Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE NEXT DAY, TREECH AND ARAUCARIA DID WHAT THEY COULD TO PREPARE FOR THEIR DEPARTURE. They sat Koa down to explain that they were leaving. Koa, only two, didn't understand nor care what they had to say, he only wanted to play outside.
The two sat on the porch as Koa ran around the small yard, making unintelligible comments to himself as he played pretend. He was untouched by the impending exit from his home, both it and the people from it mere foggy thoughts to him.
"I think he'll like it in Four," Treech said, "from what you've told me."
Cari nodded, "The journey, however..." It would take them a few days to get to Four. "It'll be a lot of carrying." She glanced at Treech, gauging his reaction.
"I'm going, Cari. Stop trying to change that," He bumped her shoulder. "You're stuck with me now."
She huffed sarcastically, "Poor me." She watched as Koa ran about, happy as ever. "Does he know? About your mother, I mean."
Treech let the comment hang in the air for a moment. "He knows that she's not here, and that I miss her. I...I don't think he realizes what it means for him." There was the unspoken truth lingering between them. As the boy grew up, he would remember less and less of his mother until she was wiped from his memory— a figure that his brother missed and expected him to do the same.
"All you can do is remind him how much she loved him and cared about him."
He nodded stiffly, his hand reaching up to play with her hair. There was an unspoken anger towards his mother for abandoning Koa, but guilt overpowered his will to say it. "What about your dad?"
Cari winced, "What do you mean?"
"He was just okay with you leaving the Capitol?"
She shrugged. "I think...I think after my mother died all he wanted was to honor what she wanted: to live in the Capitol. He loves me, but I think he loves honoring my mother more." Something in him died the day his wife passed. Araucaria was his daughter, but she came second to fortune.
The Hunger Games were a bitch. Twenty-Two children had died, Treech lost his mother, and Cari lost her father, all because of a war that happened when they were children.
Cari could allow herself to be mad at her father, unlike Treech. He was supposed to protect her, yet he sent her away, because that was what he thought was best. No matter how much a parent loved and cared for their child, they would always leave claw marks.
≘
After Koa had gone to bed, Treech led Cari to the woods behind the house, to a large tree. Guiding her hands to different knots, he slowly followed her up the tree, until they reached the highest and sturdiest branch.
Cari clutched the trunk of the tree tightly, fear of the empty air below her. "You need to relax, Four." Treech steadied himself only by a single branch above them.
