sixthiterationlogs | take what the water gave me.

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take what the water gave me.

WHO: Stella Gibson
WHERE: The fountain and environs
WHEN: November 20th, afternoon-ish
OPEN TO: Anyone!
WARNINGS: None yet.
STATUS: Open

For an instant, a brief, ridiculous instant, Stella thinks that perhaps she blacked out while she was swimming. It's the first explanation that comes to mind that even makes sense when she realizes she's several feet deep in water. The problem with that explanation is that, on further inspection, it makes no sense at all: she's fully dressed, for one thing, the extra fabric creating drag that makes it harder for her to push against the water. Harder, but not so difficult that she struggles much, legs and arms working together to bring her to the surface in a matter of seconds—

—to realize that she isn't in a pool at all, but a fountain, as she grabs hold of the edge and tries to get her bearings. She's inhaled a little water, enough that she has to lean forward and cough once or twice, deeply, to get it out of her lungs. It's only when she draws breath again that she realizes how cold the air is, colder than freezing if she had her guess, and even more so because she's soaking wet. Stella pulls herself out of the fountain, trying to stifle the rising panic threatening to take hold of her so she can think, pushing her wet hair out of her face with both hands.

She's wearing boots — hiking boots, not the stylish high-heeled boots she's used to — and a top and trousers in dark blue that look like hospital scrubs. There's a pack with something in it, but she's just going to wait to see what it is because she is, quite literally, freezing, and if she doesn't get indoors and near a heat source she is going to be very hypothermic very quickly.

(Other things to consider: this is not Slieve Dove, there are no squad cars, no one on her team is here, and Paul Spector is not bleeding to death in her arms. But she'll deal with that soon enough.)

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Although he and Annie have been camping out in the house on the outskirts, Finnick still spends very little time in the village, especially the heart of the village around the crossroads at the inn. Really, he only goes there when he's scouting (though perhaps spying is the better word to use) or, like this morning, when he's leaving his occasional thank-you gift of fish for Kate Kelly.

He doesn't like to linger, and he has no plans to do so until he hears sounds from the fountain park, not just the constant sounds of flowing water, but splashing, scraping, what sounds very much like someone hauling themself out of the fountain that seems to be the way people arrive here.

He considers, for a moment, just ignoring it, but his need to know, to find whatever intelligence advantage he can, is too strong. So Finnick approaches, his spear held at his side in a posture that's not aggressive, but that leaves him free to swing into a more threatening stance should he need to.

It's a woman, significantly older than him, wearing just pants and shirt and backpack like he had been when he'd arrived, and already starting to shiver in the wintry-cold morning.

"There's probably a coat in the backpack," he offers.

Finnick is already wearing his, over the awful still-too-bright red of his clothes.

Just looking at her, one wouldn't really expect Stella to be an aggressive person, especially not like this. Without her usual three-and-a-half inch heels to give her more height, she's petite — not tiny like Annie, but still slight of height and frame, and that in combination with the way her hair is more or less plastered to her at the moment makes her look vulnerable, though she'd hate it were she told that. But even waterlogged and shaking with cold, there's something there: not aggression as such, but a trace of steel in her bearing that might make one think twice before writing her off as helpless.

She's certainly quick to stand up straight when she hears someone approaching, crossing her arms tightly both to conserve warmth and as an unconscious defensive gesture. There's a young man there, American-sounding, maybe a few years younger than Tom Anderson, and so arrestingly attractive that she might have had a completely different reaction to him were she not currently soaked to the skin and within minutes, she feels, of a bad case of frostbite, if not worse.

Right now, though, Stella just looks at him, warily, almost but not quite frowning. The spear gives her pause, both because she has a policewoman's natural instinct to be cautious of someone with an obvious weapon and because who the hell carries a spear anymore — but he's not pointing it at her, at least. Small mercies.

It's hard to get the backpack open when her hands are shaking, but she manages it, and finds he was correct: there's a coat, similar to the one he's got but styled for a woman instead. She pulls it on; any additional layer will help right now, although she would really like to get into some dry clothes, full stop.

