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ψ haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds? | OTA

WHO: Finnick Odair
WHERE: The woods, by the fields, and the Inn
WHEN: June 6
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: None so far but always the chance of Panem-related asshattery

THE WOODS

OTA

He thinks they're dandelions. At least, they look like dandelions. But for all his training, edible-plants was never Finnick's strongest point. Fishing, hunting, improvising nets and ropes out of whatever he could find around him, those were the skills that got him through the arena of the 65th Hunger Games. So when he finds that a spot in the woods near one of his fishing traps has, in the space of a few days, erupted into a carpet of fluffy white balls that burst seeds into the air as he walks through them, Finnick's immediate response is uncertainty.

He crouches down by one of the plants and peers at its leaves. Dandelions, he knows, are safe to eat. He's seen tributes eat them in the arena. But he isn't sure if these are actually dandelions or just some other plant that acts like them, and he can't remember as he studies the leaves whether or not that's what dandelion leaves look like. if they were dandelions, shouldn't there have been flowers? Or at least, flowers for longer than the time it's been since Finnick last walked through this spot?

Maybe someone in the village will know. Maybe Katniss will know, since somehow she seems to know a lot more about how to survive in the wild than any tribute from her District he's ever seen. (There's a story there, somewhere, but it's a story that nobody would expect anyone else to share, at least not someone who's spent as long under the Capitol's surveillance as Finnick.)

So Finnick gathers a collection of leaves from the plants, and tries his best to collect one of the fluffy heads without it bursting into the air, and puts them in one of the woven baskets he and Annie use for transporting fish.

THE FIELDS

OTA

Finnick plans to stop by the fields on his way home, with the vague thought that there might be someone there who's able to help him work out what the plant he's found is. But as he cuts across from the woods towards the fields, Finnick's suddenly overcome by the smell of salt on the breeze, the tangy smell of the sea that means home.

He stops, uncertain, and raises his trident, his body suddenly tense, the alertness that's always running under the surface suddenly springing to the surface. It's impossible that he's smelling the ocean here; surely it can only be some sort of trap.

He waits, only sign of movement the rapid rate at his his gaze goes from one spot to another, scanning trees, shrubs, anything that could act as cover. It's only slowly that he realizes there's no real apparent danger, and heads towards the smell.

THE INN

OTA

The smell of the sea had turned out to be coming from another unexpected spring blossoming, this time an expanse of purple flowers on the boundary of the fields. He doesn't remember seeing wildflowers there before now, and now there are so many of them that they look like a field of their own. Since he already has a sample of uncertain flora in his pack, he'd picked some of these flowers, too, and he heads for the Inn with his samples in his backpack.

He stalks into the main room of the Inn, because it's one of the places it's common to see a lot of the villagers gathered. He has one of the purple flowers in his hand, and he holds it out, his head tilted to one side, as he leans on the never-stocked bar.

"Is it me, or are there more plants around than there should be?"

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Benedict is currently on his knees behind the bar, sweeping cobwebs out of hidden corners. He glances up when Finnick brandishes a stem of purple flowers at him from overhead, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.

"I am probably the worst qualified person to ask that," he points out mildly, sitting back on his heels and tossing his head to get his hair out of his face.

The motion brings a waft of scent to him, and he freezes, his golden eyes growing wide. Perhaps faster than it is wise to move around the people of this habble who all seem to have some sort of trauma they are working through, he reaches up to grab the flower in Finnick's hand, holding it still so he can lean closer and smell it properly.

"Where did you find this? Why does it smell like cordite?"

Finnick's gotten used to the fact that since they arrived in this new version of the village, Benedict looks like he belongs in the Capitol. Those cat's eyes would be quite a feature there, where body alteration is a fashion. Fortunately, there's little of the superficiality of the fashionable denizens of the Capitol in Benedict, so Finnick still feels relatively -- as it always is with victors -- at ease with the man.

That doesn't mean he's prepared for the suddenness of Benedict's response, or for the sudden way he grabs at Finnick's hand. Finnick tenses sharply at the unexpected touch, but years of forcing himself to strangle his impulse reactionstop him from pulling back, so he lets Benedict lean in towards the flower. Finnick forces himself to relax, and it comes easier once it's clear that it's the flower that has Benedict's interest.

"Cordite?"

