we're going down, down. {esther/celeste}

[Cait]

celeste brere

The Reaping reruns, for the most part, are white noise to fill in the silence of my room. District after district showcases deadly games of “Tag!” – so many children playing god and sentencing classmates to certain death.

I don’t know how to feel about it. Part of me is envious of those who choose to save themselves, an entire life stretching in front of them with no imminent threat to their survival. Another part of me takes solace in the fact that the guilt of the Quell twist won’t sit on my shoulders.

But then the pain in my stomach slashes across my skin, temporary and blinding. A reminder: I’m no better than the rest of them. A life is a life is a life.

How do you decide which is worth saving?

The numbers of the volunteered climbs so high that it becomes easier to keep track of the ones who keep their spot. Four, I count them up and draw the tally marks into the soft of my palm.

Around every turned corner is a person with the same question: “Why did you do it?” And every question is met with some form of the same half-truth: “I didn’t want to kill anyone.”

You’re in the wrong place to have a conscience.

It’s not the full truth, but it’s enough to keep them sated. A truth only stays buried for as long as a lie is believed.

It gets tiring, after some time. I feel like I’m on the outer before I even realised there was a clique to belong to. We’re in the minority, myself and four other names, counted and memorised and engraved into my skin. This is a game of survival, and so I do what any dying animal would do: I seek out the rest of my pack.

I wonder if they have had the same prying questions as me. It doesn’t matter, not really. I don’t want to know what their answers are. I just want to feel less alone.

I see her red hair across the dining room and take a deep breath to steel my nerves as I approach her.

“Hey,” I begin uncertainly, and it takes all of my self-control to not turn around and fly back to my nest of safety in my prison room. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

[ali]

You really know how to make me cry
When you gimme those ocean eyes
I'm scared
I've never fallen from quite this high
Fallin' into your ocean eyes

Tick.

The days always blurred together. Esther was so used to it, she found that time to her was like a flowing river, desperate to reach the sea. Full of edies and rapids that sometimes trapped her in the one moment, but all around her time moved around her as she tried to grasp for purchase and push her head above the flowing water to gasp for air and see where the river had taken her. Here, in the Capitol, there was little time to be caught in the river of time. There was always a clock, always a reminder of the ever looming countdown of the beginning of the games.

However, there were moments of stillness where Esther felt like time stretched out before her like a pristine lake, surface barely broken by the sunlight.

The lunch room was one of these places. Esther sat on the far table, picking at the food on her plate. There were always piles of food at the training center, for breakfast lunch and dinner and she was surprised that she'd not gorged herself on it. Growing up in Three, a place that seemed so distant, like a photograp she had only seen in a picture book, she had not had much food. Specially since her father died. Sometimes she had forgotten the pain the hunger bought. She still felt the anxiety though, the nagging twinge in her gut that this might be her last meal for ever.

She was sentenced for Death though right? Atticus had told her she would do well, she could do well, but she couldn't see it. She would fight to survive, she was certain that she had no choice against that but she had seen the other tributes- they were whole.

Esther was so wrapped up in her own foughts, picking and dipping the same french fries over and over again in the tomato sauce she'd put on her plate that she jumped when the voice spoke. Frowning, Esther looked up at the dark eyes and dark haired girl stood by her table. She looked timid, like a little mouse and Esther regarded her closely for a long moment, before she felt the sensation of something reaching down her throat and squeezing her heart until it hurt. Looking away quickly, Esther shrugged. "..sure.." Esther said quietly, refusing to look up again.

Who is the mouse now?

lyrics: ocean eyes by Billie Eilish

[Cait]

celeste brere

I sit down gingerly as she acknowledges me, her shoulders hunched and looking slightly fearful. I feel my own back crumple in response, sinking into the metal chair and cringing as it scrapes across the ground.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought… well, you were sitting alone, and I thought you could use a friend?” Honesty is the best policy, right? “I know I could.”

We sit in silence for some time after that, regarding our plates of food, but I find I’m no longer hungry. It burns like a new type of hunger to be like this – so close to someone, but so far away.

I don’t know how she’ll take my assumption that she is lonely – for all I know, she could be perfectly content to sit on her own and observe the world. For all I know, she’s already collected her thoughts about me and planned the best way to murder me in a few days’ time. But whether she knows it or not, we are both the damned fools who didn’t volunteer anyone in our spots. Surely that has to count for some type of camaraderie.

“Sorry.” Again. “I’m not very good at the whole “meeting new people” thing. Last time I did… it didn’t go too well.”

The sun, the moon; reflected in the darkness, pressing down on my stomach.