#there was a red panda I think that kept attacking everybody

[thealmightyconeoftruth]

Small doodle of one of my more memorable experiences in warrior cats Roblox. Just chilling as my oc BlindStride watching the most chaotic roleplay(?) I have ever seen when Legoshi from beaststars joined me.

Bonus: A terribly taken screenshot of BlindStride and Legoshi watching the server burn + random cat that joined us for a while

[thinkingagain]

“Look at that Beast, walking around like it owns everything.” Scruffy bared his teeth, glaring.

Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest (A Novel of the Revolution) Book One: Conquest Chapter 19

When the first splotches of sun sparkled through the trees, Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest roused himself from his comfortable spot among leaves and brush. His sleep had been brief but restful. Sweet aromas from the foliage had replaced the odors which had smothered him in the Beast car. He looked around at the other rabbits, also waking and stretching. He was a bunny among bunny friends, waking early for the day’s adventure. “A fine morning, is it not?” he said to Scruffy, who was rolling around in some dew.

“I’ve known worse,” Scruffy said.

“On a morning like this,” the Sir said, his fur tingling, “I feel my Demesne may indeed come to exist, and sooner than I think.”

“Can’t say I know.” Scruffy rubbed a shoulder vigorously against the grass. “I wish you well with it, whatever happens. Me, I don’t have your capacity for dreaming big. The world right in front of me is world enough for me. Still, whether you get your Demesne or not, and whether or not there’s any home for me there that I can stand, I’ll fight on your side.”

“Thank you. I respect your skepticism, believe me, given your experiences...” The Sir stopped. The grinding metallic hum of a Beast vehicle had separated itself from the low hum of vehicles on the main Beast track. It was pulling into the area where the rabbits had parked the Buick.

Lucky and Jack came back through the trees towards them. “Police Beast,” Lucky said.

“I’m going to make sure Muffin keeps our Beast quiet,” Jack said. He slipped back into the trees. Scruffy was staring angrily, his body tense, towards the parking area.

    “Police Beast?” the Sir asked.

    “Beasts make lots of laws about their behavior and enforce them on each other,” Lucky said. “Police Beasts usually do the enforcing. It’s against the law to leave cars overnight in these rest areas.” Before the Sir could ask, he went on. “Mainly it’s Beasts who have no other home who might want to sleep here in their cars. But most Beasts don’t consider it acceptable to have no home or no place to go.”

“Beasts consider it unacceptable to have no place to go? I myself have never had any place to go.”

Lucky looked momentarily surprised, then nodded thoughtfully. “The question right now is, what will these police do with the Buick?”

Through the brush, the Sir, Scruffy, and Lucky slipped up closer to the parking area. A Beast car with a red light flashing slowly on its top and two Beasts inside it had pulled near the Buick. One of the Beasts stepped out of the car. Large, outfitted in gray cloth weighed down with an array of gadgets, it walked around the Buick, peering into it.

“Too early in the day probably for the car to have been reported stolen yet,” Lucky said. “We’ll see.”

The Police Beast began speaking something into one of its gadgets. The Sir couldn’t make out what it was saying. Some words barked back at the Beast over the gadget. The Sir couldn’t hear those either.

“Routine check, it sounds like,” Lucky said. “Probably calling in a tow truck to haul it away.”

“Should we stop it from calling?” The Sir held tight to his sword.

“I don’t think so. Once the police car leaves, we’ve got to leave too, right away. We can get as good or better a view from a rest stop further down.”

“Look at that Beast, walking around like it owns everything.” Scruffy bared his teeth, glaring. “It has no idea how much danger it’s in.”

“It has done nothing harmful to us,” the Sir said, “although clearly it would attack us, given the chance. And if it did, we would attack back, and hard.”

Scruffy was still glaring at the Police Beast. “I’m ready any time.”

The Police Beast looked around, then got back into the car and spoke to the other Beast still sitting in it. The car pulled away.

“Let’s get everyone,” Lucky said. “We don’t have long until the tow truck comes.”

Scruffy hurried around with the news. In a few moments, all the rabbits were in the Buick again, with their own Beast seated carefully. They left the rest stop.

“I could have hotwired another car,” Lucky said, ‘but it might have taken a long walk to find a good one.”

On the George Washington Parkway, they were now driving in full daylight. The Sir, to better examine his surroundings, sat on top of the seat that the Beast leaned back on. He saw occasional startled expressions on the Beasts passing in other vehicles. That was worrisome, but no doubt those Beasts weren’t sure what they were seeing and would either forget about it quickly or be startled enough to later garble the memory further. Still, a Buick full of rabbits, or whatever the passing Beasts thought they saw, was a spectacle that shocked a few Beasts out of their morning daze.

The Sir kept glimpsing Beast structures on the far side of the river they were driving above. Structure after structure after structure, tall and in deep rows, loomed on the far bank. The Sir had seen Beast towns before, but nothing as massive as he was seeing now. “This Beast city,” he said, “just goes on and on.”

“One of the best views I’m aware of is coming shortly,” Lucky said. “We don’t want anybody to see us getting in and out of the car. The gawking Beasts here on the freeway are bad enough.”

Soon after, Lucky pulled into another parking area. “Everybody get down for a moment, please. Even you, Leo. Can you duck?”

“By all means.” Leo leaned over in his seat and put his head down.

“It’s a good thing not many Beasts use these viewpoints.” Lucky was peering out the window cautiously, keeping most of his body out of sight. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get out at all.”

Eventually he took a calming breath. “There’s only one Beast here, and it looks like it’s headed back to its car. Once it’s gone, we can pile out. You’ll see a clump of trees off the back end of the parking lot. When I say ready, make your way there.”

The rabbits all hunkered down. When Lucky gave the word, they jumped out and headed towards the trees. Muffin came more slowly, the Beast behind him.

