Fifth Dispatch. Practice Makes Perfect, And Perfect is Me. Action.

[trinkett]

[It's a hot afternoon, and Effie Trinket has sneaked into the Barracks -- first checking to make sure no one else is in there.

No one is.

It's far too hot and dusty and anyone in her right mind would choose the techy comforts of the Battle Dome over this place.

This is a good thing. Effie doesn't WANT to meet anyone today. For one thing, she feels very awkwardly dressed: running shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt (yellow is a Power Color); white athletic socks with that 1970s-era striping at the top; sneakers. No heels, no shoulder pads, no wig, no makeup.

She is here -- VERY GRUDGINGLY, MIND -- to train for warfare. Her last announcement to the village brought on plenty of warnings, and even a subtle death threat or two, and at least a few people giving well-meaning advice. She can hardly believe any of the doubters who'd said the Malnosso would sacrifice her in a battle, but better safe than sorry. One never knows when the higher-ups might make a clerical error or shifting error and accidentally send a valued subject into dire straits.

The second reason she doesn't particularly want to meet anyone is because she knows none of the Luceti peons like her very much. That's fine with Effie. Eventually the Malnosso will take her into the inner workings of the organization and place her right where she belongs. Until then? Well. She can and has been staying indoors a great deal, being a bored journal stalker.

Unfortunately, this lonesome round in the Barracks confirms that Ms. Trinket is not cut out for warfare at all. It turns into hesitant prods at practice dummies with wooden swords, a lot of staring out the windows, and a frustrating turn at a punching bag.

Fighting is horrible and she's horrible at it and consequently is in a horrible mood.]

Comments

[greenjacketed]

"...Aye, we can." He waved a hand -- as if washing the previous topic away. He hadn't particularly wanted to hear about how hooked she was on this Horner fellow, but Effie had interpreted his question as such. Better to just let her move on and not make a fuss of the miscommunication.

So: "Tell us, then, what subject you would care for?"

Maybe he should just leave. Why wasn't he just leaving?

[onlyeffie]

"Reading." She blurted it out rather carelessly. Why wasn't he just leaving? That's what she had expected. Counted on, even, in the rising tide of her discomfort. "Literature."

[greenjacketed]

"I don't. Read." He spoke haltingly, like trying to carefully pick his way 'round a tender topic. Spooked, yet again. Afraid of being backed into the sort of corner where he might have to admit his flaws. "Leastwise, not literature..."

Unless you counted that one bit of Voltaire. And the Bible. And stolen smut novels. None of which he felt he could own up to.

[trinkett]

"You don't?" There was surprise in her voice -- enough genuine surprise that she didn't have the presence of mind to mock him properly. It had never occurred to her that Sharpe wasn't interested in books. She'd just assumed, since their garden conversation, that he had established bibliophilic tastes that quite naturally did not coincide with hers because Sharpe despised the very ground she walked on.

"Oh. Because I went back to the library to find a new story and there were things in there that made me feel...."

Hang on while she searches for the adjective.

[greenjacketed]

"...Flummoxed?"

Because that was how the books made him feel. They were thick, and cramped with words. Words he barely knew -- where were the regimental notations? The place names? The lines of the quartermaster's list? His vocabulary was limited by his experience, and the moment he tripped across words which didn't crop up in army life? He was lost.

[inyourfavor]

"I was going to say 'nervous.' There was one title -- 'Economic Expansions in Greater Caldinia: 2607 - 2610.'"

And how could anyone let that kind of information get into the hands of just ANYONE?

"And another -- it was called 'Our Bodies, Ourselves.'" She'd thought it was another romance novel. She'd turned hot and shut it quickly and hidden the rest of the afternoon, afraid someone might have seen her with such rebellious material.

"And another by someone called Franz Fanon..." She'd been intrigued by the name, but that book, too, had to be shoved hastily back on the shelves.

[greenjacketed]

Economic expansions? How dull. And the next title sounded perilously (and naively) empowering. Franz must be German, though, and Sharpe felt okay with that possibility. He liked Germans. They were a reliable people; or, at least, Lossow had never let him down.

Sharpe wanted to keep up with her. Match her for titles and authors, so: "...Voltaire," he blurted. "I've read Voltaire."

It came dangerously close to being a boast -- except he knew he had very little beyond that one name in order to keep boasting.

[inyourfavor]

Oh, that was easy. A brutally abridged version of "Candide" was taught not as a satire but as fact in the Capitol.

""What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?"

That was a direct quote from Chapter 18. Effie Trinket had recited it to stern applause at her sixth-form pageant.

[greenjacketed]

"...Can't bloody stand monks," muttered Sharpe, who for the life of him could remember no quotations but the lonely single line he'd memorized: God is not on the side of the big battalions, but the best of shots. "Sanctimonious pricks!" His judgement gained steam. "Damned straight, none of'em ever taught me..."

