thearena | Desert Arena: The little stone

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Desert Arena: The little stone

Who| Pierrette and Open!
What| Pierrette arrives to the arena
Where| Desert Arena
When| Middle of week one
Warnings/Notes| Not too much! As will be standard with Pierrette, there's always a risk of mentioned rape, murder and witchcraft.

Ma has not prepared me for this. Confusion warps her mind when Pierrette stumbles off of the strange pedestal into a large, dry expanse of sand and heat. She sways there for a moment, reeling from the physical and mental shock of her abrupt arrival, the skirt of the simple yet foreign dress she had been dressed in before her departure fluttering against her shins. Her mouth was dry, her hands sweating and clammy, the horizon tilting and her vision dancing with sunspots as she took a few short, skittering steps into the hot sands.

Kill or be killed. That was what she had been told. But then, was that not life? Work, struggle, pain, death. This was what she was fighting all along, and yet now she was in the thick of it. But here she was wandering alone. Ma had been there beside her, wearing her mother's face, but now the goddess was gone, having either forsaken her or left her to seek her answers on her own.

Here the goddess would not help her. Here she could not seek Anselm for his wisdom. She didn't even have Gilles, her father with his cowardly nature, jug of wine and his rusted sword.

Magpie fly, magpie chatter... She hummed, a pleasant buzzing settling like locusts at dusk. She swayed in place, arms falling out to her sides and she spun, dancing steps guiding her down the slope and into the distance. I am the magpie, here I fly, here I chatter, I'll follow the road, to where none matter....

Nothing mattered. Not here where the veil of years had been breached. Her only goal was to find what her goddess had sent her for. This was her test, to be forsaken and to prove herself. She was a masc, a child of Elen. Her's were not warrior's hands, but she had cursed the Castellan, had gathered the dying spirits and united them. Pierrette could survive, to push to live and to win, leaving the dust behind her to settle and let her mind sore back into Ma's arms. She would seek her lesson, and defy Satan and his trickery. I am a stone. I do not yield.

She dug her feet into the sand and sighed, head tilted to the sky as she spun.

Shelter, to start. She decided, humming as she danced down the ridge. Then scavenging for supplies. Food, water, weapons... flints if I can find them, sandstone is brittle but can be shaped into a knife. Well enough for a single blow and then a retreat...

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"You're new." Almost as if out of nowhere, a filthy-looking blond in what was once a pristine blue Alice dress, appears. Her face is half covered by what was the bottom part of the apron, to stop the dust.

She's bouncing a little on her toes, but other than that, shows no sign of trying to kill the new one.

"Cover your face." She thinks the reason is obvious, even if her phrasing might be unfortunately blunt.

Pierrette let herself spin one last time, coming to a slow halt as she turned to blink blearily at the newcomer. Tilting her head, the woman seemed to turn sideways.

"Well said." She agreed and stooping in the heat, she began tearing a section from the hem of her white dress, enough for form a head scarf to protect her head and face from the sun and dust. This was not Citharista with the shady groves and salty sea winds, nothing but dry and demanding dunes.

When she speaks a second time, it is with a serene tone, nearly conversational. "If you are here to kill me, then I must thank you first for your foresight. Rare is it for a murderer to take such care."

Parker only watches, as the woman takes her advice.

"Kill you? Eponine's been with me since we got here. Haven't killed her."

This brings about a thought, and she looks around. "She's around somewhere."

Expect her to randomly appear.

"Why'm I killing you?"

"Is that not why we have been summoned to this place?" It seemed logical, but then again, Pierrette was not especially looking forward to being killed, nor to taking a life herself. She dutifully wrapped her newly fashioned scarf around her hair, looking for all purposes like the old women who worked in the market selling their breads and legumes.

"Not that I want to be killed," she turned and swayed, stretching her arms high above her head to let her fingertips kiss the sunlight. Somewhere, Ma was watching her. She knew that what ever was to come, it was a test she had no choice but to pass. "Or to kill. But I must be ready for what Ma demands of me."

It seemed outside of the goddess's wheelhouse, but perhaps this was all just to prepare her for Satan's cruelty.

"It's why. I don't follow rules well." The smirk on her face carries over the a glint in her eye.

"Careful. Sponsors hate me, almost as much as I hate them. Don't share what they send. Told Eponine that." Parker's starting to get the hang of this place, in the way only Parker can: the opposite of what everyone wants.

Saying the name of the closest thing she has to a friend in this arena, has Parker looking again. "Someone else tags along with her. No killing them." She points at Pierrette, rather dramatically, in the way Sophie tells her to prove a point.

"And if Ma is Evil-Eva, don't listen to her. She likes watching us die, over and over."

"Ma is not evil." Pierrette stated this with the simple truth of someone stating observing the color of the sky. It was true. Ma was neither good nor evil, she simply was as she existed, but she was surely one of the most benevolent of the old gods. For a moment Pierrette was saddened, thinking of the grieved eyes of the horned god, Cernunnos as he withered under his bondage. "She is..." Grasping for a way to make the other woman understand, she looked about her, and stooped to cup a handful of warm sand. Holding it to the woman, she let the grains slip between her fingers. "She here. In everything. We are born unto her, and return to her in death."

