(no subject)

[and_survive]

She'd been tracking the deer for an hour, and she didn't know why, exactly.

She must have had some idea this is what she meant to do when she found herself leaving the city that morning, because she'd stopped at her storage unit and collected her weapons, loading the backpack that now usually held school books with the tools of survival that had always sat beside her comics and her joke books.

Somehow, it sat better on her back like that. That was probably messed up.

But then, so was everything in this place. Messed up in how it was unmessed up, like someone had rolled back the clock on disaster. Made civilization come back. And Riley. Riley was back now, too, and Ellie... it wasn't accurate to say she didn't know how she felt. She felt everything, all at once, and that was the problem. She wanted to do nothing but be with Riley; she couldn't bear to be around Riley. She wanted nothing more than to talk endlessly with her, do everything in the city with her; she couldn't look at Riley without seeing everything that had happened, everything that Riley didn't know about.

It got so the noise in her head was as loud as the city and suddenly the city was driving her out of her mind, like the two noises were combining, and so she'd skipped school and came out... here. The countryside.

And it was better. It was quiet. It didn't seem to expect anything from her except that she be in it. She'd shot a rabbit, and tied it to her bag for lunch.

And then she'd found the deer tracks, and even though she didn't need the food, had no way of getting it back or doing anything with it if she brought it down, she'd stalked it through the forest, slowly and persistently following it. A glimpse here, a cautious step, a startle, another pursuit, until she had it fully in her sights, bow drawn taut.

She didn't fire. She stared at the deer until her arm ached with the strain of holding the bow at full draw, until there was no way she'd hit it anyway, she was shaking and wavering so. Hunting the deer had calmed her, but what would killing her do? Was this her now, killing when no killing needed to be done?

She relaxed the string without firing, and stood deliberately on a twig. "See you later, girl," she said, watching the deer startle and run and jump. Scared, but graceful, like being scared was the most natural thing in the world.

Probably it was.

She walked to a log by the stream the deer had been drinking from and sat down, bow across her knees, and watched the water go past.

Comments

[vocalfuel]

I still spend most of my time out here. If anyone were to ask me why, I'm not even sure I'd be able to tell them. The animals I kill, they're what we live on, but they wouldn't have to be if I didn't choose to hunt. It's not a necessity, not like it was in District 12. But then, it wasn't something I needed to do in Thirteen, either, and I still made sure they gave me time to go out. Maybe it's just that old habits die hard. I think better out here, anyway, where it's still and quiet and I'm finally in my element. These days, there's a lot of thinking I need to do. I'm more on edge than ever, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far, it hasn't yet, but I want to be ready when it does. That's one more reason to hunt, too. I need to keep those skills sharp.

Those skills are what have me alerted to the presence of someone else in the forest even before I see another person. Doing anything other than following, then, is out of the question. I don't want to shoot without knowing who it might be and what they're doing, but I don't want to just ignore them, either. I can't let my guard down that much.

When I spot Ellie, she's got an arrow aimed at a deer. I hold my breath as I watch her, expecting her to shoot, instinctively disappointed when she instead lets it go. Back home, that would have been out of the question. I guess I've never quite been able to stop thinking like that.

I wait until she's taken a seat, though, before I walk up to her, careful to make my presence known for once, twigs snapping beneath my boots. Reaching her side, I don't take a seat yet. I haven't ruled it out, though. There's something about her that I like, something she understands that most people here can't. "You had a clear shot," I say. "But you didn't take it."