[MINGLE] Scout's Honor

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Hot Springs
WHEN: 21 Sept, after sunset
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn in your subject line as needed
NOTES: Details found here

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It's been a strange, rough couple of months for our intrepid villagers — Bunkers, superpowers and clones, oh my! Perhaps the Observers are sympathetic to their plight, or maybe they just have a peculiar sense of humor. At any rate, they've set up a gathering space chalk full of summer camp goodness, no strings attached. Not that anyone knows that part.

Just before sunset, a cheery message pops up on wrist devices all across the settlement and beyond. The instructions seem simple enough, although one does have to wonder at what dubious gift awaits them all after everything is said and done.

Marshmallows are on the house, so grab yourself a stick, strap on a sash and get to roasting, villagers. Skinny dipping, sing-alongs and friendship bracelets optional.

Comments

cw: depression

[fishermansweater]

Finnick isn't thinking about the possibilities or otherwise of security and protection. Since it's the fear of encountering Snow here that's drained his energy and alertness, he really should be mindful of defending himself and Annie, but he couldn't concentrate on it if he tried, so he's not trying. He thinks he didn't even remember to bring a knife with him.

Huddled together by the fire feels safe, though it shouldn't; most of the other people from here are around them, also facing the fire. (For once, his vigilance at keeping his back away from the unknown has slipped along with his determination to carry weapons.) It's warm, and he settles his head against Annie's legs in a way that feels comfortable.

Finnick turns his head, watching Annie pick up his wrist and a little braided bracelet.

"Three?" he asks.

"Where did you get the string?" His free hand reaches out to touch the strands she'd been working with. "It's nice."

[treadswater]

She has plans for Snow, should he show his face. Should his presence be a real thing that will really happen, oh does she have plans. She has watched all seventy-four Hunger Games, studied and analysed them, and she is creative. There are quite a number of ways to kill someone if you really put your mind to it. She can also pack into her small frame enough paranoia for her and Finnick both, so his current state of Not Caring is concerning but not actively dangerous. Not yet, anyway.

And it's kind of sweet, the way Finnick reaches up like a cat to play with the thread.

"We've been provided with them," she explains. "Something to do with the badges on the sashes? I don't really get it, but it's fun to make bracelets again."

Annie hooks the bracelet she's working on around his wrist, and finishes it off and ties it up. Then she picks up two more from her little pile and adds them.

[fishermansweater]

"They're pretty," he tells her, turning his wrist to study the patterns she's integrated into the bracelets. He hadn't found the sashes yet, hadn't bothered to look at other people to see that they were all wearing them. He sees it now as he glances around, then he looks back up at Annie.

"Some of your circles are marked off," he offers. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

He's not sure if the question is helpful or silly, but talking is at least distracting him a little from where his thoughts have been lurking lately.

[treadswater]

"They're the badges. I helped start the bonfire, and I shared a bracelet, so the surface of the badges change to reflect it." She doesn't sound awed by it at all: it sounds merely like technology, and relatively simple technology at that. The only thing that has impressed her is that she can't see the seam or rise of a screen on the badges in this light.

"I guess the other badges are for other tasks, but-"

Annie would shrug, if she didn't have a lap full of husband and if her hands weren't occupied with braiding.

"I can't be stuffed running around trying to work out what they are."

[fishermansweater]

If he concentrates carefully and squints at the colored circles on Annie's sash, he can see a splash of something that could be a tiny picture of flames.

"What are they doing?" he wonders, but it's with the same lack of actual energy to seek it out that Annie's ambivalent comment suggests. The Gamemakers seem to enjoy making them do things, but they're usually like this, puzzles to work out rather than the life and death tricks that they'd play in the Games. Or that Snow would play in the Capitol, and that thought sits darkly in his mind, clouding over his face as he stares at the fire. He hadn't realized how much he'd let himself be lured into an illusion of safety by the relative lack of demands their Gamemakers' made about how he lived his life.

That way, though, leads to the dark mist that's haunted his thoughts for days, and he doesn't want to fall into that again, so he makes himself look away from the fire and back up at Annie.

"Do you have any more string?"