The word's unfamiliar, and it shows in the careful way Finnick repeats it, focusing on that instead of his unwanted reaction to the man's hand on his. "I thought it smelled like the sea. They're growing out by the fields."

Benedict is not, contrary to popular belief, stupid. When Finnick's entire body seizes when Benedict grabs for his arm, he instantly feels guilty, well aware that he has apparently stepped on some sort of trauma for the man, all because he was careless. With a murmured apology, he unclenches his fingers around Finnick's wrist, placing his hands pointedly on the tops of his thighs as he kneels on the ground beneath the bar.

"Gunpowder." Most high-quality long-guns were powered solely by weapons crystals, but Benedict has been on enough tours of duty through the Spirearch's Guard that he has become quite familiar with the smell of cheap, low-quality guns, the way the smoke tickles the nostrils and makes him want to sneeze.

"And ozone." He frowns, turning his eyes back to Finnick and away from the flower. "You smell the sea?"

It's an unspoken thing that everyone in Panem knows about the victors: many of them are a little strange. Some drink, some are always angry, some take drugs and Finnick ... Finnick is intense, and prone to losing himself in long periods of melancholy, and to a dislike of being suddenly touched when he's not expecting it. (It reminds him of too many other touches, and that's the only reason he doesn't flinch away, because he's had to learn not to.)

The tension eases out of him as Benedict lets him go, and Finnick gazes at him for a moment before he nods appreciation for the apology. Even after so long here, he's still not used to the fact that people here will show that level of respect and understanding.

"Gunpowder." Finnick doesn't know that word, either. For all his training and experience, he's never held a gun. They're reserved for Peacekeepers, and he's rarely even seen them used. "I don't know what that smells like. But all I smell is the sea."

How to explain what gunpowder smells like? Benedict has never properly seen the sea, only fresh water lakes and streams, and those only on his time on the Surface. For all he knows, the sea may very well smell like cordite.

"Like charcoal, and steam, and ammonia. A little bit like fireworks. The mercury fulminate leaves a distinct metallic taste in the back of your throat. The crystal mechanism for firing it smells of ozone, like the smell after a lightning strike."

Another thing he's only discovered since his time in this habble.

"Is that what the sea smells like?"

A lot of what Benedict says doesn't make sense to Finnick; mercury fulminate and crystal mechanism mean nothing to him in the context of a gun, and he hadn't been out in the streets when the uprising in Four was crushed to know if the guns the Peacekeepers used had any sort of distinctive smell.

(There'd been new smells in the district, but they'd been smells of burning and destruction, smoke and fire from bombed-out buildings, and they'd been faded by the time anyone was allowed back out from their homes.)

Fortunately, Benedict does give enough else to work with that Finnick can start to understand the smell he's talking about. He's a sailor, so he knows the smell of lightning, and charcoal and steam are easy enough to bring to mind.

Finnick shakes his head. "No. It smells like salt and hot sand, sometimes raw fish and whatever's coming in on the wind."

He looks down at the little flower, frowning, and takes another deep breath to be sure of the smell. It's definitely salt and sand, not ozone and charcoal. The little thing looks bright and harmless, but Finnick has seen the recordings of the Second Quarter Quell, and there's something deeply unsettling about the idea of something that smells different to different people.

"They've made something that smells different to different people," he says, his voice wary.

Katniss has always felt more at home in the woods than anywhere else and it holds true here in this new district as much as it ever had back in 12. She's found a bow and some arrows at the Inn and taken them out to see if she can find something to hunt that looks like deer, groosling or anything else from the world she knows. If she has a purpose, she can survive, and providing for others is a purpose she's had since she was eleven years old.

She is a little surprised to find Finnick in the woods. He's so strongly associated with the sea for her that in this place, she imagines he'd almost always be at the river or down at the lake. He's in the deep, shady cover of the trees now currently and seems to be gathering plants.

"What's that?" she asks, looking at the small flower in his hand. It looks like a dandelion about to burst its seeds and explode on the wind, something she's more than familiar with from 12. "They have dandelions here?"

He's more comfortable by the water, where he knows the ways of fish, because he'd been raised to be a fisherman, like so many other people in Four. At least, he had been, before he became a Career. In turn, it's no surprise to encounter Katniss out here. He'd noticed it watching her in the Games, how at ease she seemed in the forest in the arena, how easily she moved in the terrain that often proved difficult for tributes -- at least those who weren't from Seven.

