Cinna (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threadthefire) wrote2010-08-05 05:00 pm
threadthefire) wrote2010-08-05 05:00 pm
1st Design [voice]
[There’s a wry male voice, albeit a slightly confused one, speaking over the Network.]
Well, this certainly isn’t the Capitol, the fashion on the streets isn’t any I recognize and I could have sworn I was in a studio audience taking my bows just a moment ago.
...pity you couldn’t see the reason, it was absolutely perfect. She was perfect.
All of that aside, if someone could just tell me what District I’m in, that would be appreciated. I really should get back, I have more work to do.
[ooc: Sorry, guys, I was supposed to be off work three hours ago!]
Well, this certainly isn’t the Capitol, the fashion on the streets isn’t any I recognize and I could have sworn I was in a studio audience taking my bows just a moment ago.
...pity you couldn’t see the reason, it was absolutely perfect. She was perfect.
All of that aside, if someone could just tell me what District I’m in, that would be appreciated. I really should get back, I have more work to do.
[ooc: Sorry, guys, I was supposed to be off work three hours ago!]
no subject
She makes for the door and holds it open behind her toward him, glancing back as if half afraid he'll disappear. This place is beyond strange, filled with something too beyond her for a word to define. It's a power not of man's make, no President, no government, no Capitol. How to explain it is still elusive to her however, and it is helpful to be able to point and explain a thing rather than the whole idea that worlds meet. Something Katniss can't even quite digest even now. Worlds?
Her world has for so long been District 12, The Seam...Panem.
It's just never occurred to her that there might be more; there has never been time.]
This...I can show you where we've been staying.
[ And other things along the way, but she figures he caught onto that part. As they walk, she glances up and over at him, between him and their surroundings intermittently while trying not to look like her nerves don't know what to do with themselves, even though this is mostly the truth. ]
Who is she?
[ She pauses here, surprising herself by having asked now that they're in fresh air and moving. Maybe it loosened some of the apprehension, and maybe it's the opposite and she just needs to know now rather than later----the opposite of Peeta, but this is not too surprising. ]
The...tribute.
[ In case she needed to clarify, she does, though it probably wasn't necessary considering how she verbally seems to stumble over the word like it's foreign to her when that is the last thing it could be. ]
no subject
I think I'd enjoy to see where you're staying, is it comfortable?
[He follows willingly, taking in the sights a bit more now that he wasn't responsible for stopping his own panic attack before it began. The place had its own wonders, but it was a city with people moving about their days. He's sure he'll adjust soon.
But her question gives him pause. How does he possibly answer that question? Does he lie and risk her finding the truth later, or does he admit that she's perhaps stronger than even she thinks and give her the truth.]
She's someone you don't need to worry about right now. Tell me about the people here. Are they like your friends in the District? I've spoken to some of them, they seem friendly enough.
[Perhaps it's the coward's way, but he doesn't feel right lying to her. He never has and this isn't a time to start.]
no subject
[ She drops it though, taking to the new direction of conversation but not forgetting where they left off. Someone she doesn't need to worry about? The vagueness itself is worrisome, but Cinna has only just arrived and remembering how she felt when she first came here, she cannot ignore such a simple suggestion as to tell him more. It only feels right to answer. ]
...no. I mean...I don't know. I haven't made friends really. Peeta's more...
[ Here she gives the rare smile, part for Cinna and part for the boy with the bread because she knows she doesn't need to explain how he is always going to be the one making the friends, even if Katniss herself is not so much opposed as she is unfamiliar with pursuing it. She has always had Gale, though she supposes Madge is a friend too.
Rue would have been.
Cinna is.
But is there anyone like them here?
She thinks of Alma. ]
But no. They're not like...anyone else. They're not bad either though. It's...
[ Finding the right words takes a moment, as they pass the fountain and the carousel in the distance. ]
...all of it's so different from life in the Districts. It's hard to explain.
[ In a way it's impossible. Curses? It sounds impossible, but she's seen it. Experienced it. She remembers being cold, remembers not having a pulse, and inevitably trails into silence, trying to lock that away where her nightmares of the Games keep until she has to sleep. It isn't her intention to grow distant with her friend beside her, but for a moment it happens, lapsing into just the two of them walking side by side with the buildings that reach towards the sky lining the streets. ]
no subject
[He kept the tone light, seeming unconcerned. Peeta may be making friends, but he knew full well that Katniss would be looking for enemies. And traps and all manner of things that Cinna... well, he wasn't meant for such things. He felt a responsibility to Katniss, but really it was she that would have to lead for a while.]
