Shades of Gold and Blue | Finnick Odair

Seventeen

The Mayor's home sits just off from the town square, I'm admiring the wisteria that climbs the front of the house as I wait for someone to open the door. The Mayor had sent a letter to the house at the break of dawn, inviting me to take tea with him and a few of the more senior tradespeople in the town.

He has a lovely view, even better than the one at the Victors Village. With the house standing firmly at the top of the hill, you can see right on down to the port which is bustling today as all of the fishermen and women have gone back to work.

I'm craning my neck to get a better look when the door opens and I see the nanny that was at the town hall on the day of my arrival.

"Miss Snow, welcome to Honeygrove House. I hope you weren't waiting too long?"

I smile, letting her take my jacket as I move into the foyer, "Not at all." I say with a shake of my head, "I think I heard the mayor's daughters call you Dahlia the other day?"

She beams, "You've an excellent memory Miss Snow, Dahlia Arten."

"Arten?"

"That's right, Mitch is my boy. He's done me very proud."

"I'm sure he has, he and Iris were so kind to me the other day. I don't do too well with storms; they took me in for the night. You have wonderful grandchildren."

"When they're not being little terrors that is," I laugh and I follow her through the house towards a room where I can hear several voices.

Dahlia knocks on the door before leading me in and the noise drops to where you could hear a pin fall. All eyes are on me as I enter the reception room and I find myself glad that I dressed up for the occasion as it seems that everyone has come in their Sunday best.

"Miss Snow, I'm so glad you could make it," the Mayor says as he makes his way over to me to shake my hand, he gestures for me to move further into the room and I move over to one of the spare couches.

"It was very kind of you to invite me at all, sir."

"May I introduce you?" He gestures around the others sat in the room.

"I'd be delighted."

He takes time introducing me to each person in the room, explaining their role and allowing me to ask questions. I meet Charlie Watson, the Docks Master; there's Mr and Mrs Bass, the banker and his wife; Dr Mirren the lead doctor at the hospital and her husband, Gilliam who is in charge of Capitol exports. Unfortunately, there's also the dreaded head trainer Valora and even worse – the Head Peacekeeper, who I come to know as Commander Quill.

The afternoon is lovely, especially being able to talk to Dr Mirren about the access to medical resources and technology within the district. I promise her that I'll get in touch with our head biologist in The Capitol as soon as I get back home and request that the districts be given some more up to date tools to work with.

Mr Bass explains how well the district is doing financially and that although they had seen some unemployment and poverty over the past couple of years, that was beginning to look up. His wife was very quiet, no matter what topic of conversation we entered, I only received one worded replies.

Dr Mirren eyed me with amusement as I heaped as many sugar cubes as I could into my teacup, "I'm not sure that as a doctor, I can sit here and not tell you that you're using far too much sugar."

I laughed, "I'm indulging myself while I'm away from home, my Mother would never let me put this much sugar in my tea. I do have a sweet tooth though and what my Mother doesn't know won't kill her."

I manage to spend the time in the mayor's reception room avoiding the Head Peacekeeper after our initial introduction. My Mother would be furious if she were here and could see me neglecting such an important person within the community, but yet I couldn't bring myself to so much as look at him.