thearena | et Dieu créa les mêmes; open

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et Dieu créa les mêmes; open

Who| Enjolras and open!
What| Scavenging, reconnaissance! Adventure, terror! Nah really, I'm cool with anything.
Where| The Arena.
When| Weeks 4 through 6?
Warnings/Notes| Violence like you'd probably expect in the Arena, and Enjolras and proselytizing probably go hand in hand at this point.

Enjolras hadn't intended to make it this long. He'd hidden for much of the games, selfishly hoarding his Cornucopia-granted supplies. It wasn't cowardice, he told himself, it was pragmatism. While there was no doubt in his mind that he would go, there was no use in either expediting the process, or in bringing undo suffering upon himself. He would be found eventually, and he would surrender then to whichever assailant could be trusted to kill him quickly. There would be no honor or dignity in it for either party, but then it would be done and he could return to the Capitol and his real enemy, away from this distraction.

Some small voice told him that perhaps that's why he'd been spared for so long. He dismissed that thought quickly as paranoia brought on by the hunger and forced asceticism. The hardships endured within the Arenas were enough to put even the Pythagoreans to shame, and clearly, were playing tricks on his mind. That was it, a simple reaction of prolonged stress, both physical and mental.

The jungle stretched on endlessly and played hell with his nerves. Each tree looked the same, and as he rounded what was, at least to his mind, a corner in the foliage, Enjolras could have sworn they were mocking him. It was ridiculous, of course. Another product of his awful predicament. How dreadful it was that the human mind be rendered so useless for lack of suitable nourishment and stimulus! He tried counting his steps, but it was useless. Twenty paces in this direction or that made no difference and he was again decrying the infinite sea of green around him when the sky opened up in what he had begun to recognize as the daily deluge. He'd set out optimistic that he could find cover in time. Alas.

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"They have umbrellas," he answers distantly, and truly, the idea of a ridiculously bourgeois black umbrella suddenly seems unbearably appealing in the jungle. To think he'd scorned them only so many months ago for their societal connotations. Clearly hardship brought with it practicality. He's only half aware of how he must sound. Somehow everything about this situation suddenly seems incredibly, ethereally absurd, and it's difficult to for him to focus on any one aspect of it.

Closing his eyes, he attempts to clear his thoughts before addressing the man-- creature-- man again. "Do you think you could string several of them together? Do these last you for very long?"

"Oh, okay. We have those where I'm from - I invented them," Guy said brightly and without any trace of sarcasm. He was utterly serious about inventing umbrellas. "At least I did back home. I can't really claim credit anywhere else, can I."

He reached for some nearby leaves and a vine, slowly so he didn't waste energy, looking mildly irritated that Enjolras seemed to be asking for him to do the work for him.

But he still pitied the guy. Looking all wet down there. Wet and unable to make his own leaf umbrellas. Poor ~~creature~~ guy.

"They last a while when I'm sitting still. Since I keep most of them still attached to the tree. If you pick them, they last only as long as it takes them to wilt. Maybe a day."

He started to thread the large leaves together with the vine effortlessly, his hands moving with remarkable deftness even though the rest of him was staying still.

Edited 2013-12-01 07:24 (UTC)

Enjolras had never actually pondered the origins of umbrellas, only that they existed and were used to block rain, so he nodded along as if this strange man's words were the god's honest truth. In actuality, they may very well have been. In his world, if nowhere else.

"They would not make for very good long term shelter, then." His voice was still distant to his ears, either from hunger or exhaustion, and doubtlessly not helped by the soft pattering of the rain around them. Rain slicked the nape of his neck, rolling down his flattened curls and threatened to flood through his long eyelashes before he finally processed enough to slide an equally wet hand across his brow, a futile attempt to escape the inevitable. Still, he was already wet, soaked, at this point. So, while this was all well and good to remember for the future, Enjolras didn't suppose he really needed to concern himself with getting under cover just yet.

"Do you know if they are safe to eat?" Which wasn't to say that they looked appetizing, exactly, but something was always better than nothing at all.

At that, Guy actually had to stop and give Enjolras a 'Really?' look. They were big, waxy, fibrous leaves. Anyone with an ounce of survival instincts should have knowm, without even knowing the name of the plant, that they weren't edible. And that wasn't even factoring in the possible toxicity.

Of course, he'd seen evidence so far that quite a few people here didn't have those survival instincts or that know-how, which was a new experience for him. People who didn't, well, they died in Guy's world. There were no grocers, there were no farms. Either you figured out what you could eat and ate it or you starved.

It took him a moment of considering that maybe there were worlds that were wildly different from his own, before the expression on his face faded from one of extreme incredulity to one touched with a bit more sympathy. Either this man was from a place where people could be soft, thrown into a situation where they couldn't be, or he was someone from a hard world where no one had figured out all the little tricks to survive yet.

Either possibility moved him to pity.

So rather than mocking him for not knowing what a child would know, he opted to teach him, instead.