“Well done,” Lucky said when they were all together in the trees.

They were still on a ridge above the river, less wooded than the earlier ridge, though with enough places to hide. From here, the view of the Beast city wasn’t blocked by foliage.

The Sir looked down on the sprawling blur of Beast structures that piled one upon another out to an appalling distance. Some were square and squat, others taller or massive. One strange structure, by far the tallest, shot up into the sky like a Beast weapon with a sharp tip. Other sharp but smaller tips shot up from this or that structure, as if the Beasts who had built them were trying to arrange a group of swords to protect themselves from invasion by the sky.

Much of what the Sir could see was shaped into square grids. Maybe Beasts preferred that kind of artificial shape to the more pleasing contours of trees and rocks and hills. Although there were some hills, and many trees, the Beast city clearly tried to control all things, whether made by Beasts or not. The trees were no more than decorations that had been strewn around the structures Beasts considered important—as if Beasts or any of their structures could have survived without trees.

“I have to fight back against all this?” the Sir cried. “This failure of principle and imagination, this massive outpouring of defensiveness, outrage, and violence against the earth itself? That is my enemy?”

Muffin threw himself on his back. “The frog is afraid.” He pulled himself into a sitting position and glared at the city. “But the panda is eager.”

“I can barely stand to look at it,” the Sir said.

“It’s actually an attractive-looking city compared to most others,” Jack said. “And small.”

“Small?” The Sir, trying to understand, looked at Jack. “Beast breeding habits are far more out of control than I realized. Do they have no constraints?”

“As you can see,” Jack said, “Beasts take over huge areas of land and devastate them, making them hospitable only for other Beasts. That’s what a city is. Some animals survive in the devastation, because they’re smart like that. Beasts throw away so much food waste that many animals learn to live off it. It’s a terrible diet, but if you live in the devastation you have to take what you can. I learned to live pretty well in cities, but it took me awhile.”

While the other rabbits were talking, Leo wandered over to a nearby tree and sat beneath it, chewing a bit of grass, his face peaceful. The Sir noticed and walked over to him, the other rabbits following. “You wanted me to see all this?” he said.

“Yes.” Leo nodded calmly. “A bunny destined for great things needs to know what he’s up against.”

[quasithinking]

Gravity’s Rainbow: Part XV

We're introduced to Katje in this section. Katje is Blicero's Gretel, Slothrop's temptation, Pointsman's octopus's conditioned stimulus, Pudding's feces factory, and Pirate's—I don't know—salvation, maybe? Why does she get around so much? Whoever she is, she's important enough to be rescued by the Allies—by Pirate, to be explicit—via a message sent from Europe to London in a rocket. Was she, as Blicero suspected, always an operative for the Allies? Or was that just Blicero's paranoia, which grew so strong that he eventually sent the message to rescue her from himself via rocket? I don't know because I'm not a tenured academic who can devote the kind of time needed to understand Gravity's Rainbow! Also, I've only read the book once so far. I'll probably have it all figured out after my current, second reading! By the way, Katje means kitten in Dutch. Just in case that's important. Which it totally is because cats are fucking the best. Right up there with raccoons and goats. You might now have a slightly better understanding of me, now that you know my favorite animals are the most chaotic of our domesticated friends or, at least, in the case of the raccoon, urban dwellers. Side note: when I was around ten years old (I'm 49 now! Yeesh!), I saw my first Red Panda at the zoo and instantly declared the Red Panda as my favorite animal. I always forget how much I like them until they pop up on the Internet. Ten year old me would be severely disappointed in 49 year old me. Red Pandas didn't even make my list of favorite animals after I remembered them and had a chance to edit the previous paragraph! They only made this side note!

Speaking of loving chaotic things, I love Bob Mortimer so much that I accidentally became him.

