we shall not cease from exploration [caitlin, oneshot]

[Lyn𝛿is]

Caitlin Samuels

year 76

"...and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."

Mother doesn't like the Institute. She used to study there, a very long time ago, but decided to take care of us instead of being a researcher. At least, that's most of what she'll tell us. I asked her about it the other night, after my class had to take a day off from sophomore physics to listen to an Institute woman present her psychology research.

Oh, them, she'd scoffed. They're all just theoretical nonsense, sitting around making labels and putting people into boxes.

One time after she'd told us something similar, my older brother started saying how it must have been like those stories, where the real reason she hates it is because she actually failed out. Mother had been furious at him, when she got wind of that rumor; after all, not only did she graduate, she had been a straight-A student.

I'm just saying, if you think the Institute teaches you how to understand people, you'll be disappointed, Caitlin. They can only think they're smart, and pretend their theories have any meaning in the real world.

I think most of the time, having some explanations ought to be better than having no explanations. Like how my older brother Dmitri stopped calling after the funeral, and makes Mother worry all the time whether he's doing okay.

He can take care of himself, he's a grown-up, we say to each other, and try to believe those words. My classmates this year chatter amongst themselves, when Mr. Liu allows it, about how they can't wait to grow up and leave the nest and never have to think about schoolwork again.

I can't wait to grow up, either, but the only reason is then I'll have survived the reapings and can stop worrying about them.

Mother often grumbles, about how difficult it is for her to shove me through every stage of life - except being born; I'd came in such a hurry that she barely made it inside the hospital, and ended up delivering inside the waiting room.

She used to laugh, too, about contracting to the rhythm of a roaring kraken, and how when my head poked out an intern nurse had looked horrified and immediately shut off the TV, because it's bad luck to hear a cannon sound when giving birth.

She never recounts the second part of that anymore, and even if it's an interesting story we're not allowed to bring up any Games in our family now. I remember it from time to time, when I pass by those posters - the ones that get put up everywhere in Six, with just the silhouette of the shipwreck, long tentacles rising from the sea, and two tributes facing away from the picture, weapons raised to meet it.

I like those posters the best because they're not cluttered or chaotic like the other ones. The colors are simple, the lines crisp and clean, but there are still details on each of the tentacles, the bow of the ship rising like a building out of the ocean -

In a flash I see it. The iconic shipwreck, and the Institute's old, squat bell tower that I walk past every day on my way to school - their outlines are one and the same.

The thing about these sort of realizations is, I think I end up liking each individual piece even more when seemingly different pieces can fit into each other, when all the little connections upon connections suddenly join up into something big. And I like getting to look at familiar things in ways I didn't think of before.

Stealing a quick glance at Mr. Liu, I slide out a sheet of sketch paper and prop it inside the book we're supposed to be analyzing. I begin with the outline of the building, and add in all the windows and little scalloped ridges.

I suppose the kraken must be coming from the main quad of that college, if I'm drawing it just behind the tower like in the poster. I start on the figures, standing defiantly as they face down the Institute-kraken, but I don't get to finish them before Mr. Liu walks around the room and I have to hide the sketch inside the book's jacket.

He's pretty strict if he catches us having other stuff out in class, but at least he's not like Mrs. Russell. She used to confiscate my sketches, and then insist on analyzing them and having all sorts of wrong ideas about me.

I turn to it again when he returns to his desk and his paperwork, and shade in a brightly hued sunset with my colored pencils once I'd put a rapier and a knife into the figures' hands.

In the dark blue top section, I add dozens of stars peeking out; in a sketchbook, after all, the sky can always be clear.