Perhaps start with this.
[He passed her the small device, showing the guide that Claire had sent him. He'd read it as he waited for Kaatniss, skimming the text with mounting disbelief. It seemed ludicrous. Impossible, and yet it had been sent with what he took for honesty, and so asking seemed best.]
Are the things in here true? Deities, curses...
[In all honestly, it seemed this place was still an arena, just one of a different sort.]
no subject
As far as I know.
[ That's as honest as she can be. Nothing is for certain but from all she has observed--and Katniss is a 10 on the observation scales as far as environment and survival as long as one doesn't factor people skills into the math--it is all true. Confounding, but having experienced much of it already, she is hesitant to say it could just be a trick. At first she thought of it like another arena too---every curse a new trick, a new way to spur on the entertainment of a set of Games no one had been warned about...but Games that go on for years?
Even Katniss, most dubious, most distrusting of every scrap of Capitol and connection thereof around her, has to admit the funding for it simply can't exist...right?
It's what she's been trying to tell herself lately, needing to believe it is one thing rather than two at once, two at once being too confusing and too impossible in the midst of all these other impossible things. They are reaching the edges of the City Proper now and the forest lies out ahead, and beyond that the beach and the shack Katniss calls a house and Peeta indulges her by staying. It is, at least, still better than a tree, but it will take a while to reach it, twenty minutes maybe. ]
no subject
...and much like being a tribute he imagines.
And just at the tributes before him, he has no way out save survival. The same random fate that tossed him in. So why speak of frustration that Katniss only knows all too well? It would be the height of insult. So instead Cinna walks, watching the buildings thin out and...]
Katniss? We're leaving the city.
no subject
[ Even Katniss has the mind to be a little sheepish here though a great deal of that willingness to be temporarily transparent has to do with this being Cinna who she speaks to in the first place. She nods out toward the stretch of field, a span large enough for a tournament which rumor has it has been held here in years past. It may not take twenty minutes really, and in truth it usually doesn't for Katniss alone, but it is different when she has someone with her---Peeta, as of late, or in this case, her stylist. Her friend. She keeps reminding herself that she is fortunate to have one more person here she is all too certain she can trust, but at the same time she feels badly.
No one should wish the Games on another person and she would not wish this place on them either. Before the past month it was difficult to say which was worse, but at home there are certain set and fixed points for people like Cinna---or so she hopes, wants for his sake even if some private and sleeping part of her knows no one is truly safe forever in Panem. Forever doesn't exist, only moments and what a person does or doesn't do with them.
Though small, she does offer him a smile again. ]
Come on. It's on the beach.
[ Whatever awaits them here, it is now the three of them and she more than half suspects Cinna will see where they live and suggest something more standard--even for them, now that they live in the Victor's Village back home--and it is his presence for one reason or another that Katniss knows she may very well agree. If she is to convince anyone the Capitol has no hold here, she must start to act like it herself.
Easier said than done, after an entire life built and bred upon that omnipresent fear, but this is a different kind of arena in a way and they can only win if they change their mindsets and learn the new rules.
It's taken her too long to fully realize this truth, hiding away as much as she could before with Peeta---Peeta who has never said no to her and she knows she is guilty of taking advantage of that. Here. Home. It's too much and she racks up her own points of debt; she knows. Maybe here it can stop.
But first, she has to show Cinna where they have been at all so she quickens her stride just a little, not enough to be irritatingly quick but faster still. They may make it in less time this way. ]
no subject
[The geography of this place won't stay fixed in his mind and despite the urge to seem in control he quickly realizes that the outdoors are not his forte, while Katniss seems more at ease out here than she did in the city. But then that was to be expected, wasn't it? Her skills in the arena obviously showed someone who was at ease in the wilderness, moreso than someone who had picked up skills from the games training. Skills he doesn't possess at all.
If he's to make it back to civilization, Katniss or Peeta will have to lead him. Katniss and Peeta will likely have to give him a great bit of leadership to be honest, at least until he's established. Once he has his footing, one he knows the rules of this society he'll be settled, able to move about. But that will take time and observation he doesn't have at the moment.
The questions he has he holds for the moment, guessing that Katniss will fee like she can speak more freely back in her domain, so they walk in silence. And truth be told, he needs it. There has to be some way to keep her from asking too many question about the Quell.]