★LAURUS ENZO★

[AUTOMATIC 12]

★PERCY COLE★

Count: one, two. Count: three, four. Count: six- no. Five. Four?

Damn-

Percy, resting firm upon his haunches, presses a thumb to the bridge of his nose and sucks in an easy breath of salt and breeze. He shouldn't get worked up over numbers, he knows. Childish, that's how he acts, and that's how he's seen.

He hikes in a breath. There's a ruffling against his hair, the sky's own concoction of assistance. Silently, he thanks it.

They are close, he and the sky.

It's fine. Just restart. It's no big deal. Try, try again.

Blinking, he stretches to shove an empty canteen from a full one, and once again restarts his process of counting. It comes to him in a rhythm, and once he fulfills the solution to thirst, he drags his finger through the sand, marking a large five beside the pile. This has been his duty for the past- well, while.

And he revels in it.

Now, it's not that he garners a particular pleasure from organizing various bottles and blades, but there's this...this calmness about it, this normalcy, something he welcomes full throttle (all things considered). Packs and fruits, they mean little to him in the grand scheme of things, but they give him quiet. Peace. A bit of something to obsess over until the gracious breather they've been granted tick-tocks into dissipation.

But what's already tick-tocked, he wonders? Only a few hours split now and the Bloodbath. Or had something else happened? No, no - the Bloodbath ended, he could piece that together, and they regrouped before swimming off to the distant coves. Nobody was too thrilled about the venture but they came, one way or another.

Actually, when thinking back, Percy doesn't remember what exactly he said. Now that - that irks him. I don't want to forget, he thinks, overlapping onto the numbers he's been so caught up in. I want to remember everything. No bullshit, "Well, I think this happened," no, I need to be sure.

When he sees his finger outstretched to mark the sand, he doesn't quite know what to trace, and with a reinvigorated sense of frustration, pushes himself until he plops flat on his butt, exhaling exasperation. "This shouldn't be so complicated."

"Well, that depends - did you pass kindergarten math? No one would blame you for your incompetence if you hadn't."

Percy's leg twitches and he looks up, up into the amused expression of a man named Josef Thomas. That name carries with it rationality, for without it, Percy would think him Teagan. The resemblance is striking, really.

Percy cocks a strained grin, nods, and looks back to his work.

He expects Josef to wander, but he remains rooted, shifting sand with his foot. It's not that Percy wants him to leave, either, for he enjoys the company. He's just got near no idea what to say to this man who appears as the deceased.

A silence crosses between them. Percy starts running a hand over the back of his head, rubbing a nasty bump. Sighing, he says, "Wren. I'm worried she won't catch up."

The sand shifts again as Josef moves to sit beside him, crossing his legs and leaning forward intently to the heap of supplies before them. "We'll find out all we need to know when the anthem plays. No sense in worrying 'til then."

The next silence that passes is a contented one, one in which the two have found a comfortable common ground. Josef picks up the counting, Percy stares between his knees at the sand. There's a curiosity down there, with the periodical flickering of shadowed lumps in front of his feet. He figures it's only a wavering palm above.

Like home. Bittersweetness on his lip, he thinks of home.

A tranquil sigh is interrupted by a sudden nudge, and a whisper that says, "Do you hear that?"

Percy furrows his brows at Josef, winding his face in confusion before looking to his friend, the sky. Grey dots shoot along, all headed to a similar destination; the last one to be seen crashes against the far-off vegetation of the cove's restricted jungle.

Curiously, Percy keeps his eyes on the foliage long after the shaking of a bird's entrance stalls, and he isn't alone, for all the others that've congregated on the beach stare beside him. The group is in sync. This makes him squirm. Do they mean to mimic? No matter; he can think at night. Now, he watches.

Stiff. Silent. Suspicious.

Greenery wavers, momentarily.

For a while, Percy thinks this is an act to rile them up, and believes with every bit of himself that this is the end of trickery, that they can continue on as they had. He means to move, to turn and count, and he does drag his finger along, drumming off the seconds passing in little tick-marks.

One, two, three, four, six- no, five-

And then the sky, his friend, explodes.

Colors from every end of the spectrum overflow from the branches of trees, filling the sky with a tremendous shadow that crosses overhead with no room for light. Awe tangles itself in Percy while he watches the array pulsate above. Soon, he notes the flock's chaos. Birds thwack into one another mid-flight, and some pick fights, but for the majority, all splice towards the humanly bunch staring up at their masses.

One of them squawks at the head of the pack, a squaw with an aftershock that leaves Percy trembling and gasping out. He gropes for Josef's hand beside him, gathering up a wrist while stumbling to his own two feet. "We need to run." Josef glances up, not so fresh in the head just yet. Percy growls heavily as he, quite literally, throws the man to his feet. "Anything with wings kills, now run!" For added measure, he shoves the man forward at the collar. He wants regret, but retains only a weight in his stomach that makes him want to run, run, run. It gets him moving. It gets everyone moving, and in seconds the lot of them are thundering along the cove's shoreline.

So much for a god damn breather.

No lag of his ears can prevent the loud huff of himself as he runs, and by no means can it keep out the violent thrash of wings behind and above, like laundry snapping out to lash a rear.

No lag of his ears can play barrier to the cries of one bird too close to his back - for he does run in the back of the pack - and too familiar to offer the intended false comfort.

"Percy, I'm bored."

His feet get caught by sudden skidding, and he thrusts his whole body into a turnaround, gaping over his shoulder for the voice of his brother, too young to be real. "Where?" he says, eyes widening at the plethora of grey crisscrossing the air above him. "Where'd you get that?"

"Oh, Percy," another bird says, not too far from the other, "why so serious?" Nigel's low pucker of sass is heard at the back of its throat, and Percy stumbles forward again, prepping to run. This is a trick, a dirty, filthy trick taken from old footage of his rather unstable mentality. Invasive, invasive, invaded - he shivers at the neck and looks back to the others, the runners that've stopped running.

He means to scream at them in warning, but Nigel taunts him, flashing by his ear before shooting off into a faded sentence. Percy ducks, swipes the air. "You're playing dirty again!" he howls, face wrinkling up into certain disgust.

Does anybody hear him? Doubtful.

The next voice to join the cacophony alarms him to a much greater extent, and his anger melts off into genuine concern, dripping against the sand like sweat flicking off his chin. For this next voice is older, more recent, pained, and there's a thing about Jabberjays and their mimicry: they mimic.

"Percy! This fucking hurts!" It breaks off in the middle, collapsing into cracks and hitched pitches.

Irrationality now finds a home in him. Pushing himself from the sand and detaching himself from his allies and their absent calls for family, he takes off the way he came, zeroing in on a corroded set of prongs meant to bludgeon.

But Neptune - she with no loved ones, no torment - calls for him, and he gives her half-a-glance before two more voices, feminine and masculine alike, clobber against his ears and rise up into nothingness again.

