"Some dead ass shit thinkin' they gonna get in my way, ain't no way I doin' this, I just wanna kill some fuckin' bitches an' they won't let me? No no no," Sepia growled to herself. Her voice was gravel against a sea of smooth lettuce and she tore holes inside of it all. It seemed that people had this notion that she was playing around. The gamemakers themselves weren't taking things seriously. "I don't have time for this."

A parch was her throat and her throat was definitely parched. Rough, the gravel had transported from her words to her body. From the outside in it went, traveling, weaving throughout Sepia until it had found the sensitive underskin of muscle that connected to her throat bones. Unlike the other tributes, who held their insides on their bodies and ran around with tears streaming over their face like sensitive babies, Sepia was tough and didn't let things get inside her. The rough was a minor setback and she coughed until it became a major one.

"Shit," she croaked. Croaked was not truly what she thought, however, as that was a cuss so deep not even she could bear it. It was as though she suddenly breathed in liquid death in the form of solid fire that scorched and left trials of pain upon her. Like waves from the sun it burnt her throat. Mentally, she could pictures thick black lines running down the sides of her throat and her body becoming shriveled and useless.

Useless. The word always used to describe others but never the most important one. Sepia was the main character of her story-she was the god of her life. Nothing beat her. No one beat her. She was tough and the world knew it.

That's why instead of crying and bemoaning her life the way the stupid children around her did, Sepia did her job and she began walking through the maze before her. Walking not running, for running didn't come until it did. Unlike the inside, her legs were tough and hardened. Her body was used to no food but water had always been plentiful before. It was dirty, it was nasty, it was spit in and thrown upon the ground for the crops, but she always took it gleefully. Sepia was a smart girl. She didn't make a fool of herself for forgetting to find such an essential item.

Don't show it, dumbass. Godfuckingfuck. Shithellfire rain down on me and shoot me up a carrots ass if they think I'm gonna be weak for a goddamn camera! Sepia shook her head and cursed, wanting to spit down at the ground like she normally did but finding that no saliva would come from her tongue or mouth.

She was a desert of a girl living in a dying arena with dying children all crying about their inability to survive and the fact that they will never be good enough no matter what they do. Healing was all they ever did because they were broken, stupid people who cared too much about others. The other tributes were failures. Yet they were alive the same as she. It was irritating, it was stupid, and Sepia had to deal with that every second that she didn't win. Another day would pass and it was as though she held no effect on anyone or anything. A desert with no people and no effect, that's all she was. Dry land that scarcely held a living soul and had pretty flowers from the few plants brave enough to live upon the plain of sand and dune.

Don't show it, batshit coward.

A world of incomprehensibility, that was all she could ever be. A discordant, fickle, inappropriate, conflicting, rash, self-centered, skirmish-wanna-be-crab of a woman that didn't quite add up. Her words and her being were not whole. Her desires and her actions never matched. Words mushed together and sentences half formed. Mismatched taste and hard labor. Muscle and beauty. Sepia was just like the rest of them, that she knew deep inside, yet she hid it well. Their emotions made them weak but despite any front she put up, and despite her unwillingness to deceive or lie to others, Sepia was a weak girl in a tough body.

Don't fucking look scared. Keep moving.

Sepia was a fling of a personality who strung herself out like a cheap whore ready to be taken in by an over-paid Peacemaker with too much time on their hands.

Don't.

Pain rushed up her leg in the form of shock-electric and fast, like something a taser would do. Immediately she turned, looking through the rows upon rows of trees that once bore life and now were shrewd in comparison, but not a soul was in sight. Bending down, she lightly touched it with the hand that didn't hold her knife and winced. Rightie wasn't working right, which was that one funny word that meant something was doing what it was supposed to. You ain't be playing that. Go-get back to work! You right so why you not being right? Huh?