This section begins with Katje being secretly filmed in Pirate's apartment while Osbie Feels prepares psychedelic mushrooms for smoking. I have never smoked mushrooms before. Is that better than eating them? Or do you still wind up just as paranoid as Slothrop when he's, um, well, when he's just being Slothrop? I once went to a strip club with a couple friends of mine while I was on mushrooms. The DJ at the club knew one of my friends and kept making references to him during the night. This caused everybody in the club to look back at our table. Strangers constantly looking up at a person on mushrooms feels aggressive and terrifying. After this happened a number of times, I turned to my friend and said, "I have to go outside." He responded, "Why? Are you going to cut somebody's head off?!" Anyway, the film will later be used to condition an octopus into attacking Katje for part of the Tyrone Slothrop experiment. But we'll get to that outrageousness later! Katje walks into the kitchen where Osbie is cooking the mushrooms down to powder just as Osbie opens the oven door which sends her into a sort of fugue state where she relives her time playing Gretel with Blicero as witch and Gottfried as Hansel. Although it's an extremely adult version of Hansel and Gretel with bits like "'the Rome-Berlin Axis' he called it the night the Italian came and they were all on the round bed, Captain Blicero plugged into Gottfried's upended asshole and the Italian at the same time into his pretty mouth" and "Katje kneeling before Blicero in highest drag, black velvet and Cuban heels, his penis squashed invisible under a flesh-colored leather jockstrap, over which he wears a false cunt. . . ." There's plenty more to that last example but I don't want to put in too many spoilers and/or visuals that might upset the squeamish. If it's true that Stephen King based his entire novel It on "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," is it possible to read Gravity's Rainbow with the conceit that the entirety of it is based on "Hansel and Gretel"? The 000000 rocket is the oven Blicero shoves Hansel inside. Except there's no Gretel to save him in this version, her having run off to the Allies. Much of the characterization in the novel is based on the methods each character is using to control what they can in the face of the War's unending random violence and death. For Blicero, Gottfried, and Katje, their method is the fairy tale of "Hansel and Gretel." It is a predetermined act in which they control their roles and their environment. Or, at least, Blicero controls them. But Katje, at least, feels it is a rational decision. I don't know, exactly, how Gottfried feels about it. It's possible we eventually get a section from his perspective (I mean prior to his perspective from within the 000000 rocket) but I don't remember it. But I will remember it soon because it's in this section! Part of Blicero's suspicion of Katje, that she might be a British spy, is a result of the "Hansel and Gretel" game itself. Isn't it Gretel who pushes the witch in the Oven in the end? Is she fated, simply by the rules of the game Blicero has chosen, to bring about his end? The game itself, used to control a world one desperately knows they have no actual way of controlling, fuels a new kind of paranoia for Blicero. She is his slave, his obedient servant, his pawn to move as he wishes. And yet, she is also his demise, his bringer of death. Just as the rockets which often misfire and fall back upon the Germans firing them, Katje presents a danger to her master, Blicero. Here, Blicero's description of Katje's commitment to Nazism, to the game: "But not Katje: no mothlike plunge. He must conclude that secretly she fears the Change, choosing instead only trivially to revise what matters least, ornament and clothing, going no further than politic transvestism, not only in Gottfried's clothing, but even in traditional masochist uniform, the French-maid outfit so inappropriate to her tall, longlegged stride, her blondeness, her questing shoulders like wings—she plays at this only . . . plays at playing." Blicero (for now the story has dipped into his perspective. As so often happens in Gravity's Rainbow, a remembrance of a character by one character often turns into the narrating perspective of that character who might remember another character which will change the perspective to that third character's point of view) contemplates an earlier point in his life when he began the trajectory (parabolic, perhaps?) of the life he currently leads. It's similar to Pointsman contemplating the minotaur and the maze and Ariadne and how the lure of Pavlovian conditioning led him to The White Visitation and planning his experiments on Slothrop. This comes after his quoting a line from Rilke: "And not once does his step ring from the soundless Destiny...." He thinks about a friend from youth who was so athletic that his Destiny as a soldier to die on the Eastern Front was practically set, simply by muscle memory, by reflex. He thinks about these Germans, these youths, all used for their ability and their belief in the lie of Deutschland Uber Alles, manipulated by others, to be sent to their deaths. But more so, he thinks about those who will survive the war, those less committed than he, those limber enough, like Katje, to change. Blicero himself has grown tired and now just looks forward to the end of his story. "He only wants now to be out of the winter, inside the Oven's warmth, darkness, steel shelter, the door behind him in a narrowing rectangle of kitchen-light gonging shut, forever. The rest is foreplay." I feel like I'm just doing a lot of summarizing but it's my only method for getting a handle on the plot and the characters which will solidify these ideas in my head which in turn should allow me to recall previous passages when I get to sections that rely on the information within these passages to fully understand and grasp the meaning of the future scenes. Blicero admits to worrying about his children, Katje and Gottfried, when he's gone. This worry makes me think it was indeed Blicero who sent the message via rocket that brings Pirate to rescue Katje (it isn't. I don't know who it was though. Katje? Piet? Wim? The Drummer? The Indian?!). As for Gottfried, well, Blicero's freedom for him is, um, somewhat different. Blicero also remembers his time in the Südwest and how he met the Herero boy, Enzian, whom he took under his wing. "Took under his wing" is an awfully innocent way of saying "sexually molested and kidnapped him back to Germany." Enzian, we will find out later, has become the leader of the Schwarzkommando. From the first time I read the book, I remembered this scene where the young boy uses the name of his God as a stand-in for fucking which drives Blicero crazy with guilt and blasphemy and lust. But I didn't realize, once Enzian was introduced, that this was who that was. This is definitely something I need to keep in mind in that it colors the relationship between Blicero and Enzian. Sidekick and apprentice were the words I thought of to describe Enzian's relationship to Blicero previously; now I must also remember to add the words molestation, kidnap, and victim. And then after Blicero ponders Katje's withdrawal from the game (I think only mentally at the moment although that would set up Blicero's decision to free her completely via extraction by Pirate), the point of view shifts to Gottfried. Before I get to that, I want to clarify something I said in a previous section. I pointed at how dumb I thought my Children's Lit professor was being when she suggested we write long essays on single sentences of text. My point wasn't that critical analysis shouldn't somehow be longer than the text being analyzed; obviously that's going to happen an awful lot. Some lines and paragraphs need pages of explication! My issue was that she didn't want us straying away from that single sentence. She didn't want us bringing in other examples of the text and exploring greater themes inherent in the work while using the sentence as a basis for a longer discussion. She simply wanted us to focus exclusively on that sentence. So while I'm obviously all for dissecting the shit out of a text (although to really go in-depth on Gravity's Rainbow would take more time than I'm willing to spend so my sectional blurbs are far, far shorter than a truly explicatory dive should probably be), I'm simply not for the completely out-of-context vibe she was creating by pulling a single sentence out of the whole and concentrating exclusively on that piece. Because what does it matter if you can't refer back to the entirety of the piece of art it was pulled from? Or as Roger Mexico said: "'I don't want to get into a religious argument with you,' absence of sleep has Mexico more cranky today than usual, 'but I wonder if you people aren't a bit too—well, strong, on the virtues of analysis. I mean, once you've taken it all apart, fine, I'll be first to applaud your industry. But other than a lot of bits and pieces lying about, what have you said?'" The "you" is in italics in the previous quote because Mexico is referring back to Pointsman's previous argument that ends with "but what has one said?" Anyway, back to Gottfried, I guess! Gottfried is young enough that death is unreal to him. It is something that happens to others. The war for him is an adventure, and the game he plays with Blicero nothing more than routine, a routine that, though outrageously different, is nothing more than the routine his fellow soldiers live through. He understands that his freedom will come with the end of the War. Until then, he plays the game, he longs for Katje, and he fucks Blicero. But he is nothing more than an observer and he watches when Katje finally quits and Blicero, subsequently, throws a huge tantrum. Blicero's reaction suggests he didn't send the message to rescue Katje. Perhaps she sent it, or one of the Allies she's been secretly passing information to for the last year. According to rumors Gottfried has heard, Katje has fallen in love with a Stuka pilot in Scheveningen. This Stuka pilot exists and his name is Wim. And on her last meeting with him, she is rescued and taken back to London by Pirate after Wim and the others (Piet, the Drummer, the Indian. Who? I don't know! Maybe a reference to a movie about British spies in WWII?!) abandon her. They abandon her because they were seeking the location of Blicero and his rocket site, the one piece of information she couldn't bring herself to betray. But once she left Blicero for good, he knew she had betrayed him and he immediately had the rocket launch site moved. Now with the context of the rest of the novel, I can see where Katje came from. She was feeding information to the Allies just as Blicero suspected. But she just couldn't feed them enough. And even though her cover as a loyal Nazi party member came at the cost of sending three Jewish families to camps, she still feels she gave them more than enough information. Nobody seems to agree because she didn't give them Blicero. But Pirate takes pity on her and sends her over to The White Visitation. Here's a lengthy transcription of Pynchon's description of the commerce of the war: "She's worth nothing to them now. They were after Schußstelle 3. She gave them everything else, but kept finding reasons not to pinpoint the Captain's rocket site, and there is too much doubt by now as to how good the reasons were. True, the site was often moved about. But she could've been placed no closer to the decision-making: it was her own expressionless servant's face that leaned in over their schnapps and cigars, the charts coffee-ringed across the low tables, the cream papers stamped purple as bruised flesh. Wim and the others have invested time and lives—three Jewish families sent east—though wait now, she's more than balanced it, hasn't she, in the months out at Scheveningen? They were kids, neurotic, lonely, pilots and crews they all loved to talk, and she's fed back who knows how many reams' worth of Most Secret flimsies across the North Sea, hasn't she, squadron numbers, fueling stops, spin-recovery techniques and turning radii, power settings, radio channels, sectors, traffic patterns—hasn't she? What more do they want? She asks this seriously, as if there's a real conversion factor between information and lives. Well, strange to say, there is. Written down in the Manual, on file at the War Department. Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled 'black' by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hershey bars. Jews also carry an element of guilt, of future blackmail, which operates, natch, in favor of the professionals." Once Pirate mentions that The White Visitation is where Katje can escape to, the scene shifts to her arrival there, and Osbie and Pirate having a conversation about going mad. I must, once again, transcribe a bit of text because it has a recurrence of "magenta and green" in an account of Dumbo (which will also have a recurrent mention later where Dumbo's magic feather becomes soldier corpses (or some such thing!)): "'Of course, of course,' sez Osbie, with a fluid passage of fingers and wrist based on the way Bela Lugosi handed a certain glass of doped wine to some fool of a juvenile lead in White Zombie, the first movie Osbie ever saw and in a sense the last, ranking on his All-Time List along with Son of Frankenstein, Freaks, Flying Down to Rio, and perhaps Dumbo, which he went to see in Oxford Street last night but mid-way through noticed, instead of a magic feather, the humorless green and magenta face of Mr. Ernest Bevin wrapped in the chubby trunk of the longlashed baby elephant, and decided it would be prudent to excuse himself."

Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour during the War.

We learn that "[w]e are never told why" Katje quits the game with Blicero. But Pynchon adds some speculation that mostly amounts to simply saying, "Fuck it." In his analysis of why he brought back Katje, Pirate teaches me the word "crotchet." I shall immediately add it to my vocabulary, much as I added hobbyhorse after reading Tristram Shandy. And then, as Katje denies being Pirate's responsibility, knowing only that she owes him a debt, Pynchon gives us the story of her ancestor Frans Van der Groov and the story of the Dodoes. And I need to take a break because this section made me weep terribly last time I read it and I must prepare. The Dodo story reads like an early draft of Mason & Dixon. It easily, aside from the linguistic style, could fit into that book (which I'll probably re-read soon). And while I thoroughly loved this section the first time I read it, I gave it no real mind to the overall novel. I do that now upon my second reading and it makes me sick to my stomach. If not an analogy of the Holocaust or of Colonial Genocides, it is certainly a portrayal of the thing within humans that allow, or perhaps demand, grisly and horrendous crimes such as those. After the story of Frans Van der Groov and his dodoes (Dodoes that found salvation, or Preterite Dodoes?), Pirate and Osbie have a short conversation about what will happen with Katje. It begins like this: "'He's haunting you,' Osbie puffing on an Amanita cigarette.     'Yes,' Pirate ranging the edges of the roof-garden, irritable in the sunset, 'but it's the last thing I want to believe. The other's been bad enough. . . .'" I don't know who the "he" and "the other" are referring to! Frans, possibly, since Pirate makes reference to having been told the story later in the novel. Pointsman, maybe? Slothrop?! I guess some things will need to remain a mystery. The section ends on a scene at The White Visitation where the film of Katje that was being recorded at the beginning of this section winds up being played for Grigori the Octopus. He's being given a stimulus to respond to in the next Chapter.

[thegirlfromoverthepond]

At the Zoo - Chapter 4

To my friends, @xerxia31 and dandelion-sunset – thank you  so so much for your beta skills and for challenging me, always …

To my @akai-echo … you stun me everytime, with the art you create for my stories … you are a gem.

As usual, please please leave a message, a comment, an ask, anything to let me know whether you liked this chapter or not.

Here on FFN // AO3

4. Pelecanus onocrotalus.

Over the weeks, time and time again, Peeta found himself in the red pandas’ pen, watching the babies grow from the cutest fur balls ever to toddlers trying to get out of the nest.

