Author Games: Panem Entangled

When You Have No More Friends </3 | Entries 7-12

District 7 Female: Puck Georges-Bouffairet

"This is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, and you, my child, are in the middle of it all." CERANNU says that as IT gleams down upon her from the crest of the barren knoll, glistening off the blood which streams down Puck's cheeks.

Hansel Chae sways from the ripest tree in the grove, his neck bruised like a plum, skin peeling down and falling away from the incisions that let him. A swallow has managed to peck out one of the rounds from his glasses and is now feasting upon his eye. Its plumage shimmers and its throat warbles with off-kilter conversation that Puck finds to be beautiful. Everything is at peace. It's as if everything that moves, does so not due to any volition on its own part, but by following the directions of the breeze and CERANNU.

It shines and flickers, and stays that way for hours. Carrion and leaves fall over her. IT dries her off until the back of her hands are stained brown. Burnt sienna. Days go by, CERANNU climbs away to its roost and the rooster no longer crow. A crow is in its place and everything is as dark as its coat. Night coats everything.

Hansel's blood has dried. Puck is fast asleep. In her dreams, she toys with the idea of everything being like this all the time. By the nature of change, that very act brings it about.

Lick.

Lick slurp lick.

She awakes to the tickling of what feels like soggy sandpaper. A doe leans over her and licks her neck tenderly. "Cerannu?" she asks of it, for the deer is the creature which IT has been known to take shelter in when IT must act in ways for physical than its usual form would allow. They revered them as such back home, and she has ball in her pocket crafted from a buck's horn which was whetted and left for their honorable use. The creature - blessed creature - which Puck becomes more and more certain is CERANNU the longer IT cares for her, it licks at the blood which has become a stain upon her countenance and eats it away. Slurps it up.

Cleanses her of her crimes.

The spittle which slimes its way to every pore and crevice, every orifice, feels like forgiveness. As if the bubbles and froth are all inflated and filled with helium. CERANNU steps back on spindled legs which threaten to buckle under the weight of the situation, and IT flutters its ears like butterfly wings taking off into a peaceful sky. And then it's shot dead.

Everything comes into focus. Whichever direction the explosion of sound came from demands her attention, and when Puck supplies the need, its when she sees the wall of glass which separates herself and that horizon. On the other side of it, two young boys wearing clothes like she's never seen press their faces up to her. One unsheathes a strip of bacon from the pocket of his blue denim pants and eats it in a fashion simultaneously graceful and barbaric. He listens to his friend ask why there's a girl in a hunting game and he chews on that. "I don't know. Shoot her too," he decides. The other boy brings up a gun like the Peacekeepers would carry, except this one is painted a garish orange and green. He gives it a heft and shoots off rounds indiscriminately. One of them happens to hit her.

It only hurts a second, but the pain sends her to a whole new dimension.

Puck takes it in stride. Streets that would be familiar if they were deserted and empty are teeming with people now. They ride atop mutts which run at great speeds and spit poison from what she hopes is their mouths. She guesses. It's probably not though, unless they all run in reverse. Puck turns up her nose. That's when she notices IT. CERANNU is above, and IT seems fine. Everything had almost gone too fast for her to experience how it felt to lose IT, but warmth swells inside of her now.

"Keep it moving," a brusque and inconsiderate man says after he - to be clear - knocked into her. She tries to spare condolences but as soon as she regains her bearings, he has knifed into the stream of bodies which flood the walkways like a babbling river after the final melt of the year. Where back home would smell like pine all the time and everyone would be happy because their bellies were filled by the first tap of sap.