Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⚔⚜⚔▏ 𝑯𝑶𝑷𝑬 ➶⌢➴ goodbyes
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌 ends, we are taken into custody. I don’t mean we’re handcuffed or anything, but a group of Peacekeepers marches us through the front door of the Justice Building.
Maybe tributes have tried to escape in the past. I’ve never seen that happen though.
Once inside, I’m conducted to a room and left alone.
It’s the richest place I’ve ever been in, with thick, deep carpets and a velvet couch and chairs. I know velvet because my mother has a dress with a collar made of the stuff.
When I sit on the couch, I can’t help running my fingers over the fabric repeatedly. It helps to calm me as I try to prepare for the next hour.
The time allotted for the tributes to say goodbye to their loved ones. I cannot afford to get upset, to leave this room with puffy eyes and a red nose. Crying is not an option. There will be more cameras at the train station.
My sister and my mother come first. I reach out to Prim and she climbs on my lap, her arms around my neck, head on my shoulder, just like she did when she was a toddler.
My mother sits beside me and wraps her arms around us. For a few minutes, we say nothing. Then I start telling them all the things they must remember to do, now that I will not be there to do them for them.
Prim is not to take any tesserae. They can get by, if they’re careful, on selling Prim’s goat milk and cheese and the small apothecary business my mother now runs for the people in the Seam.
Gale will get her the herbs she doesn’t grow herself, but she must be very careful to describe them because he’s not as familiar with them as I am.
He'll probably not ask for compensation, but they should thank him with some kind of trade, like milk or medicine.
I don’t bother suggesting Prim learn to hunt. I tried to teach her a couple of times and it was disastrous. The woods terrified her, and whenever I shot something, she’d get teary and talk about how we might be able to heal it if we got it home soon enough.
