(no subject)
They arrive on the same day that Gale does, tucked into the corner of my room. The tools for my distraction, helpfully provided by the island. I have to assume that my anonymous benefactor is the island, because there's no one I know who would give me a gift or have the means to do so. And that way, I don't owe anyone.
I take them to the forest, walking until I find a clearing, in deep enough that I don't expect to find people here. The arrows crowding the inside of my quiver are fine. I've checked them over and over again, looking for signs of defect, but they're perfect and obviously machine-made. I can't bring myself to be anything less than suspicious, not when the Cornucopia lies somewhere in this forest. Or when Gale lies in a hospital bed with no memory of the past six months.
The second gift is a machine. It's different from the one they had at the training arena in the Capitol, but its function is the same. There's a lever I can press with my foot that launches a clay bird into the air, so that it's almost like shooting a moving target. I miss the first one because it's been too long.
Eventually the world around me shrinks so that it contains nothing more than my hands, this bow, the arrow and my target. Eventually I no longer have to lift my foot off the lever, so that the machine fires constantly. It challenges the speed at which I can reload and shoot. It leaves me with no time to think about the war, about Gale and Prim and all the memories that crowd into my head at nights and leave me unable to sleep.
I hit every single last one of the birds. In the quiet of the clearing I hear each one hit the ground with a thump.
It's almost fun.
[OOC - ST/LT/All tags welcome, no tag limit. ]
I take them to the forest, walking until I find a clearing, in deep enough that I don't expect to find people here. The arrows crowding the inside of my quiver are fine. I've checked them over and over again, looking for signs of defect, but they're perfect and obviously machine-made. I can't bring myself to be anything less than suspicious, not when the Cornucopia lies somewhere in this forest. Or when Gale lies in a hospital bed with no memory of the past six months.
The second gift is a machine. It's different from the one they had at the training arena in the Capitol, but its function is the same. There's a lever I can press with my foot that launches a clay bird into the air, so that it's almost like shooting a moving target. I miss the first one because it's been too long.
Eventually the world around me shrinks so that it contains nothing more than my hands, this bow, the arrow and my target. Eventually I no longer have to lift my foot off the lever, so that the machine fires constantly. It challenges the speed at which I can reload and shoot. It leaves me with no time to think about the war, about Gale and Prim and all the memories that crowd into my head at nights and leave me unable to sleep.
I hit every single last one of the birds. In the quiet of the clearing I hear each one hit the ground with a thump.
It's almost fun.
[OOC - ST/LT/All tags welcome, no tag limit. ]