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thetrashqueeeen · 3 months

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Effie was rescued from the Capitol prison at the exact moment Haymitch vomited into a metal basin and wished for a drink. They didn’t recognise her, so they scooped her unconscious body up, assuming she was a victor they didn’t know well. She was entirely boneless and floppy in the soldiers arms, and he wasn’t careful. As he carried her back onto the aircraft, her head smacked painfully into a doorframe, rousing her as he deposited her onto a gurney. The grey metal around her made her think she was in an interrogation room. Interrogations hurt. Nobody even bothered asking her questions anymore, they just hurt her over and over. She curled into the smallest ball she could and tucked her head into the space above her knees. She spent the flight back to 13 waiting for the pain to start. Her nose had started bleeding when her head had connected with the door, and the wet, metallic taste of blood enveloped her.

When they got there, they had to wheel her into the hospital wing. Her position had relaxed slightly, her arms looped loosely around her drawn up knees as she lay on her side. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew whatever they were doing didn’t hurt right now. When the bed stopped, doctors and nurses came in to check her over, leaning down to look into her wide, unblinking eyes. She was almost entirely catatonic as far as they could tell, and nobody knew who she was.

Prim walked into the room, looking over at the poor soul on the bed. She was emaciated and dirty, cuts and bruises all over her skin. Her hair was nothing more than a dirty matted clump on her head and she was curled into a loose ball on her side. She was completely still and Prim paused for a moment to watch the gentle expansion of her back, making sure she was breathing.

“We need to get this one down to psych” the doctor said to Prim in an offhand manner, referencing the mental facility far underground

“It looks like she needs us” Prim couldn’t help but say

“She’s completely unresponsive” the doctor replied in a clipped tone

“Have you tried talking to her?”

“I have a medical wing full of people happy to engage with treatment, I don’t have time to coddle someone into it”

Prim walked over and rested one hand on the woman’s arm, and reached the other one to the bed control. She didn’t look at her as she said she was going to raise the bed and she needed her to sit up so they could give her medical care. Effie complied with the voice that pulled a faint string in her mind. She didn’t know how long she had been in that place, but her life before had a dream-like quality now, like it never happened. She had buried her name deep inside herself when time became either her screams or someone else’s. As she sat up, she glanced at the girl with the voice and the name ‘Prim’ slotted into her head. Prim didn’t recognise her at first, startled by the sight of fresh blood dripping out of her nose and crusting onto her chin.

“She’s not crazy, she’s just scared” Prim asserted, shocked by her own boldness.

Now the woman was sat up, Prim began to do a quick primary survey to see if there was anything critical they needed to prioritise, thankful to find nothing. It was when she picked up some wet gauze to clean her bloodied face that she recognised her. Prim looked finally into the bright blue eyes on the thin, dirty face of the woman before her and immediately knew it was Effie.

“Oh my god, Effie” she said without realising, horrified at the state she was in

“Trinket?” The guard by the door grunted in question “she’s an escort?” He finished, taking a menacing step forward as he reached for his gun

Most people would have let the soldier take her, but Primrose Everdeen wasn’t most people. Effie might have called her name that fateful reaping day, but she had also fussed over her every moment since. Effie had brought toys for her cat and ribbons for her hair. She had slipped her chocolates when nobody was looking and listened enraptured to her little girl stories and dreams. Effie had encouraged her to be a healer. She wasn’t letting them anywhere near her.

“She’s on the list” she said lowly and sharply, spinning around to face him “if you’ve got a problem take it up with the mockingjay” she wasn’t sure if Katniss actually had put Effie on the list, but she hoped it wouldn’t get back to her before she could brief her.

The soldier looked at her with reproach and then left the room, presumably to search out a commander to advise. She turned back to Effie and picked her gauze back up, gently holding the bottom of her face with one hand, while she dabbed the blood off with the other. She didn’t say much as she worked, but as she finished, she kept Effie’s face cupped in her hand a moment longer than she needed to

“You’re safe here. I promise.”

