𝐎𝐟 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 [𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞]

0 | 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐡

Known ~ NEO 'EN' KHATRI

"Damaged goods — if I was ever good."

            — WHEN THE ARENA HUSHES INTO STILLNESS, I am certain that I can never go home. Not to my sweet Middle Canyon, that had, in the three years I've been parted from it, become my sanctuary more than ever before.

            This realisation, as I watch the Peacekeepers suddenly arise from the distant podiums to march me back to Capitol City, feels like a debilitating hit; feels like the the wrought iron rod Seth had taken to my leg not even hours before.

            I stand then at the thought, if only in defiance to the aching pain needling its way up my throat and around my ribs — bruised and stuttering. I appreciate the view briefly, how very much like home this arena appears. The desolate and desperately hot environment, the litany of dirty lakes and dug-out ravines, the desert-flowers that prickle and poison, the system of trembling mineshafts beneath it all. I was lucky to know this kind of place so intimately, even if it has destroyed any future peace I could've found in familiarity.

            Knowing to source my water from the cacti, to look for unsafe fissures in the rock, to protect my neck from the sun. These are the things that have kept me alive, even if there is blood on my hands. Despite it now being in ugly pealing strips, my skin has adapted to these harsh conditions from a childhood under the sun, and that has saved me from the exposure that killed two other tributes.

            Still, the arena looks like home, and the thought stings more than my four cracked teeth.

            If I squint, I can almost picture sandy-haired workers scuttling across the dusty orange cliff-face in the distance. I can imagine that the scent of my mother's stew carries on the passing breeze and that there are children playing in the empty street beneath me.

            I straighten up on the flat rooftop of the dilapidated saloon we found ourselves on in these last moments, and I mourn the once lovely house across the street — ornate awnings and carefully painted shutters gone in the fire I'd caused. There had probably been a better way of ridding myself of my district partner — I didn't have to destroy the building that so teasingly resembled my childhood home — but at the time leaving the gas cooker to blow the roof off while I escaped from the second-floor window had been the best course of action.