"People might not want to trust unusual birds. They seem a little too similar to mutts."

"I can use human manifestations too, but the birds travel more easily. I suppose that's less of a problem in your world... I also find it's convenient to separate the purposes of each form in the eyes of the public. People are encouraged to come up to my bird manifestations and touch them unless I specifically say not to; not so for the human ones."

"If you leave the trains intact or get ahold of a plane, your human forms will be able to get around pretty well. You could maybe wear different things depending on whether you're willing to be interrupted? Since you can move objects around. You could potentially get people to trust the birds but it'd be uphill."

"I intend to get people to trust the birds, but in the meantime human manifestations will do."

"If you get rid of all the preexisting mutts that would probably help. Especially tracker-jackers, those give me the shivers just thinking about them."

"I expect to do that."

"Good. How fast are you spreading out?"

"Right now I'm still heading down to a reasonable depth. About a mile below sea level seems like it should do. I should start spreading out from there within the next few days. I'll get faster as I cover more ground."

"You spread out from the edges?"

"Yes."

"This is a peninsula, so if you can spread faster from some places instead of just a constant rate from everywhere you'll probably get more out of going along the coast until you're in a less watery area."

"I can't gain extra speed in one place by slowing down in others, so I might as well go as fast as I can everywhere."

"Okay. I wonder how krakens ought to be handled, since you're a land-based god. I assume the Capitol has some way to control and recall or kill them but it might not survive the takeover."

"I'll think about it. If nothing else, after the takeover when everything's settled and I have more surplus power to spend, I can take the very wasteful route and claim several miles of ocean floor around the continent, then raise an island under any kraken I see. But I would prefer a more elegant solution."

"Yeah. Maybe with high-tech Capitol-type boats we could just harpoon them all."

"We'll see."

She flops on her back into the sand. "Do you think you'll be ready in time for the reaping in a month and a half?"

"I don't think so, unfortunately."

"There's leadup before the games actually start. If you're not going to be ready in time for the games themselves... I could also do something crazy like volunteer, I'm still young enough to do it. And bring a disc, but then I'd have to leave my fire wand behind, they only let you take one thing."

"If you volunteered and brought a disc, that would get me another starting point, but probably not in time to do you any good in the games."

"Yeah. And I don't think I could win them without the fire wand. With the fire wand I could win, but then I'd have killed twenty-three innocent people and it would look really, really suspicious to boot. Maybe I can talk to one of this year's Careers and get him or her to bring a disc, that's probably more sensible anyway since I know who's going."

"That could be useful. I imagine those arenas are carefully watched, though."

"Yeah. And it could be one where it would be impractical to bury the disc - water arena, platforms over a volcano caldera, ground covered in poisonous plants and everybody has to stay in the trees. ...I should try to give a disc to one of the mentors. If I can get them to talk to me."

"The mentors?"

"Past winners who go to the Capitol with the tributes and help them and negotiate with sponsors on their behalf. They're probably watched too, but they're not on TV and they're probably more able to get away. I'm not sure how practical it is to bury things in the Capitol but the mentors would know because they've been there. This still doesn't necessarily avert this year's Games though."