The next few hours passed in a flurry of medical testing. They took X-Rays of her bones and scans of her head. She was placed on a weighing scale and measured all over and then put in another machine that decided how malnourished she was. She wondered if the scans saw the snakes that now writhed in her skull, or if the scale included the weight of her screams or not. She wondered if her own or other peoples screams were heavier. Her nose began to ache and she shivered in the thin grey hospital gown someone had manhandled her into. She felt very glad to be deposited back onto her bed and told to stay there. She hadn’t spoken a single word. It was far too soon when Prim came back in, the mean doctor from earlier trailing behind her.

“She’s got several healed fractures and her left arm has an active break in both the ulna and the radius” Prim began, shocking Effie. Her arm didn’t hurt that much at all, how could it be broken?

“She has a mild case of pneumonia from the cold, but her white count is very elevated so that’s probably not the only infection she has” Effie thought of the coughs she heard from other cells. They were so loud and hacking that she sometimes prayed they would die quickly.

“There’s evidence of several previous concussions, but the MRI showed no long term damage” she remembered the sound of her head bouncing off the floor of her cell as they threw her prone body back in after interrogations

“She’s also extremely malnourished and dehydrated and…” Prim paused slightly “we think she might have fleas or lice maybe” Effie closes her eyes with shame.

“What’s your course of treatment?” The doctor asked Prim

“Well we need to get her clean, and then we need to get her on fluids with electrolytes and broad spectrum antibiotics. Then she needs a cast on her arm and a standard refeeding ration”

“And shave that head” the doctor added, gesturing towards Effie “it’s a lice haven in there”

Effie had swallowed her words long ago. She had bitten them, chewed them and dragged them down her own throat like broken glass. She would scream like everyone else, she would scream up her ruined throat with every crack of searing pain that sizzled on her skin, but she did not talk. The first guard that had stalked up to her in her cell, that she had been stupid enough to try and convince to let her go, that covered her mouth as he did unspeakable things to her, he had been the last person to hear a word from her mouth. But this doctor, who listened without compassion to the list of ways her body failed, and then thought it ok to shave her head, made her brave. The words had tripped out of her mouth without her even realising. She heard them like they had come from someone else

“Please don’t take my hair” she startled at the sound of her own voice “I just need a comb and conditioner, I can fix it” it was like the words were a river, bubbling up inside her and flowing out without her permission “just please don’t shave my head”

She saw the doctor look at her reproachfully, a battered women with matchstick arms, one of which was broken apparently, who had only managed one stuttering sentence since she’d been here. It wasn’t looking good.

“I’ll do it” Prim said quietly, as the woman drew breath to say no “she needs a bath anyway, I might as well try. If I can’t I’ll shave it myself, I promise” she finished, her voice taking on a pleading tone.

“Fine” the doctor said with exasperation “it’s not like we have an entire wing of patients needing treatment” she muttered as she left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Prim went into the small ensuite and ran the bath as hot as she could, pouring copious amounts of carbolic soap into the water until it turned cloudy pink. Once the bath was full she went back to the main room, expecting Effie to need help. She was shocked to find her perched on the edge of the bed already, waiting for her to return. When she got close enough, Effie reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly as she gave her a grateful look. Prim squeezed her hand back and then let go as Effie got down and began to hobble towards the door. As they stood next to the bath, Effie shakily untied her gown and dropped it. The person who had manhandled her into it had given her a soft pair of boy shorts and a sports bra first, which she now found herself thankful for. When the gown dropped away from her, Prim had to stop herself gasping. She could see every single one of Effie’s vertebrae stacked one on top of the other like marbles. Even through the dirt, her bruises were dark.

“You can keep your underwear on if you like” she said gently, noticing Effie was stock still and shaking a little “you’ll get clean either way”

Effie didn’t say anything, but climbed into the gently steaming water, the heat leeching deep into her soul. God it had been so long since she’d been warm. Prim sluiced water over her head using a plastic cup and then handed her a sponge

“While I tackle your hair, why don’t you start cleaning the dirt off. The soap is antiseptic so all your cuts will get clean”

She began to lather conditioner into the mess as best she could and then started to prise it apart with a wide toothed comb, careful not to pull too hard.

“I didn’t realise you had so much hair under those wigs all these years” she said she she began to tease some of the length out. Effie had finished washing herself a long time ago by this point and her skin was lightly pink from scrubbing.

