Embracing (A Hunger Games fanfiction)

Wood Carvings

After making a breakfast of an old dish called muesli for everyone, we all sit down at the table with a cup of berry juice. Katniss shows Johanna how to strap Prudence into her high chair before we all begin to talk and eat.

“So,” I begin. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh same old same old,” Johanna rolls her eyes. “Hooked up three times, but they all ran away and then the other day I got this new job as a wood carver. Apparently I’m an artist.”

“What do you carve?” Katniss asks with interest.

“What do you think dumbo,” Johanna rolls her eyes. “TREES.”

Katniss blushes and looks down at her food. I pat her leg under the table.

“You’ll have to make us something,” I tell her.

“I, Mr Mellark, already have,” Johanna grins. “I’ll show you after we’re finished.”

We talk until we’ve all eaten, Prue included, and the plates have been cleaned and washed-up. Then Johanna disappears in the hall, throwing out threats in case we decide to follow her.

I wash the remaining mush from Prue’s mouth and begin to bounce her up and down on my hip. I discovered a few days a go that she absolutely loves the movement and made a habit of doing it throughout the day. Anything to get the hight-pitched giggles going.

I’m about to ask Johanna why she’s taking so long when Katniss and I hear scratching on the kitchen window. I turn around to see a very scruffy Buttercup scratching and growling.

“Oh joy,” Katniss rolls her eyes, but I still see her eyes light up. Buttercup, one of the only things left of her sister. He doesn’t make bad company really. Besides, he’s getting old now so he hardly has the energy to hiss.

“Here you go!” Johanna bounds back into the room, hands behind her back.

She makes us all close our eyes (she even gets Prue to as well) and hold out a hand. I wait a few seconds before I feel something rough fall into my palm. When she tells us to open our eyes, I open mine too see a wooden statue in my hand. I grip Prue tighter to my hip so I can get a closer look. It takes a few moments, but then I get it.

Johanna grins when she hears me gasp.

On a small block of wood, Johanna has carved a big tree, leaves and all, with a girl standing underneath- wind blowing her dress and her hair flowing. On the bottom of the tree, there’s a sentence roughly sketched:

“Are you, are you coming to the tree?”

I smile widely at Johanna who has a smug look on her face.

“I thought you guys would like them,” she grins. “But I didn’t think you’d be this emotional.”

I look over to Katniss to see she’s crying. In her hand, she holds a pin with a carved rose. My guess is it’s a Primrose.

Katniss rushes to give Johanna a hug who accepts it graciously.

“And what about you,” Johanna wiggles her fingers at the baby on my hip.

I look at Prue’s clenched fist to see she’s holding a necklace with a wooden Mockingjay. It’s Katniss’s pin, but as a necklace.

“Will it be safe for her?” Katniss asks cautiously.

“Should be. See how it’s shining? I put this thing over it o if she chews it, she won’t choke and die. It’ll make a good chew toy.”

“What do you think Prudence?” I bounce her. She giggles and waves the necklace above her head. “Here, I’ll put it on.”

After lunch, we head over to Haymitch’s to help set-up Effie’s funeral. Haymitch relocated to a new house, saying he hated our’s because Prue woke him up to early after hangovers.

He gives Johanna a small squeeze and accepts his own gift from her- a figurine like mine, but of a girl with a big curly wig. He doesn’t say anything, but I see him clutch it closer to his chest.

The funeral will be small, with not many people. Most of Effie’s friends died in the rebellion and she only met a few other people through Haymitch who hardly has any.

Effie’s to be buried in the yard underneath a lemon tree Haymitch has been growing for the past two years. Plutarch is to conduct the ceremony and after the coffins lowered into the hole, each person shovels some dirt from the dug up hole on top, saying our goodbye as we do. In District Twelve, we also do this thing that after you put your shovel of dirt in; you throw something that reminds you of her on top. I have a painting prepared and Katniss has a lock of one of Effie’s wigs she was given that was meant to bring luck to her labour with Prue.

I don’t know what Haymitch has prepared.