Katniss was always the one to suggest they go monitor their growth, that it could be good for the show - the pandas had always been a favorite of the visitors - if he could get more images of them.

He always ended up taking pictures with his own phone, rather than the professional camera.

He always ended up staying later than anyone else when he went to visit the pandas.

He ended up staying later than anyone else when Katniss was working.

He pretended it was pure luck that they seemed to end their days at the same time. There was so much to catch at the zoo in the few remaining days, they had to spend there. Peeta tried to take as much shots of the everyday life of the place as he could, whether it was the crowds of people walking the paths, looking at the animals with big round eyes, or keepers  stealing time with their animals, taking the time necessary to make them feel home.

Peeta always tried to take the unexpected shots, the one nobody else would dare to take. He once waited for hours just to see a bear plunging into the pond under his waterfall, relishing in the cool water, mouth open to suck the droplets. The shot had been one that the network praised, that made the zoo happy - that made everyone happy.

He started taking more and more of those kind of shots, always lingering on the southern side of the park. He kept telling himself it was because the ground there was almost flat, making it less painful walking on his prosthetic - and being near the aquatic department was a sure bet to have fun with Finn - all the while being very close to the aviary.

Very close to Katniss.

Not that he did it on purpose, mind you. He just happened to be there when she was too, right?

Like the particular Thursday when he found himself in the most funny day of his life. Everything started with the daily dispatch of the tasks for the camera crews. The keepers usually shared information about their sectors, about what was going to happen, or if anything special would occur which would be good for the cameras.

That Thursday, though, Gale started with an unexpected pitch. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Operation Pelican Day. We’ll need as many volunteers as possible for this adventure. Do we have any volunteers, or do I have to ask Effie to pick some of you?”

The journalists and cameramen all looked at each other, trying to decipher the meaning behind Gale’s words. Operation Pelican? Pick people? Were they in an alternate version of the latest dystopian movie?

“For our new friends here, let me tell you this - it’s worth seeing. And filming.” Gale answered the silence plea of the journalists - without giving away too much. “We have to clip their wings today.”

Peeta wondered if that was supposed to help them understand how big a day it was, how Gale thought it could make good television. But it didn’t.

As things turned out, it made hilarious television.

The camera crews discovered very early in the day that being able to clip the wings of the pelican implied being able to catch it first. Which seemed easier said than done.

Peeta tried to do his job as professionally as possible.

He really tried. As did his colleagues.

Castor nearly collapsed on the ground laughing several times.

It all started with a group of keepers gathering around the pond, like soldiers getting ready for a war, Gale dispatching them at “strategic locations”, urging them to hide as much as possible.

Because obviously,

They were all witnesses to the greatest spectacle they’d ever seen. Several keepers were hidden around the pelican pond with large nets, trying to catch the birds that were sliding slowly across the water, failing almost every time. Added to that crowd, Gale was on a small boat, paddling around with Johanna behind him with her own dip trying to catch the pelicans escaping the pond.

And try they did.

Pelicans turned out to be very sneaky birds, who easily avoided every attempt at being caught. They swam away from the banks of the pond every time they came close to a keeper, as if they could sense their presence nearby, teasing them as they slid away from them, a mere inches from the tip of the nets trying to catch them.

Reinforcements were brought in, in the form of a small boat, complete with a floating team, ready to catch the birds.

If they could.

Gale made a first crossing, paddling the boat to the small island in the middle of the pond to drop one of the trainee keepers with a larger net, before taking Johanna, armed with a fishnet, on board with him.

Then began a game of hide and seek, between all the keepers, who kept jumping from behind the bushes or  trees where they were hidden, and the birds, who kept escaping the nets thrown at them. Endlessly.

Causing Johanna to fall into the pond’s water twice. Causing Ellen, the trainee, to fall on her behind three times, and to escape the dangerous beaks of the birds twice as many times. Causing a gathering of keepers and visitors around the pond to laugh at the adventures of the keepers - who weren’t the last ones to laugh either.

Making it even more difficult to catch the birds.

Peeta felt like he had fallen into an episode of Laurel and Hardy, the implausibility of the scene unfolding before the lens of his camera - and yet, it was real. Very real. Everybody was having fun, trying to catch the birds. He could even ear Annie’s laugh, clear like the morning, as she was nearby, waiting for her “patients” to arrive.

He could feel something bubbling in him, something from deep down he wasn’t able to immediately identify that started to make his belly warm. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

When Gale and Johanna both fell out of the boat, he knew.

For the first time in more than a year, he heard it. The sound of his laughter, coming from his throat, spreading through his body, relaxing his muscles and joints, relaxing his jaw, releasing endorphins.

For the first time in more than a year, he laughed.

Laughed at keepers trying to catch pelicans, laughed at their own cries of joy, laughed at the life pouring out of them, that seemed to come into him, making his breathing easier, his burden lighter.

“You should laugh more often.” A soft voice came from behind him, so soft he might think it was the wind talking. But it was her, of course. “I like the sound of your voice.” She added, before moving, passing in front of him, as she shouted at the disheveled crowd of keepers.

“Come on, it’s only five pelicans! We can do this guys!”

Katniss walked straight to the bank of the pond, on the opposite side of where the pelicans were gathering.

“I’ll divert their attention so you can grab them,” she told the other keepers, before she started making noise with her mouth to attract the birds.

Which led to the capture of two of them, whose wings were clipped by Annie immediately before they were put in a transport box until all the birds were done with.

Which happened in a matter of minutes.

When the pelicans were all back onto the water, as if nothing had happened, Katniss turned back to the group of soaked keepers gathered around. “So, once again, the aviary saves the day, right? The drinks are on you guys!”

Peeta watched the crew from the aviary depart, leaving the rest of the keepers to deal with the mess the pelicans made. Everywhere around, he could see long, white feathers on the ground or in the bushes, even in the hair of the keepers.