“Most people don’t” she replied quietly, still getting used to to the sound she made when she talked. She thought her voice might be hoarse from lack of use, but it sounded just the same as before. With every pull of the comb she was quietly excavating herself from the place she’d been buried.

“When I was small, I had little golden ringlets” she said, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on top of them. Prim shifted forwards slightly to compensate for this and stayed silent, allowing her to continue “I loved them so much, I used to sit for hours and comb through them in the mirror, watching them shine. When I was… I don’t know- maybe 5? My mother took me with her to the wig shop, I was so excited because she would usually shoo me away. When we got there, she held me down as the shop assistant shaved all my beautiful golden ringlets off. I screamed and screamed, thinking it was the worst thing that could ever happen” she paused briefly, the enormity of the awfulness that had befallen her swelling up in the room “and then, when it was over, I was given a wig that was just like my own hair. I cried and asked my mother why I had to wear a wig and she told me the wig was shiner, bouncier, better than my own hair. From then on my hair was shaved by my mother once a fortnight until I moved out. When I went, I didn’t mean to let it grow, but I was so busy that it kind of got away from me. One morning, I stood at the bathroom mirror with a razor, ready to do it, and I remembered those little golden ringlets on the floor of the wig shop. I couldn’t do it after that. I pinned it under my wig cap, and then when it got even longer I learned to braid and would wind them around and around to keep them out of sight” she finished.

Prim had managed to pull out the entire mess in the back of her hair and combed the lice out in the time Effie had been speaking. Her heart felt squeezed inside her chest as she listened to her, so desperately wanting to keep her hair and always having to hide it. No wonder it was the threat of a razor that made her talk

“We’re not supposed to do this” Prim said “but let’s put some more hot water in and wash your hair properly. I can do your back too”

She lathered a lot of shampoo into Effie’s hair and massaged it around on her scalp. It had been so long since someone had touched her like this. So delicately and kindly, like she was worthy of care. As Prim worked to eradicate all the dirt from her scalp, Effie wept silently. She didn’t know what she wept for, but tears didn’t stop tracking down her face until Prim had washed the shampoo out, done a second round, combed through conditioner and scrubbed the dirt off her back.

As she stood and removed herself from the bath, Prim went and fetched some soft, grey cotton pyjamas for her. After Effie had dried herself and dressed in her pyjamas, a man came and set a firm cast around the arm that was broken. In the other hand a canula was fitted and several bags hung- she assumed the fluids, electrolytes and antibiotics that were mentioned earlier. She battled her way through a disgusting trayful of mashed turnips so her body wouldn’t reject the food and then slept for a long, long time.

She came in and out of consciousness for a while, only rousing to use the toilet or eat her rations. The doctors became worried about her. She barely touched her paltry refeeding rations, and her appetite didn’t seem to be returning at all. When she was upped to a larger meal plan, she she would only eat half and then go straight back to sleep. On the eighth day, she woke and felt a small stirring of energy inside herself, so tiny she almost missed it, but there all the same. She stepped shakily out of bed and went into the bathroom. After she’d done her business, she turned to look at herself in the mirror. She had large hollows in her cheeks, and her eyes were still slightly sunken, but she didn’t actually look too bad. She showered herself and washed her face and then changed into the day clothes that had been sitting on her bedside table for a week. Her hair had dried into thick, glossy waves the colour of milk chocolate, but she’d never had it cut or styled, so it hung heavily around her face. She braided the two front sections and then pulled them away from her face and went to sit on her bead. When the nurse arrived with her very small portion of porridge, she quietly asked if she could have some more. As the nurse left to fulfil the request, she sighed deeply with relief.

It was a month later when Haymitch eventually surfaced from rehabilitation. She wasn’t fully weight restored, and her arm still had a cast, but the antibiotics had treated her infections well, and only the worst of the scrapes and bruises were still visible- tiny patches of ghostly yellow almost faded to nothing. She saw him first, but then again her hair made her look quite different, so she could forgive him looking straight past her. She had convinced the hairdresser in thirteen to cut thick, heavy bangs straight across her forehead, and her hair had ended up falling all the way to the bottom of her ribs in the end. It was her most defining feature by far, and he’d never seen it before. She called his name and saw the recognition dawn on his face after a second.