"Am I not the first person here to climb out of a fountain in the middle of the cold and snow?" she says, and on anyone else that would sound joking; she's plainly serious. The panic of not knowing where she is or what's going on is getting more and more difficult to keep at bay, but she's holding it down hard, stifling it at least until she can get out of the cold and away from this man she doesn't know nor trust. Stella picks up the backpack, loops the straps over her shoulders and shoves her hands into the pockets of her coat.

Finnick learned long ago not to judge a person's capacity for aggression or their ability as a fighter on a diminutive appearance. He's seen too many tributes fall prey to that not to know better. Katniss Everdeen was short, slender, though not half-starved like so many from her District, but she'd been more than capable of killing. So he's not making any assumptions about the woman.

Her expression says that she doesn't trust him, but it's hardly as though she's had any reason to. He hadn't trusted Riza. Still doesn't trust anyone here but Annie. That's not personal.

"It's how everyone seems to arrive here. Not always in such bad weather, but out of the fountain." His head lifts a little, the elevation of his jaw indicating the fountain behind the woman.

Usually, people have or claim to have no knowledge of how they got here, but he doesn't offer that information. He's not going to feed her anything for her story until he's heard a little more of it, to see if it matches with the others here.

It's fairly simple to do a detour by the fountain on every errand Benedict runs, just because the town is so small, and the fountain is so central. It also means he can try to be kept abreast of the newcomers; there seems to have been an uptick in new arrivals, and he wonders if that is somehow to counter the disappearances that have also been becoming more and more frequent.

Returning from checking on the bees — sluggish, but still alive and making their little homes as cozy as possible for the winter — he makes his way to the central square, only to arrive just in time to watch someone surface.

It's a woman, older than most of the village's occupants, with blonde hair slicked close to her skull. Already, he can see her starting to shiver, and he knows she's only going to get colder the more she waits around. Unbuttoning his coat, he starts at a half-jog to get closer to her more quickly, shrugging out of the dark wool by the time he reaches her so he can drape it across her shoulders. There will be a coat in her pack, he knows, but his is warmed from his body and readily available.

"It's alright," he assures her, crouching down before her. "The worst is over." Whether or not that's true has never been very clear, but he remembers how panicked he'd been when he popped up out of the fountain, and how much he'd appreciated being calmed by Miss Kate's soothing voice. "We should get you inside before you freeze, can you stand?"

It is not really in Stella's nature to readily accept sympathies or assurances; she is simply used to standing on her own two feet, as such, and it can occasionally be difficult for her to accept help or admit to her own weakness. But in this case, both the frigid weather and the bizarre situation have her outmatched.

She is, however, near to standing up when she feels the coat draped over her, the material startlingly warm in contrast to the cold, wet fabric of her clothing. "I'm fine," she says, an automatic brush-off as she pushes herself to her feet, tries not to stagger. It's not just cold; there's snow, crunching under the soles of her boots. Of course. Her fingers, numb and red at the ends already, pull the coat closer about her as she turns to look at... she's not going to think of him as her rescuer because that implies a certain dynamic she doesn't feel, but he is, if nothing else, a kind stranger. Young, more than two decades her junior, with an accent that sounds almost like hers but not quite. Gentlemanly, which would normally make her roll her eyes a bit, but he's not doing it in a way that implies she's totally helpless.

And because Stella is most certainly not stupid: yes, she agrees they need to get indoors. She picks up her pack where she'd left it sitting in the snow. "Where are we?" she asks, not really sure what answer she's hoping to hear. She has enough sense, even rattled, to realize that whatever answer she gets, it's not going to be Belfast.

The woman seems to recover her bearings quickly; Benedict can't help being impressed. It took him much longer to relax after floundering to the surface of the water, especially since he didn't know how to swim and had inhaled what felt like half the fountain. Part of him wants to hover more, to offer her his arm for balance, but he has a sense that it wouldn't be welcomed, so he makes himself take a step or two back to give her some space. He's learned that many people appreciate more space than he's used to giving, in his time down here.

