thearena | A kiss on the hand might be quite continental

Who| Terezi and Iskierka
What| Lonely dragon girl meets lonely dragon. Friendship???
Where| Deep in the jungle forest
When| Backdated to Week 5
Warnings/Notes| None? Will update if needed.

It's been days since she's run into another living person. Normally, that would be worrisome, but Terezi doesn't seem to care too much. She lost track of her partner a long time ago, and at this point there doesn't seem to be much reason to find him. She figures that it's getting to the point where they would have probably turned on one another anyway. Supplies are so scarce, and there can only be one victor, after all.

Still, wandering the jungle is lonely and miserable. Her face still hurts from the healing bruise on her cheek, and there's always those lizard creatures and other tributes to avoid. She's half hoping that she finds someone that she knows, and half hoping that she doesn't. The company would be welcome, but she doesn't know if there's anyone left who she can actually trust.

Maybe it won't matter, though. Between the bouts of chilling rain and humid heat, she doesn't know how much longer she can last. She was about ready to give up a few days ago when a gift unexpectedly dropped from the sky on a parachute. Enough food and water for two days, and a knife. The note--"THANK, I GUESS"--leaves little wonder as to who sent it. It was a relief, but nothing to be overly pleased about. He's alive. That's all it really means, and it doesn't stop the whole situation from weighing on her mind. She kept the rations and the weapon. The note was crumpled and discarded in the forest. A day later, another present came: some wire and another thank you. Once again, she kept the gift, leaving the note behind.

Now she sits in a tree in the thick of the forest, but near the ground for once. She's perpetually hungry from trying to ration out her supplies longer than they were meant to last, but it's not anything that she hasn't done before. There's still a bit left, though, and she picks at it as she keeps a lookout around her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The weather has not been particularly comfortable even for Iskierka. The heat, at least, she can manage. It's only of the advantages of being as naturally warm as she is. The rain on the other hand, has been downright miserable, and Iskierka is more than glad to see that it isn't currently raining. No one needs to be assaulted by a moving cloud of steam, whoever they might be.

Terezi isn't the only one to be almost constantly hungry either, and as much as she hasn't made a habit of it eat, Iskierka has started to seriously consider eating her fellow tributes. After all, if she's meant to kill them then surely the method behind their deaths doesn't matter so much. Besides, it would help deal with hunger, if nothing else.

She doesn't think to look up, and thus doesn't spot Terezi up in the trees, but she's hard to miss, being very distinctly not human-shaped and predominantly red to boot.

The dragon is indeed hard to miss. Terezi catches her scent, almost as soon as she emerges from the jungle foliage beneath her. She freezes in an instant, her eyes widening out of habit and disbelief. Even being in some strange location, it would be impossible for Terezi to not recognize a dragon.

Sudden memories come back to her from her first few weeks in Panem. There had been talk of a dragon in the arena back then, but that was something the Gamemakers had put there as a challenge. Considering it hadn't noticed her yet, she has to wonder if this creature was really sent to kill them. She briefly debates just letting it pass by, but her curiosity wins out in the end. At least if she ends up dead, it'll be a good way to go.

"Are you one of us or one of them?" she calls down warily, a little too conscious of the way that her legs dangle down from the branch.

Iskierka's heard the talk of the previous arena, although she hasn't been actively present to see it. It's just as well really. She would only have wanted to see it for herself. After all, it would tell her a lot about what to expect to of this world. But that is something that she can't really change. Besides, there are more important questions at hand just now, and she may as well answer them.

"Oh, I am hardly one of them. They've hardly made themselves at all tolerable."

After all, they can't even manage to bring Granby to her, and that makes her significantly less than inclined to care for their captors.

Oh! It does talk. Not in the way that the dragons that she knew did, but talking still concluded that it was sentient enough to communicate with, and that's all that Terezi really cares about.

"You're a tribute, then." That's a some relief, at least. One less thing in this forest bent on killing her--only marginally inclined to, like the rest of the tributes. She leans down, resting her elbows on her knees and sniffs at the creature. "Are you looking for something? Or someone?

That she certainly does. In fact, she's been able to ever since she first hatched and it's just as well really. It would have been ever so hard to communicate with her captain if she hadn't been able to. So she's glad enough for it, in a dim sort of way that doesn't register consciously because it's simply how things have always been.

Closer up, it isn't just red she smells of. There's green in there too - for her spots - and the black of her horns and spike. Mostly though, it's the red that wins out.

"Oh no. Not more than any other, I suppose. Were you looking?"

"Kind of hard to be looking for anything when you can't look in the first place." The joke at least pulls a bit of a smile to Terezi lips. It's more of a smile than she's had in days.

"But no, there's no one out there that I want to find right now." Not anymore, at least. She ponders this for a moment before picking apart her remaining food. She holds up a bit of it where the dragon can see. "It's not much, but do you want some? I can share."

Fortunately, Iskierka has heard mention being made of blindness. War never seems to be terribly easy on people, to the best of her ability to tell, and even if she can't imagine what it might be like to not see, she knows what it is. She even manages to not actually comment on it, mostly thanks to Terezi offering something else that is far more interesting.

"I should like that ever so much, yes."

"Here." She holds out the bit of meat she tore off, dangling it out over the dragon's head where she can see it, before letting it drop. "It's cooked, but that probably just means it's not going to kill you like everything else around here."

She pauses, waiting for the dragon to finish munching before asking: "Do you have a name?"

Cooked meat isn't really Iskierka's preference, but she's rather had to get used to it during the course of her stay in the Capitol. No one seems to serve meat any other way and mostly it's left her wishing that she could have a proper cow one of these days.

Still, she snaps the bit of meat out of midair with excellent precision. It's not much but even not much is better than anything at all.

"Whyever should I not? I am Iskierka."

Iskierka. Terezi grins a bit. It has a strange alien ring to it. Saying it feels like sharp edges on her tongue. "I like that. It's a good name for a dragon."

She wonders briefly if she might be able to come down lower. It's strange having a conversation when she's up in the tree and they're on the ground. "I'm Terezi Pyrope. You can just call me Terezi, though."

She pauses, still contemplating the distance. "You're not going to eat me if I come down, are you?"

"Of course it is," Iskierka answers, without the slightest concern about seeming to be immodest. "I chose it."

One of the advantages of being able to pick up on languages while in the shell and regardless of what it had originally been or meant, she'd liked the sound of it enough to decide that was her and she hadn't been at all inclined to ask that her captain give her a name.

"I do not see why I should want to eat you," she answers in a tone that seems to suggest she might have shrugged if she had the right sort of shoulders for it.

A kiss on the hand might be quite continental

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