Catching Fire, Chapter 22
May. 24th, 2011 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Catching Fire, why the fuck isn't Peeta dead yet?
Peeta lays the morphling on the sand. I cut away the material over her chest, revealing the four deep puncture wounds. Blood slowly trickles from them, making them look far less deadly than they are. The real damage is inside. By the position of the openings, I feel certain the beast ruptured something vital, a lung, maybe even her heart.
Uh yeah no.
If it hit the heart blood should be coming out at more than a trickle. If the lung, then the issue is airflow. There's a reason for the phrase "sucking chest wound".
A heart wound should kill her almost immediately. A punctured lung will kill her shortly, but is actually completely treatable.
See, lungs are actually just a mass of tissue, all of which is doing the same job. It's not like the heart where the whole thing has to work together. A puncture wound does negligible damage to the lung. The problem is how the lungs work.
Humans are coelomates. That means we have an internal body cavity where organs just sit around. The internal wall does not directly connect to these organs - it's why you can cut someone open and just pull stuff out. Last book I talked about how gut wounds are bad because there isn't direct bloodflow to the area. What happens when the intestines are ruptured is that the intestine itself has bloodflow, and the abdominal cavity wall has blood flow, and the area between is just there, so whatever gets out of the intestine just festers and rots.
And if you think that's bad design, just wait to learn about how lungs work! See, your lungs are not attached to your pleural cavity. Nor are they attached to your diaphragm. Your lungs are held in place by vacuum. When you breathe in, your diaphragm pulls down. Your lungs stay stuck to it by the magic of vacuum, since the entire area is sealed. That's also what keeps your lungs against your ribs. The only part of this system that's open is the lungs themselves, so, the vacuum ultimately is filled in by pulling air down your throat.
This works fine until air gets into the sealed off areas, at which point you're pulling air into your pleural cavity and your lungs start collapsing on themselves because the vacuum seal is compromised and there's nothing holding them in place.
Treatment is simply a matter of sealing the hole back up again. Get something airtight against the wound and you've restored the vacuum. If you're actually trained in first aid you can manage to make a partial seal that lets air out but not in, but I realize that's a bit much to expect here. No matter what, the correct thing to do is cover any wound that might have punctured a lung and she'd be relatively fine. The floatation belt material would probably work for this, with the main problem being keeping it on.
But like Rue, this would mean dealing with someone injured who isn't Millstone, so they're just going to sit around and watch her die instead.
Sagging skin, sickly green, her ribs as prominent as a child's dead of starvation. Surely she could afford food, but turned to the morphling just as Haymitch turned to drink, I guess.
As I said, this is not true. Morphine addicts will eat normally provided they can afford food. It's not like alcohol where they're getting calories from the drug itself. And it doesn't change your skin color. Skin color change is associated with multiple organ failure. Morphine is an opiate, it does not fuck up your organs that easily.
Everything about her speaks of waste—her body, her life, the vacant look in her eyes.
Fuck you.
There is nothing we can do. Nothing but stay with her while she dies.
As I just said, there is a fucking lot they would do. Compared to Peeta's heart stopping, this is downright easy.
So they sit and Peeta talks about painting to her in what would be a lot more touching if it wasn't for how they had just written her off and decided to not even bother trying to help her. Fuck this book.
She dies, and all without ever saying a word. For some reason Peeta puts her in the water and she floats off for a bit and then is picked up by the hovercraft.
Duke Devlin comes back. He's retrieved her arrows from the dead monkeys.
I wade into the water and wash off the gore, from my weapons, my wounds.
That's actually a bad idea.
At the initial fight at the cornucopia, Katniss manages to shoot one of her fellow victims in the leg. And this isn't the first time she's shot and hit a non-vital area, as this happened last childmurder games too. As distasteful as it is, keeping arrows clean is counterproductive - a filthy arrow means an infected and eventually fatal wound.
Anyway, their skin has scabbed from the fog.
“Don't scratch,” I say, wanting badly to scratch myself. But I know it's the advice my mother would give.