"Shit." The words left her mouth as it contorted in pain. Flinching, she tried to figure out what made the pain start and how to get it to end without crying. Pain rose to her eyes too, though, and a hiss escaped her mouth as she slid onto her butt and pressed into the tender skin of her leg. Cold brown touched her skin and she melted into it-two contrasting shades of equal beauty. Even the few blades of grass were dead. Like she, the parch had invaded into them and made them weak.

Sepia was becoming weak. The arena forced itself upon her too. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck. It wound inside her leg and the tension pooled in the area like a knife had been inserted. It wasn't red, there wasn't any sort of mark, it was just pure pain that flooded her leg. Right was no longer right. Her mind swirled as the pain circulated and blood continued to flow through her body as though no wrong was being committed.

With a burst she stood, standing in vertigo as her body swirled, and then ran forward. Pain became nothing. Running stole her skin away and rinsed her anew. In the noon light she became whole, running, moving, breathing until it ended in a short burst. Before her was a meadow that once was alive. Like she the parch had taken over the land. Lines of black dug into the ground and she longer to throw off her boots and dig her toes into it. Pain reminded her that it was only a dream.

A dream with a shack and a tree, burnt out as though lightning had struck it. A dream with a woman, yet not in Sepia's way. The woman was far enough not to bother her if she went to the shack, which gleamed as though a loving god had reached his hand to it.

Lines became darkness and Sepia welcomed it as it soaked through her throat and trailed into her body. The woman could see the darkness. She laughed and it became a sob, her voice sharp and clear despite being several yards away.

It's got to have water in it, she thought. Water meant life. It was an end to the death that had scorched her. It was a cure.

Sepia would welcome death if that itself was the cure. If she ran she'd reach it soon. Run to the water like it's Mama. Run, run, and never look back. Don't be thinking none, won't be good, just go. Go and find me some water in a barren meadow. Ignore the weirdness, ignore the sheer.

Mama used to tell her that. Her soft, calm voice restrained the lines and the pain. It soothed all ailments and made even the bad good, turning her salvation from unobtainable to in her arms. Mama was there with each stride. She pushed on Sepia's legs and tugged at her heart, forcing all things to come to a peace. Ending all but the day, as Mama would say.

Sepia longed for voices. The quiet was stupid and yet she understood why the weak tributes valued it. Sound existed only in dead crunching under her boots, the rhythm of her stomping, and the cries of a woman who had long past annoyance. In her was the ability to stir unruliness and wrong. In her was a cuss easy enough to be shouted but deep enough to be felt and Sepia could feel the woman's cuss. It was something dark and deep inside her cries, a want to outreach pain bit nothing to rid it on. Shivering, Sepia ignored the chills rushing down her spine and focused on reaching the shack. It was soon and never soon enough.

"It wrong to kill a child but this grown woman mourning the dead or stupid shit like a babe an I ain't taking' it," Sepia muttered. Her thoughts left her head and entered the parch of a world in pain. A croak was she and she was it, living together yet worlds apart. Out in the open she became real. Thinking was gonna drive her insane but she was good 'nough to put an end to that nonsense.

"Ain't having that, no no, if she gets louder I'll slice her open like Wichy and let the ground soak it in," she said. The dry coated her like soup and molded her bones into potatoes. Lumpy, scarce of water, and holding very few meat but the majority of meals consisted of it. Sepia was always told she'd become her meal if she ate it fast enough and yet there she was, starving, dehydrated, and a potato soup.

A wail caught the air and rode the rift of wind like a bullet hurling it her brain. A hiss of air cut the sky and brought down the shivering heavens onto the barren and the dead, leaving Sepia frozen as her head spin to the source of noise.

The woman opened her mouth and the sound emerged once more after not even a second of dormancy. Like seeds, they shot from her mouth and ran up the sky, beanstalks of death and cornrows of hatred and pure grief. Sepia trembled. Her legs wobbled as the woman screamed a sob so deep it shook the arena. Fuck! Everyone's gonna be headed this way because of this bitch!

