The Word Keep

There is a difference between the executioner and the hunter. The former is about snuffing a life--orphaning children, stealing away loved ones, ending family lines, the outside-corrupted body wasted, the forbidden items left behind useless to the Wood. The cost of keeping the Wood safe is being left with that final gaze before death--despair, regret, desperation--and seeing a soul dim from lifeless eyes. It is kill or be killed, but each take haunts my every dream.

This need for survival is also present in the hunt, but there is a mutual understanding in it. My death would mean sustenance for an ecosystem, my body a contribution to the Word. My kill would mean sustenance for me, warmth in the hide, the use of bones and claws for tools. There is no hate in the eyes of the dying creatures of the Green Word, just acceptance, resignation into the circle of life. I can revel in my victory and enjoy my spoils in full belly and warm back, contributing to balance.

Time in the rainforest almost seemed to stop, the canopy ever lush, the flowers perpetually in bloom, and the only indication of change at all was when the sway of a sweet tropical breeze would entice moonlit mist, summon showers of rain, or yield to still air thick with heat. This was the breath and heart of the Green Word.

Fighting someone in the Wood had always been a private affair, almost intimate. Concealed in the canopy's shroud, a single, precise strike earns victory, the battle over before it begins. Blending into the backdrop of nature, ambush is king, a win decided by the rules of the Green Word. The prize is survival.

But in the Arcadion, stealth means little under the rules of the city. Numerous trees are replaced by numerous bodies in the stands, voices in a collective, feverish roar for blood, for spectacle, for the thrill of witnessing drawn-out violence that is taboo outside the stadium walls. A new fighting style is adopted to to show off, to titillate, clothing designed to draw attention to the body as the action unfolds.