I really want this subplot to stop. Especially because it doesn't do the one thing that'd redeem the Katniss learns to be a proper healing girl concept, which would have been for Katniss to realize healing is important to know and ask her mom to teach her. Instead this is practically woman's intuition territory. She just knows and the guys don't.
We slake our thirst, let the warm water pour over our itching bodies.
Yes they're seriously soaking their sores in sap. Because they're fucking morons. You know, for the sake of my sanity, from now on we're going to assume the trees are fake and they're connected to pipes of water.
Katniss wakes up and discovers she's scratched herself bloody in her sleep, and she's still itching terribly.
“Hey, Haymitch, if you're not too drunk, we could use a little something for our skin.”
It's almost funny how quickly the parachute appears above me.
What the fuck. Is Haymitch just fucking with them? Is this some sort of power trip where he refuses to send anything unless they explicitly ask? And even if he's just a total asshole, what about whoever's in charge of Duke Devlin?
Anyway, the stuff stops the itching but stains their skin to make them look like zombies, so Katniss decides to wake Peeta up and freak him out. This is because Katniss is a terrible person. Really. This would be a perfectly okay prank under normal circumstances, but not during murder games.
His eyelids flutter open and then he jumps like we've stabbed him. “Aa!”
Finnick and I fall back in the sand, laughing our heads off. Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta's attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again. By the time we pull ourselves together, I'm thinking that maybe Finnick Odair is all right.
Ah, sociopath bonding.
Then a loaf of bread appears.
Remembering from last year how Haymitch's gifts are often timed to send a message, I make a note to myself. Be friends with Finnick. You'll get food.
This is incredibly dumb. They have plenty of food right now thanks to Duke Devlin, and Katniss has been monologuing about how she can't kill the guy after how he's saved Peeta twice already. Getting bread now makes no sense - if the message is to be friends it should have been sent back when she was about to kill him. Also, why is Haymitch the only one at the controls, where's Duke Devlin's mentor?
We all look monstrous—the ointment seems to be causing some of the scabs to peel — but I'm glad for the medicine.
That Katniss thinks appearance is even worth mentioning by this point says so much about her character.
A big wave hits and kills some unknown tribute. Katniss just collects their stuff again, not particularly caring. Then they see other people making their way toward them on the beach.
The trio's in bad shape—you can see that right off. One is being practically dragged out by a second, and the third wanders in loopy circles, as if deranged. They're a solid brick-red color, as if they've been dipped in paint and left out to dry.
“Who is that?” asks Peeta. “Or what? Muttations?”
I draw back an arrow, readying for an attack.
When you're a sociopath with a bow, everything looks like a bullseye?
But all that happens is that the one who was being dragged collapses on the beach. The dragger stamps the ground in frustration and, in an apparent fit of temper, turns and shoves the circling, deranged one over.
Finnick's face lights up. “Johanna!” he calls
Johanna! <3333333333333333333333333 I love you and I love that you can be identified at a distance by the fact you shove people over. You are like a less psychotic Azula! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I exchange a look with Peeta. “What now?” I ask.
“We can't really leave Finnick,” he says.
“Guess not. Come on, then,” I say grouchily, because even if I'd had a list of allies, Johanna Mason would definitely not have been on it.
THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE A SOULLESS HUSK THAT HATES ALL THAT IS GOOD IN LIFE.
The other two are Wiress and Beetee. Wiress is the one circling and Beetee's the one that can't walk at all.
When we reach them, Johanna's gesturing toward the jungle and talking very fast to Finnick. “We thought it was rain, you know, because of the lightning, and we were all so thirsty. But when it started coming down, it turned out to be blood. Thick, hot blood. You couldn't see, you couldn't speak without getting a mouthful. We just staggered around, trying to get out of it. That's when Blight hit the force field.”
Poor Johanna.
I like how much you can tell about her just from the short description that she's "talking very fast". She's stressed and upset by everything but she's trying to keep it together, and Finnick's the first person she's met that she can actually talk to as an equal instead of having to be in charge.
“I'm sorry, Johanna,” says Finnick.
because he's not a fucking sociopath. Katniss, take notes.
