Bric-à-brac // [Lauren & Danny]

It was late. Well, not really. Scratch that. It was the last gasp of sunset and the moon rising somewhere, way out there, certainly not in the Training Center -- unless it was like, projected onto the walls. He, Lauren Kinkade, Junior Gamemaker to the 91st Games, had mostly gotten used to that in the first week of training. Time had always been a nebulous concept. Like, brunch on Saturday? Sure, he'd be there, sometime when the sun was high in the sky. Concert tickets on a Thursday evening? He'd pick them up - or he wouldn't. And probably he'd apologize his way between the gates.

So that hours bled into days bled into "we need you, here, now," didn't feel so foreign.

Until one day, some or perhaps many days beyond the introductory pool party, a page summoned him. They ushered him along, proferring sunglasses and antiacids. He declined both though he could have used them. It seemed to him that perhaps, based on the refreshed makeup and undereye concealer, that it was evening or early night, and he ought to be able to stumble from one room to the next. So he slunk, tipping a little wall to wall, through the Training Center.

Until the page unceremoniously dumped him into the Dining Hall. She had the courtesy to indicate a high-backed, velvet lined chair at one of the High Tables. Not that he'd ever sat with the tributes! But it seemed, to him, not so distant a possibility.

A clock ominously chimed nine times.

No tributes were to be seen.

A plate of tea sandwiches and petit fours were presented.

He picked up a delicate gold fork, twirled it. What did one need a fork for, given such delicate finger foods? He pondered this condundrum perhaps a touch more diligently than the gentleman seated across from him. Still spinning the bit of meted gold, he managed, "uhm. It's Danny, right? You've... been a Gamemaker before?"