"Too fibrous. See how waxy they are?" He held out the half-finished umbrella. "Anything that looks as waxy as this, that has a skin that feels a little hard - you're not going to be able to digest. And that's not even factoring in that they might be poisonous. Most of the plants here seem to be."

The incredulity in his burgeoning acquaintance's expression registered vaguely, breaking through the overall dreamy haze of the rain and the exhaustion, but he couldn't find it in him to be insulted. While there are no such things as stupid questions, because inquiry is always valid and always something from which new information can be derived, there are such things as impractical or unrealistic questions. The edibility of the leaves was probably one of them, Enjolras just didn't have it in him at the moment to care. Perhaps at a later date, after everything in the Arena was said and done, he would, but not now, not when things such as human interaction itself was at such a premium.

There was an irony to it, really. He'd never considered himself much of a social creature, and yet here he was, holding a conversation in the pouring rain with a person who seemed so utterly foreign to himself, and being comforted by the very notion of the conversation, if not its content.

"Cabbages often appear waxy as well," he countered, while nodding along with the man's point. One could agree and disagree simultaneously, he figured. "You are right in that it is probably poisonous. They are disinclined to leave anything so easily edible in plain view, but perhaps, if they were not poisonous, such a plant could be cooked."

"I would agree or disagree with you, as appropriate, if I knew what a cabbage was," Guy said. "And cooking might make some things digestible but there's a different between being full and actually getting something out of your food."

Now finished, Guy held out the umbrella. He wasn't so high up that Enjolras wouldn't have been able to reach it if he moved a little closer.

"You sure you don't want to pull up a branch?" He nodded to one in a nearby tree. "You look - you look like the kind of tired that sleep doesn't help with. And sometimes other things can. Like a friendly face. Or at least a non-homicidal one."

Edited 2013-12-10 06:12 (UTC)

He accepted the offering, nodding gratefully, despite the continued absurdity of the situation. It was impressively constructed for what it was, not very different at all from what he understood as a modern umbrella. Reflexively, he held it over his head to stem the water still falling around them.

"You are perceptive, sir." His voice was becoming hoarse and strained form the sudden exertion after so many days of minimal use. Cocking his head to the side to study the man, possibly to assess his moments, Enjolras decided to give him a chance. There was something to be said for company and camaraderie in reviving the spirit. Besides, it was unlikely that either of them would be alive for very much longer if the Capitol had their way.

"I have been very rude. My name is Enjolras," Moving finally, he climbed the short distance between them, making a consorted effort to keep his newly acquired umbrella aloft. "May I ask yours?"

"Guy," he said, "Guy Crood."

He tried to wrap his mouth around Enjolras's name.

"Ahnzzoler. Ahnzholrrr. Ahn. Zolll. Rrrah...."

He was trying so hard.

"Okay, I think I'm just going to call you 'Rah.' Because I can tell with this language thing they somehow made everything people say sound like my language and the problem is it doesn't do that with names. And my language has a lot of guttural sounds and click noises and one-sound names so I am probably never going to get your name right just because we don't even use some of those sounds, let alone all of them at once. So I'm going to call you Rah. Is that okay, Rah? It's not so much me trying to be rude as my mouth kinda can't do that."

Edited 2013-12-12 01:12 (UTC)

Failed though it was, the attempt had been valiant, and Enjolras couldn't fault him for having trouble. Thane was an alien, a creature from beyond the stars, or so he claimed. Maybe this man was an alien as well. The constant English in the Capitol was a challenge enough for him, it seemed unfair to hold him accountable for the failures of individual creatures to properly communicate between each other.

"That is fine. The pleasure is mine, Monsieur Crood." He nodded in greeting, the weighty issues of language and communication still swimming heavily in his thoughts.

"What language do you speak?"

"Oh, it doesn't have a name. It's kind of -" He waved a hand vaguely. "People speak. It's just...language. It's not even the same everywhere. I'm just good at picking up more of it than most since I'm a nomad and travel around a lot. So actually I know two or three versions, but they all blend a bit and have a lot of crossover. "

He shrugged.

"We don't really have names for some things where I'm from because no one's thought to name them yet. I think that's why even though they've made it so I can understand what other people are saying here, I'm still not understanding a lot of words because there's nothing for whatever's doing it to translate some words to. Like that word you said in front of my name. 'Mishur'? I have no idea what that means."

In a different setting, Enjolras would find all of what Guy was saying entirely fascinating. He'd read the Discourses and digested Rousseau's thoughts on the origins of language and human civilization with a rapt fascination. To meet someone whose language wasn't even named was an opportunity to examine those ideas in greater detail and with a clinical eye he hadn't before thought possible. In a different setting, he'd have been hard pressed not to respond with a volley of new, potentially invasive questions that would likely annoy the wild man with their specificity. As it was, however, he was too tired, for all of that; the Arena and its perpetual melancholy had taken its toll on his curiosity.

"Monsieur," he repeated easily, opting to keep his thoughts and inquiries to himself for now. There would be time, perhaps, when they weren't meant to be at each other's throats. "It is an honorific, an indication that I respect you and that we are not altogether familiar to each other."