“Yeah, well, he wasn't much, but he was from home,” she says. “And he left me alone with these two.” She nudges Beetee, who's barely conscious, with her shoe. “He got a knife in the back at the Cornucopia. And her—”
We all look over at Wiress, who's circling around, coated in dried blood, and murmuring, “Tick, tock. Tick, tock.”
“Yeah, we know. Tick, tock. Nuts is in shock,” says Johanna. This seems to draw Wiress in her direction and she careens into Johanna, who harshly shoves her to the beach. “Just stay down, will you?”
I just love everything about this. Look at them talking like real people! Look at Johanna, who is capable of identifying shock, but at the same time is at the end of her rope and can't really deal with it any longer.
It's only now Katniss decides to join the conversation.
“Lay off her,” I snap.
Katniss, she singlehandedly got them this far. Note also that she willingly teamed up with HER fellow district member immediately, sort of like she's some sort of social animal that works well in groups, unlike you, Ms. Sociopath.
Johanna narrows her brown eyes at me in hatred. “Lay off her?” she hisses. She steps forward before I can react and slaps me so hard I see stars. “Who do you think got them out of that bleeding jungle for you? You—” Finnick tosses her writhing body over his shoulder and carries her out into the water and repeatedly dunks her while she screams a lot of really insulting things at me.
Yeah, Johanna has not had a good day. Also she slapped Katniss! Finally someone has done it.
Note also that Johanna is not attacking Finnick, she's just raging at Katniss. So unlike SOME PEOPLE she doesn't just lash out at everything in sight.
But I don't shoot.
WHY WOULD ANYONE EXPECT YOU TO SHOOT HER OVER THAT? FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SHE SLAPPED YOU, THAT IS LIKE THE FUCKING DEFINITION OF NONLETHAL, ARE YOU SAYING SHOUTING INSULTING THINGS AT YOU IS SOMETHING YOU SHOOT PEOPLE FOR WHY ARE YOU SUCH A SOCIOPATH KATNISS???????
...anyway. So Katniss nobly restrains herself from shooting someone who hasn't attempted to kill her and saved two people's lives, and asks what she means about getting them for her.
“I don't know. You did want them originally,” he reminds me.
“Yeah, I did. Originally.”
Wow, that's cold.
Anyway, Katniss treats Beetee's wound, because she is THE HEALER for no discernible reason. You know, it'd make a lot more sense for them to be sick because they haven't had anything to drink since yesterday morning while wandering around in a tropical jungle, and they've been coated in thick bloodlike stuff on top of that. Overheating can cause anything from irritability to psychosis to comas.
“It's good. You're good with this healing stuff,” he says. “It's in your blood.”
Fuck off, book.
Katniss then tries to clean off Wiress.
her eyes are dilated with fear, and when I speak, she doesn't respond except to say with ever-increasing urgency, “Tick, tock.” She does seem to be trying to tell me something, but with no Beetee to explain her thoughts, I'm at a loss.
Insanity doesn't work that way.
Everybody offers to guard while the others rest, but in the end, it's Johanna and I who stay up. Me because I'm really rested, she because she simply refuses to lie down.
Translation: Johanna knows better than to let the psychopath stand guard alone. As well she should - last time Katniss had five minutes by herself she decided to murder Duke Devlin.
Once the others are asleep, Johanna asks what happened to Mags.
“She was Finnick's mentor, you know,” Johanna says accusingly.
“No, I didn't,” I say.
“She was half his family,” she says a few moments later, but there's less venom behind it.
Johanna, you have human emotions! I love you more with every line.
“So what were you doing with Nuts and Volts?” I ask.
“I told you — I got them for you. Haymitch said if we were to be allies I had to bring them to you,” says Johanna. “That's what you told him, right?”
Haymitch is kind of an enormous dick.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“I hope so.” She gives me a look filled with loathing, like I'm the biggest drag possible on her life. I wonder if this is what it's like to have an older sister who really hates you.
Katniss, her friend died while she was dragging them around for you. Literally dragging one of them, for an entire day. With no food or water. So yes. You'd better fucking appreciate it.
