✓ | Iron ↠ The Hunger Games

eleven ━ the evening star

CHAPTER ELEVEN;
the evening star

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"So, I take it this morning went well?" Irma asks, cautiously peering at the mentee over her cup of tea as she takes a delicate sip.

Vesper doesn't answer — simply blinks at her, stony-faced. She hopes it'll speak with enough volume that Irma will receive the message, accept it and move swiftly on. But as always, the kind-eyed young woman won't take a simple "No" for an answer, and then implores her as to why it didn't go well.

     Why?

     With Dale recuperating in hospital, his sudden ripping from the District Six team had gone down like a rug being yanked out from underneath their feet, leaving even the composed Hermia wobbly and grappling for answers as to where to turn next. In the end, after much bickering at the breakfast table, the remaining team had come to a decision for the finale of this week that Vesper had been dreading the most — the interviews. They agreed to split up the mentoring sessions, Hermia taking the role of teaching interview etiquette, and Irma discussing what angle to take in terms of sponsors. Much to Vesper's dismay, she had pulled the short straw and been paired up with Hermia for the first half of the morning.

     It had been doomed from the start. "Oh for goodness's sake Vesper," Hermia had sneered, rolling her eyes at Vesper the minute she sat down. "will you close your legs when you are sitting? I don't care what you may think, but no frock or even any other outfit for that matter will look appealing when you're slumped in your chair like a man!" And so the first few minutes of their session are filled with passive-aggressive tutorials on how to cross her legs like a lady. She personally couldn't understand the appeal of sitting cross-legged — both of her legs were already falling asleep as a sacrifice for her femininity, and what was the point of even trying to sit up straight when the whimsical design of these Capitol armchairs were made for a spine shaped like a crescent moon?

Then followed learning to smile, wave, greet Caesar — all things Vesper thought she could do sufficiently, but apparently not. The whole objective appears to be: Appear natural, but not so natural you look real. From what she has gathered, the Capitol simply wish for a tribute to transcend reality. They want extraterrestrial, ethereal, ever beautiful.

What utter bullshit, she'd thought to herself, right as Hermia introduced a stack of books to balance on her head — "For posture when walking," she had justified. This had caused Vesper to scoff, causing a petty argument between the two to escalate like domino-upon-domino...

But how to sum it all up to an expectant Irma sitting opposite her?

"I guess..." Vesper squirms in her chair, her brain already hardwired to self-criticise over not crossing her legs. "I just don't understand this. Any of it. Fighting, I can get — it's simple. You pick up a weapon, you use it. But I don't know how to... put on a show." The silence that seeps from Irma suggests she is still waiting to hear more; it's as if she has some kind of gauge inside her, which tells her You aren't done yet. Tell me more, and I will listen.

"I can't just do this make-believe stuff like you can. If it's not somehow real, I can't feel it. But I also don't want to tell anyone my private secrets, that's for me to know and me to die with... it just pisses me off!"