thearena | Nearly every inch of us on the line

Entry tags:

Nearly every inch of us on the line

Who| Aang and YOU
What| Aang is running around setting stuff up for survival.
Where| The marshlands, the pine forest, and the caves.
When| Early Week 0.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe violence, depending on who tags. Otherwise, I'll update.

A

There is a small child sitting on the pine-covered forest floor, his legs crossed, his hands outstretched, and his eyes closed. His hands face palms-up, and between each finger is a different kind of berry—specifically, the strange berries artificially created by the Capitol at some point, instead of naturally-occurring ones.

Any time there’s a whisper of humans—whether if it’s a change in the way the wind blows, or a vibration in the ground from footsteps—he disappears up the nearest tree like a squirrel. Otherwise, he sits and he waits.

Eventually, after a long time of stillness, deer who were previously keeping their distance begin to laze around near him. He doesn’t move. He keeps his eyes closed and his hands out, motionless.

And then a fawn wobbles closer before snuffling his hands. It sits on the ground, then puts its mouth over his fingers, wetly grabbing some berries and leaving others behind.

Aang opens his eyes and looks at his hands to see which berries the deer didn’t eat.

“Thanks.” Now he knows which ones the animals consider safe to eat. He smiles at the fawn and gently pets its nose without the other deer even twitching their ears in alarm.

B

The marsh isn’t as nice as the forest, but he needs the reeds and mud.

The first thing he does is cover himself in the mud. It wards off predators and insects, which is helpful with all the blood-sucking things buzzing in the air. He has no doubt that there are predators as well as deer in the woods, and he would prefer to avoid them.

He gives the geese a wide berth. Some of them were eyeing him funny when he got a little close, so he tries to stay far away. He cuts away the reeds he needs and starts weaving things at the edge of the pond, humming softly to himself to cut through the silence.

So a little humming boy can be found by the pond and bog, avoiding geese, cutting reeds, and weaving baskets.

C

When he finds the caves, he knows he’s found prime real estate. He picks a little one far from the river, which happens to be difficult enough to get to that he doesn’t think many people will just wander in. All he needs is a little shelter; hopefully, the adults will be too busy fighting each other over the bigger caves to bother him about his own.

He rigs a trap outside of the mouth of the cave, though. It’s just a crude tripwire made of reeds intended to drop a lot of rocks (though not enough to actually hurt someone) onto whoever trips it. Hopefully, the noise would be enough to alert him to a possible attack before it happens.

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The only warning that comes for them is the sharp snap of a twig underfoot before the worlds most noisy and unsubtle viking comes bursting out of the brush with a rock in her hand.

Screaming like a crazy person she's rushing the deer and hurls her rock trying to brain it before either of them have time to respond. Fresh meat if she's lucky! She's never hunted deer before so she's completely unaware of how agile they are and how ultimately useless this will be. Still Aang might want to watch out lest he get clobbered by the flying rock.

Aang is moving at the first noise. So are the deer. Everyone in that clearing--except, perhaps, the Viking--is used to being hunted.

(Also, he's been brained by that girl once. Not this time.)

Immediately, he's on the trunk of the tree, shimmying up with the skill that only comes from years and years of growing up living on top of a sheer, treacherous mountain (and falling off of it many times when first learning airbending). He knows how to climb steep things with seemingly no stable handholds.

He settles on a high branch where he's partially obscured by pine needles (and can jump to other trees if he needs to run) before glancing down at the clearing to see if the girl is trying to chase him or the deer.

She swings and misses horribly. In frustration she roars with an amazing sound like a dragon and hurls the rock which sails uselessly into the bushes.

Now that every living creature in the immediate area has heard her she groans and sinks to the ground sitting in the dirt looking frustrated.

"Maybe i shoulda tried fishing."

She glances up to where Aang fled to and waves half heartedly. "Sorry I scared off your dinner. I thought maybe you had him distracted."

Aang stays on his branch, perched with a careful eye on the girl.

"No, it's okay. I wasn't planning on eating them anyway."

Considering his dietary restrictions, he's hardly an expert on hunting. Nonetheless, Aang's pretty sure that one isn't supposed to run screaming with a rock if they want to kill an animal.

"I just wanted them to show me something."

To be fair, Ruffnut was never called upon to do any hunting that didn't involve a dragon.

She looked puzzled and tilted her head back to look up at Aang studying him with a curious squint.

