Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does.
Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does.
The anguish I always feel when she's in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face.
We're supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being in love, not actually being in love.
You've got about as much charm as a dead slug.
Birds are settling down for the night, singing lullabies to their young.
Her name's Prim. She's just twelve. And I love her more than anything.
I remember everything about you...you were the one who wasn't paying attention
It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.
My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
Plants are tricky. Many are edible, but one false mouthful and your dead
The cat that Prim got hates me, I think partly because I tried to drown it.
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to rill in and die for their entertainment?
But because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.
Here's some advice. Stay alive.
I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.
It's my new best friend, Claudius Templesmith, and as I expected it, he's inviting us to a feast.
My mother says healers are born, not made.
Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.
The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it tighter, clinging to life.
What was that you were saying just before the food arrived? Something about me... no competition... best thing that ever happened to you...
But don't worry; as I've been saying - and this has been very clever of me, I'm sure you'll agree - if you put enough pressure on coal, it'll turn to pearls!
He's dozed off again, but I kiss him awake, which seems to startle him. Then he smiles as if he's be happy to lie there gazing at me forever.
I take his hand, holding it tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment I will finally have to let go.
It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable.
My nightmares are usually about losing you.
Scores only matter if they're very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones.
The most exciting thing either of us does is nap.
Whatever the truth is, I don't see how it will help me get food on the table.
But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.
Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.
I want to show them that they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.
It's old, very old I think. Made up long ago in our hills. What my music teacher calls a mountain air. But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today.
Myself? That's no good, either.
She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.
When I break into the clearing, she's on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has the time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.
But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece o time we call today.
I also want to tell him how much I already miss him. But that wouldn't be fair on my part.
I wish I could think of a way to show them that they don't own me. If I'm going to die, I still want to be me.
It's the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.
Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.
She's Prim's size in diameter.
The only indication of the passage of time lies in the heavens, the subtle shift of the moon. So Peeta begins pointing it out to me, insisting I acknowledge its progress and sometimes, for just a moment I feel a flicker of hope before the agony of the night engulfs me again.
Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate?
But there's food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.
I can almost hear Haymitch groaning as I team up with this wispy child. But I want her. Because she's a survivor, and I trust her, and why not admit it? She reminds me of Prim.
If I'm going to cry, now is the time. By morning, I'll be able to wash all the damage done by the tears from my face. But no tears come. I'm too tired or too numb to cry. The only thing I feel is a desire to be somewhere else. So I let the train rock me into oblivion.
It's the first time I've ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his lips are from the fever.
No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But what then ... what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some.
So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories