You always took care of me, you taught me to be strong.

[justoutrunyou]

Who: Sandy, Effie, Mindy, Duck and then open to all!
What: The good news is your alive again, the bad news is...
Where: The Tribute Center
When: week 5 of arena 10
Warnings: Probably children being inappropriate. 

Whenever Sandy came back from the arena she usually stayed in bed for an hour or so after waking up.

Today she sat stark upright in her bed, because something was wrong.

Sandy's room was usually decorated in all sorts of graphic images she had painted on the walls and ceiling. It was her way of coping with the horrors of the arena. Sometimes she would paint over old horrors with new ones, or sometimes she would build upon the nightmares she had painted with something beautiful or whimsical.

But the walls today were white and clean and sanitized. They had a scent about them like paint remover and deodorizer as if someone had tried to cover up one smell with the other and the two scents were dueling to the death.

Frowning in irritation Sandy swung her legs out of bed and rose to her feet to pad over to the mirror and examine herself.

Same messy hair, same scrawny limbs. All the muscle and tone she'd built from training before the arena had been melted away, and all the signs of starvation were gone as well. She was for all intent and purposes a underdeveloped twelve year old girl trapped in an eleven year olds body. While she had been here for over a year now her body looked the same as it had on her first day in her first arena.

And so it was time to begin again. She could repaint the walls, she could rebuild the muscle. All she needed right now, all she wanted right now was to find Pruna and have their traditional after arena ice cream. Pruna could tell her what she thought about Sandy's actions in the arena and they could plot more ways to improve before the next arena.

The game was starting over again, and Sandy believed she could handle it.

She just needed to find Pruna.

 

Comments

[mannersmatter]

For a period of time, she hoped Pruna coming back was simply one of the dellusions she'd been dealing with.

When it was clear, when she was more lucid, that it wasn't, she felt a little part of her heart break. Especially knowing she had to tell Sandy. When the girl had died, she gathered up all she had to get up, and be ready to talk to her.

This was going to be hard enough without the worry she was dying.

"Sandy."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy gave a start when she heard Effie's voice and slowly turned around, cheeks bulging with cake and frosting on her lips and fingers. The guilt in her eyes was proof she knew she was caught. She waved sheepishly with the frosting covered fingers.

Swallowing hard she quickly nabbed a napkin and tried to clean herself up before Effie could admonish her.

[mannersmatter]

The image of that food sent her stomach lurching, and she had to grip the counter, taking a deep breath.

How could she eat that? Never mind that, given the right circumstances, cake was one of Effie's favorites.

She let out a soft huff as she felt her stomach settling finally, and decided to approach quickly. It was less tactful, but so was being ill all over Sandy.

"Sandy, honey...come here. It's ok."

[justoutrunyou]

No gentle guidance about the mess she was making? Well she did look a little green, maybe she was disgusted.

Setting the napkin aside Sandy slid from her seat and came over to Effie, gently embracing the woman in a relieved grip. "I'm sorry I died again." She mumbled into Effie's dress.

[mannersmatter]

"It's ok. Oh, it's ok."

Effie wrapped her arms around Sandy then, holding her so very tightly.

"It's...you didn't do anything wrong."

And now she was crying. She was making a mess of this whole thing.

[justoutrunyou]

The words were meant to be a comfort, and any other time they would be...but something didn't feel right about them. It felt like instead of believing the words deep in her heart...

...well it sounded like Effie was grasping at straws.

"I'll train harder this time. Pruna can teach me some more tricks probably and next time they'll never be able to touch me."

[mannersmatter]

Oh.

Oh, she lost it now.

Luckily, right now, tissues weren't hard to find, and Effie was able to press her face into one before the sob got too far out.

"Oh Sandy...Pruna didn't come back."

[justoutrunyou]

For a moment Sandy was sure she must have misheard.

She didn't feel anything different so clearly Effie must not have said what she thought she just said.

But as Sandy raised a suspicious eye brow she took in the expression on Effie's face and her heart sank.

It couldn't be...not Pruna.

"I...what?" Was all she could blurt out as she felt her heart suddenly start beating faster. There was a chill in her blood that was spreading out to all her limbs and suddenly she felt like her ears needed to pop from the pressure that was deafening all the sounds around them. The lights of the common room even seemed dimmer as all Sandy could focus on now was the normally flamboyant and encouraging mother figure she had grown so attached to.

She couldn't be gone. Not Pruna.

Before Effie would be forced to reiterate her sentence Sandy tore away from her scrambling for Pruna's room. At one point she tripped on the rug and pitched forward catching herself on her hands and launching ahead even on all fours.

When she reached the door she dragged herself standing by the door handle and flung it open with a loud BANG!

...

The room was empty.

None of Pruna's trinkets or toys.

None of Pruna's clothes.

Not even her duck.

It was a blank room with clean sheets and sterilized walls.