applesaucedream | May the odds be ever in your favor

Current Music: June 9, 2013

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May the odds be ever in your favor

In the dream there is a jungle. In the jungle, there is an impossible inland sea, briny like the ocean but surrounded by land on all sides. Around the sea there is a beach, and in the sea there is an island. On the island, there is a a cornucopia, a great curled golden horn with an opening that yawns twenty feet high. Around the cornucopia, land bridges stretch like spokes of a wheel from the island to the beach.

Inside the cornucopia, there are weapons. Everywhere, hidden well enough to escape the attention of all but the most carefully observant, there are cameras. Above is a false sky, an electric dome that stretches over the round expanse of jungle and disguises itself as the illusion of more jungle where it touches the ground. To touch it is to be electrocuted.

Those who hike off into the jungle may not ever reach the edge of the dome and learn how thoroughly they are trapped. An invisible, almost always intangible line extends from each of the island's spokes to the edge of the dome, a barrier between dangers for which there is no warning. Viewed from above, this round jungle begins to resemble a clock with its face divided into twelve wedges that all converge on the cornucopia. Unfortunately for the dreamers, this clock keeps time.

At the stroke of twelve, lightning strikes in the segment toward which the tail of the cornucopia points. At the strike of one, catastrophe moves clockwise and the next segment rains blood. Disaster strikes at the beginning of each hour, moving slowly but inexorably all the way around the jungle until it comes back to the beginning and starts again. Some segments represent near-inevitable death for anyone caught in them at the wrong moment, while others simply torture their captives or twist their perceptions. The beach and the island might seem to represent safety and reprieve, but some threats, like the wall of saltwater that comes crashing through the jungle at ten o'clock, reach even that haven. And though the world outside the jungle may be watching, that world is beyond the dreamers' reach. No one may pass beyond the dome except by awakening from the dream and leaving this place entirely in favor of the waking world.

Welcome to the Quarter Quell.

[Mod note: Same drill as always. All players and characters are welcome, current members or no. Characters will remember or forget any and all dream events at players' discretion. Death in the dream does not result in real death. Post your tags under the header for the section of the clock in which your thread takes place (if the thread takes place in multiple sections, put it under the header for the section in which it begins). Threads can take place at any time; note what time your thread begins when starting a new one so other players know whether the section will be active. Multiple threads per header are allowed. Dream time passes more quickly than real time (and is kind of timey wimey anyway), so feel free to subject your characters to as many or few hours as you wish.]

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Daine nods gratefully at the suggestion. It's not hard for her to keep the shields up. She's done it plenty of times before. But given how many of the dangers here seem to involve the People, she'd rather stay put until she can listen properly again.

"Probably a good idea," she says, retrieving the bow and brushing the sand off of it. "And I'd best try this out, now that we've got a few minutes." New weapons usually take some getting used to, and she'd rather figure out this one's quirks when they're not in immediate danger.

Getting to her feet, she pulls out an arrow and looks for an appropriate target that isn't too far off. About twenty yards down the beach, there's a palm tree that's ventured far enough from the jungle cover to stand out. That'll do it. Daine retrieves an arrow and sets it to the bow, then slowly draws back the string. It still feels too easy, but what matters most is that it works. She aims carefully - if she misses, better to have it hit the sand then disappear into the greenery - then looses.

The arrow, strange as it is, still flies well enough. It strikes a glancing blow on the trunk of the palm tree, then buries itself in the sand another five yards down the beach. Daine frowns thoughtfully. "My longbow would be better," she says, "but at least it works." She pulls out another arrow and tries again, this time hitting the trunk squarely.

It's strange, watching Daine shoot. She doesn't look like Katniss - she holds the bow differently, holds herself differently - but there's something in the motion of a bow being drawn that always reminds him of Katniss. He can see both of them at the same time, in eye and mind: notching the arrow, drawing the string, letting it fly. That they're in the arena doesn't help; it's nothing but memories for him here.

He sits to the side, back to the water, as Daine practices, and tries not to think too much about anything.

It takes her some time to feel as if she's truly got the measure of the strange bow and arrows. She winds up with about half her quiver's contents buried in the palm tree by the end of it, and then she strides down the beach to collect the one that went astray and pry the others out of the trunk. One's buried deep enough that she ends up needing to use her knife to help pry it loose.

"You were right about needing the knife," she calls back to Peeta, sounding about as cheerful as she has been since she got here. There's just something reassuring about having a working bow in her hands again, despite the gravity of the situation. And the distraction is helping her deal with the eerie silence in her mind. She's made it a rule in the past to turn her magic off while hunting, so shooting with her shields up is strangely restful, like rereading a book you practically know by heart.

Peeta hasn't found the same peace in their rest that Daine has. The longer they go without meeting anyone - or anything - else, the more he's certain something is going to happen. As Daine frees her arrows from the tree, Peeta stands and dust himself off.