"Skin and bones! Where are you?" This is the voice of Layla Greenthorn, flushed with innocence and light, the light that beats down and browns shoulders.

"Just get in the fucking blanket fort, you disaster." This is the voice of Lerrin Calph, ablaze; burning fiercely.

These two voices, they meld together, and though Percy runs, runs, runs from them separately, he cannot escape the whole of them, the blondes of varying livelihood. They share the screams of death beneath the willow tree; Percy screams against them, hoping that he'll come out louder than the lot of them with his hands pressed to his ears. This is hellish.

He topples against the supply heap, crawling desperately over the tarps and bottles and fruits as a means to gathering up his trident, which he does. To his back he rolls, weapon held before him on guard. Grey, much to his disorientation, has been replaced by blue, taking the sky's role in hue and ruffling his hair when they dive and miss his forehead.

They cross his vision so often that he hardly knows where to focus, and he feels his eyes blurring with the heat of confusion. There's warmth in his cheeks, a red-hot warmth that makes him swat and swing with his trident so vehemently that he can hardly feel disturbed when he actually strikes a few out of his way. Until he's on his feet, he knows nothing but intense irritation and the light nip of beaks on his skin. Not enough to draw blood, but nagging, nagging, nagging.

Nagging, yellow hurtles forward, beak level with a nose, feathers fluffed behind it. It mimics him, an answer to a question meant for night, and Percy thinks of this and only this, a violation of himself, when he jabs his prongs up and into the little thing. Familiar warmth spurts onto him, smelly rivulets upon his cheeks.

But he cares not for his senses, only the rush that comes with limpness.

Curling his lips down, he begins to whack at the other yellows that dive for him, swinging a secure feathered corpse at its' species. "Caw caw!" he screeches, "Go shit somewhere else!"

For a moment, it seems they take his advice, flitting to some other poor ally of his. But once again, this is false hope, for more find him. They remember hunger, and they lock onto glistening skin, and they strike and shoot and wind and dive and Percy, he runs, for the beadiness of these ones is nothing like the grey, nothing like the blue. The yellow have no qualms with painting themselves the red of him.

Pain is immediate and bitter, slashing first down his arms, skimming a slice along the back of his neck. He throws up a fist to egg it away but it circles back around, snagging a talon into his cheek before ripping it free. Slapping fingers there to staunch the slight vermillion spray is regrettable; I'm gonna die, die, die.

This isn't fair, for he's already been through this, already been picked and prodded by beaks, and he just wants to rushrushrush a means to an end, striking down an ally, perhaps; Adel is sketchy, she-

-Throws a knife through the middle of a bird destined for his eye. Pinned to a tall rock in the water, it keeps squirming, and though Percy does the same, he watches, all the way to the point of splashing foam.

Spray, and only spray, washes away its livelihood.

Realization removes remorse.

"Everybody get to the water!"

Percy gasps out a smile - he yet lives - but before he can make it halfway to the outlet something too large to be a canary painted red swoops down and takes a chance at his raised hand, the one that stretches for turquoise ocean. Skin is torn clean off the back of it, starting at the wrist and ending before the knuckles. At first, he can't register anything but the sight of himself being flown off in the talons of feathered-reds.

He is forced to wait, wheeze, whimper.

But now he is the target of mimicry.

"What have we done?! What have we done?! What have we done?!" A mantra of himself shrieks across the skyline. Percy panics when the bile begins to rise. He panics and he runs and he feels the tepid splash and he hears the desire for deafness and his knees are soaked and he wants to drown and he's drenched to the waist and he submerges and submerges and submerges so that he might not lose his life to something so vile as to have the same voice as he.

When he rises, he flings the water and blood away from himself and lets out a bloodcurdling scream that follows the red bird that screams back at him as it flies away with a part of him.

I want it dead. I want it dead. I want me dead.

★CONSTANTINE CRANE★

[24 Hour Extension]

★HERTZEL KOZLOWSKI★

The following is called 'Birds of Paradise Lost'. It follows Hertzel Kozlowski and Adel Aslet as they take on friendship, family, trust, and some of the scariest birds since Home Alone Two.

-The Narrator: author, philanthropist, all seeing deity

Some would call the shelter frugal. 'A humble abode' if you will. Hertzel disagrees wholeheartedly. He sees it as the exorbitant production of those with little. They gave everything they had into this discreet lean-to. How can that be frugal? It's trash - you wont get any argument there - but it's over engineered and completely streamlined trash. To do better would require more supplies which they don't possess. This is a prideful abode. Arrogant. The exterior is slathered with leafy fronds, overlapping like stucco to keep out the rain that will inevitably become a devilish whim in the mind of a Gamemaker. Probably the one who wants to watch the world burn, but is afraid of fire. Ironic. Moronic. Inside, it's unfinished. Rickety walls stand sloven and muddy. The floor is open soil, and crawling with insects. There are ones that look just like sticks, a trait Hertzel finds fascinatingly clever. Enough so, that he lets them walk upon his arms to pass the time. Less welcome are the legged worms, and the the spiders. Those come and go with a shudder and a great deal of commotion. Especially the spiders. Can you imagine the Gamemakers not making the spiders venomous? Hertzel can't, but to be fair, he's realistic. Even if Adel wasn't at his back, the omnipresent threat that she be, he doesn't think he'd get a blink in. He doesn't dare blink.

Yet the night is syrupy, and the musky humidity of the jungle weighs heavy. From outside enters a wavelength of rhyme. His mother's sing-song voice crystalline. He'd feel foolish if he were conscious.

He doesn't dare, but he does anyway.

*

Light creeps through the foliage on the roof. His hopes that it would prove waterproof were foolish indeed. The nursery rhyme which lulled him to sleep and dictated his dreams persists. How can it persist? After he is fully awake, and there is no lethargy left to account for hallucinations, a chill settles in his gut. Some trick, yes? Something manipulative. Something to make him go outside, or to make him stay inside because he think he's meant to go outside; ad nauseum. All it does is make him think; of his mother - his family (of which there is not much to think of at all) and of the pertinent danger. The idea of Adel flares to the forefront; an idea of worry, but she is here. Against the far wall, asleep. Emotions jumble. Moments after his worry for her well being stabbed sharp, stabbing her seems so easy. So smart. What is he if not smart? At the same time, he feels relief that he, himself, was not - stabbed that is. The fear he felt just last night forces itself to be recognized, to be processed. He feels listless for ignoring it, but grateful and proud of Adel for not realizing it. Perhaps it was for the better in this instance, his somnolence, he's alive still, but now with a greater sense of confidence in his ally. And if Adel can let him live a night it's only fair he lets this opportunity pass too. Couldn't manage it anyways; not her.

So he sits. The singing is incessant, and curiosity threatens to boil over. Curious people touch live wires. The blisters ringing around his thumb flare. Shivering, he contemplates rousing Adel, but he's a little scared of that too.