He's in a vulnerable position, crouched down with his hands full of flowers instead of weapons, but all Katniss does is approach and look at what he's doing.

"It looks like one," he says, offering her the flower, his other hand cradled around it to shield it. "I think. I haven't seen them here before."

"I wonder if it's the same. When I was in the Arena, the first time? I'd never seen groosling before but I took a chance on it and I ended up all right. Maybe the plants and animals here are a little off from what we're used to in our Districts but they're not poison."

Katniss hasn't heard of an Arena using poisonous animals and plants since the Quarter Quell Haymitch won. It's not likely that they'd go and reuse it verbatim, is it? She doesn't know. Katniss isn't sure what's real or not real anymore.

"We could bring them back and try them. I'm willing to volunteer. Very little can kill me at this point that hasn't already tried."

Finnick may not know Katniss very well yet, but he does know that she knows enough about what can and can't be eaten in the wild to save her and Peeta from eating the poison berries they'd later used to such effect.

"The fish have been okay to eat," he agrees, after a moment's consideration. "The few plants I know from home have been fine, too." He still doesn't know what he can trust here, and he'd hate it, if he hadn't grown so used to not being able to trust anything he didn't know for certain. This new place with its new plants and animals is unsettling, but he's used to that sort of fear, has been now for a long time.

He glances across at her, curiously. The way Katniss says that little can kill her that hasn't tried sounds suggestive of more of her unknown history -- from the past, or from the things she's seen in the time he's been in this place? It's hard to know for sure, so he doesn't comment, just passes over the basket he's already harvested flowers into.

"I wouldn't know what to do with them anyway."

"You can live off dandelions, you know. I don't know if I ever told you that story back in 13 or not," Katniss says. She's aware that she and Finnick aren't from the same time, which is strange in and of itself, but she cannot help still trusting him. He's one of the few people who understands the panic and the fear that grips her sometimes and helps her find a way to put herself back together.

"They grow in 12 and they can make lean days go a lot further. We never, ever had enough food. I know from my tour that it's the case in other districts too," she says. "But I think it's worst in 12. My family only ate well because I knew the woods."

He offers a small echo of a smile.

"I'm used to people knowing more about me than I do about them, but not like this," he says. He also usually works to address that imbalance, to steal some of the knowledge that's become the only currency he has other than his body.

But here, there are other currencies that matter, and they're more like the everyday concerns of the districts. In Four, the fishery folk don't go hungry, no matter how bad things are. It's forbidden, of course, but there is little the Peacekeepers can ever do to prove that there's been poaching, or fish stolen from the catch, so long as the quotas are made. A family can be fed with a theft that would never be noticed, and the children of the poorest fishers learn early on how to make their own catches. Finnick had been expert with trident and net for a reason that had little to do with his training.

"I wondered," he says, quietly, his head tipping to one side in a nod of concession. "You knew how to handle yourself in the woods better than others from Twelve." He doesn't even remember whether or not there were woods within the boundaries of Twelve; he'd had other things to worry about the only two times he'd ever been there.

"My father taught me the plants you could eat and how to hunt. It took me a while before I was comfortable tying snares or shooting with my bow but the plants? Those were the first things I learned."

Katniss half smiles. "There's a root where I come from called katniss, it grows near ponds. My father always told me if I could find myself, I would never go hungry. I hope that stays true here."

The thing about being a victor is that everybody knows your story, or at least the bits of your story that you reveal or that the media dig out when you make it to the final eight. He knows about Katniss' father, that he'd died in a mining accident like so many people in District Four do in sailing or fishing accidents.

"We never needed to know that," he says, quietly. He leaves the rest of it to her imagination, and to what everyone thinks they know about District Four. They're not all rich, even though they're a Career district, but they do have access to food without needing to go out into the woods. "In Four, we only ever needed to know ww how to survive at sea."

Except for the Careers, of course, but they don't talk about the Careers.

"I think you know how to survive in the arena better in Four," Katniss says. "Most people in Twelve don't even go past the Seam. They're afraid to go into the woods and afraid that the peacekeepers will find them and punish them. Gale and I were the only ones who would go and we'd sell our extras at the Hob so we could trade for other things."

