Death is Patient

Mirror Image, Mirror Needs

I can't help but think that what Cecelia is saying is wishful thinking. Some kind of dream of making the games worth something. The bond of twins, I think and scoff. What is a bond like ours worth if it's meant to be severed?

Still, I hold Fedya's hand when we step off the train. The crowd is huge. Some kind of light is flashing and I can see people with cameras and something on their backs making them look like huge bugs. I look away from the cameras only to face another one. Wherever I look, there's a face, a pair of eyes meeting mine. The crowd is so colourful it hurts my eyes. As Fedya waves carefully, I do too. There's a churning in my stomach that only gets worse when I lock gazes with a crying woman. She looks moved, wiping at her tears with a pastel purple handkerchief. I realize that she's grieving us already, like she knows her favorite character in a book is about to die. I swallow down on the bile in my throat and pull my hand out of Fedya's. I regret it as soon as he looks to me, confused, but I can't stomach it. I'd hold his hand anywhere else, but not here.

Cecelia nudges my shoulder and I know she wants me to grab his hand again, but I can't. Instead I let us be moved forward with the crowd, peacekeepers and a few flimsy ribbons the only thing keeping us from being trampled by our colourful fans.

*

The grooming process makes me feel not too unlike a sheep being sheared. The stylists working on me chat away, and I'm moved around like a doll so they can remove every last piece of hair on my body, including a moustache I wasn't even aware I had. They smear an odd-smelling liquid onto my skin and after a moment they just wipe the hair away. One of them cuts my hair, to make it more shapely, according to them. I can't tell much of a difference in the floor-length mirror by the table and chair I'm moved between. It's still short by the neck and ears, curtain-like swoops on top. Still red. At least I still look like me. They've done something to make my freckles more prominent and somehow dyed my lashes a darker brown, compared to the almost-white they'd been before.

I've zoned out again, watching myself in the mirror. I practise a winning smile. I don't know what that is, but anything works. Something charming that will win people over. There's a gap in my front teeth that Fedya doesn't have. Is that charming, or?

I jerk at the sound of the door opening. I reach out and grab the paper laid out on the table and pull it up to shield myself. Suddenly I'm acutely aware of how naked they've left me, and all I can do is stare at the woman entering.

She looks like a cat. A tiger. I've seen people here that have had some kind of surgery to look better (or what they deem to be better, at least), but nothing quite this drastic. Her face has been altered to truly look like that of a cat. Her upper lip is big and has big whiskers protruding from it, and she has what I can only assume are tattoos that make her stripy. Even her eyes are somehow cosmetically altered, her pupils shaped like slits. For a moment I expect her to hiss or meow at me, but she speaks like everyone else in the capitol.

"Hello, dear", she says, "My name is Tigris. You're Freya, no?"

No one here ever asks my name, just says it and asks me if that's right. Of course it is. I highly doubt they'd mix me up with someone else, not even Fedya. I nod quietly. Tigris. Fitting name. She comes closer and places a pair of long, clawed fingers under my chin. Moves my head up, then side to side. Calculating. I lick my lips nervously.

"Don't do that. You'll dry your lips out", she notes immediately and I press my lips together like I'm trying to keep my tongue in my mouth. "You're cute. Not that beautiful, but cute. We can work with that", she notes. It stings, for just a second, that she doesn't think I'm beautiful. Then I realize her definition of beauty probably is very different from mine. I don't look very.. Feline.