"Hertzeeeel babyyy" it coos. "Why can't we just turn back... To the way things were back when? With Momma and Pa and little ickle Hertzie. Together like it used to be. Like it always should've been. I miss my baby." Whatever is talking has the overbearing spot on. The floozy verbiage is pretty darn good too, but the baby names are over the top. Nothing without deep roots in reality, but he's twenty-seven now, and even Mom has gathered the sense to tone it down.

More and more noise filters in. Quacks come in spastic bouts, and something larger than any bird rustles near. Shadows appear in splotches on top of the roof. Some shuffle in place like a perched creature. Others run like liquid, and flow to every opening. A leaf peels down from the weight, and spurns a droplet. Bold, red, and viscous. It hits like a tsunami of change. 'WAKE UP!' it screams, but Adel's eyes are squeezed shut. Hertzel's eyes feel like they'll never blink again. Blind, he splays a hand towards her. All he gets before the body falls is a fistful of dirt. Fall is not a fanciful word, but far from crude enough for this. It - he - he imagines it was once a he, crashed though everything, the roof, matted with sweat, and the the supports, like a sack of potatoes, and hit the ground like a firework. His severed leg dangles from the branches above. Blood stricken beaks turn towards the rest of it. Towards us. Adel bolts up at the top of her lungs. Oh she screams. Following the leaves, and the blood, and the pecked and letted flesh (that is no body anymore) of the Mercier boy, comes a flock. Ravenous and fleet. With no intention of a meeting, Hertzel and Adel run out the newly created door.

They're soaked in Seb's blood even before these humdingers of hummingbirds latch on. Like mosquitos they suck, but instead of leaving a bump, they take a chunk. Lethal! One gets Hertzel before he can toss it aside from its scruff. His neck turns to a moist cool, and the collar of his suit begins to stick with fluid. Pain accumulates as his brain begins processing again. Crossed wires: syntax error. Divide by zero. He can't crane to see the damage (which is likely for the best), but he can't miss the similarly placed wound on Adel, and his imagination extrapolates.

Little blue brats!

A curious menagerie indeed. Stratified and segregated. The yellows are a bunch of moochers. Lazy muppets, hoarding what once was Mercier like kids in a cafeteria. Hertzel has never related more to anything in his entire life. The grey ones are lazy too. Temptresses who sound like his mom. Lazy performance; moms are so cliche these days. And you all know the blues. If all goes according to plan (run and hope), they'll never know what those mahogany monstrosities are capable off. They drift ahead like storm clouds, and caw thunderously.

The nature of the island makes direction meaningless. Just run out, towards the beach. These things can't swim can they? Beach means Careers, probably, almost certainly considering the noise which follows them, but they sprint anyways. Below is a minefield of ruts. Small boulders, and smaller trees sprout from the soil. Those are the real killers. Hertzel's legs play hopscotch rather than run. Adel's does the same.

"Underwater!" He shouts as loud as he dares. She probably knows, and withholding speech would've been really poetic. Unspoken understanding and all that. But better alive than artistic.

His breath is shallow, as if half of it is leaking out through the gouge. Legs like rubidium noodles. Lucid mind. Is that a wave he hears?

The birds make another foray, swooping level. Adel elbows one off, and laughs when another starts suckling on her prosthetic. An honest, bright laugh, but everything looks maniacal with blood on your face. She is no exception. Hertzel is less fortunate, three burrow their claws into his back. Hanging on by pale skin, and the sheeny silicone of the wet suit. He's hanging by a heartbeat, a drive, and an empty stomach. The pain threatens to end him, turning the scenery dizzy and psychedelic. A tree trunk is what he needs, but everything is coming up a blur. This itch needs to be quelled. This quarter quell itch. Quarter to five; time to take a bath. Word association is the queerest thing. He's heard pain called a drug, he might repeat it after this. If only he wasn't going to die.

Sudden comes the clarity, but the trees are already behind him. This is the beach, a bittersweet realization. Adel is almost to safety, and incomprehensible fury takes him because of it. He'd kill her if the chance arrived. A hypocritical murder, embrued in emotion - whatever. He needs help, and she offers none. Birds still behind, draining him, he staggers in the sand.

The Careers have come, like he'd imagined they would, but stay only for the time it takes to turn around. An hopeful arrow flings itself into his back, taking out one bird and a pound of his flesh. Probably an improvement. That doesn't stop him from screaming. Falling now would be dying, but that's what he does. To his knees. The sand here is moist with the sea.

So close.

From above, a screech is bellowed with the weight of a funeral organ, yet the sharpness of a scimitar. An awesome voice. Such that he knows exactly what's in store. The red hawk hits his back with a force. Toppling him over the rest of the way, to his stomach, and shoving his face in the ground. He can here the water twinkle from here.

So close.

This is when Adel saves him, isn't it? Just like in the stories his mom sang- the stories those grey parrots sing now. But she just stares on. Not even hurt enough to feign away.

A cacophony gathers on his back peacefully. Even the two that were always there lull. It's as if they are saying grace. Thanking the Gamemakers for their bounty. A dawdling prayer. After which, Hertzel is torn apart. Wind breezes by his bones. Something snaps in his leg, and bunches at the heel. He gags, and a horrifying amount of blood flows out. When the first of the yellow vultures arrives, his head drops. Then roars the tide.

The saltwater sears so hard he faints.

★SEBASTIAN MERCIER★

It was almost silent in the arena, and the lack of sound made Sebastian uneasy. Silence meant something was coming, something that would make life worse. His fingers tapped rapidly against his leg, a familiar rhythm that did nothing ease the paranoia wrapped around him like a warm blanket. His eyes roved around his surroundings, searching for any sign of what was to come but the only visible sign of life was a flock of jewel colored birds flying above him. For reasons he couldn't explain, the birds made Sebastian apprehensive, and his right hand curled around his sword.

With slow, careful steps, he started to move towards the jungle to avoid detection. Better safe than sorry, right? Unfortunately, the sand beneath his feet gave out as though it was quicksand, sending him tumbling to the ground. He barely registered the faint sense of pain when his hands slipped on rough sand. Shit. As if they had heard his thought, the birds turned towards him, a flock of angry color and sound.

The grey ones arrived first, circling around his head like an angry halo and bringing the sounds of his family with them. There were whispers of words that had haunted him since he'd first come home. How could you kill my daughter? in his aunt's voice, rough and distraught. What are you doing? soft and shaky in Amara's. I don't know what happened to you in there, in his mother's. The words caught Sebastian off-guard, letting the next wave of birds take over.

Pain trailed across his scalp in hot lines as one of the birds clawed at his head. Sebastian's fingers uncurled around his sword, instinctively covering his head. He ran blindly, feathers of multiple colors obscuring his vision. With each breath he could hear a new voice, a new accusation. Blood started to trickle down his face and arms from the birds' claws and beaks. Each time he put on a burst of speed, there was new group of birds in his way, a new group of birds that nipped at his hair and clawed at his head like they were trying to rip his scalp off.

