[pain is in the mind, but also terribly present in the body]

[womanofvalue]

WHO: Peggy Carter
WHERE: Riverbed / Peggy & Stella's House
WHEN: June 10th / June 11th
OPEN TO: 1st section is open to all; 2nd is open to anyone Peggy considers a friend or anyone who would be stubborn enough to barge into hers and Stella's house
WARNINGS: Descriptions of an injury
STATUS: Open!

---

The River

The sun hasn't gone down properly in too long and Peggy is weary past recollection. She'd never considered herself someone so greatly affected by lighting, yet the steady presence of the sun in the sky has robbed her of her sleep, paired with the fact that it's so unceasingly hot. It's that exhaustion that sets her into a dazed mood, sleepwalking through her tasks. She's barely paying attention when she gets to the river, but even with her attention half there, no one would miss how low the levels are.

It's clear that she won't be fishing today. She's not quite worried, but Peggy is too tired to be worried, slipping her boots into the river in order to measure the true level and how much they've lost in the past few days. Perhaps it's time for her to stop fishing and go back to the canyons, picking up whatever berries and other greens on her way. Her mind drifting back to a cloudy state, she continues to walk up the shallow river, but when she climbs out on a few of the smoother rocks (shaped by the river's flow), her foot slips and her body gives way, crashing down hard on the outcropping of rocks in front of her.

She's ready to criticize herself when a sharp pain accosts Peggy in her side, a familiar place of pain after the incident with the rebar, but it's not quite like that. She hadn't hit her head, so that's a plus, but a glance downwards as she steadies her hand on the rock shows that there's something in the shallow water below her that looks suspiciously like blood. Moving her body up a touch, it doesn't take long for her to see that it is blood and that it's her own.

There, in between the rocks and wedged out like a pointed weapon is an arrowhead, covered in several inches of warm blood that gives Peggy a good indication of how deeply it had punctured her (or perhaps it had scraped her? She can't see, given the angle). Turning herself cautiously, she settles herself on the dry land beside the river, pressing both palms against the wound to apply pressure, most certainly awake now and chastising herself for being so stupidly distracted.

Closing her eyes and swallowing her pride, Peggy knows that she's not getting out of this without at least some intervention. "Is anyone nearby?" she calls, keeping her tone from wobbling. "By the river, it's Peggy Carter!" she calls, a little louder. I need some help, she thinks, but stubbornly doesn't say, because it will be clear soon enough once she's found.

The Day After

It's all terribly familiar, this stinging sensation in her side that's just painful enough that it nearly knocks her out. She's been lying in bed for nearly a full day, though, and the last time she'd injured herself had been far worse. She had gone right back to work. Clearly, that means that Peggy was well-suited to get up and have some breakfast, knowing that Mr. Jarvis wasn't going to come and fetch it for her. She had the presence of mind to check on the bandage at her side, pressing it tightly against her stitched wound. She also took the time to glare at the arrowhead on her bedside table, since that bloody thing caused this whole mess.

Carefully, she pressed a hand down into her bed to lever herself into a sitting position, pressing the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead. The terrible head and the constant sun had been keeping her in a state of exhaustion before, this new injury hasn't done anything to help. When she moves to stand, the weakness in her legs could be for any number of reasons, but whatever the cause, they force her back down to the bed as her frustration mounts.

She'd saved the whole world and she'd been worse off.

Perhaps if she could get to the spring, she could heal herself and this could all be in the past. "Up we go," she says stubbornly, swaying a little as she makes it to her feet, inching her way towards the door at a rate that suggests she'll reach the springs approximately next month if she keeps it up.

004 ❝ God's in his Heaven ❞

[notsocommon]

WHO: Helen Magnus
WHERE: woods, river, butcher's shop
WHEN: 10 June - 12 June
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Open

---

i. ❝ the year's at the spring ❞

Helen found that paper was a precious and limited commodity around the village and the bits and scraps she had leftover from her gifts over the winter were rapidly dwindling. She had written on every inch of paper as best she could, cramped writing fitting every square of space, and she was reminded for not the first time of Carentan and how things had to be made to last and last again well beyond their original expiration date. In this, she felt her age for one of the first times in her long life. She felt as her friend Tolkien had once described thin, like butter scraped over too much bread and facing her mortality head on wasn't a position she thought she'd ever find herself in.

She didn't particularly face it head on now if she could help it. This morning she'd found herself in the woods hunting for herbs but, honestly, they were few and far between. The sun was up nearly all the time now and while it flirted with the horizon, it never sank beneath it at night. The best they got was a few hours of near-twilight but no true night fell over the land and hadn't for the past several days. To add insult to injury, it was stifling hot and miserably dry. The grasses had either been eaten down to the earth by the grazing animals or withered and dried up.

Her basket woefully empty aside from some indigo for dyeing, she made her way back to the village, brow furrowed a bit with worry. She made a note in her already-cramped notebook: Sun - constant. Arid. Vegetation scorched.

ii. ❝ the hillside's dew-pearled ❞

Later in the day (for a given definition of day, anyway), Helen made her way down to the river to make observations there. It was dangerously low, the banks exposed to a worrisome degree. Much of their food came from the river by way of fish and if they didn't have that resource and the plants were scorching under the bright sun, what were they going to eat? Rations would need to be put into place regardless but this was escalating to a degree that had Helen wondering if they ought not call a meeting to discuss it. It was something she would certainly be discussing with Mark and Ravi when she got home to see if they ought to bring it to the village at large; her roommates were always a good sounding board for such things.

