𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games Sequel

nine

☆ CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR! ☆
034. mind boggling.

||THUNDERCLOUDS ||
❝here in the ashes
your soul cries
out, but don't be
afraid of these
thunderclouds.❞

➳➳

HER HEAD HURT like it was being pounded with a hammer.

She felt it every time the Peacekeeper returned. Each moment that she watched him take off his helmet labelled TR730 was filled with a cloud of both uncertainty and anger-driven pondering. It was that helmet that made her label him TR when she wrote about him on paper- something that he noticed almost as soon as she gave him the most recent passage she had taken more than 30 minutes to write in a legible font.

Not that it meant much to him when he did, because it was the exact same words he had read a day before in a cursive a little let sure of itself.

Still, when she watched his eyes scan every curl or small pressure change in the words she felt the heat of the unknown warm her temples and the tips of her ears. Each time he sucked in a breath through his chapped lips discoloured by his own teeth, she rubbed her finger along the outline of her bottom lip to remember what it felt like to be wrapped in a comfort thick enough to tickle her nose, and she pulled at the ends of her hair until the weaker strands fell onto the wooden floor.

She just wanted to know what the words meant, even if the bloodied walls of her voice hadn't picked up the pieces enough to say it yet.

"TR?" The man asked finally after minutes of silence. It wasn't the kind of silence she had been forced into when the soldier left her- this one had been hollowed out to let the tension hang where her comfort use to be.

"TR730." Lorna tried her best to mutter. He heard it when she pointed to the white helmet placed on the table without much care, and then glanced down at the badge engraved into his sleeve.

"You're very observant."

There was nothing left for her to refine. She couldn't learn another language, or spend her hours practising her writing for much longer without breaking the small amount of equipment they left her with, but her sight was free. She could glance around the room without an extra assault on her mind; her eyes could scan the walls a thousand times without her breaking a sweat from her seat. She had nothing better to do then really notice the little details in a space filled with so many obviously large things- she could feel proud that she could see the small mole under his left eyes that almost looked like a shadow.

"What-" she caught herself as she tried to push more air into her words, only for them to seem flatter than ever. "-does it mean."

"They're randomized for each Peacekeeper."

"No."

She shook her delicate hair as she pointed to the words he had read between each conversation they had. He seemed to understand what she wanted faster than Lorna had understood exactly why her feet were so cold when they were left against a floor that felt strangely warm- the corners of his mouth turned down almost immediately like her own had when she figured it out.