Satisfied, she opened her palm and let the sand spill back to the desert floor.

"I will not kill until I am forced." She turned, considering. "But I will do as I must."

"Madame? Parker?" Soon enough, Eponine appeared in sight. In her hands, she had a bit of cacti that she had found, and remembering Mona's words, had bitten and scraped and torn until a bit fell away. Dressed in a dirty pantomime Aladdin outfit and thigh high heeled boots, she made a peculiar sight indeed.

But Eponine stopped short when she saw the other girl. "Madame - is she your friend? Will she - Who are you, Madame?" She addressed the last bit to Pierrette.

Pierrette tilted her head and considered the other girl as she approached, eyes wide and curious behind the makeshift scarf. "Pierrette." She stated simply, edging around the blonde woman to better see the newcomer. She hardly looked dangerous, but then again, neither did a a ladder snake until you reached Massalia. Then the viper stirred.

What little of the hem of her dress was left was now dirt trodden and soiled from her wandering, but Pierrette still grasped at it to hike it up, better for turning and spinning as she tilted her head back to follow the girls as she spun.

"Have you any more friends?" She asked in a murmur, coming to a slow stop. "Ma is watching. Perhaps we can pass this test together, to earn her favor."

"Parker!" She says it as if she's almost offended. "Just Parker! I'm not your damn anything, just Parker PAR-KER."

"And we might." She looks at Eponine. "Did we lose somebody?" There was that other girl. Names, Parker, not good.

Parker's likely more dangerous than any snake, if she put her mind to it. Her mind's not on that right now. Pierette now has her attention, well her skirt has Parker's attention. "Wearing anything under that?"

She has an idea.

"I'm sorry, Madame. Parker."

Eponine obediently corrects herself, but she can't help the tinge of annoyance in her voice as she adds, "It is a habit I have now. You must learn that it is just something I say. Madame Mona is... somewhere. There was one of the cactus she was telling me about, Madame. It is good for water. Since you will not drink mine, you must drink this instead."

She offers the bit of cactus to Parker, before focusing on Pierrette again.

"Ma, Madame? Who is Ma? Someone from the Capitol? Is she a Gamemaker? Is that why you want her favour? Will she send us things? It is nice that someone remembers you here."

She does add a snide look over at Parker when she says this. It feels nice to get something over someone else for a change; it makes her feel a little bit more superior.

Thane had not been doing anything of consequence so far, spending most of his time on the move or in shelter, avoiding others. He could have continued to do so, when he saw her coming from the distance, but to move again would mean to leave behind the slight shelter he had found sitting next to a rock, and she did not look like a threat.

Not yet, at least. He stood when she was not far from his slight shelter and bowed his head to her in acknowledgement, an alien wearing a costume straight out of 1800's France in a rather incongruent picture. "If you wish shelter from the sun, there is a little shade here." She was young, and heat could kill as surely as any blade.

Pierrette danced down the steppes, hearing little over the rustle of the dry winds and her own humming until the voice broke through the silence. She turned, a slow pirouette twirling her white gown until she laid eyes on the reptilian spectre, and then she merely swayed in place. "Shade..." she agreed, eyes squinted in the harsh light.

Oddly enough, it was his alien appearance that did away with her doubt and caution. She had come to learn that the strange creatures (like Guihen) and the frightening (Yan Oors) were where her true trust could lie. Humming, she made her way down towards the shelter, and once near enough to reach the shade she flopped to the ground, curling into the side of the large rock, accepting it's embrace.

She hummed, knees pulled near to her chest, hand close to a nearby stone she could grab and wield if need be. Tilting, she stared up at her host with a complacent curiosity. "You are no wraith, yet no sprite. How strange."

He returned to his seat when she sat down. The shade was minimal, but it was still better than the direct sun. He liked the dry heat though. That was good, something he appreciated a great deal. Breathing felt easier here, even if he knew that was only symptomatic and not really true.

"I am a Drell." Not that he expected the words to carry much meaning to her. They had not to anyone here except Shepard. "You are very trusting for a participant in the Arena."

"Drell." She confirmed, tongue lingering on the 'ell' as if tasting it. Not a creature she was familiar with, not from her wanderings in the forests or from the tomes of Anselm's library, but then again, she was sure there were a great many odd beings she had yet to meet. To assume otherwise was both ignorance and arrogance.

Pierrette studied him for a moment, starting at his large black eyes, shiny like beetle skin, and his scaled face. "I am not trusting of anyone. You may have killed me if you had liked, and yet you still may. But should you try, I will fight for my survival." She puled her knees tighter to her chest, one arm wrapped around her legs, the other still ready to grab the rock and smash his temple. "If I shall not survive, then it is as Ma has chosen."

She said the word like someone who was not sure what it meant, entirely, as he had thought. He did not know why he would wish for someone from his world to be here, but nevertheless sometimes he did.

A strange hope, and not a reasonable one. "I have no intention of trying to harm you." He said it certainly, trying to convey honesty with his look. It was difficult - he was not sure what humans read as honesty, always, and he was not accustomed to trying to persuade others of his trustworthiness. He rarely needed anyone to think of him as such. "Ma?" The word rested on his tongue much like Drell had on hers - unsure of the meaning, but knowing that it contained one.

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Desert Arena: The little stone

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