"elowen, if you say those three words again i swear i will put an axe through your skull."
"go to sleep, johanna."
╰┈➤ In which Elowen North of District Seven, dealing with fresh trauma from her Hunger Games, falls in love with Seven's other feisty...
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I find Johanna in her room later in the evening, fiddling with a little mahogany box of something.
"What's that?" I inquire.
"Music chips," Johanna replies. She pats the bed beside her, signalling for me to sit down. "They're kind of strange. Only the Capitol uses them."
I pick one of the tiny green electronic chips from the box and place it in my palm. "I don't understand."
"Watch." Johanna takes the music chip from my hand and places it on a flat machine. It begins to play a soft song. An instrument I recognize as guitar starts to play, and soon after it is joined by a vocalizing female voice.
I smile at the sound of the guitar. My father has always had an appreciation for the instrument, and I remember watching him for hours on end at his woodworking station as he tried, and ultimately failed, to craft his own guitar. When I won the Games, he and I went to the little musical instrument store in Seven and purchased an expensive rosewood guitar.
I stand up and extend my hand to the other victor. She hesitates, but eventually rolls her eyes and takes my hand.
"This really doesn't feel like the kind of music you dance to, El," she points out.
"It really doesn't," I agree.
But we do, anyways. We do, because we're young and defiant and potentially in love and mostly in the dark, where nothing really matters.
It's not really dancing, though, since neither of us dance. It's more hand holding and leaning into each other and maybe moving the slightest bit.
Johanna and I both stop and just cling to each other as the young female voice coming from the music chip holds the last note in the song, then her voice fades away.
The victor pulls away for a second to put the music chip back into the box.
"I like you a lot, Johanna Mason."
"I like you a lot, too, Elowen North."
-
I sneak into Johanna's room half past midnight, disturbed by the fact that my little sister is currently sleeping in an arena full of brutal kids like Ardor and Alexis.
She seems to hear someone in the room, and, not knowing who it is, throws a punch at my face. Luckily, she's not as quick as she is when she's fully awake, and I catch her fist before it makes contact with my skin.
"Elowen?" Johanna says sleepily. "You have good reflexes."
I climb onto her bed next to her. "I'm a victor."
Johanna switches a lamp on and turns around so I can see her. "What's bothering you?"
I cross my arms. "How do you know I'm bothered?"
"You don't just come in here in the middle of the night for no reason." Johanna sits up straighter, with a pillow supporting her back.
