Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh

[homicidium]

Who| Wednesday Addams and you
What| Fittingly, the Arena's newest Tribute arrives in the night
Where| Multiple places around the Arena
When| Early Week 2, night time...
Warnings/Notes| Creepiness, discussion of murder/weird things/etc

Wednesday's arrival is heralded with an owl's screech from the forest. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem at all out of place in this setting, and so it's really pretty meaningless. They've dressed her as a fairy, and she's not entirely clear on why, but they've failed to make her appear as anything other than perhaps a slightly creepy photograph come to life, particularly with her ghostly skin and big eyes. The hem of her long dress, gauzy and sheetlike but black all the same, drags behind her on the ground.

Her walk is slow but steady, as she takes in her surroundings without looking for anything or anyone in particular.

A. The Village
She stands near the charred remains of the Cornucopia, gazing at it as she tries to discern what it was supposed to be. It's far too many ashes for a witch. Perhaps a mass burning? A town full of heretics, discovered by the faithful?

There are so many possibilities, and she does hate it when she doesn't get to know the story. It must be a good one, given the state of everything else around here.

Nothing in the cinders is of use to her, but Wednesday quickly locates a rusted, filthy pitchfork in the stables, then sets off to explore further. She seems to almost glide through the dark, pitchfork resting on her shoulder, and she'll often stop to stare into the homes and shops, though she rarely enters or does more than stare unless spoken to.

B. The Catacombs
The smell of the catacombs is welcoming, like home, and Wednesday is more animated here, peering into the loculi and tapping on the bodies therein, as if she expects them to wake up. As if she wants them to wake up.

"Deep sleepers," she says to herself, then moves on, until she finds the chamber of bones. And well, that's just too much of a temptation to resist. Anyone entering will find her carefully disassembling the original structure of bones to use some of them as building toys, or else sitting on the floor next to her pitchfork, busy building houses from femurs and tibias.

C. The Dungeon
Those who pass by the dungeon might hear perhaps the absolute worst possible thing to hear emanating from the stone stairwell in the middle of the night: the delighted laughter of a little girl.

Seriously.

The items in the dungeons here put the Addams' family collection to shame, and Wednesday is happily torturing imaginary victims with the tools she can manage on her own, the Spanish spider and the pear of anguish and thumbscrews. She imitates her prisoners' screams and demands confessions of them and lectures them on the damnation that awaits them once they've died.

But, as little girls do, Wednesday grows weary, and, if you wait out the noises, you might find her simply sleeping like a torture-happy angel on the rack, arms wrapped around the stick of her pitchfork, a set of crocodile shears still in hand.

Comments

B

[needlebearer]

Arya had taken to the catacombs more out of necessity than choice. She's heading for the castle, but only moving short distances each day, worrying about being out in the open for too long in case someone took the opportunity to attack. The catacombs had been her stopping point for the day, and she nibbles on the food her sponsor sent, watching out for signs of other Tributes hiding down here.

Being among the dead doesn't bother her, but the whole place reminds her of the crypt beneath Winterfell, and it makes her feel desperately homesick, remembering running through the crypts playing with Jon and Robb, jumping out and scaring Sansa, simpler times that she knows she can never regain.

When she comes across Wednesday she looks disgusted by what she's doing. "They're still people. You can't just take them apart like that, they deserve to be left in peace."

[homicidium]

Glancing over her shoulder at the other girl, Wednesday looks unconcerned. She's mostly done with her structure anyway, an impressive multi-story building, decorated with finger bones and teeth. Grabbing her pitchfork, she stands and leans against it, dusting off her skirt.

"They were people. The ones in the walls, they still are, I could probably wake them up if I knew their names. They like it better when you know their names. But these are just bones. They were already stacked up when I got here anyway."

[needlebearer]

At her comment about waking them up, Arya's thoughts go not to her own resurrection by the Capitol after her death in the last Arena, but to the Red Priest reviving Beric Dondarrion. They'd said it would be impossible to bring back her father, that they couldn't do it to a man without a head, and this seems to follow the same logic. She glances over Wednesday again - she certainly doesn't look like a follower of the Lord of Light. For the moment, she puts the desecration of the bones aside, looking at her with intense curiosity.

