but if you're worried about the weather, then you picked the wrong place to stay.

[vidal]

WHO: Reyes Vidal
WHERE: Finnick & Annie's place (House 57)
WHEN: ~handwavey general siege times~
OPEN TO: Hawke, Finnick, Annie
WARNINGS: Violent geese!! Probably some violence to NPCs.

---

Since Reyes had been attacked, the two hunters had taken to walking the village armed. Hawke had more of a tendency to look in on her loved ones, and so today they were doing the rounds together, checking in on their famously reclusive married friends out at the outskirts, like performing a neighbourly check-in. Except instead of spare a cuppa sugar or want to come in for some coffee?, it's so how about those mysterious attackers, huh? Reyes still has a blossoming bruise darkening one eye from his own altercation, and he's leaning his weight on a crude spear as they stand outside in the pleasant sunshine, chatting and watching as Finnick and Annie fuss with booby traps that pique his interest. For all intents and purposes, it all looks like a nice and normal spring day out in the garden -- except that they're battening down the hatches, readying for something potentially awful.

The yard has the visitors surrounded by birds, too, and Reyes has to keep sidling further and further to the left as a particularly large goose keeps stalking closer. He's not quite sure if it approves of him or not.

"You know, I'm lamenting the fact that no one ever taught me how to build booby traps," he says. "I'm starting to think my life skills are sorely ill-fitted for this planet."

(Understatement. He's been thinking that since the day he got here.)

Comments

[vidal]

He absorbs all that information thoughtfully. It sounds like a steadily-turning wheel, a self-sustaining system, a snake eating its own tail. The wins and the resources go into training more children to kill, who then go on to win, and bring back more resources to make the next child even better-trained.

The Vidals' own life had followed a feedback loop, too, but one with a downwards trajectory. One debt incurring another and sliding them even further into that pit of obligation, until the only way to climb out was to get your hands dirty too. Muddy. Bloodied.

"I've never seen a dolphin," he admits after a pause. Station boy. Space-raised. "I've only ever seen them in the archives. Photos and videos of them. They seem like they have fun; is that an odd thing to say?"

One of the geese honks aggressively at him; Reyes shoos it away again with a boot.

[treadswater]

The feedback loop Reyes is thinking about, it happens in the districts, too. Less blood and gangs, but a downward spiral is easy to achieve. A part of the system, in Annie's opinion. Hadn't her own mother wagered her - Annie's - life, accepting money and support so she could keep the rest of the family, and her boat, afloat?

(Annie never played her; her father did.)

But Annie isn't thinking about feedback loops, or the issue of children supporting their families. No, she's been distracted by Reyes' pause, and ignorance.

It shouldn't be a surprise. Education in Panem is a laughable mess, she's been learning while she's here, and most people in Panem wouldn't know a dolphin if it jumped out in front of them. And yet-

"No?"

She shakes her head, sharply, trying to clear it. "No, not odd. They are, they're wonderful. They'll follow along with the boats and jump around them, and they like to show off? So sometimes they'll do spins. Just because they can."

Much like Careers, or fisherkids, doing somersaults and flips just because they can.

"Some of the friendly ones, they like scritches. Yes, like you," she tells East, who flaps her wings and ruffles her feathers in disagreement. Fancy her being like a dolphin.

[fishermansweater]

"Hey, behave." Finnick waves a hand, gesturing to the geese who have been getting too close to Reyes.

He keeps his head down as Annie talks, staring at his trap so that the fact he can't help from grinning at her description of dolphins isn't immediately obvious.

"A lot of fishermen think it's lucky to see dolphins," he says. "Course it helps that they herd fish together when they're hunting, which is good for the fishermen as well as the dolphins."

That's what Annie had been getting at with her analogy. Not their playfulness or their elegance or the way they seem, like Reyes says, so joyous. It was that they hunt, and hunt in packs.

Finnick stands up and heads to a tree, where the materials for a snare have been placed. It's going to hang enemies upside-down by their feet from the tree once it's done.

"I'm glad you still have videos of them. Everyone should get to see them, even if it's in a video."

[vidal]

"We're missing a lot of things back home, but at least there's extensive recor--"

Reyes' voice trails off as his gaze follows Finnick out to the tree-line and he suddenly sees, further out into the forest, approaching figures. From outside the village. Not following the usual trails that the hunters or smiths take; these are forcing their way through the underbrush, and they're dressed in shabby dirty clothing that he recognises. Like the ones that had attacked him before.

Goddamn Odair and Cresta and their hermitic house out on the absolute far edge of the village. Reyes straightens, no longer lolling lazily against his spear, his hands instead tightening on its grip.

"Cresta," he says sharply, the humour suddenly bleeding out of his voice. Her husband is still out by the trees.