"Nobody really knows," he replies, his eyebrows descending in a frown. "I have been here some three months and still I am not sure. All I know is this, we are on the Surface."

The emphasis he places on that statement should make the capital letter clear. To Benedict, being on the ground is a Big Deal. He's still trying to wrap his head around it. Shaking his head slightly as if to clear his thoughts, he takes a half step towards the Inn and gestures towards it. "Come, you need to get out of those wet clothes. There is room at the Inn, and some tea, too."

Stella might look outwardly composed, but she's far from relaxed: she's in a place she doesn't know with a man she doesn't know or trust, freezing cold and soaking wet. It's only decades of practice at stifling her feelings when she doesn't want to make them obvious that keeps her from showing any of the panic she's trying to keep at bay.

That he allows her some space to straighten up and orient herself is appreciated, even if she doesn't say or show as much. The last thing Stella likes is having someone hover over her. Then he says nobody really knows where they are and that he's been stuck here for three months, and that is enough to make her nervousness more apparent — though the gesture she makes to cover it, crossing her arms tightly as if to hold in the feeling, could easily be mistaken for a gesture intended to conserve warmth, which is just fine with her.

"The Surface," she repeats, a question disguised as a statement, definitely hearing that capital S; there's a frown, a little crease between her brows that makes it clear she has no idea what he's talking about. The surface of what exactly? The Earth? That's clear enough, she thinks — but maybe not to him, for a reason that's not obvious to her yet.

And — oh. Tea. Suddenly that sounds better than almost anything else he could have told her at the moment. She still doesn't have much reason to trust him, but at the same time she is not precisely spoiled for choice here. It's either follow him and get out of the cold, or freeze to death. Stella trudges after him through the snow, tucking her hands into her coat sleeves.

"Was there a man who came through just before me?" She doesn't like even asking this, but— "Early thirties, about six feet tall, athletic, short brown hair and a beard. He would have been badly injured."

If Spector is here too, that's going to complicate things, to say the very least.

"I know," he says with feeling, mistaking her confusion as some sort of show of solidarity. The only other person he's met who seemed surprised to be on the Surface was Raven, and even then, she didn't know about habbles or spires or any of the things Benedict has taken for granted his entire life. His assumption that she understands his unease at being on the ground endears her to him, and he smiles easily at her even though he's starting to shiver in just his shirtsleeves.

Still, at least he's not wet.

Her question has him shaking his head slowly. "I do not think so, madam," he replies, turning his head slightly to look at her over his shoulder as he forges ahead through the snow towards the Inn. There are a few men already living here who might fit that description in a pinch, but they have been here for weeks, some longer than he, and nobody is badly injured. Only Miss Kate, who refuses to keep her weight off her ankle. Everyone else seems to be in better health than they were expecting, Benedict included. "There are not many of us in this habble, however. If the man you ask about is here, you will find him quite quickly, I am sure."

He stomps his feet just before entering through the doors of the Inn, trying to dislodge most of the snow from his boots so he doesn't track it across the floors, before immediately heading towards the desk near the front door and reaching behind it to grab a key and a towel.

"Here, take these." They've been keeping towels by the door ever since he's been here, and the idea has always shown to be a good one. Everyone arrives here wet, everyone can be handed a towel. "The rooms are upstairs. While you change into something drier, I will put the kettle on for tea."

"I see," she says, her voice not giving away much in the way of emotion at all. Even as she had asked the question, Stella had known the answer had been likely to be no. A man — even an otherwise healthy, physically fit man — bleeding out from two gunshot wounds to the abdomen wouldn't survive being thrown into deep water long enough to swim his way out, and there'd been no blood on the snow nearby in any case. The feeling that understanding brings is some strange mélange of relief and anger that Stella buries, for now. She'll take it back out and analyze it later.

