The Rebel Queen

20

I wake up in my childhood home, my eyes adjusting to the light of my attic bedroom. It feels strange to be here, even stranger to feel my small, child's feet fall on the worn wood. The worn, threadbare shirt that once belonged to my father falls to my knees as I step slowly across the floor. I can hear nothing but silence, not even my mother's usual wails filling the house as she sobs for my father and my dead sister. 

I know what I will find downstairs. This silence, this dream feels just like that morning. I hesitate on the first step, my long, twin braids mother had tied up last night falling over my shoulders. I don't want to go down there, to see and smell what waits. But my body moves on it's own accord. I am just a passenger, reliving this bad memory.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turn and look at the scene in the kitchen, her body is still, but the blood still pours out of the deep slashes she had made with the scalpel. The bottles of Morphling still set with their needle on the counter. The child's scream escapes my lungs as I look at the horrible scene of my mother's suicide, trembling as I fall to the ground, my nightshirt becoming stained with her blood. I cry bitter tears as I watch her still body, weeping over my last family member.

After what I know was hours when I discovered my mother, nearly the whole day wasted crying on the floor, my shaky legs carefully push me up off the stone floor. I wipe my eyes as I get up, stumbling to the fireplace. I grab a nap sack and quickly grab onto the keepsakes that are kept up there, sliding them into the bag. Grabbing my father's coat and my child sized bow, I step in my boots, prepared to leave. Glancing back at my mother's cowards death, I sigh, ducking out of the little hut. 

I shiver in the cold, looking around at the now dark sky. I can hear the howl of a wolf, but I see nothing in the shadows. I step forward, walking with purpose towards the voice. I don't remember what made me follow it. I couldn't even hear what she is saying, But I feel something, someone, guiding me towards the merchant part of the district. My boots crunch in the snow as I follow her, hearing her mumbled words a little clearer with each step. 

"Follow child," She whispers. "You are not alone. I won't leave you, but there is work to be done." I don't remember this, this voice calling and guiding me as I went to the bakery that morning. I just remember wandering there. I didn't have this unknown voice calling to me. I stop just outside the door and see his young face looking at me out the window. He opens the door and comes out, his blue eyes full of concern. He walks up to me and I feel tears running down my cheeks

"Katniss, what is it?" He asks and I grip tight to my bag as I stand before him.

"My mother," I whimper. "She, she's gone!" I start sobbing and he takes a step towards me, his arms wrapping around me.

"I'm so sorry," He whispers and I grip onto his shirt. I sniff and push him away.

"I have to go," I whisper and he looks at me.

"What do you mean?" He asks and I blink at him. 

"I can't go to the orphanage and end up like those girls by the slag heap," I say. 

"But where?" He asks and look back, towards the trees that lay beyond the Seam. "The Rebels? Katniss, you don't even know if there is anything out there."

"I have to try," I say. "I will not stay here and wither, become a product of Snow's crushing of hope." He looks at me and sighs.

"So this is goodbye?" He asks and I nod. Peeta looks down at my clutched, shivering hands and nods, a tear falling down his own cheek.

"Wait here," he says stepping away from me and running back into the bakery. He is in there for a few moments before he comes back with a paper bag. He takes my bag from me and stuffs the paper sack in there. "It isn't much but it is what I could sneak away." I blink at him and nod.