Panic and pain mixed as he ran, and for a second it was like he was back in the arena for the first time. No matter how many times he came close to dying, the fear was always as sharp as the first time, always as raw and primal. He scrabbled for the sword at his side, but each time his fingers left his hand another bird was there to nip at him.

Gritting his teeth, Sebastian quickly brought his right hand away from his hand and grabbed his sword. He immediately began to slash and hack at the birds surrounding his head. There was the occasional thud as his sword tore into wings, more blood spattering across his face. His movements were sloppy and unrefined though, and there were too many of them for him to make a difference. He needed a new plan.

Fuck! What am I supposed to do? There was nowhere in the jungle to hide, and the shack he'd gotten his sword from would be of little help to him with so many birds. Which left...the water.

Sebastian wasn't even sure that the birds couldn't swim underwater-who knew what the Gamemakers this year had done to the birds-but he couldn't think of anything else to do. As he ran in what he thought was the direction of the water he thought, I swear if I die by being pecked to death by birds I'm gonna come back to life just haunt whoever came up with these things.

He was mere feet away from the water when there was a sudden, sharp nip to his wrist. It sent a jolt of pain through his arm and he dropped his sword. It landed somewhere behind him, tearing at his left thigh and sending him tumbling to the ground once again. Immediately, the birds were on him.

This time, they were a dark ruby color, and the size of his head. They knocked into him like bowling balls, leaving bruises that he knew would turn out purple and blue. Big and bulky, they moved slowly, only to be replaced with birds the color of the sand around him, nipping at his clothes and taking chunks out of his skin. If the birds weren't trying to kill him, and succeeding, Sebastian would have admired their ability to work together.

Pain was something he had become used to, but it was still difficult for Sebastian to focus on what he needed to do. I have to get to the water. He repeated the words to himself over and over until they drowned out the panic and the pain. I have to get to the water. The sand irritated the cuts along his body as he crawled along the beach, each attempt at standing only resulting in being knocked to the ground again by one of the red birds. The closer he came to the water, the more hesitant the birds became, and a tiny bubble of hope grew in Sebastian's chest. I can make it.

Relief rolled through him when he finally reached the water. As he pulled himself in, the birds hovered above him, but didn't follow, and some of the tension in his shoulders lessened. Red swirled in the water around Sebastian, his skin stinging in the saltwater. It was a good kind of pain though. One that told him he was alive. For now, at least.

★JOSEF THOMAS★

A man who has lost hope is barely a man at all.

The Earth does not notice this, not at first. Wind continues to whip away at hair, pulling and tugging against torn pieces of fabric. Trees stand strong to block paths, while vines snake across patches of earth to trip exhausted legs. What does notice, however, is the sand. Heavy footfalls leave bigger craters, heels dragging to form unclear footprints. It rises up to bury a man still walking.

Josef shook sand from his shoe for the third time. It was infuriating to the say the least. Every time they clogged up it made him feel as if he was running with concrete feet. Rubbing a tired hand over his face and feeling the beginnings of a beard prickle his fingers, he glanced up. Across from him, on another outcropping of rocks, sat Adel. Her foot had already gone to tapping obsessively against the sand, little puffs of it spurting up every time her heel hit back down. They had only been resting for a few moments and yet already she was getting restless. He was fairly certain she had scanned the skyline five times already, yet her deep green eyes seemed insistent on checking that the one cloud in the sky didn't suddenly decide to be filled with acid rain.

In comparison, the boy on his left had scarcely bothered to blink since they had sat down. He had one hand cupped under his chin, his other being used to prop up his elbow as he stared back out towards the beach. Josef was fairly certain that if he had walked over and waved his hand in front of Percy's face, he wouldn't have even noticed he was there. Then again, he wondered if he would have noticed him shouting either. Josef was fairly certain the brown haired boy had a hearing problem, but with the blood bath and the now encroaching silence, it had yet to be discussed.

Behind both of them stood quite a view. Leaning back on his hands, Josef trailed his eyes over the outlook. Oversized trees dipped towards the ground, pulled by burdensome leaves and a heavy breeze. They scrapped against vibrantly green ferns, whose bases were thick with ivy. The sky behind them was bright, yet not nearly as much as the waves themselves. They lapped innocently against the shore, foaming pearl white as they touched the sand.

It was the kind of scene in one of Ben's adventure tales. He could only imagine the face of pure joy he would've made had he been here to see it for himself, squeezing that little, stuffed dragon against his chest so tight that Josef would become worried he would pop its head off. It was funny how attached to the thing Ben had become; after all, Josef had only picked it up on a whim in the town market. The thought brought a smile to the man's lips, but it was sour at the edges, bitter. The thought that he would never see his boy outgrow that stuffed animal brought out a harsh, clipped laugh.

"Something funny?" Percy asked, briefly lifting his head from his palm as his eyes seemed to clear from whatever fog had fallen over them.

The words "our situation" almost passed Josef's lips, yet he held them back and offered a simple wave of his hand instead. He was becoming depressing, wasn't he? Was that what becoming old did it made you depressing? No, he realized after a moment, it made you realistic.

"We should get going," Adel announced, pushing herself to her feet.

Worry stirred in Josef's gut at her urgent tone, but when he checked their surroundings he found nothing of note. "You're being paranoid," he stated firmly.

She frowned, "I am not. We're too out in the open here, it's not smart."

"We've only been here five minutes," Percy reminded her, his eyes dark eyes flicking briefly between the two of them.

A streak of blue caught Josef's eye in the sky, but it was too quick for him to be sure he hadn't imagined it. Still, it gave him enough of a reason to believe the impatient woman before him. "She's right," he admitted, rubbing a hand over his stubble. "We should move."

Adel didn't smile, but it wasn't hard to see the flash of victory in her eyes. She scanned the sky again and her frown deepened, her voice growing tighter, "We should hurry."

The momentum Percy got to his feet, the group headed right, away from the water and towards the uncertainty of the rest of the cove. Uncertainty gripped Josef's heart, yet he kept his breath steady. Had he been younger or had Molly been beside him, they would've gone tearing through the foliage at the speed of light. Now, however, their pace was measured, not so quick to alert any horrible wildlife that might've been lurking, but at least quick enough that they weren't targets standing still. Tightening his hand around his machete, he focused on the ground below, stepping over tree roots and pools of very red blood.

Whispered words floated on the breeze softly, too quiet for the man didn't recognize. He looked up and nearly ran smack into Percy, who had stopped a few inches from knocking Adel over. She stood stock stiff, her eyes planted on something far off. Concern filtered across Percy's face and Josef felt the squeezing on his heart tighten. Reaching forward, he gave her a hard shake and she blinked, her green eyes focussed on them.

"We need to move," she insisted, the words dropping like poison from her lips.

The other two exchanged a brief look of confusion, but both nodded. She led the way through a particularly heavy amount of brush, slashing as she went. Josef noticed as she wobbled slightly, her leg not doing as well she seemed to show. He opened his mouth to ask if she needed to slow down but was interrupted.