As it died out and became a pattern of cries the woman shook her head and became a blur of motion. Sepia had no time to think, no time to feel. One second she was upright and the next a woman was barreling down upon her and hitting the bone of her collar with a large plastic spoon-like thing. A cry of Sepia came then and she used the pain to propel herself forward and push the woman off.

"Shitdogs, stay off me, bitch!"

"You killed him," the woman screamed. The blue of her eyes was wild and mimicked the morning sky. Clouds passed in her eyes and in the white pools were lines of red that were thin and exposed to open air. Rage was she as the plastic object slammed back down, cracking something like lightning as it went. "You killed him! It was you and you killed him!"

"What the skunks ass?"

Sepia barely twisted enough to avoid the next slam. Red pain coursed through her body in eighth shades to give the sun envy. Red that, like the arena, would turn brown and dull in time. Red that, like Sepia, could only last so long. Under her the ground shook again and she sunk into it, hitting a hole in her desperate scramble away.

Mousy brown hair caught in the bubbling foam that rolled down old lips and wrinkled skin. "I hate you," she hissed.

"I don't," Sepia grunted as the woman grabbed her hand with enough strength to snap a neck, "fucking care!"

Water rose from the ground. A cure touched her back and Sepia gasped as the coldness struck her. Along with it came another hit from plastic--this one bruising her left girl. Sepia screamed.

"No no, bitch!" Her words came with force and the force pushed the woman off. Sitting up, and fighting the light suction the cure held, Sepia glared daggers at the woman. Her knife was a foot away but she didn't need it. Anyone stupid enough to hit Sepia's pride and joy deserved whatever hell they got and her fingers were itching to find just how deep the hell was buried inside the crier.

Tears streamed the woman in black, tears staining her clothes, but tears were weak. Sepia forwent her cure to help the woman no longer be weak. In death, all was gone.

Sepia wanted her gone.

The ground was her enemy as it squished under her, each movement drawing more water to the surface. With it rose the smell of sewer but it was still a cure. Death stunk worse. Afta I kill her I'll drink up and leave, she thought. Thoughts were the only thing not against her. Every step was a grunt and every grunt sent lines spiraling down her deeper and deeper. She could scarcely breathe and yet she continued, walking through the sludge to a woman standing up right and sobbing as though she weren't about to die.

A groan rose as something caught her foot, warmth flooding the boot as water soaked it dry. The socks were wet and water pooled in the spot where her toe should've been. The cure was trapping her. It sucked her into the ground, pulling at her, yet it wasn't water that she felt clasp onto her ankle. "Fuckbeards," she whispered, looking down at herself. Sepia lacked the strength to fight. To pull herself away.

Bile bubbled inside her stomach. A hand of bone and flesh rotted as it held on, white putrid skin that popped with dead pus into the cure. The dead had come to steal her and she froze at the sight of them, her body lost. She'd seen dead, and lots of it, but never like that.

A scream tried to rise from her throat but it was pathetic and small. It was a bird and she was a lion. Sepia became weak, useless, stoic in the face of death as it pulled her in close and held her there. Hands upon hands reached up, breaking open the earth as she fell, allowing them. No emotions pained her mind and no thoughts or words could form. Death had come even after she'd evaded it's grasp.

Just as sudden as her acceptance came did it end. Kicking, Sepia opened her mouth and screamed, lungs burning as the parch overcame her and stole the remaining life. Hands flinging, she pried at a set of hands only to pull up arms that continuously dug into her flesh and took hold. Harder and harder she dug, screaming, shouting, and yet there was no escape. It was fushnutam, come to take her. It was the tributes of past reaching out and taking her to the pits of an arena long lost. Summers and summers worth of hands took her down and as the water passed into her open lips and dribbled down she laughed, a final bit of dying humor as the dark overcame her.

The only cure for Sepia came in the form of black death and dark that she surrendered her soul to.

All flying fucks fall...