"You can really bring them back?"

[homicidium]

"Who said anything about bringing them back? Anyone can wake them up. I've never done it with loculi, usually we have to take shovels out to the graveyard to wake everyone up. Mother and Father only let us play for special occasions, though. They say it's rude to keep them up for too long, and besides, it's a hassle to chase nosy cats out of open graves."

Wednesday looks like this is absolutely normal, explaining Wake the Dead. It would be loud though, and she's unsure of how wise it would be to make that much noise around here.

"But they always respond better to their names. 'Wake up, Uncle Atlas' always sounds nicer than just digging and banging on his headstone."

[needlebearer]

"Oh." Arya looks extremely disappointed despite her lingering curiosity - it sounded far more like the stories Old Nan used to tell of the dead rising beyond the wall than anything related to true resurrection such as she'd seen the Red Priest perform on Beric Dondarrion. The idea of 'waking up' her father or any of them like that seemed pointless and cruel, and as much as she wants to see them again she'd rather leave them to whatever chance they have of resting in peace.

"How do you do it? Is it magic?"

a

[smarterthanthem]

Oh that's mildly creepy. Clementine peers out from around the corner of one of the houses at the girl standing out in the middle of the square, staring up at what remains of the Cornucopia. It's the middle of the night and the costume the stylists have put her in makes the whole thing even more unnerving.

Underneath the outfit she looks like just another kid though. Maybe Clementine's age and obviously newly tossed into the arena. She's probably confused, maybe she doesn't even understand what's happening or that she should be running, hiding, anything but standing out there the way she is.

Clementine grimaces as she comes to a decision. As quietly as she can she whistles, trying to get the girls attention, hopefully without attracting the interest of anything or anyone else. All Wednesday will see if she looks is Clem's head poked round the corner of the building, her small hand beckoning her over urgently.

[homicidium]

The way Wednesday walks shows that she's absolutely unafraid. If anything, she looks a bit intrigued, her head cocked slightly and her big eyes blinking less than one would think necessary. As she moves toward the building, she takes note of what's around, what could be an impromptu weapon.

That's what they told her, kill everyone else. She can do that.

She doesn't say a word as she approaches, only keeps the mildly interested stare as she folds her hands politely in front of herself.

[smarterthanthem]

Clementine backs away once she's sure she's got the other girls attention, backing around the house to be sure they'll be out of the open, then she holds up a hand to signal her to stop. Most children aren't out to kill but there always exceptions.

"You shouldn't stand out in the open, it's dangerous." she speaks only as loud as she has to for her voice to carry, her hand holding onto one of the straps of her backpack. There's a white rose stuck between the buttons of her doublet and a smiling doll wedged in her belt alongside a hammer that Clementine had lifted from the forge. "You're new, right?"

This girl doesn't even look like she has any reason to be afraid, that's not a good approach.

[homicidium]

Wednesday only stops from curiosity and manners, and because one is always more likely to gain trust when they honor these little wishes. She doesn't, however, make any effort to keep her voice lower than normal, though she does have a fairly quiet voice to begin with.

"Yes, if you mean to ask if I just got here." That's all she says, and she doesn't at all react to the idea of danger or the liability of being new. "But if you want to lecture me about hiding, maybe you shouldn't be wearing a white rose. Or any rose."

She can't imagine wanting to wear a flower.

C

[ruffntumblenut]

Ruffnut has always had a fondness for cold, dark, soggy places. They make her feel comfortable and peaceful when she's in a mind to brood or be alone. This used to be much more difficult when her brother knew and used all the same dark soggy alone places back home.

Now with half her face and much of her scalp burn with only her blond braids left clinging to her head, the girl was in a mind to avoid people. The haunting giggling of a child however is just too creepy to ignore.

With adrenaline leaking into her blood stream and her face stinging and throbbing every few minutes, she slips into the dungeon and her eyes open wide to marvel at the collection of painful and wicked looking devices on hand. Having grown up on an island of viking warriors she is not entirely unfamiliar with some of the items on display...but others challenge her imagination to figure out what they would do to a person.