The key and the towel are taken without much fuss, not even a thank you — not yet, at least — although she can probably be forgiven for that; she's still in shock. It takes her a moment to gather herself enough to actually go upstairs and look for the room marked on the key. She's already noticing things about her environment as she goes: the architecture seems old, very early twentieth century if she doesn't miss her mark entirely. Having just come from a quite modern city, it throws her a bit.

But everything about this place is throwing her, frankly, so that's not new. Stella finds her room, shuts the door behind her, throws her pack onto the bed and strips out of her boots and socks and her wet clothes. Picks up the towel and dries her hair with it. She doesn't try to get dressed again right away, but sits on the edge of the bed with the towel draped over her shoulders and gives herself just... just five minutes, five minutes to try to take stock, to focus on what's going on.

She's been abducted, is what's going on — not by the young man downstairs making the tea, no, she'd got a good enough read of him to intuit that he'd been genuine with her. But abducted by someone, or something, and her investigative mind is already trying to sort the whos and wheres and whys, despite the large pieces she's missing from that particular mental puzzle.

Eventually she does get up and start to sort through what's in her pack: socks, underwear, a black wool coat like the one she'd "borrowed," a baseball cap, and a pair of what she'd call dungarees. Stella puts on the long underwear, and the dungarees over that, and the coat over that, along with the heavier-knit woolen socks. She is a woman used to dressing well for her own pleasure, and feels faintly ridiculous like this — but the clothing is dry and clean, and she doesn't really have any room to complain. She goes back downstairs, slowly, taking her time to examine her surroundings more thoroughly. It occurs to her that someone has gone to some effort to give this place a sense of normalcy. Like they're intended to stay here for the long haul.

She stops by the fire for what she intends to be a brief moment just to warm her hands and check for frostbite, but decides it might actually do her some good to sit down there for a bit. Stella is sure her new "friend" can come find her with the tea when he's ready.

If questioned, Benedict would lay the blame for the attempt at normalcy, at comfort at the feet of Kate, although he knows he attributes more to her than perhaps he should. He can't help it, though. He'd been quite lost when he first arrived here, not knowing up from down, basically, and having someone who would issue him directions and expect him to do what he was told was incredibly helpful.

He's quick about transferring the heavy iron kettle back onto the stove, made all the heavier by the water he'd filled it with, and then sets about finding a nice collection of herbs to brew. It's been three months, and he still misses the tea he remembers in Habble Morning, but he's learned quite quickly since he arrived here that beggars cannot be choosers, and actually, some of the teas they've managed to brew here are quite pleasant. After he's selected the correct combination of fruit leaves and bark-y things — there were quite a few plants he recognized growing, not to mention what he was able to salvage from Mr Watney's garden before the snows came, but when it came to things growing on trees, Benedict was entirely ignorant — and dropped them in the teapot, he moves to collect two mugs for them, setting them beside the pot while he waits what feels like an age for the water to boil.

Things take so much longer now than they ever did up in Spire Albion.

Eventually, it does. Once he's filled the pot and set the kettle back to rest and cool down, he collects both mugs in one hand and the teapot in the other, deciding to go out into the common areas to search for this new arrival since it seemed she wasn't inclined to come find him in the kitchen.

Naturally, she's sitting by the fire, so he moves quickly to her side, setting the teapot down on the table beside her and reaching to fill one of the mugs. "For you, madam," he says solicitously, handing her the freshly-poured tea before setting to pouring his own. "Forgive me, I did not introduce myself when we first met," he continues, pressing a hand to his chest. "Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, at your service."

He's being what she would almost call slightly too polite with her — an affectation on most men she's met, the sort of men who are trying to impress women like her — but on him, it actually feels honest. It makes her think he comes from a very different world than she does, though she thinks that in the figurative sense. The idea that they are actually from different worlds entirely has not occurred to her as yet.

Stella does manage to thank him when he hands her the tea, and for a few moments just sits there with the mug in her hands, letting the heat from the tea soak into her skin; she's still trying to shake the last vestiges of cold and damp. When she tries it, she finds it's actually quite good, though she can't place exactly what's in it.

