thearena | The open log I promised Ian's mun almost two weeks ago

Who: Eponine and whoever would like to be badgered by a French girl scamming for more food
What: Eponine is on the hunt for more food for Mona and herself... unfortunately, giant sandworms are also on the loose
When: Sometime after the sandworms start appearing
Where: DESERT arena, heading towards the caves
Warnings: She has a knife - but she would rather use it to threaten than actually harm... feel free to hurt her though - but don't kill her please!

It was good, sometimes, having a friend in the arena. Mona was clever - she knew everything, and though Eponine hated feeling ignorant, she loved talking to Mona, learning from her. She could have been clever like Mona, too. And that gave her hope for Capitol life. Maybe when she got back, she could study - and get clever and know lots of things - just like Mona. It was nice to have Mona, someone to talk to and curl up next to and actually take turns to sleep whilst the other played look-out. And she helped Eponine to walk sometimes, now that the French girl's ribs were fractured. Mona was a good friend, and it was nice to have her.

But having a friend meant that everything had to be shared. Share the bottle of water that Eponine could easily guzzle herself. Shake her head and refuse the last drop because she knows Mona wants it. And share the food that Eponine had come across, the cans that Marius had given her, and the few tins left behind by Parker before she... well.
Eponine was hungry constantly, and was quite used to the gnawing on her insides. Mona, on the other hand, was not. And Eponine did not want to see her friend so unhappy. And so, once the rumblings had stopped, she took it upon herself to go 'shopping' - to see if she could find any tins - or any Tribute looking weak enough not to put up much of a fight as she (slowly) tried to steal theirs.

She wandered away from Mona, further and further into the desert, letting her instinct guide her. But soon enough, she spotted a figure on the horizon. She slowed, and began to move forward, hastily copying a trick Montparnasse had employed and pushing the knife Wesker had sent her into the sleeve of her tunic, so that the blade hung down into her hand. This time, Eponine meant business. She needed food, and she was going to get it, no matter what.

Inwardly, she hoped and prayed that she wouldn't actually have to use the knife on anyone.

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So far as cans went, Eponine might be a little out of luck. But the food - she had a small pile of creatures nearby, things she'd shot with her iron crossbow bolt or stabbed with her scythe. She was still going relatively strong, not quite in her element but certainly doing better than most.

When Ruby saw the other woman, she was instantly on guard. "Hey," she said, a little cautiously.

Eponine hesitated. This woman was bigger than her - and she had seen her. And unlike Ian, she didn't look like a pushover. So, slowly, hating herself for doing it, Eponine drew her knife and pointed it directly at Ruby as she moved forward.

"Food. Give me your food. NOW! Or - or I'll kill you, Madame. Do not think that I will not."

She did her best to look threatening, but a small, skinny kid on the brink of starvation - she was never going to look particularly scary.

Ruby... laughed. Lifting her hand up to her mouth, briefly. It happened to be the one with the crossbow, though she wasn't too worried. It wouldn't take more than a second to re-aim and shoot, though that wasn't what she wanted.

"Come on," she said, dropping the hand after a moment. "You can help me cook."

Eponine had begun to back off as soon as Ruby raised the crossbow. Eponine hadn't really seen such a weapon close up before; she had only a vague idea of how it worked, but she knew that she could not beat it with her puny knife.

But then the woman dropped it, and with the crossbow, so Eponine's jaw dropped momentarily.

"Cook, Madame? You're not to kill me? You will give me food... I cannot cook much..."

"Just hand me what I need when I ask for it," she ordered, gesturing for Eponine to come forward. She'd give the woman food, one way or another - but it would maybe be a bit better for both of them if the girl's hands were kept busy during it.

."What first, Madame?" Eponine was quite clueless. At home, her mother did the cooking - if one could call it cooking. More like just bunging whatever Eponine and her father had brought home into a pot and boiling it into the thinnest gruel possible to make it last.

