Grain & Blood | A Hunger Games collection

System Overload: Chapter Seventeen

District 7

Lumber

The sign flashes past in an instant, and we slide through the gates and high walls, along the track as it winds through a forest. If this is what all of District 7 is like then I'd like to move here permanently.

I'm meeting Mags in District 6 on Friday, just two more days to go. Iris is meeting Pablo today and she keeps describing what she's going to do to him. Most of which carry the same theme. Death, pain, violence.

I rearrange the tissue held up against my nose, checking to see if the blood has stopped. The two of us were fighting earlier, with 'friendly intentions' but I still ended up lying on the floor, covered in bruises and dripping blood. Iris helped me clean it up, stuck plasters on the cuts and we cuddled on one of the sofa for ten minutes, but my nose kept bleeding and I had to change tissues every few minutes, and so we separated, Iris writing in her book, and once again I found myself staring out of the window.

Most of the District is just- trees. I know that there will be a town somewhere in it, but it currently seems so much like I'm in the middle of the woods somewhere, which for some reason only sparks happiness. My eyes unfocus on the forest rushing past, and I end up watching Iris behind me in the reflection.

Her face sometimes tenses up, and I know it's because she's writing about that crappy time in both of our lives. I can't think about it without tearing up, so I'm not sure how she can write about it every day without showing much emotion. It's way beyond me.

Iris shuts her notebook and mutters something that I don't hear and she slides onto the seat next to me.

"You doing any better?" She asks

"No, I still feel like sh*t."

"Okay, great. Hopefully the nosebleed stops by the time we reach the train station."

"Great?"

Iris doesn't answer. I slide down on the slippery leather seats, curling my legs up and resting my head on her lap.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

The gentle bouncing of the train slowly lulls me to sleep.

When I awake, there are no longer trees outside, only the bleak gray of a town somewhere in District 7, looking much like the one in District 4.

"Are you awake yet?" Iris asks.

"No," I mutter sleepily.

"You clearly are. Get off my lap."

I groan and roll my eyes.

"Well, I'm about to leave so, if you don't want to end up on the floor, you better move."

With a sigh, I wriggle a bit and sit up. Iris shifts almost instantly, as if she wasn't very comfortable with me falling asleep like that. To be quite honest, I don't think I would be either, maybe next time I should ask before doing something.

I walk down the carriage into the bedroom section. Most of the journeys are overnight, and even though we have a bedroom each, Iris and I prefer to sleep in the double bed in my room instead, not doing anything like that but just because the amount of times I wake up screaming in the night from the nightmares.

In my room are two outfits laid out on the bed. One for me, one for Iris. I'm not a huge fan of either, to be quite honest. Dresses. Pink. Frilly. Nothing about it makes me feel excited.

Iris steps in, picks up her dress, and leaves to get changed. I lock the door and change out of the gray trousers and blue shirt that I was wearing, into the disgusting dress. I slide the pearly hair clips into my hair, wishing that I don't have to wear any of it.

The shoes are even worse. A bit like the ones I wore home from the Capitol after the Hunger Games, except pink and with an even bigger heel. How am I supposed to walk in them?

"Don't like it?"

I'm taken by surprise at Iris's voice.

"No. I look like a little girl."

"You wore that kind of thing when you were younger?" there's a hint of doubt.

"Yeah, but only when I was like, three."

"Oh. My parents couldn't afford dresses for me. Mother usually made my clothes by hand in her spare time."

"Oh."

After a few moments of silence, she speaks again.

"Well, don't forget to smile."

She takes my hand and we walk through the train carriage to the doors, where the other members of the prep teams are waiting. I can tell Iris is just getting ready to kill Pablo, her mentor, for lack of everything in the arena.

To be honest, I would too.

It was so long ago that i wrote this (5th of September) i just haven't had any motivation to do anything... ALSO I HAD 71 NOTIFICATIONS WHEN I LOGGED ON YESTERDAY!!! (can anyone top that?)

-Katherine (and Rose who wrote about 4 lines of chapter)