[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: 6I Fountain Park & Elsewhere
WHEN: April 1
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
WARNINGS: N/A

---

In the snug circle of an old park, a fountain sits burbling beneath a broad, midday sky.

Once-neat paving stones have buckled and cracked from the slow nudge of wayward roots. Benches stand covered in lichen and rust. Three paths push into the underbrush like the spokes on a wheel, the encroaching forest creating lush tunnels through the dark.

But the fountain stands singular and pristine, brightly splashing in open rebellion of the deep, muffled sounds of a place long ago gone to seed. A vibration hums through the ground, there and quickly gone, and the water in the fountain trembles, lapping against the high walls of its cool, pale reservoir.

Far, far away, in a place that isn't really there, people begin to blink out of existance.

It is the first of April.

It is precisely ten o'clock in the morning.



[Please see event details and guidelines here.]

Comments

[fishermansweater]

Lyanna hadn't been here at the start, when Finnick had been so obviously and openly suspicious and hostile towards this place, before he'd learned that people here professed no knowledge of the Games, and treated his suspicions with skepticism at best. Although he was right, wasn't he, that this had happened after he'd suspected something was going to happen for so long. He wasn't sure what that something was: the few people he's seen here so far look terrible, hair grown far far longer and messier than he's ever seen, dozens of times worse than the Games or the beards so many people had grown when they first arrived here. It was like they'd been ... somewhere for months, and were suddenly being brought back here. But where was Annie? Had the Gamemakers kept her somewhere?

He watched Lyanna approach, and when she spoke, he considered for a moment what to say to her, how honest to be. But one thing was more important than anything else, and Finnick leaned back, wrapping an arm around the trunk of his tree to stabilize himself.

"Lyanna, have you seen Annie?"

[iron_beneath_beauty]

She didn't know the extent of his fears, though had heard some talk about games and game makers. They were words she understood to be frightening, but couldn't say why or fully understand what troubled Finnick so much about them. Her mind didn't follow the thread to his reasoning or registered that he might be right. For her, all of this was such an intense shock, she was tethered to the moment and what was happening around her.

But she could at least understand his worry for Annie, as she had her own for her family, who she hadn't found yet. "She scanned the crowds, looking for the familiar red hair that belonged to Finnick's shy and strange lover.

"I haven't. I haven't seen my family either." Which threatened to seize her with fear, but was pushed aside. "Let me climb up there with you. I could be able to see better than on the ground."

[fishermansweater]

He'd long ago given up on expecting people here to understand his fears. Nobody could fear the arena and its games as much as someone who'd survived it and then had to relive it every year on behalf of his tributes as he tried to help them survive. The people here had shown little willingness to listen to his warning, but now, surely this was evidence that he was right.

He wasn't the only one with loved ones here, and he nodded in agreement when she asked to join him in the tree. There was a risk, but he felt little to fear from Lyanna, for all she was the age of a tribute and he knew well enough not to dismiss her based on that.

"Do you remember anything about how you got here?" he asked. They may as well compare their experiences, and see if she knew anything more than he did. He doubted it, though, when there had been so little the first time he'd come up out of the fountain.