After the Storm • The Hunger Games

TWO

CHAPTER TWO
❝Beneath A Burning Sky❞

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Her hand was warm.

Not because the air around her was warm because it was actually rather chilly, causing gooseflesh to run along her bare skin. Her hand was warm because someone was holding it.

Her eyelashes were adorned with mini butterflies and when Effie Trinket opened her eyes, eyelashes fluttered as if the butterflies were taking flight.

The room around her was bright, forming disorientation as her pupils contracted rapidly; taking in the luminosity much to fast, turning the shapes around her all bright and blurry.

"It's alright sweetheart, you'll have one whopper of a headache."

The warm hand belonged to Haymitch Abernathy.

He was right about the headache; dull poundings buried themselves deep within her head before branching outwards and blooming, it was as if every nerve in the circumference of her head was alive and alight.

"Why does it hurt so much?" Effie composed the question although it escaped her lips as more of a chopped up phrase. Syllables were lost into the blanket of silence and each letter that left her tongue caused her throat to contract. It wasn't just her head that was alight in pain; it reached down to her throat, as if someone had placed a knife upon her trachea. Of course there wasn't anything there but it still hurt just the same.

"Cressida had to knock you out, it was safer that way," she heard Haymitch snort, "although, she gave you too strong a dosage. It'll leave your system soon enough."

Her eyes became accustomed to the bright room she was in and beneath the war that raged along her nervous system, her senses began to assert themselves. Effie was lying on a bed that was rough to the touch and was stiff to rest upon, a flimsy sheet covered her body, which had been shed of her feather dress and replaced with a rather ugly cotton nightgown. The brightness of the room that had assaulted her eyes started to fade, revealing a shape that slowly began to resemble Haymitch. His blond hair was hanging out of a grey beanie – Effie instantaneously disliked that thing upon his head – and his pale eyes were locked on her own, they were slightly glazed; a barrier of controlled emotion. Although his eyes did glint with worry, a flaw where the barrier that started to crumble.

"Where am I?" Effie asked, this time pushing past the knife pressed against her trachea and presenting her question with all her syllables intact.

"District Thirteen," Haymitch replied; lips pulling into a hard line.

Effie let her mouth open, pink lips widening to reveal polished white teeth; she smiled. District Thirteen was long gone, buried beneath ruins and rubble caused by their own defiance. She knew the story well. Every year she told the people of District Twelve what happened seventy-five years ago; right before she plucked two children from the audience and sent them with only tooth and nail to their ultimate demise.

District Thirteen didn't exist anymore; her ears must have been playing tricks.

"Don't be silly Haymitch, there is no District Thirteen," Effie tried to giggle although her body wouldn't let her. She had to suffice with letting her laughter shine through her eyes.

"There is more of District Thirteen than there is District Twelve," Haymitch countered back although a moment too late he realised his mistake. He had been warned to restrict knowledge to Effie Trinket, keep the wool pulled over her eyes because in the end she was Capitol. At least, that was Plutarch's opinion. He considered her a prisoner of war and nothing else.