Katniss sighs a bit. "In Twelve, we don't even learn our industry until we're eighteen. You guys know how to make hooks and nets and spear? We don't know anything at all. It's a miracle that there were even three victors."

"We have to," he says, tilting his head to one side as he considers her words. "You run a small crew, that means all hands on deck, including your kids, 'cause that's what it takes to make your quotas. Kids who aren't from fishing families don't know that sort of thing."

He doesn't talk about his childhood -- what there'd been of it before he'd gone to the Careers and then on to the Victors' Village -- with many people. Annie's from his fishery, most of the other victors don't ask, and he's always hated talking about home in the Capitol. Most people there don't care, they just want to revel in the glamor of the poor district boy made rich and famous by his victory, and he's been on the bitterly wrong end of that too many times to want to give them anything real to feed it.

There's a lot he could say about the strategy of the Games. It's not just about knowing how to feed yourself, though that had gone well for Katniss, and often did for the tributes from Four, too, there's knowing how to game the Games, how to make alliances and when to break them, the sort of things the Careers are taught alongside how to fight, but more than that, there's a stubbornness and determination that can never be taught, but that all of the victors have. He still doesn't want to talk about that, though, because it comes too close to open admission of what everyone knows: that he, and Annie, and Four's other younger victors, had that forbidden advantage of training.

"We're all afraid of the peacekeepers," is what he does admit. "It's just easier to poach fish than go somewhere forbidden."

"Easier to take the small ones, cull a few from the catch and still make quota. Our men do it too, in the mines," Katniss explains. "Nobody has power for very long in the Seam. It only works when the Capitol wants us to have it - but we could have heat in our fireplaces from pilfered coal."

It's not very different from Finnick's situation except coal can't feed you. It can keep you warm at night (and it gets very, very cold in 12 during the winter) but it's not going to ease the gnawing of hunger or make sure that you don't die just because you had nothing to keep you going but boiled pine needles.

After so many years of studying the Games, and then of participating in them as a mentor, Finnick's seen the difference that things like food make. The kids from Twelve, the ones that look like Katniss, are usually scrawny, underfed and disadvantaged from the start. But places like Eleven produce occasional tributes like Thresh; big and strong and obviously well fed. Four of course has the double advantage that there's always food to steal and that they had the Careers, who were not only trained but fed and cared for.

"Or the kids could catch some of their own. I used to, after school."

He doesn't talk about his family much; there's little point, now, when they've been dead for so many years and the guilt of their loss still hangs heavily over him.

"But nobody ever gets to hear this stuff from the other districts. None of us know how much of it is the same."

Except the victors, those who dare the conversations that can't really be had in public.

"I think they do it on purpose. I didn't know anything about other Districts until the Games and really not until I did my tour after I won. By the time you're a Victor, they already have so much over you that you'd be a fool to try and rebel."

And yet, they had. Katniss had with the berries, even if she didn't know exactly what it meant at the time. Peeta did, when he gave away his winnings to Rue and Thresh's families. Finnick did, refusing to give Annie up. Mags did, volunteering to throw a wrench in what was probably a Reaping as rigged as 12's.

They all had everything to lose and did it anyway.

"There would have been a rebellion a long time ago if people just knew. The whole thing only works because we're all afraid."

"It takes a lot to rebel when you've seen what it costs."

He doesn't know what's happened between the two of them in the time between when he arrived here and when Katniss did. But he knows enough to know that Katniss is probably aware of where his sympathies really are. He hates Snow, hates him with everything he has, but open defiance had been impossible.

All he'd had left to lose was Annie and Mags, because he'd lost everyone else already.

"I think it's harder for us. Everyone's afraid, but for the victors, it's personal. They're not just watching, they're watching us." Watching them, getting reports from their patrons if they're unlucky enough to be wanted.

The victors knew exactly what would happen if they crossed the line, because they'd been told. It was why Finnick gathered his secrets, why Annie played up her insanity until the Capitol left her alone: those were the only ways they had to protect themselves.

"They want us to fall. They can make examples of us and show that even if you win, even if you beat them at their own game, there are other games."

Katniss sighs a little, scuffs the toe of her boot in the dirt. She's angry but being angry here, so far removed from where she can do anything? It only leads to frustration.

"It's like Haymitch says. You're always playing even if you aren't in the arena."

"Not us. We're too popular to make public examples of."