“Tick, tock,” I hear behind me. I turn and see Wiress has crawled over. Her eyes are focused on the jungle.
“Oh, goody, she's back. Okay, I'm going to sleep. You and Nuts can guard together,” Johanna says. She goes over and flings herself down beside Finnick.
Johanna has her priorities straight!
Katniss does her best to get Wiress to calm down and go back to sleep, which admittedly is nice of her. I just wish this was her normal character instead of an exception.
Time passes. Katniss guesses it's noon, and then the lightning strikes again in the same place, and Wiress repeats her phrase.
Slowly I rise up and survey the arena. The lightning there. In the next pie wedge over came the blood rain, where Johanna, Wiress, and Beetee were caught. We would have been in the third section, right next to that, when the fog appeared. And as soon as it was sucked away, the monkeys began to gather in the fourth. Tick, tock. My head snaps to the other side. A couple of hours ago, at around ten, that wave came out of the second section to the left of where the lightning strikes now. At noon. At midnight. At noon.
Good job Katniss! This is the first time she's figured something out where it made sense she wouldn't get it immediately and she did so based on real evidence.
My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she's right. “Tick, tock. This is a clock.”
Now, though, it's time to complain about Wiress.
She's obviously trying to say it's a clock, so why is she stuck on two words? What might have worked here is if somehow she can't say the word "clock" - for example, maybe she was holding onto Blight when he hit the force field. It's a stretch, but this kind of thing can happen with brain damage. In that case, Wiress could still have most of her vocabulary, but she can't get to the one word she needs. Instead of tick-tock, she could be saying a lot of related words (gears! Hands!), and Johanna is tuning her out because Johanna is a busy woman occupied with not dying and dragging around two barely conscious people without strangling them for being so annoying and she has no time to listen to nonsense, so she's not playing word association. Indeed, there's ready-made excuses for Wiress to be particularly unhelpful, because maybe she ran through the more obvious words ages ago to Johanna who wasn't listing, so by the time she arrives to see Katniss, she's doing stuff like running through every word that starts with C.
Peeta lays the morphling on the sand. I cut away the material over her chest, revealing the four deep puncture wounds. Blood slowly trickles from them, making them look far less deadly than they are. The real damage is inside. By the position of the openings, I feel certain the beast ruptured something vital, a lung, maybe even her heart.
Uh yeah no.
If it hit the heart blood should be coming out at more than a trickle. If the lung, then the issue is airflow. There's a reason for the phrase "sucking chest wound".
A heart wound should kill her almost immediately. A punctured lung will kill her shortly, but is actually completely treatable.
See, lungs are actually just a mass of tissue, all of which is doing the same job. It's not like the heart where the whole thing has to work together. A puncture wound does negligible damage to the lung. The problem is how the lungs work.
Humans are coelomates. That means we have an internal body cavity where organs just sit around. The internal wall does not directly connect to these organs - it's why you can cut someone open and just pull stuff out. Last book I talked about how gut wounds are bad because there isn't direct bloodflow to the area. What happens when the intestines are ruptured is that the intestine itself has bloodflow, and the abdominal cavity wall has blood flow, and the area between is just there, so whatever gets out of the intestine just festers and rots.
And if you think that's bad design, just wait to learn about how lungs work! See, your lungs are not attached to your pleural cavity. Nor are they attached to your diaphragm. Your lungs are held in place by vacuum. When you breathe in, your diaphragm pulls down. Your lungs stay stuck to it by the magic of vacuum, since the entire area is sealed. That's also what keeps your lungs against your ribs. The only part of this system that's open is the lungs themselves, so, the vacuum ultimately is filled in by pulling air down your throat.
This works fine until air gets into the sealed off areas, at which point you're pulling air into your pleural cavity and your lungs start collapsing on themselves because the vacuum seal is compromised and there's nothing holding them in place.
Treatment is simply a matter of sealing the hole back up again. Get something airtight against the wound and you've restored the vacuum. If you're actually trained in first aid you can manage to make a partial seal that lets air out but not in, but I realize that's a bit much to expect here. No matter what, the correct thing to do is cover any wound that might have punctured a lung and she'd be relatively fine. The floatation belt material would probably work for this, with the main problem being keeping it on.