"Dad, please, help me."

All of the breath left the man in that instant. His feet frozen, his eyes blurred as they stared at the ground. His body shook as he took in a breathe. It wasn't real. It was an obvious statement, but one he needed himself to hear. Ben wasn't here. He never would be. Looking up, he found Adel staring at him harshly, her eyes narrowed.

"Josef," she warned.

"I'm fine," he replied, pressing his lips thin as he rolled his shoulders.

Percy's eyebrows furrowed, "Did you two hear something?"

"Jabberjays."

"Most definitely."

A scream pierced the air, too human to ignore. Josef didn't recognize the voice, though as he glanced at Percy he could see the boy's slightly paled skin, dark eyes narrowed even more.

"Let's go," he said quietly, his eyes looking away from the sound.

Nodding, Josef went to help Adel cut through the vines and leaves. The faster they could get away the better. He still felt his heart hammering in his chest, the thought of Ben being hurt boiling his blood as much as chilling it. He had few people in his life he still held dear, but his children, they were a line that never should have been crossed. The feeling of recklessness began to scrape at his insides and had he noticed it then, he would've done his best to quell it instantly; however, he had yet to notice the creeping feeling beneath his spite.

"Adel, please."

"Help me, Joey!"

"Please don't."

The screams overlapped, filling the air with sickness and sadness. Words clawed at ears, raking each tributes insides. They got worse, gray feathers appearing in the corner of Josef's eyes. He wiped sweat from his brow as he ran, Adel leading away and Percy close on his heals. The world began to spin by in blurry scenes until all it became was gray. A cliff face towered over them, casting a heavy shadow on their heavy hearts. Holding back a grimace, Josef shot the others a look.

"Do we have a choice?"

Percy's mouth screwed up, yet his words met little resistance, "Not Really."

Josef nodded and grabbed onto the nearest handhold. It was a pain to climb so high, but he couldn't even think how hard it must have been for someone with only one real leg. Trying to focus on both of himself and the others, he grappled onto another handhold, nearly having to jump for it. Gritting his teeth, he wedged one hand in between a crack in the rocks and pulled up his feet. Thankfully, it didn't take much time to get half way up the cliff, yet that was also when they realized their mistake.

A shriek pierced the air. Josef had no time to look behind his before a breeze ruffled his hair. Blue feathers whisked in front of his eyes, another small chirp almost sending him falling. Clinging even closer to the cliff face than before, he shot as look at the other two. Adel was still climbing as one tried to swipe past her hair, while Percy has wasted a handhold to swat at one of the little pests. The man knew he just had to ignore them since the little things didn't seem to be truly attacking as they climbed. Pulling himself up closer to the edge, a stab of pain flared up on his left shoulder.

Yellow feathers brushed against his skin as talons cut through the skin of his arm. Holding in a scream, the man groaned in pain. Using his free hand, he pulled a machete from his belt and slashed wildly. As the weapon clips one in the wing, another nips at his ear from behind. Before he can even turn to see it, a third begins to bite his toes. Feeling his body slip from the rock, Josef slides away his machete and goes back to climbing. Birds stab and sting and bite, yet he can't fight them all, not here.

His fingers dug into the grass. Clamping onto it, he hurled himself onto the top of the ledge.The birds continued to screech and as he stumbled backward, he found Percy already slashing apart several. A huffed breath comes from the cliff and with extreme effort, Adel heaved her body to safety. Small cuts and bits dripped blood from all of the tributes. Skin had been torn, new scars created, each one looked as they have suddenly gained freckles.

Before any of them could even draw their weapons, the birds pulled back. They flapped and watched from a distance, beady eyes narrow. In less than a second, a new threat swooped in. The birds were red, like blood but so much more lively. They had voices like the others, but theirs were different. Theirs were the most familiar voice anyone can know.

"What would Nigel think now? Where are your matches now?"

"How's the leg holding up? Do you still remember how you got it?"

The words of the others blended together, to form nothing more than screeching. They were so much bigger, so much harder to ignore. One knocked Josef down, crashing into his chest as his shoulders hit the ground.

"How's it feel now that she's not here? She wouldn't have even died if you hadn't volunteered," it lied, pulling up its talon to slash through his chest.

Josef reached for his machete frantically. Blood spurted from its chest as the metal made contact, yet the wound wasn't near enough. It backed off briefly, replaced again with the small, nipping ones as he pushed himself to his feet. Fleeing was quickly becoming the only option. Josef backed away, his eyes scanning the drop off for some other way down. The cliff overlooked many trees and plants, but as he quickly discovered, it also overlooked something far more important.

"Guys," he hollered, still slashing uselessly at the birds that attempted to tear him apart. "I've got a way down."

Percy and Adel rushed over, the former leaving a heavily wounded bird behind.

"That's insane," she responded the moment she glanced over the edge.

"I didn't say it wasn't."

The boy's face had turned sullen, "There's no guarantee they won't follow us... but he has a point."

Another shriek from the birds around them seemed to seal the deal. Without waiting for a count of three, they all jumped off of the cliff. The world below rushed towards Josef faster than he could've imagined it would. His entire body broke out in pain the moment he hit the surface below. All the sounds died away and he kept his eyes closed in darkness. As the shock wore off, the lack of air struck him. Kicking frantically, he broke the surface of the water.

Wet hair clung to his head, the only sound in his waterlogged ears his own heart beat. The other tributes floated near him, catching their breath. Above them, the birds of gray and yellow and blue and red circled, yet none dared to swoop back down. A small smile cracked onto his face. Whether the creatures were afraid of the water or had realized they didn't want a meal so stupid, the fact remained the same. They had escaped, at least for now.

★KEIFER ELWOOD★

[USED AUTOMATIC 12]

He could not swim, so instead he flailed.

★ASHRE RELICKS★

Keon Ristarria's hand is in his, leading him through the city. It's warm; everything is tufted between their fingers. Warmth, settling like coils around wrinkled skin and unsteady bone. Family, entwined like oracles in their palms. And love- it's interred beneath their fingernails, buried in the hold.

Tears stain eyes. Once amethyst, now dimmed to concrete, a stiff and maniacal grey. Blood stains clothes. Brotherhood is laced in the crimson, climatically dry, spilled too soon. Fear is the toxin running through their veins- will it stop their hearts?

Keon looks down at their hands. Is he wistful? Longing? Subdued. The boy stumbles and falls into a building; it's quiver and haywire and trip and crack, collapse.

Their grasp unlocks.

     He left. He's gone- don't think, Ashre, breathe breathe breathe; run. You're it.

          You're it. You're it.

      Run.

     Gone. Breath- find him, please, be never alone. He's-

         face in the sky

               He left.

                Keon...

                    Oh, Keon...