But there are other examples to be made. Examples to the other victors, and examples to themselves. But the games that Finnick's been forced to play have always been ones with private losses: his parents, killed after the first and last time he'd lost control and let his instincts take over his sense with one of his patrons, and the rest of his family, killed in retribution for breaking the rules when he'd mentored Annie. But that's known only to him and Annie, and those of the victors who could put it together.

In public, they were just tragic fishing accidents, common enough in Four to be believable. He doesn't expect Katniss to know it, to know the depths of the games that he's entangled in, the fact that the person he is in the Capitol is nothing more than another game, and another, and another, so many that sometimes it's easy to forget where the games end.

Annie reminds him, when she can. When she's there, not home in Four while he's stuck in the Capitol's nets.

"We play the games that are just for us, the ones nobody knows the rules to until it's too late."

He says it quietly, almost to the flowers he's picked, and he can feel his neck burning.

"We hardly ever win them," Katniss says softly. She doesn't know the extent of Finnick's private pain, only the bit he'd revealed to her in 13, but it's enough to know why he puts on a facade. It's enough to know why he acts one way in public and another in private.

"I'm always going to be on your team, Finnick, and I'm going to keep playing until we win."

He'd sworn to be Katniss Everdeen's ally in the arena if it killed him, because she was more important than he was. Not that Finnick is without value: he's popular, even beloved, across much of Panem, and he knows things that even the revolution's planners seemed not to know, because his patrons think talking to him is harmless. But he's trapped, and he's tainted in a way Katniss isn't. He can persuade and inspire people, but he can't show the sort of open, honest defiance Katniss had. He can't make people ask themselves what if? in the way she does. He's loyal to her, but he's loyal to her because of what she stands for.

It's startling to hear an honest expression of personal loyalty from Katniss, who he hadn't known before she came here the first time. For a moment, he looks at her with the facade fallen, open honesty and confusion showing in his eyes.

"A lot happened between us in Panem before you got here." It's not a question; he's known for a long time that Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, and Johanna when she'd been here, all knew things he and Annie didn't. But it's never before been so obvious to him that somehow, he'd earned the trust of Katniss, someone he'd been observing for the past year, someone he'd seen didn't trust easily. "Most victors wouldn't trust me enough to say that."

"When you've seen someone screaming and paralyzed in fear, it doesn't really make sense to keep the walls up," Katniss says quietly. She and Finnick have that bond and know that about one another. He's known about her fear, the overwhelming sense of anxiety that drifts over her from time to time. She knows about his too - he carries all the weight and fear of what's happening to Annie when he's not with her to shield her.

There's no sense in pretending you don't know a person when you're stripped down that way. She knows Finnick and trusts him with her secrets same as he'd trusted her with some of his own.

"We've been through a lot together, Finnick. I trust you. I have to trust you."

He recognizes that stance in Finnick. He could remember the times that he had seen it in the arena, each time there was a perceived threat or a sudden attack. Instinctively, Peeta braces himself, ready to raise his hands to defend himself against the trident. It was strange to see Finnick go from calm to sudden tension, as though he sensed something.

Peeta was careful to approach, keeping a bit of a distance between them in case things went south very quickly. Despite the memories he has of Finnick, he has to remind himself that it isn't shared. For some reason, there was a difference in memories among all the Victors, something that he couldn't explain and wasn't sure he'd ever wrap his mind around.

"Are you allright?" He asked, raising his hands to show he was unarmed. There were no canons here and no images to cast in the sky to show who had died or not. If he was attacked, Katniss wouldn't know. "Finnick?"

It took practice for Finnick not to react like this to far more things than he does. Many of the victors would see threats where there weren't any; Finnick saw threats in the people around him in the Capitol, but he couldn't react like this. But the uncertainty of what an unexpected smell means had slipped past his guard, because he had no way of knowing just what caused it, or how much of a threat it was.

At least, if someone had to see him react like this, it was Peeta, a fellow victor. Victors knew what it was like to see a threat where there might not be one, to react as if his life depended on it, because they'd been in the arena too, where their lives did depend on their reaction to anything unexpected.

"Can you smell that?" he asked, the question the only acknowledgment to Peeta. He was still looking around, slowly, trying to work out where the smell of the sea came from.

