If I Should Die Tonight :: Elegant ::

The wind pulled against him, straining him as he struggled to keep his feet planted. The kite, like a red postage stamp, danced in the sky as if it was free, not at all chained down by the string that attached it to his hands. A quiet laugh at the bubbling joy in his chest. Grey hills rolled away from him, and he and the kite were the only sources of colour in an absolute world. The heavy sky frowned upon them, but they step-stepped out a tango that was in perfect sync, no matter what the rest of the planet might say.

The wind changed, pulling him around. As he turned, he noticed out of the corner of his eye another little pile of colour, on the crest of the next hill, just before the land merged into the sky. The figure, crumbled in a heap of striped-knit on the silver grass, looked vaguely human, and so he released his hands from the kite. In that instant, as his hands recoiled, the electric-heater glow of happy went out, as if someone had submerged him in a bucket of cold water on a lukewarm day. But he fought through it, ran to the child-like pile of wool on the ground. By the time he reached it, his legs were hot and his lungs, charred, but he was there. “You-“ he panted, chest heaving. “What’s wrong? What can I do?”

As the child turned over, he watched a shaky smile rice-paper-sketch onto her face. Dark hair clamoured against her sticky pale skin, eyes sluggishly searching. He dropped to his knees beside her, and held her there. The thought that her face was oddly familiar tickled the back of his mind as she started to talk, voice pallid.

“Nothing, Ev.”

“No, no, there must be something. I can help you, I can!”
His voice desperate, searching for something, anything. The fact that her dark eyes and delicate features belonged to a much younger version of this year’s district ten tribute switched in his mind, but he didn’t care for that fact that she knew his name. The words had no voice, yet somehow stuck to his mind like glue.

“Not this time. You can’t help us all.”

If there was something that Everest had always been, it was a fighter. He was not ready to give up on this child who had so many more miles to go, so much more ground to cover.

“No. No!” he said, agitated, fanning her clammy face with his hands. It did nothing. Her eyes started to drift downwards like dirty snowflakes, breaths becoming laboured. And then, with her last one, all the effort in the world- “Thank you, Everest.”

He awoke with her last breath lukewarm on his lips, the memory of her face dying as he awoke to a technicoloured world where the grass and the sky seemed much brighter than they were, and human emotions so much duller. A semicolon in his stomach squirmed, regret like lead sweat on his brow.

Thank you for what? For the nothing that I did? For the everything that I wanted to do, could have done, had I tried that last push harder?