And speaking of people, there is one person in the room, so dark that Ruffnut almost overlooked her on the initial glance around the room.

"Was that you giggling? Or a ghost?"

Because creepy girls she could handle. She still hadn't figured out how to fight a ghost.

[homicidium]

While burn victims are always a pleasant sight, Wednesday is perturbed at having her fun interrupted, particularly because she's already caught on to the fact that no one here is going to play with her because they're all afraid of dying.

She misses Pugsley. If he were here, she'd have already tried out that skull crusher over there.

"Ghosts don't giggle," Wednesday says flatly, her face expressionless, "but ghouls do. They shapeshift lure people into isolated places to kill them. Sometimes eat them."

She's been slowly circling, idly, but she's suddenly between Ruffnut and the stairs. She's got a lead sprinkler in hand, nothing elegant or even usable in the sense of its original purpose, but Wednesday supposes there's a certain glory in bludgeoning.

"They like the taste of children most of all."

[ruffntumblenut]

Before Ruffnut even realized it was happening, it seemed she'd become trapped in this dungeon with this creepy newcomer. She watched Wednesday warily at first, but her words were intriguing and she laughed at the last part.

"If you're a Ghoul you picked the wrong place to look for food. There's only a handful of us kids and teens around here. The rest are cranky adults who think they know everything."

Trying to keep moving so her back wouldn't be exposed to Wednesday, Ruffnut failed to notice some chains on the floor and tripped on them with a clattering and clanging mess that sent ungracefully flat onto her back starring up at a hanging cage full of spikes.

"H-heh...neat cage." She mumbled in her daze. The fall made every inch of her burns throb and it was enough to make her teeth clench.

[homicidium]

"I'm a small ghoul. I can live on you for a week or more."

Ruffnut does half the work for her, so Wednesday takes a step to the side and reaches for the chain on the wall that helps hang the cage from the ceiling, keeping it changeable in height, to put prisoners in and raise them back up. In one swift moment, she looses the chain and sends the cage falling, chains making clanking and whipping noises from their speed.

"More if you're flat."

A

[tucky]

Tiffany is spending much of her time around the village area, especially now that a lot of people have moved on to explore the castle. She's not nonviolent by any stretch of the imagination, but she's also not nearly as skilled a fighter as most people around her, and so she's mostly focusing on survival and trying to find along-range weapon.The first has been going okay; the second, not so much.

So she's slinking around in her ruined princess dress (it's dirty, the sleeves are both torn off at the elbow, and the skirt has been ripped up and tied around her legs in as pants-like a fashion as possible), using a sharpened shard from her tiara as a weapon. When she sees a small, shadowy figure slink by in the dark, she whirls around, holding out her makeshift shiv.

"Who's there?"

[homicidium]

Wednesday stops in her tracks, pitchfork balanced on her shoulder and looking fairly menacing where the tines cast shadows. She turns slowly and looks the woman, her filthy clothes and how obviously intimidated she is by the setting.

There's a moment of silence, one where Wednesday just looks at the lady.

"I'm a figment of your imagination. Fear often leads to insanity. Delusion. Paranoia. Hallucinations."

Cocking her head, Wednesday impassively adds, "Don't you trust your own mind?"

[tucky]

What a silly question; of course she does.

Probably.

Maybe.

"Fuck off," Tiffany says harshly. "You're as real as me."

[homicidium]

"Are you sure about that? I'm asking but you should be honest. I already know you aren't sure. You can't trick yourself into making things real."

Wednesday takes two slow steps forward, her dress dragging behind her, her eyes wide and unblinking.

"If I'm real, then you don't have to worry that I'm a manifestation of all your guilt. I don't represent every bad thing you've done, every mistake you feel even the smallest bit bad about. But I don't have to tell you about that. You're already thinking about those things."

Another step forward.

"Maybe you'd feel better after a confession."

bayard's narcoleptic adventures continue

[yoknapatawpha]

Every sound in the dungeons feels damp and smothered, as if the syllables of a voice are soaked with all the dust down here. Bayard is trying to find his way back up so he can use the nice bed he saw towards the top of the castle, but he's beginning to think that he'll never find the stairwell back up and so he's found a dark, quiet spot under a stocks.

