#odairing

better yet.... both of them!

"this is where i learned to swim," it still feels like i'm not supposed to be out here. i'd never listened, never let the fence that is no longer there keep me out of my father's woods, but my ears still prick at any sound and my feet itch to move. i think about gale and eight hundred people crossing by here. maybe they ate katniss from the soft bed beneath the water and lingered in the skeletal remains of a house on the edge. the thought of him makes my chest ache, still. i think it always will. "my father taught me. when he taught me to hunt."

maybe it seems silly to finnick. everyone in what used to be district four knows how to swim, probably. but he would remember peeta's head slipping beneath the water in the arena; did my father know he would save my life when he taught me to swim here, his hands keeping my head above water while he showed me how to kick my legs to tread? i tuck my knees to my chest and rest my chin on them and only feel a little bad for not eating the food peeta sent us out with. eating out here reminds me too much of before, and then i miss it, and then i feel terrible for missing it. the world is better now, so why do i sometimes find myself longing for it?

the silence that follows for another few beats is terribly loud, punctured only by the slow tick of the kitchen clock as mike visibly struggles to understand what he is seeing. finnick stands before him, looking like something out of a horror show, coated in shades of crimson fading to rusted browns where it already appears to be drying, somehow sporting that too-sharp, almost giddy smile that somehow made the entire thing that much worse.

concern swallows shock almost at once as mike is shaken to himself, setting his mug on the counter in passing to look his friend over. he does not ask before he is lightly pushing finnick indicatively to turn, wordlessly searching for any offending signs of injury, cut, bullet or otherwise. the more he scans, however, the more the realization settles like an odd weight in his stomach, a sinking stone he is not quite sure how to name.

There was a time when Hauvomil believed some creatures too thoroughly evil - too stained by the corrupting force of this world - to be anything other than a target for destruction. As a Gnosi hunter he had sought to track down all the BAD THINGS and eliminate them by the blade of his scimitar, and he had not felt remorse for what he’d considered lesser, malicious creatures. But even in those days that now seem so long ago, he’d never considered the sort of arrangement that these humans have cooked up, trapping the thing behind bars, in shackles, and letting its miserable life  l i n g e r  on in fear and anger. It would have been beyond consideration to the man he had been then, and to the man he is now, traveled, wiser, rough edges smoothed by his experiences as a rock by waves, and returning each night not just to his camp but to the welcoming arms of his siren lover, it was an intolerable cruelty.

The creature’s owner shows him off to the traveling hero, grasping for the respect of a dragon-killer with his own monstrous prize, but all Hauvomil can think of is Cal in these chains, bitter and hateful and demeaned. This being (Is he also a siren, or some other denizen of the murky deep? No, the human calls him nymph.) seems dangerous, malevolent, but if he were allowed freedom, shown compassion, Hauvomil feels certain he could choose to be and to do good. Every creature can.

@odairing​   sent:    ❛   are   you   sure   you’re   okay?   you   still   look   a   little   woozy.   ❜

“   i’m   fine.   ”    that   force   field   was   .   .   .   he   still   doesn’t   know   how   he   survived.   sometimes,   he   feels   that   if   he’s   sat   for   too   long,   that   his   heart   will   stop   again.    “   i   suppose   that’s   what   happens   when   you   get   electrocuted   nearly   to   death.   i   think   i’ll   look   woozy   for   awhile.   ”

send 🔥, get an unformatted (and late) unpopular opinion

   “ you aren’t anything akin to those who seek adventure on their frail, pathetic boats. ”  a grin curled lips, showing a glimpse of the sharp teeth which were hidden moments before.  the god of these seas,  an endling.  “ what brought you here? ”

❝ I barely recognize myself. ❞

        “I know.  I know.”  Lip’s voice, stripped of their customer-service sultriness, is barely a whisper.  They run the washcloth under the tap again, waiting for the warmth to soak it through, then wipe the last of someone else’s makeup off Finnick’s jaw.  “There.”

        They wring the washcloth out and spread it out on the edge of the marble sink, their hands admirably steady as they smooth the wrinkles out of the stained terrycloth.  “Do you want me to stay tonight?”