❝ it is sometimes an
appropriate response to
reality to go insane ❞
──⭒─⭑─⭒──
In which an innocent girl finds herself
trapped in an arena with monsters and
her only hope is to claw her way out.
──...
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ℭato and I don't have that long to bask in the silence and fear that President Snow caused when he left. A mere few minutes later, the doors fly open once more as our prep teams appear.
We're both pulled away from each other to separate rooms, as the prep team starts to examine me.
"Mitzi, you let your eyebrows grow in." Lish chastises, shaking her head. "I told you to pluck them!"
I'd forgotten that.
Lish still had the same violet curls and lilac skin that she'd had before, whilst Mist and Saphi had both changed parts of their appearance. Saphi had finally got rid of his horrid orange eyebrows that were now bright green, but at least they seemed to compliment his blue hair. Mist's skin was yellow, but not a natural yellow, an almost sickly yellow, and his hair had been dyed white. He looked like snow that the cows had walked through.
"You can fix those in no time." Saphi replied, before grabbing onto my hand and shaking his head. "But what am I going to do with these nails?"
There's mud under my nails, and I'm sure they're chipped from the cow shed. The calluses on my hand have grown back from working on the farm once more, and I don't want to hear what they have to say when they see that.
"I am happy to see you've been taking care of your hair." Mist speaks softly, as the trio all examine the dark curls that I've been trying my best to take care of. Even on my darkest days, I forced myself to deal with my hair as best I could. It was a routine that I could keep up.
With that, the trio all pressed kisses to my cheek, in the traditional Capitol greeting and set me on a chair in the room I share with Cato and began to fill me in on all the gossip in the Capitol. It's nice, I think, to hear them speaking so casually, especially after the incident with President Snow.
They wax my eyebrows (which was just as painful as last time), paint and then give me fake nails when that doesn't seem to work, and massage some conditioning goo into my hair so that they can tame my slightly frizzy curls. All the while, they tell me what a hit the Games were, how boring it's all been since then, how no one can wait until Cato and I come back at the end of the Victory Tour. After that, the Capitol will begin gearing up for the Quarter Quell.
"Isn't it thrilling?"
"Don't you feel so lucky?"
"In your very first year of being a victor, you get to be a mentor in a Quarter Quell!"
Their words overlap in a blur of excitement.
"Oh, yes," I say neutrally. It's the best I can do. In a normal year, being a mentor to the tributes is the stuff of nightmares. I can't walk by the school now without wondering what kid I'll have to coach and if I know them, or helped to raise them. But to make things even worse, this is the year of the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games, and that means it's also a Quarter Quell.