He did understand what it was to see a threat where there wasn't one, reacting with wariness and being on guard where others would just brush something aside. Smell or sound, it wouldn't mean anything to them. For victors, they knew these things could mean life or death. They survived by keeping their guard up.

He wouldn't judge. There were a number of strange things in this village. Phantom smells could be some trick by the Observers. Jabberjays had been used in the arena, this wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine.

Peeta smelled the air, looking for something that stuck out to him. But There was nothing, only the same scent of fresh air and pine from the forest. "What do you smell?"

Finnick didn't know Peeta well yet, but he knew enough victors to suspect that Peeta would understand, at least. The victors bore with them the aftereffects of what they'd done in the arena to survive; he didn't know of any of them who didn't, no matter how well some of them tried to hide it.

In some ways, it was a small relief that someone understood that way of reacting to something unexpected, a potential threat; he'd spent so long with these people dismissing or showing open skepticism about his suspicions that he no longer expected anyone else to seem to take them something like seriously.

"Something smells like the sea," he said, pausing his study of the fields in front of him long enough to glance sidelong at Peeta. "Salt water and hot sand and a little raw fish," he added, because he wasn't sure if Peeta would have ever registered just what that smell was in the brief stop in Four on the Victory Tour. "Can you smell it?"

There was a twitch they all possessed, some sort of shadow in their eyes that spoke of something lurking in their mind. They were victors, but they never fully left the arena. It was with them always, coming forward when they tried to sleep or find a bit of peace.

He understood, even if Finnick didn't mention it. It was still fresh with him, made worse by the Quarter Quell. While he didn't smell the ocean, he knew that this place had some sort of lake or large body of water. But that wasn't the point. It was that he sensed something off.

"I don't smell it." It wasn't to be dismissed though. He knew that smell, but it didn't make him think of the victory tour. Just the description was enough to take him back once again to the arena. "Do you think the Observers are trying to make you remember things from home?"

Ten years later, Finnick was still as edgy around danger as a newly-crowned victor, but he'd faced danger far more recently than the arena, even before he found himself here. He'd learned that the sharks of the Capitol could kill just as surely as those of the sea or the arena, and those had been the ones that had attacked him, over and over again. Far from the Capitol, though, this place had kept those nerves sharpened, keen against the moment when things would change, if and when it came.

"Not sure," he told Peeta. "They've done things like that before. Gifts from home and hallucinations and other tricks." He shot a sidelong glance at the other victor. "A lot of the same tricks the Gamemakers use, just less immediately deadly."

And, therefore, it was harder to understand, to see their strategy.

"You don't smell it at all? You smell anything strange?"

Beverly has been thinking the same thing as Finnick lately. Not one to pick or disturb unknown plants without proper observance, at least not here without a good tricorder, she's taken to making mental notes more than anything else, hoping that over time she'll be able to figure things out about them without risking anything. But given that Finnick comes wandering in while she's perusing the food stores, she glances up at him with interest.

"It does seem that way," she agrees. "What have you got there?"

He's aware that picking strange plants isn't always a wise move -- after all, he'd seen what nearly happened to Peeta and what did happen to Finch Crossly from District Five, when she'd eaten the berries Peeta had unknowingly picked. But he'd been disconcerted by the flowers that smelled like the ocean, and he'd thought that the things like dandelions were probably fairly safe.

He knows that Beverly likes to garden, and that means she'd probably be someone good to talk to about the plants, if anyone was, so he's pleased that she's there when he wanders into the Inn looking for some advice.

He gives her a careful smile.

"These were growing out by the fields," he says, offering her the purple flower. "Thought the smell was a little strange."

Beverly steps a little closer at the mention of a smell. She hadn't noticed anything right away, but as she takes a quick sniff, a wave of nostalgia floats over her. At first, she can't pinpoint the actual smell. It doesn't smell like anything powerful or strong. Something familiar, almost metallic, sterile. Or not quite sterile.

It smells like sickbay. Or more accurately it smells like a starship and reminds her quite forcefully of the Enterprise.

"Well, that sure makes me homesick," she jokes lightly.

In the middle of setting out a stack of plates for the upcoming meal, Mulcahy is taken by surprise by Finnick popping up out of seemingly nowhere and, of all things, toting plants. He's learned that Finnick has a sharper mind than the younger man realizes, but plants were never something he'd been truly interested in, to the father's knowledge.

