Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 1 ♢ When Time Stands Still (KE)

THE HANGING TREE GAMES: REVISITED - TASK ONE

Kassia had never been uncomfortable in unfamiliar terrain. She knew other kids, other girls, who had taken to sleeping over at a friends house when things weren't exactly ideal in their own home, and then woken the next morning and gone to school with a kink in the neck and a bit of exhaustion smeared on the lip. They'd talk of how they hadn't gotten a great night's sleep, of how they just couldn't drift off clustered in foreign temperatures and smells, a choking humidity and lingering smell of supper's boiled carrots in the air that just kept them blinking.

Now, Miss Ejleaf had never been one for staying in others homes - she had no issue with her own, and would hate to impose even if invited - but that had no effect on how she reacted to this new place, this new bed of fresh linens and a bunchy comforter that scratched her skin in all the good ways. Crisp. Comfortable. Completely fine. Sure, the ground rattled a bit beneath her, but that was the nature of trains, and she wouldn't blame a contraption for its own manner of tugging and pulling. Maybe it'd become a mantra. The lulling sort.

She snuggled down further, the bareness of her legs kicking into the cold spots of the bed, the spots that felt nicest in the summer heat. It was about the eighth time she'd done so that night; things were comfortable, yes, but sleep did not come as easily as she'd anticipated. Even with the blanket pulled up around her chin, the thoughts whirring up top didn't think to take their conversations elsewhere.

In fact, they talked so rapidly that, after a time, one topic would become lost in the hubbub, and another one would spring up entirely, and again and again and again like that until there really weren't any words to these conversations, just a gentle hum of dying activity as the after-hour workers finally packed up and headed out.

Kassia drifted off. The thoughts locked up and went home.

But the lights in the building remained on.

And, damn, did they illuminate her. She suspected it might've been some trick of vanity that led her to see herself perched up on some far-off hill, glistening silver with little patches of armor clasped tight to her shoulders, her chest, her abdomen. The setting was undeniable. Nobody ever saw such an expanse of rolling hills in day-to-day district life. The grass was too faded and alive at the same time to be anything very natural; the mud was too light and too heavy to be the the simple result of mixing dirt and rain. And she, on too great of an advantage point for it to be real. It was an arena. Hers. Mine.

Lip twitch finger itch

It was a dream. Logic said so; a scattering of only three existed in the valley below, so it must've been late in the battle, but her hair had not an inkling of grease or any tangle so far as she could tell. Her face, not a smudge of sharp black around the eyes. Too attractable to be legitimate.

Like most boys and girls from One.

A slight bitterness crinkled up Kassia's nose, and in this scrunching she moved quickly, twisting her arms around herself to unhinge the bow from her shoulder and wriggle free an arrow from the quiver. All of this was observed by herself in the third person, however; there was no way for her to tell what she saw through her own eyes, just these floating, disembodied ones. That'd be awfully odd to see on any occasion, wouldn't it? If she could've, she would've laughed.

The strict nature of her palpable face kept it at bay. Kassia always got this way when she was ready to loose an arrow - she would know that better than anyone, all things considered - but at whom, she as an observer couldn't guess. The blackened figures down below were all too far to hit. What was she thinking, huh?