Ashre opened his eyes to mist. Physical, it twinkled in the air like stars of moisture and haze. Heat dripped down his cheeks sullenly, as if fire, as if mud. Mental, it covered the world in a layer of fog. His senses dulled to mere static, buzzing and whirring with a connection to the outside world lost.

There were tears, but they were lackadaisical drips. Like a sudden downpour unexpected, drizzling to dot the sand instead of cover it; Ashre wiped them away, the name Keon desiccating his lips. The pale scarlet became amber in the cold, skin shivering against the wind.

Ashre's body withered as he stepped into the depths of the isle jungle. Numbness ached at him; fear, it told him, Please, be afraid.

Why did he feel nothing?

Fear was a persistent thought, not a feeling, and he clambered against tree trunks and wistfully stared at the sky and its unimaginable reach. His muscles worked slowly, speed deterred by fatigue and a melancholy mind. The air smelled of whimsical salt; he stopped, mere feet separating him from the shore.

A tremble- not from him, but a rustle of leaves, palm firs displaced. The sound was light, but Ashre flinched to where it came from, a distance undetermined to the left. He paused. Waited. His fingers tapped mindlessly against his hip- bone, thrum, bone- and narcotics invaded his chest- fever, thrum, fright. Heart became a wash of totter and reel; lungs ventilated the shudder.

Wings fluttered past him, swishing upwards until a bird landed on a teetering branch. Greyness leaked about its feathers, almost divine, a remnant of twilight now flying in day. It watched Ashre closely, beak perched open.

"What's that, Little Ashre?"

Keon. His voice disarmed Ashre immediately- the man slouched back and filled his lips with teeth. The sound was copper and wire and rusted pipes covered in even more rain. It came through like a mountain, given three peaks; Keon's timbre was distinct and like masks contorted to echo.

Ashre looked up at the bird. Together, they were both still, claws and feathers, arms and legs. A thousand breaths passed between them, each carrying a thought from the past. Ashre saw feet running in their game of tag; he saw brotherhood sealing wounds; he saw Keon Ristarria's flesh, composed of sound and voice alone.

Then, the frozen and powder blue earth melted away. Another bird- equally blanched- came down from the canopy to roost by its friend. Their beaks were copies of one another, slightly open, orifices of the tone Ashre begged to hear. Everything restarted.

"Be happy, Uncle Ashre!"

Keon. Again, but smaller, more delightful, his nephew, and like citrus juice pouring down throat. Ashre pictured the boy's smile, magnificent and illuminated and bundled by constellations. His ears perked, eyes latched onto the bird.

He should've been afraid, wary. But so persistent were their voices, so becoming, so there...and he watches Keon- Keon, the big kid- and smiles. Happy; Ashre feels happy. Its deep breaths and wide eyes, counting heartbeats, crinkling toes. The fountain laps, the floor is still. Even Lacey has found the time to sleep- and she never sleeps.

He can't stand it any longer. He feels thunder belie his thoughts. "Keon?" he asks. Oh, Keon.

"Yeah, Little Ashre?" The older boy shifts, adjusts, stares up at the purple moons of Ashre's eyes. The little boy stares back. Keon. Keon. Copper and wire.

"I want you to live," Ashre says. Tremulous. Dreamy. For once, the boy can feel his own bones. Their quake and quiver.

Keon, Keon.

Copper and wire.

"Be happy- Little Ashre- What's that, Uncle Ashre?" The letters blended and fused like steel; the spaces shortened. Each word flew from the birds' beaks, cannons and bullets of nostalgia and love and carelessness. For a moment, Ashre felt completely serene, lost in their clamor.

He smiled. Full and boisterous. Extraordinary. A heaven risen to the galaxies. Then, a third and a fourth and fifth, eighth, tenth bird rustled and landed on a near branch. His eyes were suddenly blind to the trick, masquerade believed.

The dozen stiff wingbeats sang: "Ash tray! Ash tray!"

His old nickname flickered in, throughout the world, and then out. It was endearing and soft and lovely; Keon and Wherin and everyone he'd ever loved called at him from the air. Ash tray- because of a cigarette once snuffed on his skin. But Ash tray- because the singe, he came to think, was sweet.

Ash and Ash and ashen birds, all swirled into a single tornado. He heard his name among the chaos; part of him knew it was fake, and that the birds were mechanic and unreal. But the rest of him wished the voices were true, so he could hear Keon speak for the first time in twenty-two years, so he could he hear Keon speak one last time before-

Inside the hurricane of voices and ash, a particle of silence simmered. It was a mere second of quiet, fallen between pandemonium, but it grew. It dug its way through the voices and dimmed them to simple vibrations cast from tree to tree, occupying the sky rather than filling it. Ashre's loved ones decrescendoed, and the world became a little less alight.

And one last time-

"It's Keon. We named him Keon," Wherin boomed, a thunderous statement that gave way to a sea of blue flight. The grey birds remained still on the branches, whispering their words, an underscore to the next step; Ashre straightened his spine, bones clicking in feverish place. Sweat collected skin; his mind's interlude ended and reality swelled his thoughts.

A flash of blue and a swift sound, a drowned bird attacked him without being seen. It flew down quickly and darted past his face, talon scraping cheek, leaving behind a thin slice to percolate rose. The senseless sting made him realize the full weight of what was happening; he brought a hand to the cut and let blood colorize his prints. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. Oh, how I want it to hurt. . .

He remained static, feet pressed unsteadily into dirt. Logs covered soil and weeds stuck out from an affray of bush and grass; it was earth-shatteringly natural, so brilliant, so frail. Ashre stared into the side of a tree- his thoughts told him to leave the forest and trample back to the shore, but his eyes meshed and desensitized. He disassociated.

The pendulum of birds swung down, back and forth. And a flock of yellow flew down in a huddle, beaks aligned. There were four, and they struck his chest in a flurry of calls and airs and ripping fabric. The wetsuit tore, decorated by holes, and his torso added to the image with its own drippings. His collarbones revealed bone for the birds to gnaw, skin for them to peel. He closed his eyes and his stomach bellowed with the spine.

It was something of irony for the birds to peck so close to his heart, drawing blood from an organ that pumped weakly nonetheless. The pain was water and craters and hollowness knocking at the front door; he let them assail for what seemed like minutes, then backed away, swatting until even his hands were unruly with the carve.

He heard the greys speak up: "Ash tray; be happy- Uncle, Little Ashre!" and he turned around to run. The wetness made him drowsy and his steps were heavy and sore. The yellows didn't follow; their satisfied battalion retreated, chirping along the greys and blues.

He ran, stumbling. And Keon sits up, back splitting to a million stars. It's ethereal; It's deranged. A moment of fury passed between the mild night. Neither had thought about it, desperate to cling to today, today today, stones fearing no weather. Whether death, or life, carries on.

And Keon looks back, eyes taken by moonlight. Ashre sees gruffness and hairs and thick skin around stalwart features. He sees future; he sees what he wants to become.

Keon. . . Keon.

Copper, and wire.

