WHO: Ariel O'Connell [D4] WHAT: slight changes to the arena :') WHEN: Night 7 through Day 9 WHERE: throughout the arena STATUS: complete
It became easy to slip away from the others and become himself once more. Calling on his old habits, his roots, Ariel would go off in search of tributes and met with no question; he had few kills, he was no threat, perhaps someone had noticed that sometimes he could not seem to hear a remark or did not see the other career until they were right in front of him. Often his allies seemed to fade into grey-black shapes and blurs, and that was what they were becoming—were all becoming—as the Games went on. Shades. Like the people of his district, they were slowly becoming less human.
Or perhaps Ariel had just always been something other than a person. Alone by the bleachers or by the tents, his fingers worked with preternatural speed and sureness, weaving his rope with an expertise that exceeded even what he had shown in training. In the Capitol, with all the cameras, he had been caged still. Now, as when he was in the bogs of the District or under the docks, he was utterly alone.
He knew ropes and knots; he had been able to separate some of the fibers of the original rope so that he had several finer strands, weakened but still adequate, and these cut into more manageable lengths. His movements seemed random even to a person familiar with nets and the sea, but soon acquired a pattern, and then the shape of his projects would form from thin air. From a length of rope to a knot and then suddenly in his palm Ariel was holding a small figure, a rope-doll, except with proportions that did not bring to mind a child’s toy. The limbs were over-long, as if the person had been stretched, and there was something to the placement of the knots in the head that suggested an open, wailing mouth.
Among the strands and knots he put detritus from the Arena—popcorn seeds, rubbish, short lengths of wire and metal, the bright fabric from the tents. With his camouflage paint he made of the figures different colors, some dappled with a grey-blue and others black to the tips of their knotted ribs.
Ariel wandered through the Arena, stumbling and mumbling, his voice a low stream of words unable to be understood even with Capitol sound systems—a chanting, and then, with the first doll in his hands, he climbed to the top of the carousel and said, very clearly, the word “Ruth.” Then his voice raised, and some words could be made out.
“Let us be your eyes,” his voice guttered and moaned, “eyes in the darkness. Ears in the roar.” His smile was crooked; it seemed that he turned sometimes to stare at shapes only he could see. When the figure was placed, he leaned in close to it and altered some of the face knots, and when he pulled away it had bright white shining eyes, points out; eyes of teeth.
Some figures he tied to their resting places; others he nailed, and those who were nailed were done all the same way, through the palms and throat. One he left hanging, upside down, by the Mines of Marnassia; another he left seated in the theater.