He's trying to get some rest when he hears laughter. It continues for at least an hour, along with what sound like play screams and interrogations that he recognizes to be the exaggerated acting of pretend games. After it goes on for long enough, Bayard gets up and starts looking for it. It takes him nearly thirty minutes to find Wednesday, by which time she's fallen asleep with her pitchfork and shears.

"Pardon. Pardon, little girl..." Bayard doesn't approach quickly, aware that people can wake in the Arena and swing a knife before they even open their eyes. "Are you awake?"

[homicidium]

When Wednesday wakes, it's not the slow, discombobulated wake of most people. Her eyes open abruptly and she sits up with a smooth, easy grace, gaze fixed on the boy who's disturbed her.

"Clearly," she answers, letting her pitchfork stand on the floor with a clunk of the handle. Her feet dangling from the edge of the rack, she watches him with a moment of loaded silence, one that practically dares him to interrupt it, but she speaks before he can.

"Have you come to play?"

[yoknapatawpha]

Bayard wasn't expecting her to just sit up, and when she does he jumps back a bit, feet sliding on the large stone bricks on the floor. He grabs the doorway. He respects that silence out of a sense of fear that doesn't fit what he should feel at looking at a young girl, but she sparks all the wrong impulses in him; he doesn't want to play with or protect her, but to make sure she's unarmed, which she clearly isn't.

The Arena must be working its cruel magic on his brain, turning him into a fraidycat, jumping at shadows and little girls.

"Nome," Bayard says. "I just- are you alone? I thought I heard playing."

[homicidium]

"Yes. I was playing by myself because there's no one else here." She slides forward to the floor, her little feet making no noise in the soft black ballerina slippers she's been given to wear.

Wednesday takes a step towards him, still clutching her pitchfork. She angles her head a little, cocked in a way that manages to be both curious and threatening.

"So do you want to play with me?"

[shenunigans]

Being dressed like a nun is wholly humiliating, but it has perks. Overall, the costume is a lot thicker and warmer than things he's seen other Tributes in. Without the headpiece, it doesn't look terribly bad either. Still fairly dorky, but he thinks he pulls it off. At least, the puddle he's looking into gives him that impression. Vanity, thy name is Strider. He finally pulls away, running a hand through his hair and pushing his shades back up his nose.

A quick glance around is what draws his attention to Wednesday and he needs to do a double take. Huh. She looks familiar, like most gothy little shits do on some level. She doesn't look scared, either, which is just further evidence to the fact that she's a goth. Or a ghost.

"Nice pitchfork, child of the corn." He says conversationally, loud enough to carry over if she feels the desire to approach. He has a sword in his hand in case of shenanigans, though he doubts she'll want to fight.

[homicidium]

"You have to believe in things to be a child of the corn," she answers with a casual, if completely blank, air. She stops and turns toward him, still where she stands, out in the open. "Besides, I'm not from anywhere that they grow corn. No evil beasts to worship for crops. Just for fun."

She doesn't move toward him, doesn't move at all except to cock her head to the side, moonlight catching on the tines of her pitchfork and the glittery ties that hold her braids in place.

"And you're one to talk, sister."

[shenunigans]

"At least you know what they are." And he seems entirely satisfied with that, not particularly concerned by the perfect picture of child murderers at large. He doesn't trust her, of course, but he's a little too accustomed to her sort of person to be terribly anxious.

"Hey, I'm an atheist. This-" He circles a hand around his person. "Is purely ironic. Also not my idea, but shit rarely is these days." And now he shrugs, taking another moment to consider her appearance. "Are you new? Is everyone in this Arena new except me?" Hyperbole? Nah.

[homicidium]

"It was a better story than movie. But that lead to a nice evening of disappointment, so it evened out." Addams family movie nights are a serious affair, and they take their choices in comedy very seriously.

She looks away from him, as if whatever's to the side is simply more interesting than he is. "I suppose I'm new. I've never been here before. It's shaping up to be a good vacation though, or it would be if my family were here."