Tempers Flair((Open to anyone))

Huntley walked through the deserted allies as he clenched his hands into fists, he was full of anger. As he stopped in front of a tree he lost it and wound around and punch his fist at the tree. Huntley pulled his hand back and fell against the tree, his left hand was scratched up and bruised. Huntley and his mother had gotten in a heated argument over "grades" when he knew why she was lashing out at him, literally. She had gotten so mad that when he tried to explain his falling grades she threw a bowl at him. It left a large black and blue bruise on his left cheek.

Huntley sat against the tree and rubbed his throbbing cheek, Huntley felt a small paw on his scratched hand, he looked down and saw his ferret Fireball. He got him around three years ago as a gift from his mother, She found him hiding in a bag flour and nearly deep fried him, well she had deep fried his tale on many occasions. Huntley called him that cause his fur looked like fire in the sun and his eyes were a deep silver.

"So you saw that huh?" Huntley looked at his curious ferret as he licked at Huntley's hand then looked up at him and opened his mouth as if wanting to growl but didn't know how to "I'll take that as a yes." Fireball curled up in his arm and started to make a vibrating noise "Ok than, weird." Huntley tried to move his injured hand but had little luck, but after a minute he was able to move it "Well I'm screwed." Huntley looked up into the branches of the tree hoping to just escape from this unforgiving world.

Pfeiffer trotted down the street, the sun at her back. She felt good, happy even. Her older brother had been given his monthly wages yesterday, and, for the first time in weeks, they had had a meal that had not left them all still hungry. With the food had come a spark of hope, a reassurance that they could still make a go of it. And it had left Pfeiffer in an unusually good mood.

As she continued wandering aimlessly around, she was suddenly brought up short by the site of a boy... punching a tree. Weird. And now he was talking to a ferret. Weirder.
She sauntered over to him, eyebrows slightly raised. "Hey there, mister fists. Take it easy on the tree. Nice shiner." She added, leaned against the tree and absentmindedly scratched her chin. She glanced down at the ferret, which was an unusual shade of redish brown, curled in the crook of the boy's arm. "Is he... purring?" The ferret was making a strange humming/vibrating noise that was reminiscent of a cat's purr. She didn't know ferrets did that! But then again, she hardly new anything about ferrets in the first place.

She watched the boy carefully, keeping her expression relaxed but remaining alert. He obviously had a temper, but she doubted he'd do anything stupid. Anyway, she didn't want to provoke him. She was having a rare fit of -mild- friendliness.

Huntley glared at the girl his dark green eyes flaring with his raging temper, but when he saw her Huntley calmed his rage and smiled "Well, I just had a small burst of rage that I had been containing all day. You can laugh if you want." Huntley continued to rub his bruised cheek. Huntley looked up at her as she leaned against the tree "I'm Huntley, What's you're name?" It's been a while since Huntley has tried to make friends, and to be honest it hasn't really been that easy.

He saw that his ferret was act oddly, especially when she asked if it was purring "Oh yeah Fireball dose that when he wants to comfort someone, you can hold him if you want he doesn't bite." Fireball loved to make people feel better counting that he was raised by a cat, and Huntley was always there when Fireball was in his recovery stages.

She watched as the boy's facial expression changed dramatically from one of rage to a smile. A smile that didn't convince Pfeiffer in the slightest. But she returned his smile with one of her own. "Oh don't worry, I won't. Small bursts of rage are nothing to laugh about." She kept her voice and face serious as she spoke, expertly hiding her amusement. "Nice to meet you, I'm Pfeiffer." She stuck her hand out for him to shake, glancing at the ferret as he spoke. " Ah, no. That's okay. I'm not big into animals." It was true, Pfeiffer had always been wary of animals. Not afraid of them, per-say, but she didn't trust them. And rodents, even clean and apparently well behaved ones like this, were no exception.

[color=green]"So... bad day?"[/green] Pfeiffer realized that, coming from pretty much a complete strainger such as her self, this question could be construed as nosy. And she surprised herself by asking it, as she wasn't usually nosy at all. But she didn't really know what else to say. And anyway, it wasn't like he had to give her a strait answer if he didn't want to. In fact Pfeiffer would be surprised if he did.

Huntley chuckled at Pfeiffer's response to holding Fireball "Ok that's all right. Besides it's you're choice." Huntley swallowed and continued to hold down the rage and to suppress a smile. When she asked him if he's had a bad day Huntley's smile went to a frown "Well now that you mention it yeah I have had a bad day." Huntley went through the course of his day and was able to recapture every waking minute of it "It started off normally and nothing seemed out of the ordinary until lunch, My mom asked how my day has been so far and I told her that it was going ok. She was fine all up until that point." He breathed in deeply and calmed his raging nerves "But when I told her that I had sent a letter to my dad she went crazy. Started going off on how dangerous it was, and how grateful I should be that he is out of our lives. We shot out some words here and there, then I told her that maybe I wanted him back and that I thought that he had changed. I told her how he offered me to live with him up in the higher part of the district." Huntley looked down and felt every notion and every feeling of that moment all in one thought.