"I like that," Guy said. "Sometimes, back home, when different tribes meet each other and don't know each other, people will give each other a small gift to say the same thing."

Guy pointed to the umbrella he'd made Enjolras.

"So you can pretend that's my way of saying that back." A pause. "Since I can't pronounce it."

Tribes. It was with that word that his suspicions were confirmed. The man before him, this new acquaintance, was a primitive and wild creature. His ability to cope so admirably with their present circumstances abruptly made far more sense.

"You have my gratitude then, monsieur." And of course it spoke volumes of Panem's savagery that such a man should be friendlier and less brutish than their traditions. Enjolras tilted his head, lowering his upper body in the slightest of bows, taking care to move the umbrella with him. "For your gift as well as its meaning."

It was all relative, wasn't it? What was savagery? Was it a lack of shoes? Was it living without the wonder of the written word?

Or was it having everything you could ever want, even maybe a window to other worlds, and using it in the worst way possible?

It was on Guy's mind as well.

"Sometimes I wonder what they think of the people in here just sitting to talk," Guy said. "Acting civil."

"I do not believe they consider it with much regard," he admitted quietly. At times, the Capitol had a mind to construct human dramas between them, whether or not there was proof enough for them. Ironically, the ones which actually existed were more often than not ignored in favor of those of their own orchestration.

"I have been told, on more occasions than I care to remember, that I would be a more competent competitor were I not so keen to engage my fellow Tributes in conversation." And with this admission, Enjolras' tone took on a note of distinct conspiracy. Being told he was a poor competitor in the Games, was obviously something he took as a compliment. "The truth is that I am no assassin. I would rather be civil to all I meet than to neglect my humanity and earn their praises."

Guy just nodded along to that, the nodding getting even more fervent by the end. The being civil part. The not neglecting his humanity part.

In this place, it was all they had, really. When their captors were trying to take so much from them, it was the one thing they could choose to hold onto. Guy was glad to see that Joan wasn't the only one that felt that way. So far, he'd met quite a few people that seemed to be trying to be their better selves.

"What's it like where you're from?" Guy asked, now curious what kind of world could produce someone with such similar attitudes to himself.

That was a difficult question to answer. Try though he might to change it, the Paris he knew wasn't so different from the Capitol when all was said and done. Enjolras would wager, however, that it was staggeringly different from where ever it was Guy came from. "I am from France. It is a country in Europe, which means very little to anyone here. Cities, both big and small, and people live in houses with families."

He looked out from their perch across the leafy terrain and through the rain pouring down around them. "It does not rain so much, and there are no jungles in France. And the animals you find here are, if I am not very much mistaken, extinct, if they ever truly existed in the first place."

It isn't that he doubted the exist of dinosaurs so much as that he had never truly seen evidence of these giant beasts outside of Combeferre's most esoteric periodicals.

"I...don't know what a country is. Or a city. Or, uh, a house. Is that like a cave?"

All of that was meaningless to him but the rest was solid enough for it to pique his interest.

"Do you have other animals? We have a lot of them where I come from. Lots of big, nasty, toothy animals. A lot like the death lizards, actually, but there are more that are furry than lizardy."

He had to smile at the term death lizards. It was accurate and descriptive enough, to be certain, but lacked a certain poetic charm, although its utilitarian aspects had their merits.

"Not in Paris, no. There are mice, and some people keep cats or dogs, but cities do not have an abundance of animals." The rain was finally subsiding, and Enjolras decided to chance dropping the umbrella. His arm was getting tired anyway. "I am from the country originally, and we had more varieties there. Chickens, cows, horses. Nothing quite as intimidating as you find here, however."

"Where did they all go?"

He had trouble imagining a world without terrifying animals. They had to be somewhere. Were they hiding? He had a little bit of trouble believing humans could have killed them off if they apparently had difficulties figuring out how make their own umbrellas, but maybe some humans there had been more practical than others and cleared them all out.

"All the growly ones?"

"Such as bears?" He looked back at Guy with confusion. The dinosaurs of the Arena were too fantastical for him to imagine them ever being real elsewhere, and France hd never been particularly abundant in intimidating wildlife. What existed was beautiful, of course, but nothing so terrifying as what one might find in Africa or America, or some other exotic place.

"They exist in forests, but France is a relatively tranquil place as far as such things go. Our unfortunate emperor was fascinated with elephants and I suspect that he was mad enough to import them, but even they are not so much like the creatures here." That said, the idea of elephants marching on Paris was ridiculous enough.

"Oh yeah, bears. Bear owls. Bearbats..." He ticked each one off on a finger as he said it. "That's not even getting into the non-bear varieties. Koaleopards. Yaklions. Wolf hawks. Sand Snakes. Giant scorpions..."

He wasn't sure what an elephant was supposed to be but he assumed it had to be something like a girelephant.

"Are chickens dangerous?"

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I'm sorry this took me so long :c

no probs!

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