ψ i've got a friend he's a pure bred killing machine

[fishermansweater]

WHO: Finnick Odair
WHERE: Outside the Police Station
WHEN: November 4
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: Animal death, gore, possible PTSD
STATUS: Open

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It's been becoming increasingly clear that the weather is taking a turn towards, not away from, winter. Not the mild winters of District Four, either, but something colder, harsher, and the first snowfalls had made him turn his thoughts back to when he'd first arrived and he and Annie were wondering if freezing them out was going to be part of the Gamemakers' strategy.

The snow's cleared now, but it's still cold enough that Finnick is wearing the woolen coat that had been in his backpack when he first arrived on his daily fishing trips. He's spent a lot of time lately carving a thin, strong branch he'd cut from a tree into a suitable haft for the spearhead that had been in the gift box he'd received, and since he's been using the spear, he's been doing well. (The trident is still a work in progress; he still hasn't found anything suitable to use for the tines, though he's thinking it's probably going to be animal bones.)

The spear has helped him increase his fishing yield enough that he can, occasionally, drop some fish by the Inn for Kate Kelly to use. Not that he stops to give them to her: he leaves them in a woven basket by the back door where he knows she'll find it eventually, as his way of thanking her for helping him and Annie when they had too little food to get by. That's the sort of thing a lot of people talk about here, help and be helped in return, more like life in the districts than he'd ever have expected in any arena.

It's still early morning as he heads away from the Inn, spear in one hand and a few fish strung on a cord over his shoulder. He's planning to cut off into the woods again to throw anyone watching him off his trail before he goes back to the house he and Annie are using, but just as he's about to turn away, he notices something bright red on the path just in front of the building labeled Police.

Something big and bright red, and he feels a jolt of fear kick into his gut, the fear that sets off all his instincts. making him draw back from the path, into the cover of the edge of the building. Making him draw his pocket knife, and extend the blade so that when he steps out of the shadow to see what the mangled mess in front of the building is, he has his spear and knife both ready.

Nobody attacks. There's no flash of movement in the edges of his vision, no prickling sense of otherness that suggests hes being watched by someone other than whatever cameras are always on them. But that's no reassurance when he sees what's there. It's a deer, or what's left of one, its throat torn nearly in two, its stomach and back a mass of mangled flesh, torn and worried by what looks like some sort of bite marks.

Finnick's hand tightens on the haft of his spear as he takes a couple of steps backwards, suddenly wishing he didn't have his back to the path. Or anything.

Comments

[lastofthekellys]

It's habit which keeps her checking the windows of whatever room she's in. Habit, after a lifetime of having to answer knocks on the door. Sell a traveller some grog, be polite to whatever copper has turned up this time. Occasionally, frighten off some idiot who thought the Kelly girls were fair game.

So when Kate comes up from the root cellar, where she's put the fish Odair's given her, she glances out the window next to the outer kitchen door. And there. There is Odair, red trousers and black coat, standing out and standing still.

Which isn't normally how he moves. The man is all cat-grace, a rolling saunter as he heads back to wherever he's taken shelter with the redhaired woman.

Swallowing, Kate picks her own coat off its hook, puts it on, and goes outside.

"Odair?" she calls out, staying within running distance of the kitchen door. "You all right?"

[fishermansweater]

Kate Kelly has a distinctive accent, broad and lilting and unlike anything he'd heard before he came here. That's the only reason that he doesn't turn to her with his spear lifted, poised to strike. He wants to, his body yearning to turn and fight, but he doesn't. He stays facing the creature, staring at it, for a few moments longer, trying to note the details that might tell him what happened: tooth marks, he thinks, from the pattern on the deer's skin, like it's been mauled to death by an animal. But not for food, because after the turn the weather's taken lately, what animal would leave that much food behind?

When he turns his head, it's to look back over his shoulder, where he sees Kate Kelly standing outside the Inn, wearing the same black coat everyone here seems to have gotten when they first arrived.

"I'm fine," he says, slowly. But his fingers are moving, imperceptibly, on the handle of his knife. "This deer's not."

The deer's not, and no ordinary animal did that. He's sure of that.

[lastofthekellys]

This deer's not, and his voice is all queer. Unbidden, she thinks of Miss Margaery's ram.

Taking a breath of cold air, Kate walks forwards. She's wearing her skirts in layers, petticoats under her blue overskirt, but without stockings, she's still chilled. A few layers are better than one or two, but the fabric is still thin. The snow crunches under her feet, an alien sound to her which merely adds to the eerie atmosphere.

She doesn't want to walk forwards. She doesn't. She wants to go back to the warm sanctuary of the inn, the sanctuary she's built up, but she's a Kelly and she's an adult: it is not to her to hide from unsightly things.

Although she can flinch, and she does when she sees the wreckage. She lifts her hand, crosses herself and murmurs an almost silent prayer.

"It. It looks like the ram."

[fishermansweater]

He's still looking over his shoulder as she makes the decision to start moving towards him, further away from the inn and towards Finnick and the mangled deer. Her shock is clear when she sees what's been done to the deer, though he has no idea what the gesture is that she makes over her chest is.

That doesn't matter, though. She stumbles over what she's trying to say and has to repeat the first word, and it's hard to fake that look on her face. Disgust, horror, unease. Finnick has seen far worse sights, but he's unsettled by the dead creature too, even if he might not show it openly.

"What ram?" he asks, his words blunt, maybe lacking in tact when she looks so upset, but Finnick is not at his best himself.

[lastofthekellys]

She's seen worse: nothing, nothing can match the sight of her brother as nothing but a burnt out, charcoaled corpse. Nothing can beat the smell of that, either. But violence is violence, and she's used to the petty sort. Brawls, punches, beatings. The quiet violence of a man's hands.

Not this.

And not this again.

"Miss Margaery's," she says. "A week ago. It was killed the same way, it looks like."