I Learn Why

Nightmares

edit: now that i think about it the beginning sounds really sexual... :| but i assure you, it isnt.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night to grunts. They were distinctly my father's - I could tell because I was used to it. The day before he had dug up the primroses on the side of our house and replaced them with new ones, like evey year around this time. Back then, I didn't know the reason.

His heavy footsteps sounded barefoot - I couldn't tell. The sounds clambered down the hall, but I was not fully awake yet. I only opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling.

I shared my room with my little brother, who was so tired from that day's adventure he did not wake. I looked over at him in the shadows, examining his baby features. He had fat cheeks and a little cherry of a nose, and the profile view of his face reminded me of Father's. I saw it on the TV all the time before Mother shut it off. His tiny chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and that somehow encouraged me to slip out of the covers and tip-toe to the closed door, where a candle was being lit.

"Peeta, please." It was my mother, and her light footsteps against our wood floors scurried down the hall towards the kitchen. I froze, fear rising in my heart and beating along side it. "Peeta, you'll wake them acting like this." Her soothing voice was calm and distant, like she was trying to distract my father from something. I crept forward another step, now that she had passed, and laid a hand on the door knob. I wanted to know what was happening.

"I had the dream again," I heard my father mutter, angry and muffled from traveling down the hallway and through the door. My father was not the angry type. Strong, definitly, but soft and gentle.

Flickering light shone across my feet. I turned the handle to the left and opened it slowly. Peeking through the crack, I remember watching as Mother rubbed Father's arched back with an affection I was familiar with, but not towrads him. It was strange, almost, as he opened his arms out to her and she crawled into them, how they loved each other, and everyone knew, but they rarely showed it in front of people. They fit together like the puzzle I had completed that day - compatible and creating a picture.

I opened the door wider, not bothering to keep quiet. I stepped out into the hall, and Father looked at me.

"Ivy," he said, definate and strong and mine. Mother looked up from her place on his shoulder and knelt down, her night clothes loose and welcoming. She opened her arms, just like Father had, and I rushed into them, closing my eyes. I felt so secure there. Father knelt down and wrapped his arms around us both.

"Bad dream, sweetheart?" I heard him whisper into my ear, and I pulled away to look at both of them, to compare. I had my mother's hair, dark and long, and my father's eyes, blue and kind. I always hand two braids except for at night, when against my pillow it itched too badly with the braids. That was how my mother slept, too. There was always a fire in her eyes with everything - when she was angry, it was like a flickering fire. Laughing, a playful candle. Sleeping, a dull light. Then, her eyes shone with a new type of fire - a loving one. A glow.

"I heard you wake up," I explained quietly, my voice girly and small. "I wanted to see what happened."

My father... he was a kind man, I knew. But sometimes he had this hardness about him, like when he baked our bread he would glance at Mother in a weird way, as if remembering. If the dough came out burnt, they would look at each other for a second, holding the stare until my brother stood up and clambered over between them, ruining the moment. When he made funny faces at Gray he would relax, though, and when he held me in bed because I couldn't go to sleep his muscles were no longer stiff and strong. They were secure, but not hard.

"You should go back to bed now," my mother told me. "Is Gray sleeping?"

"Yes."

"Alright then, little duck."

That was always another nickname. I still don't know why. Sometimes Mother murmured it into my ear, other times when she was calling me. When my father was there to see it he softened with a type of sorrow and a little bit of wonder.

"Goodnight," my father said, and kissed the top of my head before standing, towering over us.

"Ni-night," my mother said, and just like Father, she kissed my cheek, pulling away to rub the spont with her thumb.

I didn't say anything. I just walked back to my room to a sleeping Gray. Once in there I closed the door and leaned against it, no longer tired. The dark of the room did not scare me, like it did to some of the other children in my class. It was almost conforting, like one of my father's hugs, or one of my mother's songs.

"I told you they would get up," I heard Mother tell my father, and he grunted again.

"This one was different. They were in it too."

"What?"

"Ivory. They took Ivory, then Gray, and then they... they took you away from me."

"I'm here." I closed my eyes and imagined my mother stand on her tip toes to kiss him. "Real or not real?"

"Real, Katniss." And I could almost hear a smile. "Very real."

They floor creaked as they walked back to their room, but I did not stiffen as they passed. The candle was blown out, making my room even darker than before.

Crawling into bed next to Gray, my heart beat in a steady rhythm, like his. Slow and content. Looking over his face, I wondered what he was dreaming about. Then I sank into my pillow and thought about my father's words. Real, Katniss. They were soft and loving. Warm. Very real.

From now on, the multimedia thingy is the song i listened to as I wrote.