But like Rue, this would mean dealing with someone injured who isn't Millstone, so they're just going to sit around and watch her die instead.
Sagging skin, sickly green, her ribs as prominent as a child's dead of starvation. Surely she could afford food, but turned to the morphling just as Haymitch turned to drink, I guess.
As I said, this is not true. Morphine addicts will eat normally provided they can afford food. It's not like alcohol where they're getting calories from the drug itself. And it doesn't change your skin color. Skin color change is associated with multiple organ failure. Morphine is an opiate, it does not fuck up your organs that easily.
Everything about her speaks of waste—her body, her life, the vacant look in her eyes.
Fuck you.
There is nothing we can do. Nothing but stay with her while she dies.
As I just said, there is a fucking lot they would do. Compared to Peeta's heart stopping, this is downright easy.
So they sit and Peeta talks about painting to her in what would be a lot more touching if it wasn't for how they had just written her off and decided to not even bother trying to help her. Fuck this book.
She dies, and all without ever saying a word. For some reason Peeta puts her in the water and she floats off for a bit and then is picked up by the hovercraft.
Duke Devlin comes back. He's retrieved her arrows from the dead monkeys.
I wade into the water and wash off the gore, from my weapons, my wounds.
That's actually a bad idea.
At the initial fight at the cornucopia, Katniss manages to shoot one of her fellow victims in the leg. And this isn't the first time she's shot and hit a non-vital area, as this happened last childmurder games too. As distasteful as it is, keeping arrows clean is counterproductive - a filthy arrow means an infected and eventually fatal wound.
Anyway, their skin has scabbed from the fog.
“Don't scratch,” I say, wanting badly to scratch myself. But I know it's the advice my mother would give.
I really want this subplot to stop. Especially because it doesn't do the one thing that'd redeem the Katniss learns to be a proper healing girl concept, which would have been for Katniss to realize healing is important to know and ask her mom to teach her. Instead this is practically woman's intuition territory. She just knows and the guys don't.
We slake our thirst, let the warm water pour over our itching bodies.
Yes they're seriously soaking their sores in sap. Because they're fucking morons. You know, for the sake of my sanity, from now on we're going to assume the trees are fake and they're connected to pipes of water.
Katniss wakes up and discovers she's scratched herself bloody in her sleep, and she's still itching terribly.
“Hey, Haymitch, if you're not too drunk, we could use a little something for our skin.”
It's almost funny how quickly the parachute appears above me.
What the fuck. Is Haymitch just fucking with them? Is this some sort of power trip where he refuses to send anything unless they explicitly ask? And even if he's just a total asshole, what about whoever's in charge of Duke Devlin?
Anyway, the stuff stops the itching but stains their skin to make them look like zombies, so Katniss decides to wake Peeta up and freak him out. This is because Katniss is a terrible person. Really. This would be a perfectly okay prank under normal circumstances, but not during murder games.
His eyelids flutter open and then he jumps like we've stabbed him. “Aa!”
Finnick and I fall back in the sand, laughing our heads off. Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta's attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again. By the time we pull ourselves together, I'm thinking that maybe Finnick Odair is all right.
Ah, sociopath bonding.
Then a loaf of bread appears.
Remembering from last year how Haymitch's gifts are often timed to send a message, I make a note to myself. Be friends with Finnick. You'll get food.
This is incredibly dumb. They have plenty of food right now thanks to Duke Devlin, and Katniss has been monologuing about how she can't kill the guy after how he's saved Peeta twice already. Getting bread now makes no sense - if the message is to be friends it should have been sent back when she was about to kill him. Also, why is Haymitch the only one at the controls, where's Duke Devlin's mentor?
We all look monstrous—the ointment seems to be causing some of the scabs to peel — but I'm glad for the medicine.
That Katniss thinks appearance is even worth mentioning by this point says so much about her character.
A big wave hits and kills some unknown tribute. Katniss just collects their stuff again, not particularly caring. Then they see other people making their way toward them on the beach.
