The perfect alertness in his body, the readiness to spend the next minute, just a minute, and that's all he'd get, taking in everything he could about his surroundings because that's the only way he'd survive the bloodbath at the Cornucopia, all of them narrow, focus, not on the arena, but on here. Now.
A lounge. None of the crass glamor and fashions that border on self-mutilation that are so popular in the Capitol. None of the shine, the brightness, the self-indulgent laughter that he knows to be merely a thin layer over a world of depravity. He's plumbed its depths.
He doesn't know what this is, or where this is.
It can't be 13. Not yet. Not without Katniss. Not before the Games.
He's almost persuaded himself that it's a hallucination, and the appearance of a woman with a horse's body is almost too much.
"This is a trick."
But while her hands are so plainly away from the weapon he can't help but notice at her belt, he doesn't attack.
no subject
A lounge. None of the crass glamor and fashions that border on self-mutilation that are so popular in the Capitol. None of the shine, the brightness, the self-indulgent laughter that he knows to be merely a thin layer over a world of depravity. He's plumbed its depths.
He doesn't know what this is, or where this is.
It can't be 13. Not yet. Not without Katniss. Not before the Games.
He's almost persuaded himself that it's a hallucination, and the appearance of a woman with a horse's body is almost too much.
"This is a trick."
But while her hands are so plainly away from the weapon he can't help but notice at her belt, he doesn't attack.