001 🔥strange things did happen here

[burn_with_us]

WHO: Katniss Everdeen
WHERE: 6I village
WHEN: 6 May (before Peeta arrived)
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: TBD

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Katniss has been here a few days and it's already long enough.

From the moment she climbed from the fountain, she's thought this place was an arena and nothing she's seen has given her the impression it isn't some sort of Capitol trick, though the arena might be a stretch. It's more like a District, given the lack of traps, but she's still not trusting anything. She doesn't want to fall victim to a trap, to lull herself into thinking she's safe when danger can be lurking around any corner.

She feels safer under the cover of trees than out in the open so she'd taken to them as soon as she'd pulled herself from the fountain a few nights before, still dripping as she scrambled up a likely redwood and perched there to get the best view of the surrounding area. There's a village where the fountain is and it looks for all the world like the town part of 12, like the little houses the merchants had before everything had been blown to smithereens.

There's people who come and go, yes, but she hasn't seen any peacekeepers. She journeys through the woods during the night and finds that there's no fence, so far as she can tell, but she'd managed to stumble into a few ant hills and get stung; it's this that drives her into the village. None of the plants here are plants that she knows and she doesn't know what will draw out this poison. The welts on her arms and legs are painful even if she doesn't feel sick and the sun is up and has been for a while. It's not terribly hot, which is a blessing, but the pain from the bites doesn't make it an easy trip.

By the time she actually makes it into town, she's more than ready to get her bites tended to so she can go back to the woods and hide a little longer. She'll have to move camp to make sure she's not followed but better this than to die.

[Find Katniss on the edge of the woods, near the hospital or anywhere else in the village.]

Comments

[fishermansweater]

When he'd met Katniss here before, it had been clear that she knew him, to some extent. He's learned enough from her and Peeta and especially Johanna, to realize that what she remembers from Panem might not have happened before he found himself here, however that's supposed to work.

His green eyes study her. The blue-green version of the uniforms everyone's wearing when they arrive here. Still tidy enough that she clearly hasn't been out in the woods for days, like he and Annie had when they'd found themselves in that first version of this place. Not as much wariness as he'd expect from her, but still plenty. She's a victor, and she'd been skeptical enough as a tribute.

"If anybody knows, they're not saying," he says, his head tilting a little to one side in curiosity. The question suggests that she doesn't remember being here before, like Johanna had. Katniss has been gone a lot longer, though, and some people who disappear and return months later don't remember being here. There's still so much they don't know about this place.

"Some place we've been stuck, but nobody's trying to kill each other."

And Snow doesn't seem to be directly interfering in their lives, though he, of course, can't say that.

[burn_with_us]

"I don't trust anyone who isn't you, Annie or Haymitch." Katniss doesn't say Peeta. She wants to trust him, yes, but he's been warped and changed from the boy she knew into something twisted by the Capitol. That Peeta cannot be trusted. Her Peeta can.

"I just don't know how I got here. Was it a hovercraft?" Katniss has done enough travel by hovercraft to know it's quick enough and silent enough not to wake her if she'd been drugged.

[fishermansweater]

Finnick's list of people he trusts is different from Katniss': he trusts Annie and Johanna, and to a limited extent Kate Kelly. Neither Katniss nor Peeta is on it. He already knows that Johanna remembers a lot more from Panem than he does, and if Katniss is going so far as to say she trusts him, she clearly does, too. Most victors don't even like him, let alone trust him. He's a Career: that makes him suspect to most of the other Districts, and he's from Four, which makes him suspect to the rest.

More surprising is the fact that she mentions Annie, who she can't ever have met, because Annie stays home, in Four, instead of going with the other victors to the Capitol. Finnick is wearing the handmade wedding ring Annie gave him, a visible, obvious token of love that he could never wear in Panem.

Before he can say anything, though, Katniss asks another question, and he shakes his head.

"I don't know. I don't remember anything about getting here. Just found myself in the fountain. Everyone here seems to have the same story. Found themself in the fountain with no idea how it happened."

[burn_with_us]

"It doesn't make sense," Katniss says, turning it over and over in her mind until it's a stone worn smooth. Mulling over it doesn't seem to reveal any other answers, though, and if Finnick is here healthy, she can possibly relax for a little bit. Finnick is someone she can trust.

"Where are the fences? I assume this is some kind of district but I walked a long way and I didn't find any fences at all."

It's as if this whole place is free of the trappings of Panem and Katniss knows that's not possible.