capeandcowllogs | you do not see that I see inside

WHO: Peeta Mellark (

unrealize) and OPEN.
WHERE: Some park somewhere.
WHEN: This afternoon.
WARNINGS: Peeta's trauma (violence, including to children), if it comes up.
SUMMARY: One of the less stable of the imPort population discovers his nightmare-painting powers.
FORMAT: Prose to begin with; pick your poison after that.

It hasn't been easy to keep track of the past few weeks. Normally that wouldn't stop Peeta--he's done a lot of things that haven't been easy. But around here, it doesn't quite seem to matter as much. Especially since he still isn't convinced anything much is real. He's hungry a lot: real. Katniss isn't here: not real, can't be real. So he wanders, and he doesn't remember all of it.

Today, something new is real. A child left a box of chalk on the pavement in a park. He found it, and he rolled the dusty, colorful pieces between his fingers. Memory stirred. But when he starts to rub the chalk along the sidewalk, reality sort of disintegrates a little again, becomes tattered at the edges. He's not sure what's going on anymore. He certainly doesn't know what he's drawing, but at least it's something he can feel. At least his fingers cramp up a bit and his knees ache through tattered jeans someone gave him last week.

But to anyone wandering by, this is all there is to be seen: a young man, a teenager, crouched on the ground just outside the playground in a park, drawing on the pavement in chalk. His expression is far away, his clothes ragged, and he doesn't appear to have showered recently. His work of art, though, is arresting. It's done in the broad strokes of someone more used to paint than the fine lines of a pencil, but an image jumps out more and more as he works on it all the same. In it a half-huddled figure races down a narrowing hall as the ground crumbles away behind them and shadows converge upon them.

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When Jade spots Peeta, she hesitates. To be perfectly honest, he'd unnerved her quite a bit before, but the image he's creating is enough to get her to stop. It's beautiful, and even more impressive due to the fact that it's in chalk, on an uneven, cracked surface.

She clears her throat quietly, trying her best not to startle him.

"Peeta?"

He doesn't startle, at least. He just kind of trails off, his earnest drawing fading to a slow stutter on the pavement. But even so, he's careful not to damage the art.

Peeta turns and leans back a little to look up at the girl. His eyes search her face; he remembers her, thinks that maybe she's real. "Hey." What's her name? It's like her eyes. Something like--right. "Jade." He offers her a tentative, apologetic smile. He can't remember exactly what happened the last time he saw her, but he's pretty sure he didn't handle himself too well.

She grins at him, clearly relieved that he isn't nearly as jumpy as he was, and moves to stand beside him.

"That's really beautiful!"

And a little dark, but hey. Her best friend is Rose, she can't be too shocked by things like this.

Even if he hasn't made the best use of the time he's been here so far, it has at least put him in a slightly better state of mind than he was in when he first arrived. So there's that to consider. For now, Peeta looks down curiously at what he's been drawing. "I don't know where it came from," he says slowly. "I meant to draw a tribute I..." He trails off, frowning, shaking his head. The girl he finished off that first time in the arena. Sense holds his tongue from talking about killing just yet. "This came to me instead."

She tilts her head, clasping her hands behind her back as she looks to the drawing again. "A tribute? What do you mean?"

"A kid like me, except she died," he says quietly. "Sorry. I probably shouldn't talk about it. There's a lot of talking and smiling here. Real smiles, if anything's real. I don't think they know about the Games."

Jade hesitates, then kneels down beside him, peering at him sidelong. "The Games? No, I've never heard of them. But..." Again she pauses, taking a closer look at the girl in Peeta's picture. "I'm sorry. Was she your friend?"

Mike is out on one of his random shopping sprees when he he finds himself in the park. Not The Park, just a park. He was feeling pretty carefree until he noticed them: the humans in this park. They were leaning closer to each other and whispering. It's the kind of thing people do when they've seen something, but they don't want what they've seen know that it's been seen.

He's been getting that a lot. Even on days like today, when he's dressed in full street garb.
Quickly he takes his hands out of his pockets and pulls his knit cap just a little bit further over his head. It's a few feet afterwards that he realizes they're not whispering about him, but something else they've seen. Something a bit further into the park.

And that's when he sees the street artist.

"Oh wow."
Oh yeah, and then the art.

It takes a little while after Mike's exclamation for Peeta to look up. After all, people have been muttering and murmuring at him for the past few hours, sometimes at the quality of the picture taking on shape in front of them, sometimes at the ragged quality of the boy drawing it. After a minute, though, his gaze wanders to a shadow falling not far from him, and how it looks a little unusual. That's the sort of thing you notice when you're an artist, and when you've had to fight for your life a few times.

He wipes a dusty hand off on his jeans and cautiously twists around to look up at Mike. He doesn't startle, but he does look very skeptical. One brow raises.

Mike offers Peeta a small smile, then...looks to his feet to judge where his shadow happens to be falling.

"I'm not in your light, am I?"

Flynn can appreciate art, even if it's a little frightening to look at, stopping just short of walking across the chalk colored surface. It reminds him a bit of the drawings he can remember seeing on Rapunzel's tower walls - if not completely more depressing to look at.

"Nice work," he says, crossing his arms and tilting his head to look at it, as if another angle might make a difference.

Out of the edge of his eye, Peeta catches sight of shoes near the boundaries of his drawing, and he tenses a little. Only when he hears the lack of threat in Flynn's tone does he relax slightly. "Thanks," he says, looking up. "I'm not sure it's mine. Not exactly. Do you know what I mean?" A pause. He shakes his head. "Sorry. I shouldn't ask things like that."

"Not exactly, but this place is strange enough. I'll believe it," he answers with a shrug, ignoring the apology as he crouches down to get a better look.

you do not see that I see inside

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