"Then she told me that if I wanted to leave than I should. I yelled something that I would rather not repeat then she threw a metal bowl at me, I know that she wasn't trying to hit me but it had. Right here." Huntley turned his head and showed her his bruised cheek, the left cheek throbbed and was probably even more black and blue than before "Pretty bad huh, after that I stormed out of there with fireball at hand. I'm still determining if I should go back or not. But I might after we have time to blow off steam." Huntley knew that it wasn't his place to tell of his family affairs but this was his chance to have a real friend "So how have you been?" Huntley asked with a cheerful disposition in his dark green eyes.

Pfeifer's eyebrows lifted as Huntley began spilling out his problems, the only visible sign that she was surprised. She hadn't expected him to actually tell her what had made him angry, and to be honest she would have preferred it if he hadn't. Well that's what she got for asking.

She stood there in awkward silence, listening to him and nodding her head every now and then. She really wasn't sure what he wanted her to say, and giving advice really wasn't her strong suite, so when he stopped talking she found her self in the situation of having to say something in reply to him having just spilled his guts out to her. "Um, yea. I guess you should probably let her cool of a bit befor you go back." She tried her best to hide her discomfort, because he seamed like he really needed someone to talk to, but she couldn't help averting her eyes as she spoke. His story about his mother throwing things at him had struck a little to close to home.

Her head jurked up as he spoke to her again, and she made her expression relaxe, a half smile playing across her lips. "Oh I'm pretty good, thanks. I'de ask the same of you but I think I already know the answer." She let out a faint chuckle along with her last words.

Huntley felt a lot better now that he had told someone what had happened cause no one ever seems to care any more. "Ya now you're probably the only one that knows about this, So I thank you for listening." Huntley stroked Fireballs fur as he stretched out over his arm, Pfeiffer seemed like a nice girl she really listened. "So what do you like to do for fun?" It's been a while since Huntley has actually interacted with someone his own age that wasn't a ferret, or leaving cause they were picked at the reaping. Huntley wondered what his friends were up to but now was his chance to start over and have a new friend "I was wondering cause I wanted to know maybe...I don't know maybe we can be....I thought that maybe we could be Friends." That took a lot of unneeded effort, but it has been a while since Huntley has tried to make friends. "So what do you say?" Huntley extended his hand to her hoping that she would take it "Come on I don't bite, at least not right away, ha-ha." Maybe this could work.

Pfeiffer glanced down at her boots when he thanked her, feeling slightly guilty. He sounded so sincere and all she had been able to think about while he was talking was how awkward she felt. "Don't mention it." The words came out as a bit of a mumble, and she quickly brightened her expression, paisting a convincing smile on her face. "Oh, I don't know... The normal stuff people my age do, I guess." Gee, that was convincing. But she couldn't very well tell him that, besides school and caring for/playing with her younger brothers, (which took up allot of her time anyways) mostly what she did was steal... no, that wouldn't do at all.

The corners of her mouth quirked up as Huntley awkwardly attempted to ask her if she wanted to be friends. His request surprised her in both the sense that he was so forthright about it, (which was something Feiffer appreciated) and that it apparently took alot of effort on his part to get the words out. But there was also something bothe comical and endearing about the way he sead it. So yes. Of course she would say yes, she wasn't that heartless. "Well when you say it like that... how can I say no?" She grinned at him and held her hand out for him to shake again. Feiffer liked hand shakes, they ment something. "It's official. Pfeiffer, me, and Huntley, you, are now, and for ever more, freinds.

"Consider it done." He looked at her eyes with a sense of a playful nature in them "And may the odds ever be are favor." Huntley used to say that around some of his close friends but after the bitter split up of his parents he drew away from them and his old ways. "So what do consider normal. cause you said the normal stuff people do." Huntley sighed "Cause well my normal seems to be close to a criminal act." Huntley thought back when he needed too steal food to feed Fireball when he was sick "Ok I know that this is going to sound really weird but when Fireball was really sick my mother didn't have enough money at the time. And he needed food." Huntley remembered that this was before his father left and shuddered a little "I went to the market and I sort of took a small cup of grain and two apples. When my mother found out she was fairly happy that I did it cause it meant that I cared a lot about the pet that she had helped me raise from that bag of flour that he had tagged along in."