"It should probably be getting close to the end of the hour," he calls. "We should get moving again soon." They need to find water, and food. Or maybe they don't need to; it's just a dream, after all.

"What if we doubled back?" she suggests as she walks over to him. "If we keep heading the way we were before, we've got the clock chasing us the whole time." Plus, if they head back, she might be able to check for injured jays.

If they continue heading in the opposite direction, they'll eventually run back into the clock. But Peeta can guess the main reason Daine wants to double back, and he nods in agreement. "Okay."

Sheathing his machete, he starts walking back along the beach.

Call Daine optimistic, but she's sort of assuming they're going to wake up before it really feels as if twelve hours have passed.

When they reach the section of beach that she's fairly sure corresponds with the jays, she tries carefully lowering her mental shields. It's far quieter than it was, but after the self-imposed silence, the pain and confusion of the injured jays still hits hard enough to make her wince. "I think they're done," she tells Peeta, "but some of them are hurt." She hesitates there, wanting to head right into the trees - it feels safe enough to her - but aware that Peeta doubtless knows more than she does about what to expect.

Peeta smiles slightly to himself when Daine stops. He was right, after all. He's sure he's right about why she hasn't barged right into the trees after the injured birds.

"It should be safe," he assures her. "There's only one trap in each area, and this one's time is done for now." To back up his words, he walks toward the treeline.

That's some relief, and Daine ends up passing Peeta in her haste to get to the injured birds. Many didn't make it at all, and the line where the barrier used to be is lined with little feathered bodies. Daine presses her lips together in a thin line, but resolutely focuses on the ones she can still help. She stoops to gently lift one into her hands, then looks around for someplace to sit while those mobile enough to come to her make their way over.

"It'll be fair boring to watch," she warns Peeta as she makes herself comfortable between the roots of a large tree. "And it might take a while." Perhaps not because the individual jobs will be difficult, but because there are just so many of them. She sighs down at the jay in her hands - it blinks up at her trustingly, no longer screaming at her in achingly familiar voices - and then shuts her eyes and gets to work.

Peeta can't imagine a situation in which watching someone heal animals with nothing more than their hands would be boring. He finds a place where he can keep Daine and the path back to the beach in sight and settles down to watch and wait.

It's fascinating to watch Daine work. There isn't really anything to see - a bird reaches her injured and leaves healed - but the fact that there isn't anything visible to the process is what's so interesting.

She was correct in her predictions. The injuries aren't too complicated and are easy to fix, particularly because they're too fresh for any infections to have set in. Few even have broken bones, doubtless because so many birds struck the barrier head-on and died on impact. That's bad enough, but it does mean the birds still alive to be treated aren't too badly off to begin with.

There are a lot of injured jays, though, and by the time the last one flies off with a chirrup of gratitude, the better part of an hour has gone by. Daine blinks her eyes open, then stretches. She's been hunched over her charges for long enough that her back's a bit sore.

When she realizes Peeta's watching her - and might have been for some time, given how he's sitting - she smiles faintly. She's not quite sure if she should be flattered by the interest or baffled by it. "I did say it'd be boring," she says.

Peeta raises his eyebrows at her. "I don't understand how you can think that" - he waves a hand in her general direction - "is boring. You're healing animals. With just your hands."

He'd watched, fascinated, as bird after visibly injured bird came to her, sat in her hands for a little while, then flew away as good as new. No matter how many Daine healed - and there were quite a few - Peeta never failed to feel a little thrill each time one took off, chirping happily.

Feeling that they should probably start moving again, he hauls himself to his feet.

Daine lifts her shoulders in a little shrug, though her smile widens. "Well, it's not much to watch," she says as she gets to her own feet and brushes off the back of her pants. "You ought to see some of things regular mages can do," she adds as she retrieves her bow and slings it over her shoulder. "They're much flashier."

"I don't really like flashy," Pete says. In his experience, flashiness was never a good thing.

Giving the surrounding jungle a weary glance, he sighs. "Back to the beach? Or we can walk through the jungle for a while, if you want. Look for food, get some water." There was a spile in the bag he picked up at the Cornucopia, so that won't be a problem.

Technically, neither of them should need food or water, but healing is hungry work, and it's a hot jungle. "Food and water would be nice," she says, scraping a few damp curls off of her forehead. "And I'm not feeling anything strange about the People around here, so we should be all right as far as they're concerned."

Peeta nods and begins walking. It shouldn't take long to find one of the water trees, and he keeps an eye out for any other familiar ones; he remembers a few that bore edible fruit.

They haven't progressed far past the line of dead jabberjays, but the trees have thinned enough that Peeta's forced to walk a bit farther up the slope to check for ones he recognizes. "There are trees here that have water in them," he throws over his shoulder to Daine as an explanation for their climb. "Actually, they're the only source of drinkable water."