"I was under the impression, myself, that we still didn't know enough about what makes things common here to truly make that distinction. For all we know, the plants from wherever this is don't grow in certain areas when they first bloom, or perhaps they require more sunlight than is available at earlier times in the year."

Still, whatever the reason, Finnick was probably right, now that he thought about it. There did seem to be more foliage around now than there had been even two weeks ago, and he moves over to see exactly what Finnick's carrying.

Finnick is far from a botanist; there had been no need to teach anything about plants and how they grow or where to expect them in the schools in District Four, because District Four is for fishing and fish processing. Maybe someone from Eleven or Nine (or even Seven, if Johanna were still here) would know enough to be able to tell what's going on, but they only have people from Four and Twelve here.

"I haven't seen plants grow this quickly before," he says, though he sounds more confident in his assessment than he actually feels. Maybe this is just some entirely normal thing about how plants grow here, how they'd lain dormant over winter or something like that.

He holds out the little purple flower he'd picked. "These things are everywhere by the fields."

There hadn't been anything like them growing there in the last place they'd been, but maybe this was something that didn't get replicated.

Mulcahy unconsciously voices Finnick's private thought, because it's occurred to him, too, and he always does like to find the various potential reasons for things. It's an intellectual exercise he values. "Perhaps they simply grow fast? There is an entirely new world out there we know nothing about, although with the scholars in our midst we may be able to learn something soon."

The purple flower is taken gently from Finnick's hand and studied, his head tilting slightly as he brow furrows as he tries to take it all in. "This looks familiar, like several flowers from home, but I can't say I-"

He stops when the scent drifts to him: old paper, a hint of clean dust, freshly washed linens, and two incenses that seem to mingle in the air. The priest blinks in surprise as a mental picture overlaps his sight for a moment, entirely not real but evoked by that scent, a picture of the office in the church where he'd served as a deacon.

"...What is that?"

The question comes as something of a surprise. He's no botanist, that's for certain, but neither is there any denying that for all that this looks like the village they're used to there's no guarantee that it is. In fact, in light of the nature of their arrival here, he rather suspects that it isn't. What it is is another question, but he's certainly allowing the possibility that this is every bit the alien planet that it seems to be.

"I'm not certain about should. For all we know this could be normal, here. But there does seem to be more of a variety, at least."

Which is another point in favor of it being another planet, by his way of thinking.

Finnick is barely able to think of another country, let alone another planet. He doesn't understand how people can be here from different times and places, who know different histories and seem to be from so far in his past that the planet still supported more than a single country, that the weather and the seas still allowed those other places that once had been to flourish, before the collapse of the world into war and disaster had destroyed everything but Panem. Anything more than that is more than he can imagine.

"You think this could be just another place?" Finnick asks.

The words seem to suggest that, and Finnick is still open to suggestions about just what is going on here.

To be fair, even Picard can only barely glimpse the hows of the Observers being able to pull people from different times. And even that much is largely due to the fact that he's aware that time travel is possible at least, if not necessarily practical or commonplace. The finer details of how the Observers are able to so seamlessly pull people from wherever they'd been is another question entirely, but to be fair, he rather doubts that they'll have an answer to how they're able to manage that until they manage to learn more about the Observers themselves (which is easier said than done).

"Somewhere with a very different set of native wildlife, yes," he agrees with a nod.

True, he can't deny that some of the local wildlife is similar to that of Earth. But it wouldn't be the first time he'd run into that sort of thing, and there's enough that unfamiliar for him to assume that, by and large, this is some uncharted planet somewhere.

Kate isn't looking at Odair; at least, not at first. No, she's staring at the fields and frowning. There are too many weeds. She knows weeds, she knows fields. Oh, nothing as fertile as this place has proved to be, but she's had to clear fields and she's had to keep them clear, and then she'd helped clear these fields. At least, the fields in the mirror village, and she's been here (or there) for summer. And there's been nothing like this profusion of weeds.

And they are weeds. Dandelions and little violet-blue, all over the place. They need to be pulled up, weeded out, but for the moment, Kate has her hands on her hips and is glaring at the fields.

At least, until movement and stillness out of the corner of her eye attracts her attention. Turning, she sees Odair looking puzzled and on the trail of something.

"Odair!" she calls out. "How goes your day?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ψ haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds? | OTA

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