"How? Do you speak animal?" Maybe this kid could teach her how to call to her next meal. How cool would that be? Just standing on a hill shouting and the food comes running to you? The only animal calls she knew were dragons and that didn't do much to encourage creatures to come at you.

"You don't need to speak animal to communicate. They showed me what's safe to eat out here."

He shows off the berries between his fingers, though they're a little squashed from climbing up the tree and he's too far away to really know what kind they are.

"If they eat something, it's safe. If they don't, it's not."

The explanation sounds so simple when he explains it but at the same time it's utterly mind blowing to her. She rubs her chin thoughtfully squinting at the mush in his fingers.

"But wait a minute...how do they know what's safe to eat? They're just animals. And they work for the Capitol so they might be evil animals!" She questioned with a leap of logic that could clear several lit candlesticks if called upon to do so.

Aang stares at her with a furrowed brow, beginning to wonder exactly how smart this girl is.

"They're... alive. And healthy. So they've been eating things that aren't killing them."

He's not sure if he should be trying to explain this. Maybe he should just go.

The answer is: Not very.

"Yeah but how did they figure out what wouldn't kill them without dying? Do you think there was just like...a bunch of dead animals laying around this bush and all the other animals were like "Oh I guess we can't eat those." or do you think they can smell it or something?"

These are the important questions that plague our times. How do deer communicate?

If she noticed his discomfort though she didn't react to it.

"That's... not how it works."

If these questions mean anything, it's that explaining will take more effort than it's worth. He prepares himself to start jumping to other branches and just leave.

"Good luck finding something to eat." He thinks.

Ruffnut only looks more puzzled and watches with a vague expression on her face as Aang makes his hasty and probably appropriate escape.

"What a weirdo." She mumbled shrugging her shoulders and stalking after the deer she had scared. Maybe it would come back for the berries?

Whatever Dorian was expecting to see in this strange facsimile of Ferelden, a nearly bald child petting a dear was not it. He watched from the trees for a while, waiting to see exactly what was happening, gripping the branch that he had found and started using as a staff.

When the petting started, however...

Carefully, warily, he stepped forward into view.

The deer didn't seem to particularly appreciate a new (bigger, much bigger) human in the clearing and started to back off quickly. Aang waved cheerfully at the retreating animals before jumping to his feet to look at the new man.

"Hey there. What's up?"

He smiled and looked completely at ease, but his muscles were humming with energy, ready to allow him to spring up the nearest tree at the slightest indication that the man intended to hurt him.

"My curiosity overcame me," Dorian said, still wary, and keeping his distance, but slowly approaching.

"I would have thought most would be out to hunt the creatures of the arena, rather than converse with them."

"Well, I'm a vegetarian. Hunting them doesn't make much sense for me."

Yes, he chose to remain a vegetarian even with limited food resources. Whether that was a testament to stupidity or integrity was up to everyone else.

"They showed me what berries I can eat and what's probably poisonous."

"Ahh," Dorian said, somewhat understanding. He hadn't heard the word Vegetarian before but he could put two and two together, and there were those even in Thedas who preferred not to eat meat (though they were rare). He smiled at the latter, though.

"Well that is more out of a friendship than one can expect even out of most men," He admitted warmly. "I haven't dared to test them myself - too much risk, for too little gain."

Aang stood up--partially so he could more effectively show the berries to the man, partially so he could more easily run if the man suddenly decided to attack him--and held out hands, still with the rejected berries between his knuckles.

"These are the ones the deer didn't want to eat. The other ones I found should be okay."

Two nights from the start of the arena, Aang will find himself alerted by the unmistakable sound of falling rocks - accompanied by loud cursing. In the rapidly falling darkness, Thorin did not catch the tripwire until his boot had already hit it; but luckily, his reflexes, honed by years and years of hard travel and constant state of alertness, throw him to the ground in a rolling dive... which, he finds, was deeply unnecessary as the amount of rocks would hardly have been enough to hurt anyone.

He dusts himself, grabs the wooden branch he's been using as both weapon and shield, and stalks forward, calling out loudly:

"Whoever inhabits this cave, show yourself!" Though wary, he doesn't think the person who set the tripwire aims to harm, and frankly, he doesn't desire a needless fight, either.

The moment he hears the rocks fall, he grabs his spear. A more accurate description of it would be 'a staff with a small pointy rock on the end', since he doesn't actually plan on using the sharp part except to pin people, and he holds it more like a staff than a spear.

