𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 [𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬]

0 | 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰

Known ~ NEO 'EN' KHATRI

"Damaged goods — if I was ever good."

        — MY MOTHER IS DIFFERENT from the women that live on our side of the mineral strips. She came from wealth, and is subsequently taller than almost everyone else as she'd been raised on more than just grain and stout. She is prettier, too, because she'd had time to come into her body and face, more-so than anyone else; skin of a healthy golden brown, eyes lined with thick, dark lashes, cheeks flushed in the sun's heat and lips painted a glossy cerise.

        This day is the one I remember the most from my early childhood. She is wearing a white prairie dress dotted with pale blue flowers, the high-collar ruffled, sleeves puffed with sheer white fluff, a string of pearls draped over her chest and two massive glittering diamonds in her ears. Her hair is shiny, rich, and unusually dark because she hadn't been sent to work under the sun throughout her childhood. I can feel her bone corset from where I'd wrapped my legs around her as she held me to her side.

        Dark hair is somewhat of a bad omen in the more rural settlements of District 1 — dark hair meant you hadn't worked the same long days on the creeks picking at the shores for geodes, that you hadn't been bleached and burned raw out on the ravine rock-face while your skin sizzled and your hands puckered with callouses. My mother's dark hair spat in the face of every hard worker in Middle Canyon.

        I remember it well, coming home for the first time. Father is the cat who got the cream for all of ten minutes, a smiling beauty on his arm, adorned in her own district's produce in a startling display of Capitol-favoured fortune, towering heads over the rest of the townsfolk with her heels and height. She is so tall, in fact, that when I lay my head on her shoulder, I can see every scalp pinking in the sun and the concave top of my father's cream ribbon-wrapped fedora. The people halt their days, women looking up from where they lazed in wicker chairs, men watching warily from porch steps and doorways with a stout or rifle in hand, hats tilted low, all shimmering in the sweat of the summer evening. There are no Peacekeepers out here, I think. It is an unnerving thought. Middle Canyon is almost like living in the Wilds.