Ashre didn't see the log until it caught his ankle, sending him down to slam skull on sand. His upper half made it to shore, patterns of blood spilling from chest to ground. Dryness imbued his tongue and lips as sand attached to saliva; the cut on his cheek went hoarse and sharp. And the string of red, contiguous and prolonged, formed further with feathers and wings.

A cardinal bird hovered over his back, wings loud and hectic. Ashre rolled over, attempting to stand, but- A scream fell off his throat; it never reached the world, solidifying as a gasp before release. The Jabberjay's talon, rust and sword, stabbed down before he could react.

What came next was geyser and lift; blood spurted from Ashre's stomach with volume and splash. Tears welled in his eyes and he flipped back over, shoulders aching, the rest numbed. His hands burrowed into the sand and pulled, his body inching forward onto the shore.

His wounds stung with the salt from the air, but he didn't wish it away. Madness eroded his nerves, mania as divine as the birds clipping at the edges.

By the time he was halfway to the ocean, three birds of a scarlet feather had come upon him. One; his ankles were shred, paper flushed to shin. Two; a beak ripped the skin of his left hip, reveling in the tear. Three; it plunged inside the already-open wound of his chest, excavating further the fossil of ribs and heart.

But there was a fourth- a smaller, more frantic being. Ashre crawled and the bird clawed at his neck, which was protected by the strap of a waterskin. The bird physically angered until it followed the strap to its origin, intermittently clicking against it to slash and hack, desiring the man's spill. However, its beak pierced the waterskin itself, pricking a hole and causing water to flow. It was nearly full, so the deluge drenched the bird in lukewarm water, causing it to let loose a fierce and wavering cry. Its feathers hung and it flew. Away.

In the close distance, waves clambered to the shore. Ashre noticed how the water affected the bird; he felt of cracking plaster and brewing hailstorms, motion so drastically unafraid of destruction.

"I want you to live," he said. He said.

But Ashre's mouth hadn't moved. He craned his neck to see the voice filtering from the birds, monstrous and hungry. There was no distinction between wounds, only an enigma of different sensations. It was a labyrinth of scar; why did he feel nothing?

"No, Ashre. Don't say that. Not that, not yet."

The night rises to an amethyst sun. It's sweet dreams and misty breath and shivers too cold to stop. Ashre's head is downcast, heart guarded by something more frivolous than love; he's watchful and hopeful and dying. Dying. Keon, Keon, Copper,

and wire.

"I want you to live. I don't need to," Ashre says. He hops like a rabbit in the bush, floppy and wild. Where's Lacey? Where's Lacey? And this is leaving.

"Of course you do." Their hands roll together as one. Brother, can you heal us?

"No. I see the future, Keon! My family can make it. They have Wherin. It's so easy to see them without me there," he rambles and tumbles and falls to the side. He's tired; he didn't sleep.

Keon, Keon picks him up, but their hands untie. He's vicious with caper and caw, harrowing, hollow, the deeper part in darkness that moves when left unwatched. "Stay here," Keon mumbles, wandering away.

The boy doesn't say bye because he doesn't think it is one. But goodbye copper, farewell wire...Keon, he's-

Foam engulfed his remains. Ashre couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, calf and shin and ankle blending into a single, long gash. His stomach looked like a million puzzle pieces skewed apart, all a picture of the same, resting, evening skyline. He tasted metal grit; nail entwined with vein to trail up and down his arms and hands.

He was fluttering. The tide washed over him and retreated back again, gulps barreling down his throat and tongue, filling up his lungs with a thing to dispel. He floated with a sway, hearing the feathers flee far away from him, hearing nothing but vibrations as water locked his ears closed.

Breath circled and voice marred through whispers and wisp; Ashre was swept into unconsciousness, unafraid of the looming and scare.

face in the sky--

Keon...

Oh, Keon..

★VALENTINE RACHMANINOFF★

The elderly shopkeeper casually walked over to Aaron, who had his face pressed on the front of a glass terrarium. He pulled a set of rusty metal keys from his overall's breast pocket, and shakily sorted through them with worn-down fingers. He selected one from the lot and inserted it into the box's lock.

The following squeal from the box would've irritated the ears of anyone who heard it if there were more than three people in the shop.

The old man groaned as he bent down to meet the little boy's size, "Listen here. Make sure to keep this little guy happy. He'll need a bowl of fresh water every morning and about two or three lettuce leaves."

The boy beamed at the man, and then turned his gaze to his uncle, "I'm gonna name him Ollie!"

Valentine returned the smile but briskly turned around to face the cage behind him. Time had not been kind for the "For Sale!" sign. Its corners had peeled away, exposing the thin layers that made up its cardboard. The price reductions, however, still maintained their purposefully eye-catching qualities, clearly marking the price of what it was advertising: free.

The puppy noticed Valentine's attention and started to bark and scratch the metal bars of his cage. For some unknown reason, Aaron preferred the turtle over the dog that didn't cost a penny. Unfortunately, it would most likely be Aaron's naive curiosity over the way the turtle moved that would bill the puppy the ultimate price.

"Ollie's a fine ol' name, but I'm gonna have to be serious with you for a sec, little fella. That right there is my last turtle, you understand? I need you to promise that you'll take good care of him, okay?"

"Yes!"

The quarters jangled noisily as Valentine halfheartedly tossed them onto the granite counter top.The dog was still staring directly at him, barking.

The man sent the pair off with a new turtle and a beginner's terrarium set-up kit. He wished them luck with raising him and bid farewell. Aaron happily returned the old man's kindness with an enthusiastic wave, but Valentine hurried him out of the store.

"Goodbye, son," the shopkeeper said.

Valentine and Aaron kept walking, but Valentine faltered for just a moment.

When the arrived back at their cottage, Valentine went right to bed while Aaron showed off his new pet. At first, Anna Rachmaninoff wasn't impressed that her grandson had purchased an animal that didn't do much more than sleep, but she was glad that he could finally have some company other than the dolls he had started to make from the endless wheat.

Valentine rolled in his sleep that night; the dog still occupied the corners of his mind.

It spoke to him.

"Valentine."

"Valentine!"

There was something smooth, soft almost, supporting the entire backside of his body. Although "supporting" might've been too strong of a word to describe the feeling, it was the only one Valentine had time to pick out from his mind before realization smacked him in the face like a frying pan. It was painfully obvious that he was dreaming, but he shook the feeling of disappointment away with ease. His eyes remained closed, for he was afraid of what he would see just beyond the comforting veil of darkness.

"Valentine!"

There it was.

Surely Aaron would be smart enough to try and wake him using some form of physical contact before resorting to yelling. It wasn't him. It wasn't.

"VAL!"

Two veils had been hung over Valentine to protect him from the horror that awaited him. One had been physical, as it had shielded his vision from the monster that was lurking just in front of his trembling eyelids. The other had been less tangible and had served as a barrier between whatever was cruelly imitating his nephew's voice and his misplaced parental instinct to strangle it.

