Better Games

15. Brighter Blues and Deeper Seas

I rummage through the study looking for any possible empty book, blank pages, empty journals, anything. I look until finally I remember. I walk purposefully to the bedroom and open my nightstand drawer. There I find Peeta's locket, my pearl, my mother and father's plant book. I retrieve it from out of the drawer and flip to the back of the book. Countless pages are unfilled. They are made from the same material as the book we have now.

'Blank' I think. 'Perfect'

It was an idea I had a week after we had received the letter from Annie. It kept me up at night, bugged me, I had to do something so that I, so that no one would ever forget them. So that no one would have a reason to forget them. So that maybe one day, if I ever have...children, I certainly know Peeta would want his to know, though that is a far far off subject that comes to me only when I think of Prim. Or when in the village visiting the now legal Hob once in a while, I see children who come up to Peeta and how he effortlessly puts smiles on their faces, even if just for a moment. I know that look, I know even though he wouldn't dare tell me now, but I know.

He agreed to the idea once it had finally occurred to me. Agreed that he would draw their pictures and I would write everything about them it would be a crime to forget. We send a letter to Annie and Johanna as soon as we agree. We sent that letter two weeks and have many pages filled on the people we loved, people we lost. We started with the most faded memories of those we lost, ones so distant they should be written down at once. We start with the two teenagers in the woods Gale and I didn't protect. The boy who was stunned and the girl who became an Avox. We go from there and so on. Haymitch will soon contribute all the tributes he mentored and watched die, seeing it would be a crime to forget any of them as well. Peeta and I have done mine and Gale's father's, Rue, Foxface, Cato, Clove, Marvel, Thresh and the tributes we remember from our first games. After them we write about the two runaways from District 10 I found escaping to Thirteen, the fallen tributes from the Quarter Quell, and today we are finishing Finnick. We ran out of pages which is why I've come to find more to mold into the book. I bring them to Peeta's studio and sew them into the binding.

"I can't get Finnick's eyes right," Peeta says exasperated as I mold the pages, "I remember them I just can't, the color..."

I look up and see the colors he's trying to use, comparing them to the picture of Finnick and Annie's baby Finn.

"Finnick's eyes are like an ocean, like the color a wave makes when it's forming: from the deep blue of the deep sea into the open lighter rift it makes, with white spikes of foam increasing as it gets bigger. Annie's are the sea green a wave makes when it meets its end when it crashs, merging into the green of the shore and receding tide. Finn's eyes are a mix, Peeta. They're his own."

I find Peeta looking at me with such wonder, confusion, and a hint of something else I can't put my foot on...Awe I think.

"That was amazing, how did you know, how did you remember all that?" He asks taking his gaze away from me and searching for deep sea and light blue colors. He steals a glance once or twice.

I think to myself and search for an answer. I didn't know I knew so much about his eyes, I think the only reason I knew was because,

"Yours," I state out of the blue, a few moments after he asked me the question.
"My what?" He looks confused again.
"I guess the only real reason I know so much about his eyes is because I compared his blue with yours. Your eyes were the ones I really payed attention to. I thought all blues were the same. I saw yours and when I saw Finnicks for the first time they weren't as kind, or as light, or as strong or safe as yours. They were the sea, they were Finnick's. Vibrant and striking but not in the ways yours were- are.You on the other hand," I turn around so he knows I'm not looking, "Yours are the sky on a spring day. The exact moment where morning meets afternoon, fading and almost easily missed if you're not looking closely. It's light and vibrant and sometimes the night sky shines through little cracks in your sky blue. When the light hits it its so blue it's yellow. When you draw the blue is almost hidden by long blonde lashes. And sometimes in the best moments they'll glow. They'll glow so warm, so soft, and yet..." I stop myself, wondering if I'm going too far. I didn't know I knew all this about colors and eyes let alone his. But I guess if I were to know all this it would be especially about his, about him. I feel a strong warm hand lay on my shoulder to gently turn me around. I find myself face to face with the eyes I were describing. I search them. I know what glow this blue means,

Love.

Instead of what I think he's going to say, something about how perceptive I am which I will forcefully disagree, he does something that surprises me. Peeta suddenly lays his forehead against mine and stares deeper into my eyes. I feel I'm about to get lost in his when they slowly flutter closed, his long blonde eyelash strands not tangling even once.

"Anyone would think they were a storm at first. Anyone who didn't know you before would think it was a storm grey, full of darks and shades. But unlike a storm you grey isn't cloudy, not one bit. It is the sharpest most clean and precise grey I have ever seen. When they catch the light it's a better silver than any jewelry I have ever seen, even the ones Cinna has made you where. Now they look like clouds compared to your eyes," he continues, his eyes still shut but mine are wide open, staring intently at face, his eyebrows scrunched in concentration,
"When you hunt they focus, they strike like lighting. When you sing they crack through with the slightest blues your mother had. And in your best, most intimate loving moments they sparkle with the lightest glitter, a grey canvas with white streaking in an out."

He opens his eyes and we are looking at each other the way only we do with each other. "And when we kiss, both our eyes closed and consumed in darkness," he touches our noses together, "they are the brightest I have ever seen."