applesaucedream | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

May the odds be ever in your favor

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