Katniss came closer to him as she was making her way out of the Pelicans Pond, closer than was necessary. He was putting his camera down, getting ready to move to the next pen they were supposed to film, when she stopped right next to him, leaning in slightly to talk just to him.

“I hope you can make it tonight…. It will be at Sae’s, at seven.”

She moved away from him, swiftly, with the grace of the animals she loved so much. Her words lingered in his ears, a soft music echoing in his mind, soothing him, quieting his demons.

She had that power over him, he realized, to bring the calm back with just a word or a touch, just like she had done at the giraffes’ pen a few weeks ago, bringing him back from his flashback.

He stopped packing his camera, a thought crossing his mind.

His last flashback had been with the giraffes.

Weeks ago.

Weeks.

Not days.

Weeks.

Almost two months ago.

When he was used to have one or two per week.

He didn’t know what had happened here to stop the attacks. Maybe it had to do with him being focused on work again, or being outside every hour of the day, or the animals, he really didn’t know.

All he knew was that he felt better - so much better than the first day he had walked into the zoo.

“Mellark? You coming?”

Turning his head, Peeta saw his teammates walking away from the pond. His epiphany had obviously taken more time than he thought, but for once it didn’t matter. He packed quickly, jogging to catch up to his co workers, a slight smile on his face.

If he could go two months without a flashback, maybe he could go way longer. Maybe, there was hope for him, at the end of a very long tunnel.

He found himself outside of Sae’s dinner a few minutes before seven, wondering whether he should go in or not. Sure, he was pretty sure Katniss had invited him, but would he be welcome there? Would the other keepers, and the staff he wasn’t used to dealing with, be happy to see him?

“Bread Boy! You coming in or not?”

Peeta turned his head towards his name, seeing the now familiar face of Johanna looking at him, holding the door opened with one of her hands, the other waving at him to come closer.

“I don-”

Johanna carefully closed the door, walking towards him, stopping a few feet away before she started talking.

“Come in, she’ll be here soon. She just called Gale to say she was leaving.”

“I have no clue who you’re talking about, Johanna,” Peeta answered, casually sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he looked inside the diner.

“Small, black braid, grey eyes? The one you stare at every day? The one who looks at you as if you were the sun itself? You sure have no idea?”

His eyes snapped back to Johanna. Did he really hear what she just said? Katniss was looking at him?

He never caught her eyes on him, never once. Maybe Johanna was making fun of him...

Maybe Katniss was too, talking about him with her friends, telling them about his attack…. But no, he hadn’t heard anything about it so far so  He lowered his gaze to the ground.

“So, you coming in, or not?” Johanna was starting to get impatient, if the stomping of her feet on the ground was a sign.

“I don’t know… it’s not my scene, really…” The desire to run away was getting stronger and stronger now - the irony he couldn’t run on his prosthetic wasn’t lost on him either.

“It’s not your scene unless you make it yours. Look, Peeta….” Johanna paused, and he heard her sigh, but it was the sound of his name that made him look up at her. She never called him by his name, always using silly nicknames she seemed to have an endless list of.  “I don’t know what happened to you, and it’s not my business.”  As Peeta started to open his mouth to talk, she stopped him with a wave of her hand.

‘It’s written all over your face. Or it was, whatever, as I said, not my business. But you have a choice, now. You come in and mingle with us, or you stay out, and keep not living your life. Road’s not taken, and all that Frost shit.”

Without another word, Johanna turned on her heel, opened the door to the diner, the sound of  music and  conversation flying to his ears. She watched him for a few seconds, holding the door for him, until she shook her head, disappointment on her face when he didn’t move.

The sound of music and chatter died.

Peeta remained alone, on the sidewalk, watching through the big windows people having a normal evening.

For a few seconds, he wondered what would have happened if someone else had held the door open for him - would he have had the same thoughts? Would it have changed what he was doing right at this moment? Watching from afar?

Wasn’t it what he always do? Watch from behind the lens of the camera, away from the action, never a real part of it.

Just a witness.

Never a participant - even in Afghanistan. He had made images, filmed what happened. From afar, never willing to give his opinion, keeping to what he thought the media would expect.

Just filming the others.

His friends, or complete strangers, making stories fit for the news, never the vision he had of a conflict.

Or of the zoo he was working in.

Never participating in the life around him.

Following.

His brothers, his parents, his friends, orders.

Maybe it was time to actually do something he wanted.

For him, only.

Peeta shook his head, took a deep breath, then turned to the right, facing the door.

It couldn’t be that hard, right ?

It wasn’t.

He was met by the sound of music, unending chatter, forks and knives clicking.

The sounds of life.

“Peeta! Come on over!” a voice called after him. Finnick was waving his hand in the air, beckoning him to come closer, showing him the empty chair at his side. “Kitty Kat will have to find another place to sit, right?” the keeper added, smirking.

“I guess so…” Peeta answered, almost shyly. He took a deep breath, taking the time to let all the smells get into him - some familiar, like Finnick’s faint smell of chlorine he carried with him, some he couldn’t really recognize.

He bathed in the sounds, in the warmth surrounding him, agreeing to whatever Finnick ordered that was placed in front of him. He bathed in the laughter coming from their table, in the sounds the cooks made, the rock music that played behind them, the colors of the diner - neons flashing pink, the red of the benches , more laughter, more sounds, more noise …

Until the familiar tickling in his head started. The first signs of an upcoming attack fell upon him - Everything was too loud, too bright, too shiny - he needed to get out as fast as possible, get away from the crowd, escape or he would found himself hit by a bullet - or a bomb …

He couldn’t hear any music anymore, just the sounds of bullets flying around him, teasing him, playing with him.

He could swear the next one would hit him.

He jumped out of his chair, the pain in his head unbearable.

