Day Three: Morning

[Zangya]

The pleasurable burn of the wine as it slipped down her throat felt as if it would heal all of her wounds. Zangya, the Ader whose beautiful body, over the course of this competition, had become bruised, bloody, and broken, sat idly in the middle of an orchard, resting on a crate of wine she had found. The drink had aged, but as wine always does, it only tasted better as a veteran of life than as a newborn gratification.

The scene that surrounded her was serene; this orchard, placed strategically in the middle of a forest, was filled with freshly grown grape vines, and the tiny violet and emerald colored orbs hung off of their vines proudly, having just turned ripe enough to be picked. They taunted Zangya with their undisturbed appearance, seeming like one of the few things that had remained in a perfect state of tranquility throughout the carnage that constantly surrounded them.

She drank the intoxicating potion straight from the glass bottle it had been poured into, not caring enough to find some other way. It seemed overdramatic, perhaps, but Zangya did not care—she did not have the focus to find something else, and so, she drank it savagely like she had always done, and when the bottle had been fully emptied, she sat the hourglass figure down next to her and reached into the crate, hoping to find another blessing of bliss like the previous bottle had given her. She could find no more bottles, though; the one she had emptied so quickly had been the last that could be found in the orchard.

She struggled up, and stood with the empty wine bottle in her hands. She took it along with her through the forest, exiting the orchard briefly as she returned to the banks of a river she had found such a short time ago. She sat down next to the river’s shore, and tossed in the empty glass shell, letting it land gracefully in the raging river. The vase was carried down the river roughly, and Zangya watched as it soon disappeared from sight.

She took her shoes off and sat them on the ground beside her, then dipping her now bare toes into the river’s coarse waves. The water felt cool, and crystalline; quite the opposite of the burning hot weather that accompanied the sun as it rose into the sky this quaint morning. Her shoes were quickly joined by other apparel, and the Ader’s wounds suddenly felt the coolness of the water as it cleaned her soul.

Once her bathing expedition was finished, she put on her clothes once more and traveled back to the orchard, getting her survival bag and her collection of ninja stars. She squeezed just a bit of the grape juice from the grapes into her once empty vial of poison, and put the cork back on it. She would have something else to drink besides water—it was good for her, yes, but it was rather boring drink. The girl took her feet out of the place, and began to follow the raging river. She walked along its shores for miles, traveling endlessly, as it seemed; her path never found an ending. The forest canopy continued to shield her from sunlight as it hadn’t in the orchard (which had been placed in a clearing, of course) and the spray of the river often found its way to her as well.

As she walked, her eyes closed, and she entered a state of perpetual meditation. Dante had been tamed—at least, to her, it had—and she was its mistress. It was caring for her, soothing her… it was protecting her.