"Valentine!"

His physical veil was shredded to ribbons as he opened his eyes. They darted around the forest, trying to hone in on the source of Aaron's voice, which was starting to call out more consistently and with increasing panic. While one of his walls collapsed, the other rose into reality, channeling its strength into Valentine's arms and legs. He had to find Aaron. He pressed his hands into the moist soil and pushed himself onto his stomach.

It's important to note that even though the arena of the 154th Hunger Games was sure to contain horrors beyond comprehension, it also was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful creations of the Capitol. It's also important to note that there are some experiences that Valentine wished to never deal with while trapped in the deadly paradise. For example, the sensation of something trying to squirm out from underneath his body.

This sensation, however, did not make itself apparent to Valentine for the time being. The pain in his back was still prevalent from his failure to do anything in the bloodbath, of course. Blood was pounding in his ears, and it was this internal noise that caused him to doubt what happened next.

It was only for a moment, but Valentine thought he heard his nephew's voice soften and become more muffled.

Immediately he pinned the lack of noise on the blood flow in his ears; surely that was the cause of the lack of volume in Aaron's cries, right?

That moment of ambiguity stretched itself to become Valentine's reality. The voice was still audible, but it was, in fact, quieter. Not only that, but there was something wrong sounding about his cries. The tone of Aaron's voice had changed from worried to something that was on the verge of being pained and stressed.

It was then that Valentine experienced the sensation of something trying to squirm out from underneath his body.

Instinctively he jerked away from his spot on the dirt to release whatever moved underneath him. It horrified him to no extent to know that there was something alive that had been struggling due to him.

The struggling creature was a small, gray bird.

He knew that kicking himself for not realizing the source of the noise earlier wouldn't help anything. He lacked the first-hand knowledge of the other tributes when it came to the Hunger Games, but that didn't mean that he didn't do anything in preparation. Each room in the Capitol came equipped with the full set of Hunger Games DVDs. The videos contained full coverage of each game along with commentary from Gamemakers and the other Capitol workers involved.

It turned out to be fantastic preparation, and it revealed patterns in the way most Hunger Games' functioned. The releasing of muttations into the arenas were especially fascinating to him. Almost always, it seemed that they also followed a rule or pattern. One such rule applied to Valentine's current situation:

Jabberjays always travel in groups.

In the distance, screams of both birds and tributes mingled and echoed through the misty forest, reminding Valentine he had mere seconds to start moving. The only thing he was able to collect from the bloodbath was a baguette that was half-buried near the treeline. He couldn't eat it, but he kept it for some reason. He scrapped the idea of using it as a club and decided it would be best to ditch it. Maybe the birds would stop and eat it.

His legs carried him away from the trampled path of leaves that indicated his earlier path, but the rate was agonizingly slow. The knife wound didn't completely halt his run, but it left him clutching his back.

A scream cut through the trees and mist, interrupting the hum of cicadas, small rodents, and the constant plop of water that had become too large for the leaves of the canopy. Of course, there was also the sound of Valentine clumsily hobbling through the foliage, but he chose to ignore it for the simple reason that he already knew that there were already birds following him. Attempting to make less noise would slow his progress to wherever he was going.

A cannon followed shortly after.

Another fact Valentine chose to ignore was that he truly had no clue where he was running. He had only made it a few meters into the tree line before he lost consciousness after the bloodbath, and perhaps he had woken at various points in time afterward and crawled farther, but those were beyond his memory. By the time he awoke, the clearing of the Cornucopia hadn't been visible, so Valentine assumed he had made a decent amount of progress.

"Valentine!"

It wasn't his nephew's voice that tormented him this time: it was Anna's. It was Anna's in the sense that it had, at one point in time, belonged to her, but old age had corroded her vocal chords to the point where faint mumbles were all she could muster. It was youthful now, and the tone was one a mother would use to lull their children to sleep.

The voices of his small family melted together to form a nostalgic harmony that reminded him of home. More gray jabberjays joined the chorus, and soon it felt like the entire forest was alive with the sounds of the Rachmaninoff's household.

He knew he was going to encounter a hill before he could see it; the land had been gently sloping for a while, and it only made sense of it to be leading up to something larger.

It was when he first got his first glimpse at the rising earth that a new bird, a blue bird, swooped just over his head. It didn't come close enough to make contact with him, but Valentine could still feel the whoosh of wind through his hair as the bird flew back into the trees, readying itself for its second dive.

What he thought would be a hill turned out to be something more like a cliff. It rose sharply from the earth, as rocky and impenetrable as a mountain.

Another one of his avian companions dove at his chest. This one was a shade of yellow that Valentine was sure didn't naturally occur in nature; bright, aggravatingly so. This bird didn't waste any time psyching him out and dug its talons into the skin of his abdomen, latching onto him.

Valentine screamed in pain and ripped the bird out of his skin, extending the claw marks to his pectorals. More golden jabberjays lined up in the highest branches of the trees but remained motionless. Even as a second cannon fired, they all remained still. In fact, when Valentine turned his head, he saw that all the birds had either fallen back or joined the flock of their yellow brethren.

Perhaps they had reached some invisible boundary that had prohibited them from flying any further, or maybe there was something equally terrible waiting for him at the top of the cliff. He didn't know, and he didn't particularly care to know. He just climbed.

The rocky cliff provided Valentine with a multitude of footholds, so even a man bleeding from both the front and the back could easily scale it. He went one appendage at a time. Left hand, right leg. Right hand, left leg.

He pulled himself over the rocky ledge and realized why the birds had stopped chasing him. The bodies in front of him were indistinguishable from roadkill; their bodies had been trampled, their skin peeled off from the bone. The only sign that they were once human were their eyes, which had been neatly plucked from their sockets and rolled on the ground.

The red bird didn't attack then. They caught each other's eye, and both remained still as the smaller birds in the trees below.

It spoke to him.

"Get out of this house you sick fuck!"

The scarlet beast charged directly at the scarlet-covered man and threw him off of the cliff.

The ocean water quickly infiltrated Valentine's nostrils and seeped into his cuts and gashes. The pain made him jolt straight out of the water, gasping and gulping. He had been lucky; just beyond the cliffs were tall, jagged rock formations. There was a man on one of the spikes, and blood slowly dripped from his body into the waves.

The pain of the salt receded. There was another figure in the distance, but it was human. It waded towards him, and Valentine could see that it was holding something.

Parabella cautiously approached him with a turtle in her palms, and they both realized that neither was in any shape to commit murder. Instead, they talked about the reptile.

"Aren't they such beautiful creatures?" she asked.

"Yea, my nephew has one for a pet. Does your family have any pets?" questioned Valentine.

Parabella's face lit up, "Shale and I were thinking about getting a puppy, but we haven't decided if it would be a good idea. My father has one, though. His name is Bruno."

"What breed is he?"

"We're not quite sure, but it would be almost impossible to find out now. The dog's from an old pet store in District Nine."