Escape was on the other side of the door.

The cool air hit him right in the face.

Cool.

The wind on his face.

Sounds, still.

Someone shouting.

At him, most probably. Because that’s who he was. The one people shouted at, because he was always in line to take a good shot.  

“Go back inside!” he heard a woman’s voice shout.

“Should we call 911?” someone asked, a man, for all he knew.

“No. I’ll handle it,” the woman firmly said. The voice was a familiar, though, even if Peeta couldn’t place it. “Deep breaths. Breathe in through your nose, then exhale through your mouth. Slowly. Count to three, yes, just like that. I want to hear you breathe, Peeta.”

The voice was calm, almost relaxing. Almost soothing.

“You just breathe, Peeta. Focus only on your breathing, there’s nothing more important than that. Don’t let anything derail you from your breathing. Nothing can disrupt your peace of mind. Nothing. You’re stronger than your fears.”

Peeta didn’t know if he could trust the voice he was hearing. The ruckus in his head was stronger, maybe, the demons too strong for him. It was easier to get lost in them than to fight.

He had no reason to fight.

“What’s going on? What happened? What are you doing, Jo?!”

He heard another voice, through the noise in his head, through the pain and commotion. It was a sound he knew, something he could hold onto. Someone he knew he could trust.

A link back to reality.

Peeta forced all of his will to hang onto the voice that had struck through his mind like a lightning.

He forced his nails to dig deeper, harsher into the skin of his palms, to make the monsters go away.

He didn’t want to lose his grasp on reality.

He failed.

[thinkingagain]

“Police random checkpoint.” Lucky pointed to some small barriers in the road and several uniformed Beasts standing and walking near them.

Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest (A Novel of the Revolution) Book One: Conquest Chapter 23

It had long been dark by the time the rabbits were making their way down Highway 81 towards Fallons University in the car Lucky had hotwired. An old Cadillac with a remodeled interior, he told them, apparently a prize among Beasts. They stared out into the flashing darkness of the Beast highway night, working out their ideas and plans for seizing the university grounds and preparing to turn them into a Magic Demesne.

“First we remove all Beastly noncombatants from the area,” said Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest. “The Brain Trust insisted on this point, and I agree. We do not harm Beasts that have done no direct violence against us. It’s okay to confuse and frighten them, but the main goal is to escort them away. If they resist, we may subdue them until we get to the proper spot for releasing them. We shouldn’t harm them even if they have weapons and intend to harm us but we are convinced they can’t. Please, everyone, do not wound any aging, armed, doddering Beast with delusions of grandeur, or any foolish young Beast that thinks the situation requires it to prove its Beasthood. Fight them only if they mean it, are trying to carry it out, and are able to carry it out. Does anyone disagree about any of this?”

“I doubt they’d show us the same consideration,” Scruffy grumbled.

“Indeed they would not. That is why the rabbit way is superior to the Beast way, and why our Demesne needs to exist.”

“There won’t be much time to do all that before word gets out and the initial police Beasts arrive,” Jack said. “But it’s summer, so there won’t be many Beasts on campus, which makes our job easier. We want to prevent panic if we can, and we have to be prepared to disable the advance rounds of police. At first they’ll send only scouting missions, but once the situation escalates, they’ll bring significant force. Our biggest advantage is going to be continued Beast confusion and refusal to believe. They won’t be looking for bunnies, and they won’t understand who we are when they see us.”

“How do we get them to leave campus if they don’t believe in us?” Muffin’s long ears bent questioningly. “Easier to confuse a Beast than direct it while it’s confused.”

“We’ve done quite well directing this Beast.” The Sir gave it a light whack on the nose from where he sat on the headrest above the driver’s seat. The Beast looked as though it was driving, although Lucky still controlled the wheel. “I suppose some improvisation will be necessary. And who, my dear henchman, improvises better than yourself?”

“Confuse and direct.” Muffin did some limited hand and foot gestures in the car’s restricted space. “The grasshopper, panda, and frog agree.”

“Jack is right though,” the Sir said. “Our biggest challenge will be to maintain the university as animal territory against an organized, larger Beast assault. Many more powerful Beasts will consider what we have done an outrage. Their attack will be as vicious as they can manage. They will not respect, perhaps not even notice, the care with which we have removed Beasts from the area.”

As the Sir said this, Lucky began slowing the car, slightly at first, then more. Soon the car was hardly moving at all. The Sir looked out the front window. They were stuck behind cars that stretched ahead of them in a long line of red blinking Beast lights cutting the darkness.

“Traffic jam of some kind,” Lucky said. “Happens when too many Beast vehicles travel a road at once, or when a Beast vehicle has broken down or crashed. Don’t see many on a road like this, though, especially not this time of night. I wonder.” He looked suspiciously through the front window.

“The more I learn about Beastly vehicles,” the Sir said, “the more repelled by them I become. The odor of the gas they spew does not grow more pleasant with time.”

“Beasts who hate themselves sufficiently will sometimes inhale it directly,” Jack said. “Put the car in an enclosed space and turn on the engine for full fumes. Knocks them unconscious and then kills them. Beasts also kill other Beasts this way, then pretend that the dead Beast did it to themselves. Both things are more common in Beast films than in real life, but they do happen.”

“I think we have a big problem, bunnies,” Lucky said.

They all sprang to attention, moving to spots in the car where each of them could see best out the windows.

“Police random checkpoint.” Lucky pointed to some small barriers in the road and several uniformed Beasts standing and walking near them. “They do it sometimes on Beast holidays when it’s likely that too many are drunk in cars. But also when they’re looking for a fugitive, a Beast that other Beasts are determined to put it in jail but can’t yet find. The crime has to be pretty serious.”

The Sir was still peering out the window. “This checkpoint could be designed to catch us.”

