thecapitol | so here's my hope, my tired soul. ( open )

She's been here for a day now, enough time to convince herself that this isn't some kind of awful dream. In a lot of ways, it's almost surreal. For one, she's clean for the first time in months - actually, truly clean. In part, thanks to the efforts of her prep team, who had tsked at the filthy and matted state of her when she'd been brought in.

So here she is, squeaky clean and sitting in the corner of the common area in front of one of the many television screens. Watching one of the programs that seem to run around the clock. This time, it's highlights from the last arena.

Beth's no stranger to violence. Her life has been full of it for the last two years, ever since the dead stopped staying dead. She's seen a lot of it. But this is a full highlight real of awful, grisly murder being narrated by people with chipper voices like some kind of sick sports event.

"I'm gonna be sick," she mumbles quietly, mostly to herself.

TRAINING CENTER RESTAURANT

They give her more food than she's ever seen in her life, and Beth looks down at it like it's an alien thing. Like it can't possibly be real. She's perched on the edge of the bar on a stool with a plate heaped high and for a moment, she doesn't make any move to eat it. Because even before everything went wrong, they never had food like this on a farm where they grew mostly everything they ate.

She sort of just looks at it, fork in hand, like she's in shock.

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"Yeah, it's way too complicated." Ruffnut agreed and came around to flop onto a chair near Beth's spot.

"I mean it's one thing to fight to the death and all that right? It's how a proud Viking wants to die! But then you get into all the lies and sneaking around and people not fighting fair. Fighting dirty is fine but there's a limit you know?" She sighed as if the whole thing were exhausting.

"But what really gets me is the stylists. Crazy ladies always plucking at me and painting me and making me look...pretty." She growled like that was a horrible offense.

"Have they ripped out all your body hair yet?" She added with a curious glance. "They had to strap me down the first time, I mean seriously who does that to a girl!? It hurt really great but now I'm all smooth like a baby or something."

She raises her eyebrows a little bit at vikings, because she might have only gotten to take sophomore history before the apocalypse started, but she knows that they're supposed to be ancient. Like, a thousand years before her time. Beth makes a mental note to ask her a little bit more about it later on.

"They did that, yeah. I mean...we used to shave back when everythin' was normal, I guess. But they take it way too seriously," it's really surprisingly hard to look good in the zombie apocalypse, and after a while you sort of just give up and let the dirt and the grime win out.

"WAY too seriously." Ruffnut agrees. "There's like a million little knobs in the shower and I still don't know what most of them do." Taking regular showers had been a new experience for Ruffnut as well but she had grown to like them better then baths so that was one upside she supposed.

"And I don't understand why they wear what they wear either. Some of it looks really hard to move in." And clothes were meant to be practical right?

Beth's the kind of girl who used to like pretty things, though. All those cute cotton dresses and cowboy boots, sitting there in the pews in their Sunday best every week, without fail. Not that any of that matters, and while she might mourn them from time to time, it's only because they represent a better time.

"But it's nice, isn't it? I missed bein' able to take showers. And I guess...the people here aren't used to doing much fightin', so being able to move ain't on the list of their priorities," which is sort of hard to believe, actually. It's still sinking in, that people somewhere are still able to live like this. Untouched by tragedy except when it graces their television screens.

Ruffnut had to think about it for a minute.

"Doesn't really bother me I guess. Getting dirty and smelly is just part of life." Though despite her preference towards being more rough and tumble she did bathe more then her brother which wasn't saying much.

"But the outfits are still dumb. All sparkles and glitter and stuff that's so thin...I mean I get it they don't have to worry about freezing to death here but it's just so...it's like barely wearing anything at all!"

In Berk typically you had to wear fur, leather and keep moving in the colder months or risk turning into a viking ice sculpture.

so here's my hope, my tired soul. ( open )

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