"First off? We need a fire." She gestured to the dry wood. "Help me gather a bit?" the cooking wasn't going to be anything fancy. Just a little roasting over the spit, to make sure there was nothing that would kill them.

Eponine nodded, and set about gathering the requested wood. She knew vaguely, at least, how to make a fire - but she had never done it before. After a few minutes of gathering a few scant sticks - they were in a desert, after all, Eponine returned to Ruby, dumping them close to the woman.

"You WILL give me food, won't you? I don't want to help and then have nothing to eat whilst you eat it all."

"As soon as it's cooked," she promised, setting the wood alight with a few quick twists.

Then she speared the meat on the sticks, twirling it over the flames. "Watch," Ruby told her. "It's not going to be fancy; but it'll be edible."

Eponine licked her lips. "We used to have roast meat sometimes when I was a child you know, Madame? Sometimes some beef-meat, but that was rare. Sometimes Papa had a pig to roast. But not often. I liked it though. It is a taste you never forget, is it? I used to think of it always when I was hungry. I could smell it so, sometimes, that it truly felt real when I ate it."

She plopped herself down, a little distance from Ruby, so she stood at least an inkling of a chance should Ruby be acting.

"Well... This is going to be a bit different," She admitted, continuing to turn the food on its spit. "We don't really have any ovens; or spices. But it's meat."

"You think I care for an oven or a spice, Madame? I have eaten dirt I have been so hungry. Truly, I do not care for taste so much." Eponine grinned, leaning forward to sniff the meat. It smelled so good to her, hungry as she was. She hadn't eaten for ages and ages.

"Remind me to treat you when we get out of here." She smiled faintly, pulling one of the spikes of meat out and handing it to Eponine.

"Want to try the next one?"

"Treat me? Madame, you need not do that, you know? Here, no. It is good -I do not eat dirt here, not even in the arenas. Never am I so truly hungry as that. Here, there is always some sort of food to be had. Even here."

She reached out for the proffered stick.

"Even in these horrid arenas, there are people who will give me food when I ask. It is strange, no? When we ought to be killing one another, they give me food, but when I was at home, when we were trying to be alive, there were many who chased me even from their gutters, who made me leave behind a rotten crust covered in mould. It is a strange thing, I think."

"Maybe we're all just crazy..." She smiled faintly as she awtched the woman eat. Maybe the girl didn't need to be treated, but Red would still welcome the chance to help her a little. There was too much of horror in this place, and not enough kindness.

"I think they underestimate us," she added. "This is the only way we have to rebel."

Eponine wiped away the grease from her chin, sucking her fingers and licking her hand to get every bit of nourishment possible.

"This is what I think - you know, to stop their Games seems simple to me. If none of us fought, then there would be nothing to be done. They cannot truly make us fight. We are the public they see, and if we disobey, then they kill us which is not a bad thing, or they do nothing at all and we shall win."

"Or they change the games for personal executions," she remarked, voice soft. "I think they know how to make our deaths... spectacular. And then they'd get a new batch."

She shook her head, softly. "I don't think just... doing nothing will stop them."

She shook her head.
"I am not afraid of death, Madame. At home, I should be dead now, through starvation or the cold or even murder at my Pa's hands."

She shrugged, and began to suck the stick.

"They would find my body, perhaps the next summer, when the snow was gone, and throw me in the pit. Well, I do not mind. Sometimes I think death would be nice. I thought that when we lived under the bridge- the Seine, you know? But then I thought, no. The water is too cold. Sometimes I wish I had said, 'yes'."

"Nothing gets better if you just die," she whispered, quietly. She believed that. She had to, trying to survive as she was here - surviving, as people died around her. The way it had been all of her life, actually. Ruby survives. People die. Frequently, she's the one who accidentally killed them, or else the reason they died - but... she learned long ago to keep trudging forward, and push all of that backward.

"if we're going to fight, it has to be to stop them.

The open log I promised Ian's mun almost two weeks ago - SORRY!

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Sorry - I was on holiday

Aaaaand I totally lost this.

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