thearena | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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?"

et Dieu créa les mêmes; open

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I'm sorry this took me so long :c

no probs!

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