Small Chance[Dunders]

With a fishing net and a bucket filled with ice in hand, Griffin Tucker trudged through the snow. Tracks ahead of him, oddly close together for a person's stride, suggested that some large animal was nearby. But the tracks weren't deep, nor were they shaped like an animal's.

For a while he attempted to step in the tracks himself, to follow them and cover them and avoid making any footprints himself. But then, his strides were large, and these were much smaller. When he tried to match them he waddled like a penguin, shuffling his feet to the beat of his own heart under the sound of the wind whirring around him.

He stopped moving as such, and instead made a point to walk in every other footprint. He made a game of it, and a few times he even toppled over, unable to meet his feet to the spot where the stranger's foot landed. It only occurred to him as he came upon the ocean that he was actually following someone.

Someone who, as he got closer and saw the figure up close, looked..

Small.

"Oh my goodness.. what have they done to you?" Griffin cried out, suddenly feeling for this random stranger. No wonder the footprints were so small.

The Capitol must have done it. Their fault, good heavens. Those monsters.

In a fraction of a second the bucket and net were laying in the snow as Griffin rushed forward with a shocked look on his face. He forgot his game of following in the stranger's footsteps and leaped forward, falling to his knees in the snow right in front of the man, whom he was now staring at face to face.

"I -- I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?" he asked worriedly, ignoring the man's prior remark. Snow trickled into his jeans where his knees met the watery earth, but he paid the cold no mind. "I.. we can help you. Did they cut off your -- " He stopped. If they had cut off most of the man's legs, why did he still have feet? He didn't look the least bit harmed, there was no blood. Maybe it was a horrible torture of the Capitol, to make the man feel small and insignificant throughout the rest of his life. Shorten his legs, then make sure he could still walk and move and such. It made sense, in a way. And it was possible, with all the fancy doctors in the Capitol. Why else would he be wandering outside of the Districts, alone and old, if he were not cast out?

Griffin knew nothing of being small. Perhaps he was not domineering, or his Career skills went to waste, or his gentle demeanor didn't live up to the title of "leader." But to be physically small, to look up to everyone and everything and feel like nothing... he couldn't imagine a worse fate.

"Can I help you?" he asked, a mixture of sorrow and anger in his eyes.