Mmhm. He was taking her words a little too literally, as though she had somehow questioned him personally on his relationship with the monastic orders.

[inyourfavor]

She stared at him blankly, not quite getting the gist. Then: "I personally do not think you can stand anyone, Major. That's why you're so....

Well. We don't have monks anymore. They were people who lived long ago.

In your time, I suppose. Very historical."

[greenjacketed]

"Very papist," countered Sharpe. Even though his best and closest friends were Catholic. His daughter was likely being raised in Romeish ways. But some insults came easier than others.

HUFF. But the woman was likely right. The only company Sharpe could conceivably stand was that of other exiles, and he hadn't yet realized they were all exiles here.

"But -- aye. Katniss said so. No parishes. No religions. Had to explain what Christmas was..."

[inyourfavor]

"Christmas?"

It sounded dangerous.

"Maybe you shouldn't tell me. Just in case..."

[greenjacketed]

"In case of what? Me havin' to get you a blasted gift, as well?"

Sharpe didn't do gifts. But he wondered if it was the sort of thing you were SUPPOSED to get for the people you shared a house with. Problem was, he'd never reliably shared a house with anyone but other poor orphans. Or poor prostitutes. Or those scant few months with Grace...

[happyhungergames]

Wait wait wait wait GIFT?

"......Gifts?"

Effie LOVED gifts.

[greenjacketed]

"On Christmas day. People give each other gifts. Celebrate the little Christ baby and the bloody wise men and somethin' about being born in a stable..."

Sharpe was not the best one to ask about the Christmas story -- he'd only just barely learned its intimate details later in life. Anyway, what was the big deal about being born in a stable? Richard Sharpe was born in a gutter, and no one gave him a day to himself. The Major didn't even know his own birthday, although it must have been recent. He could dimly recall his mother calling him a June or July child, but that was the only memory he had of her before she'd died and he'd been consigned to a childhood of picking hemp and oakum. Of beatings and of being thumped on the head with heavy Bibles. Always reminded: be sure your sin will find you out.

[happyhungergames]

"I don't think I'm supposed to be hearing this. It sounds...odd. Dangerous. No one talks like that. We don't celebrate people born in stables." Because that sounded like the Districts and the Districts were NOT celebrated, except with the Hunger Games. And no gifts were really exchanged for that, except sometimes from generous, sympathetic, or interested sponsors. And Effie's job was, in part, to solicit those in any way she could on behalf of her Tributes.

[greenjacketed]

"Instead, you celebrate children dying in arenas. Don't you?"

Fascinating, really, how he just about managed to edit the vitriol out of his voice. It was calm and collected. Oddly factual. After all, didn't his own home celebrate death just as vigourously?

[onlyeffie]

She flushed hot, and sweat trickled from her palms, stinging one. "Richard? Don't."

Because she wasn't the same woman who had memorized so faithfully and delivered so ecstatically the scripts for the Hunger Games. So faithfully and so ecstatically and FERVENTLY. She didn't know what she was. Had no idea. But she wasn't THAT anymore.

[greenjacketed]

Some days, he didn't understand the fuss. Hadn't he killed his first man at an age younger than Katniss's? Sharpe could still remember the crack of his enemy's skull on the slick flagstones, and Maggie Joyce's insistent whisper in his ear that he flee St. Giles and make for the north. He'd been thirteen, a common street thief, and unusually small for his age.

And here he was -- tall, strong, and an officer. Scarred, perhaps, but successful. So, sometimes, when he heard Katniss get down on herself or witnessed others turn up their noses at the thought of children willing to kill just to survive? He'd begun to wonder if it somehow invalidated how far he'd come.

But he did know that he should act as though their Games offended him. And they did, to a point, but not because of the children. Nor even the competition. It was the conscription that rankled.

"You've truly nothing else? No holidays? No feast days?" Perhaps, he thought, their Capitol celebrated more than the Districts.

[happyhungergames]

"We have holidays quite frequently." Bread and circuses, the Romans called it. "And we celebrate birthdays. And then of course there's Black Friday."

That's when you ate and ate and ate and then shopped until your feet swelled up and exploded. Figuratively, of course.

[greenjacketed]

"...Black Friday?"

Now, there was a day what sounded dangerous.

[happyhungergames]

"You eat. You eat and eat and eat. There's banquets and drinking and dancing everywhere! In the streets, in the restaurants. On roofs of buildings."

It was a very exciting holiday. Lights were strung up everywhere.

"And then you shop until the wee hours of the morning. All the shops stay open for days and days. Some people shop for a week."

[greenjacketed]

"How can they afford it?"

Stupid question. Of course they could afford it -- he'd witnessed enough opulence second hand to believe it.

[inyourfavor]

"We're rich." Even Effie made out pretty well in her government job. Not to mention television appearances and the odd product endorsement.

[greenjacketed]

"...Must be convenient."