He creeps towards the front of the cave, crouched low in a defensive posture, his weapon in both hands, and he doesn't relax when he sees who it is. The short man seemed nice enough in the Capitol, but Aang's learned the hard way that that doesn't always translate to the arena.

"I won't hurt you if you don't try to hurt me."

Thorin, however, does relax his posture slightly, especially after hearing Aang's words. He recognises the boy, of course he does - the very same who initially warned him against the things the Capitol can do. He still remembers that, the debt he sees himself as owning to him.

"I was not going to. I have no interest in pointless battles, or fighting a child." Not only because he has seen war, but also because battles is what the people watching this want, and he refuses to give it to them.

Aang stays still for a moment, assessing the man's sincerity, before straightening up with a sigh of relief and a smile. "Good, because I don't feel like fighting either."

He waves his spear towards deeper in the cave. "I have a fire. There's some food, too." Aang is a very skinny boy with limited resources for food he can eat, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to share. Part of it is Air Nomad culture, and part of it is just that he's a kind soul. "You can stay if you want."

Psii needed more containers to carry things in, but he didn't fancy taking time to skin and tan more hides than he had to for warmth. Skinning made him a sitting duck, and the smell attracted predators. Luckily, Psii was smart enough to wrap his mind around basket weaving techniques passably enough, and he had deft fingers to begin with.

He didn't see the human boy some ways down the shore, hidden in the reeds. Nevertheless he was careful, knowing all sorts of animals came to the pond for water, and it took him a while to creep slowly away from the forest. He was cutting himself some reeds with a crudely sharpened stick when he saw the geese.

Dinner.

He'd hoped to finish crafting a better weapon by the time he decided to kill something, but this was too good a chance to pass up. He wasn't a good hunter like Disciple, but he knew that opportunity should not be wasted. The reeds would still be there when he got back. He switched his grip on his stick and trekked slowly closer. Their heads jerked up, eyeing him with murder in their beady bird eyes.

"Aw, don't look at me like that, you dumb feathery fuckth," Psii muttered under his breath, "I jutht want to thtab you and roatht you on a fire, no big deal...."

Unfortunately, there was a human hidden on the path between Psii and delicious (and possibly dangerous) avian protein.

When Aang hears a voice, he sinks deeper in the reeds, perking his ears in case it's someone who's planning on hurting him. The smart thing would be to hide and stay quiet, but he feels an uncomfortable jerk in his stomach when he hears that the owner of the voice (a troll, he can peek the troll through the reeds) talking to the geese. Those geese are not going to be kind.

He picks up his makeshift spear from the ground, keeping a tight grip before saying cautiously, "They're aggressive. They all might mob you."

If the young bald human wanted to get the jump on him, he would have already done so. Instead he delivered a warning. That sort of altruistic behavior reminded him of Signless. And the best way Psii knew how to spite the Gamemakers was to uphold Signless's ideals of pacifism and cooperation. He smirked.

"Good, then they'll come to me. Maybe I can get two, that'th alwayth better than one. You want thome delithiouth fowl meat, too?"

He couldn't speak for how delicious they might actually be, but everything tasted good when one was starving. Psii wasn't picky.

Oh. An offer of food. That's usually a very good indication that a person doesn't want to fight.

"Thanks, but keep whatever you find. I'm okay." And he doesn't eat meat, so it's better for that food to go to someone who'd actually eat it.

He steps out of the reeds, eyeing the geese. "I can't hunt, but I can try to throw rocks or something if they all mob you at once, if you'd like."

"Are you thure? I really want to try nabbing two." No, his obsession with doubles had nothing to do with it, not at all. "Alright rock mathter, wish me luck."

It went about as well as one could expect attacking an unusually aggressive flock of geese. Psii crept closer and closer, aiming for one goose a little apart from the others. But before he could get the jump on the loner, it sounded a loud honk, and the rest of the flock dashed there like pellets to a magnet.

"....Shit."

Psii still attempted to jump into the fray, but they circled, dodged, and charged their force of sheer numbers. Even as he finally got his hands on one goose and jabbed at it with his knife, he couldn't keep the rest at bay. The others seized his clothes and pinched his limbs. The feathery mass dragged the hissing troll into the muck.

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Nearly every inch of us on the line

A

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C

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B, let me know if it's ok

This is okay!

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