“It’s not a bad bet,” Lucky said. “That’s the risk we’ve run, getting in this Cadillac. With luck it hasn’t been reported stolen yet, since that Beast house we took it from was quiet and dark. Still, when we get down there to Fallons, they’re going to find us. Maybe we better abandon the car now.”

“The grasshopper doesn’t think we need to do that yet,” Muffin spoke up.

“Why not?” the Sir asked.

“All of us have been working with the Beast,” Muffin said, meaning himself, “because we’re the ones who have gotten stuck with it. The panda can make it act by precise tugs on its rope.” He moved close to the Beast and tightened the rope and the Beast raised its hand. “The grasshopper can get it to recite basic repetitive sounds, including its poetry and songs and a few standard requests.” He poked and prodded the Beast with some quick flicks of his paws.

“I’m hungry,” the Beast said. “Can we please stop and eat?”

“And finally,” Muffin said, “the frog has learned to sound like it, when essential.”

“The rabbit is a wise and honorable animal,” the Beast said, although none of the rabbits saw its lips move. They looked at each other, bewildered.

“What just happened?” the Sir said.

“Muffin,” Jack said. “You’re a ventriloquist.”

“A great tool for deceiving Beasts,” the Beast seemed to say.

“Risky.” Lucky, driving, spoke over his shoulder. “If we end up having to take down the police Beasts at the checkpoint, we’ll draw a lot more attention. We could leave the Beast in the car and head into the trees, and the police will either take it into custody or let it go.”

“We’ll lose the Beast that way,” the Sir said, “after I have vowed to protect it.”

“And after I’ve had the trouble of training it,” Muffin added. “We have enough Beast objects in back here that if the smaller bunnies get on the floor underneath, it’ll just seem like a pile of junk. We can jump out and evade any police Beasts at the last second if we have to.”

“Or fight back if we’re attacked,” Scruffy said.

“And Leo?” Lucky asked.

In the seat next to the Beast, Leo laughed. His joviality even in this difficult situation was calming. “I have talked my way out of encounters with Beasts before. You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t, how a Beast reacts when it finds itself in a situation it can’t comprehend.”

Lucky looked at the Sir.

“I think we proceed,” the Sir said. “We abandon the vehicle if we must, and fight back only if the police Beasts leave us no choice.” He and Jack and Scruffy jumped into the back seat and got on the floor, pulling some of the objects from Muffin’s bag over them. Muffin went carefully under the front driver’s seat, where he could operate the Beast. Lucky went under Leo’s legs and beneath the seat on that side. Leo didn’t go anywhere. He reached out with one paw to control the steering wheel while Muffin worked the pedals.

The car moved forward, stopped, moved forward, stopped. “Muffin,” Leo said, “when I tell you to, can you roll down the front window?”

Muffin nodded. After the car stopped a few more times, Leo said, “Now.” Muffin rolled down the window. Leo turned his face away so that he was looking at the opposite window. He rubbed a paw against his shoulders and back as though they ached.

A flashlight glared in the open window. A police Beast leaned in close, though it kept its face outside the car. “Evening.” It was a large, full grown male, with large shoulders and arms and a closed expression.

The Beast in the front seat grunted something unintelligible.

“Where you two traveling tonight?” the police Beast said.

At Muffin’s tug, the Beast in the driver’s seat pulled a hand down over its mouth and scratched it. “Want to make Kentucky by morning,” it appeared to say.

“Your driver’s license?”

The Beast in the driver’s seat, without any response from Muffin, reached into its pocket, pulled out its license and showed it to the police Beast. Clearly the Beast still knew how to take Beast orders.

“What kinds of work you do?” the police Beast said.

Unprompted by Muffin, The Beast responded, “I’m a poet.”

“Really?” The police Beast frowned. “What kind of poetry you write, Mr. Poet?”

“The sad kind,” came another unprompted response.

“Isn’t that nice. Make any money?”

“No.”

“What a surprise.” The police Beast moved its flashlight upwards, across the car, and landed on Leo, whose face was still turned away to the other window. “What’s your story?”

“Just trying to get some rest, Officer,” Leo grumbled. “Tough day yesterday. Worse one tomorrow.”

The police Beast’s flashlight moved up and took in Leo’s tall ears. “What the?” he said.

Leo, rubbing his eyes, turned sideways to glance at the police Beast. “You ain’t never seen a man in a rabbit costume, Officer?”

The police Beast flashed the light around a bit. “Damn. Lifelike.”

“I’m a professional. A get-up like this takes hours.”

“Strange.” The police Beast moved the flashlight off of Leo. “Lately, everybody’s talking rabbit this, rabbit that. What is it, some kind of weird trend?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Officer.”

“Everybody’s talking about rabbits all of a sudden,” the police Beast said. “No clue why. How come you’re driving down the highway dressed in a rabbit suit?”

“Trying to make a carnival in Kentucky tomorrow morning.” Leo scratched his ears. “South of Knoxville. We’re already late. I’m gonna have to jump out and go straight to work.”

“Oh, I get it now,” the police Beast said. “You both carnies? What made you so late?”

Leo directed an elbow towards the Beast sitting next to him. “Poet,” he winked. “Reciter of famous poems from memory doesn’t remember his schedule nearly so well. I had to track him down in a diner.”

The Beast in the driver’s seat grunted.

“No surprise I guess.” The police Beast grinned. “Good idea to let a poet drive?”

“I’m trying to get a few hours rest,” Leo said. “Figured it’s a straight shot down 81 and even this, uh, poet couldn’t get us too lost.”

“I guess not,” the police Beast said skeptically. “Best of luck with that.” He leaned up, looked away.

“You have a good night, Officer,” the sitting Beast seemed to say, “and a blessed day.”

“At least you’re a Christian poet,” the police Beast said over its shoulder, moving on towards the next car in line. “Don’t that beat all?”