He felt a tear run down is cheek "But when my father found out he freaked out and lashed out at my mother; He must of had a little to much to drink that night. He yelled and hit her a few times before I ran and pulled him off of her." Huntley rubbed his hair around "Then before I knew he had me pinned to the ground, and we were fighting. I remember he had wrapped his hands around my neck, the air was harder to get and I thought that I was going to die."

Anything that was normal for him suddenly changed that night. "After a few minutes I was able to get away but the hits just kept coming." Hunter wiped the tears o that had streamed down his face and smiled "I don't know where I would be without Fireball, He was there to protect me that night. Fireball had climbed out of the cage we had gotten him and he attacked my dad, He loosened his grip on me and ran out the door and out of our lives." Huntley was not one to dwell on the past.

"So, on that lovely note. Define you're normal, cause mine leaves a lengthy trail of depressing memories."

Pheiffer listened in silence to his story, eyes fixed on Huntley. Apparently he had stolen a bit of food for his ferret when it was sick. If only that was all I needed to worry about. Feeding a ferret. But no, her thefts were a bit biger then that. What scared her most about her thieving was that with each thing she stole the gilt and the shame lessened. And as she became more comfortable playing the part of a thief, she also became more paranoid. The fear that she was slowly losing her conscience was only out wade by the fear of getting cought and her family having to pay the price. And yet... she souldn't stop. Her family depended to much on the stolen goods she brought back, and, much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, she loved it. Nothing else gave her the thrill she got when scamming someone or stealing. And as much as she haited to admit it, even to her self, it was true. She new it was.

Pfeiffer pulled herself out of her thoughts in time to hear the last bit of Huntley's monolog, wracking her brain to recall what he'd sead. He had been talking about his dad, that much she was sure of, but anything else had been lost on her.

"So, on that lovely note. Define you're normal, 'cause mine leaves a lengthy trail of depressing memories." She blinked. Define her normall of what? She couldn't remember for the life of her what they had been talking about. But, being the deceiver she was, she acted as if she was on top of things while mentally she scrambled. "I don't know... my definition of normal would be whatever everyone else finds normall, I guess. So you tell me." There. She had managed, (fairly successfully, she thought) to provide an answer without actually answering... if that made any sense.

Huntley rummaged through his own thoughts to find her an answer "Well, I guess my definition of normal would be. Doing what ever you needed to do in order to help you family. Even if it's stealing, scamming, or even deceiving someone to get what you need to ensure you're families survival." Yeah, that sounds like a good definition of normal to me. Huntley thought to himself as he tried to comprehend what he had just said. Other than that he couldn't think of anything else that he could tell her about normal. "Hey do you have any siblings?" He sighed as he spoke to her "I've always wanted a brother or sister. I'm kind of envious to those who have siblings, If that doesn't sound to selfish?"

Did it really sound selfish to want what you didn't have? I mean do I really sound ungrateful for what I have, Hopefully it doesn't.

Pfeiffer openly stared at him for a full minute before recovering her wits and pasting a look of mild amusement on her face. "Um, alright then... I guess I was wrong. If that's what the majority thinks is normall then I guess my definition would be a tad different." She fought to keep the panic out of her voice as she spoke, forcing herself to sound calm and slightly sarcastic.

Pfeiffer's heart was pounding in her chest and she could feel her hands involuntarily clenching into fists, then slowly opening again. It was a nervous habit of hers, and she was definitely nervous right now. Her thoughts kept running in circles. Does he know? How could he know? Was he dropping a not-so-subtle hint? Huntley's careless comment about thievery certainly wasn't doing her paranoia any favors, and any amount of trust he might have been gaining in pfeiffer's eyes had been wiped away.

Because of her new found distrust of Huntley, when he asked if she had siblings Pfeiffer was put immediately on her gard. It was all she could do to keep her eyes frome narrowing, instead she offered him ahalf smile. "Yea, I have a few brothers." She was carfull not to be to specific. (Although what he'd do with the information she didn't know, she was just naturlly very protective of her family) "Nothing selfish about it. I think most only children feel the same way."

Huntley saw that he might have hit a nerve or said something wrong so he turned away from her and looked at the ground. He might have just ruined any sort of friendship that could have formed between them was now gone and replaced with distrust. "I'm sorry if I said something wrong." Huntley got up and fireball climbed up his arm and rested on his shoulders.

Huntley turned around and looked Pfeiffer in the eye "I'm deeply sorry if I have offended you." Huntley slowly started to walk away back towards the town that he hoped would hide the fact that he had just screwed yet another friendship. Nothing felt worse than that, I wonder if she now hopes that I get chosen at the reaping and is then killed in the games? Well with that lovely thought now lingering in his mind Huntley was now sure that there was no way that Pfeiffer would ever want a friend like him at all what what he might have said, cause he doesn't even know.

((Sorry that it's so short, I am just really tired from a 5K that I had done today.))