The trio's in bad shape—you can see that right off. One is being practically dragged out by a second, and the third wanders in loopy circles, as if deranged. They're a solid brick-red color, as if they've been dipped in paint and left out to dry.
“Who is that?” asks Peeta. “Or what? Muttations?”
I draw back an arrow, readying for an attack.
When you're a sociopath with a bow, everything looks like a bullseye?
But all that happens is that the one who was being dragged collapses on the beach. The dragger stamps the ground in frustration and, in an apparent fit of temper, turns and shoves the circling, deranged one over.
Finnick's face lights up. “Johanna!” he calls
Johanna! <3333333333333333333333333 I love you and I love that you can be identified at a distance by the fact you shove people over. You are like a less psychotic Azula! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I exchange a look with Peeta. “What now?” I ask.
“We can't really leave Finnick,” he says.
“Guess not. Come on, then,” I say grouchily, because even if I'd had a list of allies, Johanna Mason would definitely not have been on it.
THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE A SOULLESS HUSK THAT HATES ALL THAT IS GOOD IN LIFE.
The other two are Wiress and Beetee. Wiress is the one circling and Beetee's the one that can't walk at all.
When we reach them, Johanna's gesturing toward the jungle and talking very fast to Finnick. “We thought it was rain, you know, because of the lightning, and we were all so thirsty. But when it started coming down, it turned out to be blood. Thick, hot blood. You couldn't see, you couldn't speak without getting a mouthful. We just staggered around, trying to get out of it. That's when Blight hit the force field.”
Poor Johanna.
I like how much you can tell about her just from the short description that she's "talking very fast". She's stressed and upset by everything but she's trying to keep it together, and Finnick's the first person she's met that she can actually talk to as an equal instead of having to be in charge.
“I'm sorry, Johanna,” says Finnick.
because he's not a fucking sociopath. Katniss, take notes.
“Yeah, well, he wasn't much, but he was from home,” she says. “And he left me alone with these two.” She nudges Beetee, who's barely conscious, with her shoe. “He got a knife in the back at the Cornucopia. And her—”
We all look over at Wiress, who's circling around, coated in dried blood, and murmuring, “Tick, tock. Tick, tock.”
“Yeah, we know. Tick, tock. Nuts is in shock,” says Johanna. This seems to draw Wiress in her direction and she careens into Johanna, who harshly shoves her to the beach. “Just stay down, will you?”
I just love everything about this. Look at them talking like real people! Look at Johanna, who is capable of identifying shock, but at the same time is at the end of her rope and can't really deal with it any longer.
It's only now Katniss decides to join the conversation.
“Lay off her,” I snap.
Katniss, she singlehandedly got them this far. Note also that she willingly teamed up with HER fellow district member immediately, sort of like she's some sort of social animal that works well in groups, unlike you, Ms. Sociopath.
Johanna narrows her brown eyes at me in hatred. “Lay off her?” she hisses. She steps forward before I can react and slaps me so hard I see stars. “Who do you think got them out of that bleeding jungle for you? You—” Finnick tosses her writhing body over his shoulder and carries her out into the water and repeatedly dunks her while she screams a lot of really insulting things at me.
Yeah, Johanna has not had a good day. Also she slapped Katniss! Finally someone has done it.
Note also that Johanna is not attacking Finnick, she's just raging at Katniss. So unlike SOME PEOPLE she doesn't just lash out at everything in sight.
But I don't shoot.
WHY WOULD ANYONE EXPECT YOU TO SHOOT HER OVER THAT? FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SHE SLAPPED YOU, THAT IS LIKE THE FUCKING DEFINITION OF NONLETHAL, ARE YOU SAYING SHOUTING INSULTING THINGS AT YOU IS SOMETHING YOU SHOOT PEOPLE FOR WHY ARE YOU SUCH A SOCIOPATH KATNISS???????
...anyway. So Katniss nobly restrains herself from shooting someone who hasn't attempted to kill her and saved two people's lives, and asks what she means about getting them for her.