The bright sun glinted against something bronze and shiny against the dried mud of the riverbed and she picked it up, uncertain of what it could possibly be. It appeared to be some sort of arrowhead but she knew the people here who fletched and made arrows typically used flint for them, not bronze. This was something that didn't seem to fit with the activities that the residents normally engaged in and she slid the arrowhead in her pocket, intending to ask about it once she'd gotten back to the village. Perhaps the others might have a better idea as to what it could possibly be.

iii. ❝ all's right with the world ❞

In spite of the strange happenings of late, some things never changed and one of those things was the need for soap. A village like theirs with about five dozen people, give or take, went through a good bit of soap both for personal bathing and for laundry. It took a lot of Helen's time each week to make soap, cut it, leave it to dry and to distribute that which was ready to be used. Each batch of soap had to be cured for at least three weeks to a month before it could be used but given the bright, beating sun of the past month or so she'd had luck with curing soap for much less time.

"The only good thing to come out of this bloody heat is that I can turn over the soap much faster," Helen muttered, stepping outside the butcher's to get away from the hot lye and fat mixture bubbling over the fire and get some sort of relief. It wasn't coming to her here, given it was nearly as hot outdoors as it was inside, but at least she could fan herself and get a chance to get a few deep breaths without inhaling the scent of soap-in-process.

She slid off her t-shirt, standing in just her bra for the moment, and used the soft cotton to mop off her brow.

All Your Actin', Your Thin Disguise, All Your Perfectly Delivered Lines

[bewaretheniceboy]

WHO: Peeta Mellark
WHERE: Village in general, bakery, riverbank
WHEN: June 8, 9, and 10
OPEN TO: Anyone
WARNINGS: It's Peeta, so there's always possibilities of the Games coming up, especially now
STATUS: Open

---

( June 8, Village )

When he'd woken up that morning, it had been with his heart hammering in his chest and a barely contained panic. The symptoms weren't at all unfamiliar to him after a year: a nightmare, a bad one, the kind that made it impossible to ever think things could be good again, and he turned to look at Katniss like he always did to reassure himself that they were okay, that they were safe (relatively, at least), and-

She wasn't there.

He hadn't panicked at first; sometimes she woke up before him and went out to do different things. Sometimes the hunting or tracking was better in the early day for reasons he didn't understand. But she'd always show up for lunch, at least long enough to grab something she could eat as she moved if she didn't stay for an actual meal, and this time she didn't... He'd left Jacob in the bakery to go check the house and see if she was there, and that was when he'd found that almost all traces of her had vanished. There was only one set of the clothing and supplies that people carried with them up from the fountain, only one scrubs top. The bow and arrows she'd been shaping were still there but nothing that had been supplied to them. As much as Katniss liked the woods, she wouldn't have packed up everything and run away to them, not without giving something away.

All of that means that Peeta goes into a mild frenzy and immediately into search and rescue mode, crutches be damned. Katniss is far from the most social person in the village, but she's been there long enough to still be familiar to most people, and anyone he runs into is likely going to be a target for that question of Where is she? whether he knows them or not. His first target is, of course, the inn and anyone there, but he spirals out around the village as well as he can while still being limited in mobility, getting more panicked as the day drags on.


( June 9, Bakery )

He can't search the woods in his condition and he's angry about that on a level no one in the village has seen from him, but he's not stealthy to begin with and a broken leg, even one that's mostly healed, makes him even worse. There's still two weeks, give or take, before the rigid brace can come off his leg and he can drop the crutches, and while he's gotten pretty good at dealing with them in the village, that's still somewhere with places for him to stop and sit and rest and convenient water and loads of other things. There is literally just nothing he can do right now that other people can't do better than him, so Peeta is pouring that anger and energy he has into doing something that's at least productive, mixing up, rolling out, and cutting down batches of pasta which he hangs to dry on a series of branches he'd carefully washed before using. It's very basic, just flour, water, and a little salt, but it's more food for people to eat and something to say "thank you" to everyone who wanted to help him or even commiserate with him. Even worried and angry he wasn't about to make things worse for the rest of the village residents, not when they all needed each other to get through this.


( June 10, River )

Two solid nights of terror have taken a toll on Peeta and he knows it's not really going to get any easier, though he also knows he'll reluctantly get used to it the longer it goes, and he just needs a day away from the normal haunts he'd established within the village. In case something happens, though, he's not gone all that far: just down to the river, not near the waterfall since that's the most popular area, but downstream from it a little to enjoy the cooler air around the moving water. The way it's drained reminds Peeta a little too much of when the Gamemakers had drained the stream in the 74th Games to herd them towards Cato and the finale, but it has uncovered a small cluster of rocks that make good seating for someone who can't swim. He's brought his pencils and one of the books he's working on to continue his project, the one that's a record of all the residents. The pages are opened to a certain entry and as the water swirls by he carefully begins embellishing it, adding more words and details to the sketch there, slowly and lovingly. Katniss' entry, of course; she almost looks as if she's staring at him from the page. He's entirely wrapped up in his work and oblivious to anyone coming up on him.