Of Thistles & Thorns ✧ The Hunger Games

𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐒

Of Thistles & Thorns.
A The Hunger Games Fanfiction.

And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will see thee as a spectacle. Nahum 3:6

[GOD WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE REBORN INSIDE THE RIBCAGE OF A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL.]

It has been thirty-five years since the Treaty of Treason was signed by a set of leather-skinned hands tinged scarlet with the stain of new blood, and the country of Panem is famished for repentance.

In between the cobweb-laden walls of the dingiest hospital in District Three, it is first hinted in the likes of Osiris Valencia: a baby birthed with blossoms in her tresses, a target on her back, and a deity tucked safely beneath the lining of her belly, bare-breasted and bleating for liberation. Hidden behind the age-weathered glass of an abandoned nursery, the idea climbs her ribs like the rungs of a ladder, claws its way up her throat until the skin is shredded and raw underneath the crescents of its yellowed fingernails; a silent plea that pitches a tent sewn from spare nerve endings and silk-spun hemoglobin on the bud-toughened surface of her tongue. But freedom, even for those who are holy, is nothing but a pipe dream to the citizens of Panem; an unreachable destiny that hangs above their heads like a tangle of storm clouds, pearl-tinted and heavy with precipitation. President Snow can barely make out the smoke trails of Osiris Valencia's ignition all the way from his rose-curtained throne in the Capitol, but – from the moment she is laid across her mother's bare skin, as bruised and bewildered as any newborn babe – even still, he makes it his sole mission to snuff her out. Her spark may never burn again, and if it does, it will burn in the flame-curtained throes of the Underworld. If he must be sure of anything, Coriolanus is sure of that.