“I don't know. You did want them originally,” he reminds me.
“Yeah, I did. Originally.”
Wow, that's cold.
Anyway, Katniss treats Beetee's wound, because she is THE HEALER for no discernible reason. You know, it'd make a lot more sense for them to be sick because they haven't had anything to drink since yesterday morning while wandering around in a tropical jungle, and they've been coated in thick bloodlike stuff on top of that. Overheating can cause anything from irritability to psychosis to comas.
“It's good. You're good with this healing stuff,” he says. “It's in your blood.”
Fuck off, book.
Katniss then tries to clean off Wiress.
her eyes are dilated with fear, and when I speak, she doesn't respond except to say with ever-increasing urgency, “Tick, tock.” She does seem to be trying to tell me something, but with no Beetee to explain her thoughts, I'm at a loss.
Insanity doesn't work that way.
Everybody offers to guard while the others rest, but in the end, it's Johanna and I who stay up. Me because I'm really rested, she because she simply refuses to lie down.
Translation: Johanna knows better than to let the psychopath stand guard alone. As well she should - last time Katniss had five minutes by herself she decided to murder Duke Devlin.
Once the others are asleep, Johanna asks what happened to Mags.
“She was Finnick's mentor, you know,” Johanna says accusingly.
“No, I didn't,” I say.
“She was half his family,” she says a few moments later, but there's less venom behind it.
Johanna, you have human emotions! I love you more with every line.
“So what were you doing with Nuts and Volts?” I ask.
“I told you — I got them for you. Haymitch said if we were to be allies I had to bring them to you,” says Johanna. “That's what you told him, right?”
Haymitch is kind of an enormous dick.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“I hope so.” She gives me a look filled with loathing, like I'm the biggest drag possible on her life. I wonder if this is what it's like to have an older sister who really hates you.
Katniss, her friend died while she was dragging them around for you. Literally dragging one of them, for an entire day. With no food or water. So yes. You'd better fucking appreciate it.
“Tick, tock,” I hear behind me. I turn and see Wiress has crawled over. Her eyes are focused on the jungle.
“Oh, goody, she's back. Okay, I'm going to sleep. You and Nuts can guard together,” Johanna says. She goes over and flings herself down beside Finnick.
Johanna has her priorities straight!
Katniss does her best to get Wiress to calm down and go back to sleep, which admittedly is nice of her. I just wish this was her normal character instead of an exception.
Time passes. Katniss guesses it's noon, and then the lightning strikes again in the same place, and Wiress repeats her phrase.
Slowly I rise up and survey the arena. The lightning there. In the next pie wedge over came the blood rain, where Johanna, Wiress, and Beetee were caught. We would have been in the third section, right next to that, when the fog appeared. And as soon as it was sucked away, the monkeys began to gather in the fourth. Tick, tock. My head snaps to the other side. A couple of hours ago, at around ten, that wave came out of the second section to the left of where the lightning strikes now. At noon. At midnight. At noon.
Good job Katniss! This is the first time she's figured something out where it made sense she wouldn't get it immediately and she did so based on real evidence.
My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she's right. “Tick, tock. This is a clock.”
Now, though, it's time to complain about Wiress.
She's obviously trying to say it's a clock, so why is she stuck on two words? What might have worked here is if somehow she can't say the word "clock" - for example, maybe she was holding onto Blight when he hit the force field. It's a stretch, but this kind of thing can happen with brain damage. In that case, Wiress could still have most of her vocabulary, but she can't get to the one word she needs. Instead of tick-tock, she could be saying a lot of related words (gears! Hands!), and Johanna is tuning her out because Johanna is a busy woman occupied with not dying and dragging around two barely conscious people without strangling them for being so annoying and she has no time to listen to nonsense, so she's not playing word association. Indeed, there's ready-made excuses for Wiress to be particularly unhelpful, because maybe she ran through the more obvious words ages ago to Johanna who wasn't listing, so by the time she arrives to see Katniss, she's doing stuff like running through every word that starts with C.
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Date: 2011-05-25 04:18 pm (UTC)more on topic seriously Katniss die. Just die.