"Stella Gibson," she says by way of introduction when he gives his name. There's a pause while she takes another sip of tea, then forces a slight smile. "You may have to forgive me for asking a lot of questions," in the tone of a woman who isn't actually apologizing, just stating a fact. "You've said there are others here. How many others, do you think?"

She's trying for interviewer, not interrogator, but her attention is still firmly focused on him and it's clear she expects an answer.

Benedict's mannerisms have often garnered him raised eyebrows, but he's too set in his ways to change now, and besides. He was raised to be polite, especially to women, especially to women older than him. The rest of the village residents have simply had to grow used to him, although that is made slightly easier by virtue of him not being the only one who speaks as he does.

He'd put a dollop of his carefully-hoarded honey in her mug, just because he had a feeling she would probably appreciate a little bolstering sweetness after the day she's had so far.

"Well, I'll answer them the best I can, Miss Gibson," he says gamely, sitting in the other chair near her and curling his own hands around his mug of tea. This would all be better if he'd taken off his damp boots so he could dry his socks out in front of the fire, but he's pretty sure toeing out of his shoes in front of a lady would be considered bad form, even if she might not get offended. Better to just stoically suffer through the indignity of damp socks in silence.

Doing a mental count of the people who live here takes a moment. "Between forty and fifty, I believe," is his eventual reply. "We've had a handful new arrivals trickling in every few weeks, but it's not been steady by any means."

Stella notices the tea tastes sweet, and while she's not typically one to put sweetener in her tea, right now it does help. She is still not exactly relaxed, but being able to concentrate on the questions she's asking and taking in his answers is getting her mind off of her own nervousness and concern.

Between forty and fifty is quite a large number for what she had assumed was just a random abduction of a handful of unfortunates. Her brows knit slightly in an obvious frown as she tries to process that. What would anyone want to do with so many people?

"And all through that fountain? No one's found a way to go back out the same way, I suppose."

It can't be that easy. Never mind that the entire idea of getting to a place through a fountain makes no sense whatsoever.

Helen, too, had dark blue scrubs but she also had a coat to keep the chill of the air and the snow away. She had taken to checking the fountain periodically, testing it to see if she could discern where the damned thing ended and where people came out of it from; she had yet to be successful. She had been poised to toss yet another rock into it for another fruitless attempt at experimentation when she saw the blonde woman's head break through the water; she'd freeze if Helen didn't work quickly.

Helen slid off her jacket and offered it to the woman, draping it around her shoulders.

"Come, let me get you indoors before you go and freeze to death. The explanations of this place can wait until then."

And Stella's not quite sure what makes her accept that without balking. Maybe it's that this stranger is a woman (it's always, always easier with women), maybe it's that she looks near to her own age, maybe it's that it's vaguely nice to hear an English voice again after close to a month of being surrounded by Irish accents.

Or maybe it's just that she is actually fucking freezing, and the coat is a light, warm weight over her that improves the feeling considerably. Stella inhales, a little shaky, and has to try not to cough again when the cold, dry air cuts her nose and throat like a knife. She's shaken, and suppressing panic hard, but her mind still works, and from the other woman's words she can immediately deduce two things: that she is not the first person to get here the way she did, and that this happens regularly.

"I'm not the only person who's come out of that fountain, then," she says: a question phrased like a statement. That, of course, invites the question of what she was doing in the fountain in the first place, and who or what put her there — but that, that can wait. Just for a few minutes.

Edited 2016-11-22 04:56 (UTC)

"Alas, you are not. Much to my own chagrin and frustration, people have been coming out of that fountain steadily for months with no rhyme or reason. I can't even sort a pattern to it," Helen admitted. It was an ongoing frustration, the proverbial thorn in her side and being able to kvetch about it was her only form of solace; research had yielded very little progress, after all, and it was only being able to commiserate with her fellow prisoners that gave her any relief.

"I'm happy to explain the lot of it once we get you somewhere warm. There's an inn up along the road. There'll be a fire and something to eat there and then I'll be happy to address any questions you have to...my limited ability."

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take what the water gave me.

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