WHO: Oliver Queen
WHERE: 6I Inn; lake in 7I
WHEN: 21 January
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: TBD. Also a note - Oliver has a lot of tattoos and scarring that will be visible.

but i only see one way out (lake)

OTA

It's probably idiotic to do this but Oliver at least has come prepared. He has his warm jacket, a sweater he'd recently gotten in the box, two pair of socks and three blankets set at the shoreline. For his part, he's naked as the day he's born and trying to get up the courage to jump into icy cold water. It's slow to come, yes, but eventually he just takes in a deep breath and wades into the water until he can start to swim.

He swims until his lungs burn and each pull of his muscles borders on painful rather than a good stretch. His concentration on form and speed helps to distract him from how goddamn cold the water is and he feels like this lake is endless. Is it endless? It certainly seems that way from the shoreline. Right now, he has no idea how long it's going to take him to get to the other side but he's going to do his best.

He doesn't know how many meters he manages before he just has to stop and tread water for a moment, the shoreline distant and small from where he is. It feels like he gets further every time he tries this but he still can't get there and never getting the carrot on the stick is starting to weigh on him.

He's going to crack this place. Eventually.

For now, though, he gathers as much strength as he can and pushes himself back to shore. When he reaches it, he collapses against the stony shoreline and just gasps for a moment, trying to get his bearings. It's so cold, made even worse by the fact that he's soaking wet. He reaches for one of the blankets and dries himself off as quickly as he can before getting dressed again. He wraps the other blankets around him in an attempt to conserve warmth and walks back toward the village, wanting to warm up with some food and a fire.

This is possibly one of the stupider things he's done lately.

then i floated out of here (inn)

OTA.

After his particularly stupid excursion trying to swim the lake, Oliver finally manages to get to the inn and he's settled in front of the fire with a mug of some kind of herbal tea between his hands. The tea is all right, so far as those things go, and more than tasting good it is warm and it's helping him start to feel the tips of his fingers again. That can only be a positive.

His hair is still damp and he's shivering but his eyes are alight with possibilities. Could they build a boat, possibly? A boat would be a lot less risky than trying to swim the lake in the middle of winter and Oliver thinks if he could build a kayak-style boat and row himself out as far as he can manage and try to see if there's a way out. It's futile, probably, but he can't let it lie when he'd gotten so close this time.

When someone comes into the inn Oliver turns his head, trying to see who it is. He calls out a quick hello and goes back to curling up before the fire, trying to decide how best to attack the problem of getting the hell out of here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Unlike Oliver, Bela hasn't been swimming in the lake. In fact, she hasn't been doing much of anything lately because of the recent spat of bad weather and her reluctance to go outside for very long. Bela preferred to remain indoors, bundled up in several layers in front of a small fire that she built herself (took a couple of tries to get it right but she did it)

She did go to the inn everyday. Around the same time in fact, about an hour after she rose from her bed. Bela didn't have an alarm to wake her up so the time varied - but at least she did get up. Rather than lying in bed, lamenting about how much she didn't want to be here.

Bela recognises Oliver from a few months ago, acknowledging him with a quick hello in return before grabbing a cup of whatever herbal tea was available. She doesn't leave him alone for long though, coming over to get some heat and maybe some conversation at the same time.

"Swimming, recently?" Bela asks casually, sitting down on a nearby chair.

"To my own detriment," Oliver says, giving Bela a smile and lifting his mug in greeting to her. He'd liked Bela when he met her before and he's glad to see her now. He's heard that people come and go sometimes and he doesn't necessarily want to see Bela among their number.

"I was testing a hypothesis. I don't know how much information I got out of it but it looks like this place isn't all it seems."

She smiles in return and raises her mug to him. Oliver was one of the first people that Bela talked to during the first week of her arrival when she was trying to find out information about where she was.

"A hypothesis that required you to swim. Interesting." Bela laughs lightly. "What did you learn? Even if it's something that seems insignificant, I'd like to hear it."

"I learned that while that lake goes on farther than it looks like it's going to from the shore, you still can't get to the other side. I'm pretty athletic and I'm a good swimmer. I couldn't even get close to where it looked like there was an opposite bank. There was no way to reach land again other than to turn back and swim to the shore we can access from here," Oliver explains.

"So it's not a way out. I guess we should have known that, considering this place, but I wanted to give it a shot in case things had changed."

"How strange. It doesn't seem like it should be possible, but then I remember where we are and I have to keep an open mind." A never-ending lake? Offering everyone here a false hope that they could get out of the village and back home. Perhaps it was another form of manipulation by the overseers.

Taking a sip from her tea, Bela continues. "Thank you for trying, Oliver. I am sure I'm not the only one who appreciates your efforts. What else have you tried?"

"I tried to get back through that fountain," Oliver says, huffing a quick laugh. It had been a fool's errand, just like the lake, but at least he'd had a chance to give it more than one try before he gave up. The weather's too cold for any extended trials.

"And I tried to climb the cliffs. Nothing seems to work. It's like you get closer and closer and the horizon seems like it's getting but it doesn't. It's all some kind of optical illusion."

"You're probably not the only one who has tried." Bela offers, hoping that it would help. "An optical illusion is probably the best explanation." She shrugs. "But how can we tell for sure?"

Unless they investigated it further.

"Got any other hidden talents I don't know about? I mean, former businessman, current mayor, good swimmer..."

It's an invitation for Oliver to tell her a bit more about himself.

"I used to be pretty decent at polo," Oliver jokes, laughing softly at that. "Which sounds like it's pretty useless but you have to have good hand-eye coordination to swing a mallet while riding on the back of a horse. Not everyone can do it."

He'd been better at polo than lacrosse, anyway, and he thinks polo's the harder of the two.

"Since we don't have horses here, though, I don't think it's going to help me out too much. What about you? Any hidden talents?"

"Polo? Interesting." It isn't a sport that Bela has tried before (and probably never will) but if it could teach a person skills like that then maybe it wasn't so bad.

She smiles at him, thinking on the best way to answer the question.

"I am an excellent shot. But since I don't have a firearm here, I can't exactly prove that."

"So am I. They have my weapon of choice here, though, so I'm in luck. I've always preferred bows to guns."

It isn't the normal thing for a vigilante to divulge something like that but in the village unlike in Star City, bows are in decent enough supply and enough people use them that it isn't strange that he has proficiency. It's proven to be a key part of his ability to survive here.

"The ones here aren't what I'm used to back home but they're good enough."

"The plot thickens."

She teases, but there is also a genuine curiosity there. Why would a person choose a bow as a weapon? Unless he used the bow in his leisure time, like for hunting or archery. Whatever the answer may be, Oliver has an advantage over her.

"Suppose I will know who to ask should I ever need the use of a bow. I've been learning a few things here, but have yet to master how to hunt."

004 ➵ you know i love the element of surprise (OTA)

but i only see one way out (lake)

then i floated out of here (inn)

Inn

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