“Nice do, princess” he had mumbled gruffly, clearly trying his best to keep the upper hand

“Thank you, Haymitch” she replied with a clipped tone.

They stared at each other for a second and then broke into laughter. He reached down to hug her and she led him over to the table Katniss, Finnick, Annie and Prim were sat at. She laughed with them as she ate, and finally felt like it might turn out ok after all.

#the hunger games #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #hayffie #but only if you squint #Effie & Prim #I’m emphasising the ampersand #this is PLATONIC fellas #and if I see any of you making it romantic you’re going to time out #hurt comfort #primrose everdeen #thg series #thg

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chloeallenba3b · 7 years

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Василиса красивая

Vasilisa the Beautiful

Looking through my work, I felt that I had a selection of strong prints, however I feel that I’m a lot stronger now in my printmaking abilities than I was a few months ago. For the Degree Show, I want to be able to present a selection of prints that are as strong as I can achieve with a sense of refinement and clarity in my visual language.

It was quite difficult to decide what subject matter to approach with this set of prints, because I didn’t want to start an entirely new project that felt separate to what I’ve been working on this term, but neither did I want to over-work previously done images.

After some reflection, I established the themes/ideas I have explored within this term:

Based in the realms of literature/folklore

Ambiguity

Mystery

The Unknown

The Consumer/Predator

Innocence and Monstrousness

The curiosity and empathy of children

Gothic undertones

Contrasts

Natural/Supernatural

Character-centric / Female-centric

I decided to return to the character of Baba Yaga, who I explored at the start of BA3b in relation to the Ampersand project, but this time with the specific folktale in which she appears- Vasilisa the Beautiful. I felt that this had a backing of research, but also a new perspective and imagery to explore.

Text

[Translation of the text]

I contemplated integrating some of the text into the images, however I felt that the images were a lot more powerful on their own. I’m particularly fascinated by the folktale, because of its unfamiliarity. Although they are familiar ‘fairytale tropes’, there is something that feels more mysterious due to its origin in another culture. I wanted to try and communicate this sense of mystery and discovery in my prints by allowing the viewer to piece together some form of narrative based solely on the imagery. It’s not the original story that is significant, but rather the atmosphere and ambiguity. I’m particularly fascinated by the folktale, because of its unfamiliarity. Although they are familiar ‘fairytale tropes’, there is something that feels more mysterious due to its origin in another culture. I wanted to try and communicate this sense of mystery and discovery in my prints by allowing the viewer to piece together some form of narrative based solely on the imagery. It’s not the original story that is significant, but rather the atmosphere and ambiguity.

If I were to include text, I think that I would choose to use Russian, because it would provide a cultural context, but retain a sense of mystery for the majority of viewers.

Image

The above prints are primarily tests for my final prints, but I took great care to try and make them as perfect as possible. There are a few where I’ve made error, such as marks outside the print, thumb smudges, or in composition. Although, on the whole, I am really pleased with how they turned out. I think my improvement is clear from this set, in terms of the overall richness of the ink layer as well as the variety in tone to create more interesting depths through light and dark. I think the use of black ink really allows the contrasts to capture the eye and reveal the tiny details in the mark making. I also think that it emphasises a sense of atmosphere and the setting of a foreboding forest at night.

The narrative comes forth from the perspective of Vasilisa. Despite her name, I didn’t want the focus to be on her beauty. Beauty is subject to alteration, distortion and has so many implications. Instead, I wanted the focus to be on her venture into the dark woods. What she saw. Who she met. But most importantly, how she felt.

Presentation

They are all printed from the same plate onto Fabriano White Paper to allow for a consistency in size and print quality. Currently, they all have the same sized border, however I’m considering trimming them to a full bleed to allow for a greater sense of immersion.

Once I have decided this, I will have the measurements needed to be able to have a set of frames made at Norwich Frame Workshop on St Benedicts. I think that this will complete the images as a set and allow for a visually coherent display at graduation. The black ink will also look more cohesive besides my final book for The Wallpaper.

#resolution

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