Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 3 ♢ The Miser (KE)

THE HANGING TREE GAMES: REVISITED - TASK THREE

Kassia had never minded cloudy days. Back in One, it was always a little too cloudy for anyone's liking, a little too chilly (the sort that dug deep into the skin and burrowed down into the bones) to find being outside when it wasn't necessary tasteful. It was when the sun came out that everyone found cause for celebration, the schoolgirls done up in their best knee-dresses and the guys wrestling each other onto pebbled ground (and then they'd rise, wiping their brows and talking shit and picking pesky rocks out of their skin all the same).

But when the sun came out, Kassia just sat on her little bench and when the clouds came back she just sat on her little bench and if it started drizzling she'd just sit on her little bench until her dad would peek his head out the door and prod her shoulder and tell her it was time to come in, darling.

So no, when the clouds strung themselves up across a five o'clock sun, Kassia was not the one in her pack to get those strange inklings of panic over pneumonia or a great big flood. The sun still shone, the pavement was still hot. It would be back. While the rest walked and fussed over the fact that Cressida wouldn't be back, Kassia stared at her clouds. It'll be back. And if it rains, it rains.

"Kassia? Did you hear us?" This came from Aeneas. His brows were tight, crinkling his forehead as he looked at her.

She looked to him, shoulders perking to attention. "Hurh?"

Aeneas continued to look at her in that wondering sort of way before looking back at the street they walked. "Cress was in charge of getting all the food and water before she kicked it. Now, though you won't have to deal with her quenching her thirst on me anymore, there's a whole new issue with the actual thirst deal. Do you follow?"

Kassia rolled her eyes. "I'm blonde. Not deaf. I follow."

Aeneas huffed to begin speaking again, but Brannon cut him off just as he inhaled everything. "We need to split up. Scavenge. Find what we can in any of these buildings. Oh, and if you find any pineapple slices, I'm sure Symon'd like those."

"Noted and duly noted," Kassia replied, bouncing on the balls of her feet before moving to catch up. "Ah, but uh, I don't think any of us should go alone? What with everybody out to kill us and everything. Ya know?"

She meant to say more, to raise her chin and start declaring a game-plan, but Aeneas was too quick. Probably vengeance on Brannon. "I say Kassia and I branch off into the suburbs." He winked. "Brannon should take the smalls through the offices. Someone for the high places and two for the low, yeah?"

Though Brannon seemed a little uneasy at the prospect of being in charge of the kids again, they seemed like they could handle it, so Kassia shouldered an empty bag and shook her hair out to rebraid it, already turning down a lane into the suburbs. "Sounds good to me. Coming, Annie?"

"I regret this decision already," he said, touched with laughter as he moved to keep pace.

***

The sun was situated lower in the sky by the time they'd made it waist-deep into the suburbs, and the rainclouds that'd made her various partners' shoulders tense up had thinned, even brightened up yellow underneath. It was rather peaceful, Kassia thought, though the cracks in the street were more shadowed. It was common for the both of them to branch off a few feet from one another for the sake of taking extra care.

It was only when the rattling of a mesh fence sounded to her right that she noticed just how far Aeneas had gone; his fingers hooked through the metal and he hauled his entire self up with one nice pull. "What's the matter?" Aeneas called. "You gonna hop the fence or what?"