You Are My Mockingjay- Watty's Finalist 2013

Prom Preparations

The next morning as Clove rolls around her bed she skims at her clock which read 9:15.  Ugh, it's still that early?  Clove says complaining to herself, lately she had been able to sleep past 10:30 but with a rough day from yesterday that night had kept her up for quite sometime.  Rolling up into a sitting position Clove takes a look at her arm in what the damage had been done from yesterday.  The once then red marks had vanished but was replaced with the colors of blue and purple.  Slightly Clove goes to simply touch it but with a shooting of pain that ran through she had to quickly release her hand.  She hated the fact of what happened yesterday for she should have known never to make contact with him.  But she did and that is what happened.  Clove wondered what her mom was up to since she knew she must be up by that time.  Kicking through her bed sheets she climbs out and retrieves her plaid robe that laid across her cherry wood chest that her great, great grandfather had made and passed it down to generation to generation. 

Clove suspected her mother would say something if she saw the bruises on her arms but hopefully with the robe she wouldn't notice.  After wrapping it around carefully she heads downstairs to fix herself some cereal.  The sound and smell of fresh coffee still in the pot made her feel at ease.  How she hated the taste of coffee which she attempted many times to keep awake with her studies, it just never clicked in but the smell was something different and delightful.  "Morning sweet heart, how are you?"  Said Grace as she came up to her daughters chair kissing the back of her head.    Clove wanted to admit about her throbbing bruise that stayed hidden but instead she just decided to not bring it up.

"Good, and you?"  Talking with her mouth full of Life cereal.  Clove skims her mother down as she looked to be all dressed to go somewhere.  "Are you heading out somewhere?"

Her mom turns around with another fresh cup of coffee in hand.  "Yeah I have to run some errands, care to join me?"  Clove looks down to her cereal.

"No thank you, I only have like three days left to be off for spring break  so I'd rather just stay here."

Her mother nods at her daughter with a satisfied look.  "Ok well if you change your mind just call me, I should be back no later then 4 o'clock. With that she takes one last sip of her coffee and hugs her daughter from the side.  "Love you Clove."

Clove smiles slightly at her as she walks away.  "Love you too."

When the students returned it was within days where everyone had to turn in their papers in for Powering Your Community. Where Cato and Clove had all theirs in order one about a boy named Gavin...who hated school, and his family.  But the one thing he loved was traveling.  Whenever his family took trips over the summer he would find it easy to pack up and leave and love the moments of what it held.  When we, meaning Cato asked what he thought of the Mockingjay pin he found it a mystical yet not impossible miracle.  "They roam this earth whenever and whatever they want to.  You can't always expect yourself to find them, for they find you."  Was what his answer was.

Then there was a elderly man named Blythe, a man who was a widow in his late 50's. A man who studied birds and how Mockingjays was the ONLY one he could not find.  But yet he said: "All birds have reasons to be seen and how they want to express themselves, but I hope one day to experience why that is." 

Dylan a young women in her twenties said she encountered one a couple years ago but only for a split second.  "Once I saw that bird I was in a daze and when the time came to finally understand what that was it was too late for me to do anything."  Trinity a girl about two and half years old.  Her and her family where on a picnic one day and saw this little bird next to Trinity not feared by her at all for it just stood beside her.

"I saw bird, and it talked to me."  Clove had asked the little girl what she thought of it.  "I like bird, it pretty!"  Then finally on their last person was Macie Greenwood.  The girl who was dying and who had never experienced the bird either, yet she was understandable that it held important things.  Both Cato and Clove agreed they had strong people for their project and each one left a imprint on what the Mockingjay bird held.