She probably shouldn't be surprised that there's no easy way of getting ahold of fresh water, but at least Peeta knows how to get some. As she steps over a few vines toward a clearer patch of ground, she starts, "So every time you--"

And then the ground gives way beneath her. For a moment, incongruously, she feels as if she's stepped back onto the beach, but her foot continues to sink past the point it would for regular sand. Daine gasps, tries to heave herself back, and overbalances as her other foot slides off of solid ground and into the muck. Already she's knee-deep in the stuff, and her efforts to pull her feet out only seem to make her sink faster. "Peeta!"

It isn't until Daine yells for him that Peeta realizes he's relaxed. But at the tone of her voice, his body goes rigid, a thousand horrible scenarios flashing through his mind. He spins in place, panicking for a split second when he doesn't immediately see her. Even as he starts to yell her name, though, he spots her. She's in plain sight, but about a foot or two lower than he expected, due to being partially buried in the ground.

"Daine!" he cries, half confused, half worried.

In the few steps it takes for him to reach her, she sinks even further. He steps close to grab for her hands, but he's still a few feet away when his own foot sinks into the ground. He pulls back quickly, but the sand sucks at him, ripping the shoe right off of his foot.

"Hold on!"

Glancing around, he spots a stick nearby and grabs it. With quick movements, he tests the ground between him and Daine. The soft earth starts a few inches away from where his right knee is planted on the ground; he can't get any closer to her.

After a moment's thought, he drives the stick hard into the ground a foot back from the soft earth. Then, one hand wrapped around it, he stretches his free hand toward Daine.

"Grab my hand!"

"Don't fall in!" she cries as Peeta loses a shoe to the muck and she sinks a further few inches. It seems to not be as bad so long as she holds still, but she's still sinking. It's as if there's no bottom to this weird bog she's in.

By the time Peeta reaches for her, the mud has reached her hips. She stretches forward precariously, her fingertips just barely brushing his, and then gasps as even that little movement seems to increase the pull from below.

Wait. This is stupid. "Hang on," she says, "I can--I'll just take a shape." There might not be much her human body can do to get out of this, but she doesn't need to stick to just a human body. She forces herself to take a slow, deep breath, then thinks of crows. She'll fly herself out.

The choice backfires horribly. The swamp doesn't want to give her up even as she shrinks in on herself, and one downbeat of her wings gets them stuck in the mud, too. She lets out a harsh squawk, then twists and grows into sea lion shape, lithe and strong and so good at swimming. But this isn't water, either, and her flippers don't find the mud any easier to work with than her human limbs had done. It's not working -- nothing's working--

She takes human shape again, buried to her shoulders. It's a struggle just to free one arm, but she manages. Her bow, miraculously, hasn't yet been lost to the swamp, and she grabs it with a mud-slick hand and thrusts it toward Peeta. Goddess, she should have started with this idea. "Can you reach it?"

Peeta almost tumbles into the muck when Daine switches to crow form and seems to get completely stuck. He loses his balance and plants one hand in the soft earth, but manages to pry it free even as Daine switches form again to an animal he doesn't know. He watches in growing horror and helplessness as she sinks further and hates himself for leaving behind the coil of rope he remembers seeing in the Cornucopia.

When she holds out her bow, Peeta feels a glimmer of hope. Clutching his stick anchor with one hand, he stretches forward again. After a couple of misses, he manages to grab hold of the bow.

"Got it! Hang on!"

He shifts his body even as he pulls the bow, trying to get his feet under him so that he can haul Daine up out of the ground.

For a few moments, it seems to be working. She can feel herself moving against the pull of the swamp, her shoulders slowly surfacing as she forces herself not to kick her legs or do anything but hold onto the bow.

Then her fingers slip. She pitches forward into the mud before she can do more than gasp. Her head goes under, the mud filling her nose and ears, pressing against her eyelids. One hand, though, is still free, and she tries to stretch it up into the air, hoping Peeta can still get the bow to her. She can feel the mud creeping up her wrist as she continues to sink, and her lungs start to burn. She flexes her fingers desperately, praying to feel the bow again, and she feels something…

And then the swamp takes her hand, too. She can't hold her breath any longer. The swamp seems to squeeze the air out of her as she gasps reflexively, the mud filling her lungs…

… and then she's gone.

Peeta can feel a smile - of relief, of hope - starting to curl his mouth as Daine begins to rise from the muck. It's still there, frozen on his face, when she loses her grip and falls back in. He doesn't even have time to call her name - doesn't have time for anything more than a frantic flap of the bow toward her still visible hand - before she disappears entirely beneath the ground.

He stares in horror at the spot for a brief, never-ending moment, somehow both completely numb inside and with a roaring in his head. Then, all thought of himself gone, he stumbles forward on his knees, only to find the ground now solid beneath his clawing hands.

"Daine! DAINE!"

There is no answer. He digs at the solid ground and screams her name.

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May the odds be ever in your favor

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