto a flowering bush, one she knows, one she lets pass them by without a moment's pause.
She glances over her shoulder as she walks on, gaze lingering on the deadly nightshade flowers for a moment before she tucks them away in the back of her mind.