paper airplanes / random writing things

the rain is falling it's after dark

Scarlett hadn't intended to end up at the old vintage shop that day. She had been wandering the streets for hours searching for anyone who looked like they might be especially sympathetic toward a starving little girl and the bite of the cold was beginning to get to her, sinking beneath her skin and causing her teeth to clatter together. Finally she caved, diving into the nearest store and rubbing her hands up and down her arms to keep warm. The warm air in the cramped space worked to thaw her, but gradually. She flexed her fingers, knuckles stiff with the cold, and glanced around. There was no one else in the store, which was crowded with a variety of strange, worn objects. She noticed a shelf near the back crowded with a variety of broken toys, and near it several racks of out of style clothing. The entire shop seemed to be an oasis for outdated curiosities.

She wandered around, trying to look like she was shopping just in case someone was watching her, lifting a knitted scarf here or a scuffed up sneaker there. Her fingers grazed over the cracked wooden carvings, fingers probing into breaking points curiously before moving onto the foggy glass figurines. A set of mismatched bells caught her attention and she peered around cautiously before lifting one up and listening to the clear sound it made, the corners of her lips tilting upward. Her eyes then landed on a small rack not too far away with jewelry that looked like it was taken straight from an ancestor’s old chest. She wandered over, grinning at an oversized gem placed on a ring. Everything seemed over the top and gaudy, very District One, until she spotted a piece of jewelry that was surprisingly plain. She fingered the necklace curiously, fingers running over the smooth surface of two rectangular pieces of metal.

“Interestin’ piece, that is.”

The voice made her jump, spinning around in panic as if she had been caught in the middle of committing some sort of crime, eyes wide. The man before her was old, with only a wisp of silvery hair on his head and large glasses that he kept on having to push up on his slightly misshapen nose. He was shorter than she was, stooped over, but somehow she felt very small in comparison. “Oh!” she exclaimed, running her fingers through her hair briefly. “I am so sorry. The door was open, and I just thought I’d come take a look around. I’ll just... I’ll leave now.”

She started to do just that, but the man stopped her, placing an icy hand on her arm. “Wait.” Scarlett paused, lingering uncertainty. The man gestured to the necklace she had been looking at with a small smile. “Interestin’, that you should be lookin’ at that piece. I’ve had it for years, I have. Not many people notice it.”

He was silently asking for an explanation, but Scarlett (as usual) didn’t have one. So she simply shrugged, reaching out again to feel the cold chain. “Nothin’ special about it, really,” she said indifferently. “Why isn’t it fancy? Isn’t that what jewelry’s supposed to be?”

The man’s eyebrow arched. “Not that necklace, little missy,” he informed her matter-of-factly. “Those there are dog tags.”

Scarlett’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Dog tags? I’m sorry, I don’t really know what those are.”

The man nodded as if suddenly realizing something, offering her a kind of distant smile. “‘course you don’t. You wouldn’t. The Capitol wouldn’t want you gettin’ any ideas, now would they?” He paused, as if expecting a reaction, but continued easily when she didn’t offer him one. “Dog tags were the necklaces that soldiers used to wear. They’d have all kinds of information on them, just in case the soldier wasn’t able to tell them himself.”

“Because he was dead?”

“Most of the time. But sometimes, if he was lucky, it would only be if he was captured or unconscious.”

Scarlett frowned, turning over the tag before glancing at the old man. “It’s blank.”

The man shrugged. “Dunno why that is. Must’ve never been used. You’re welcome to take it, if you’d like. I’m sick of lookin’ at the thing, so I’ll sell it to you cheap.”

She pulled the necklace off the rack and cradled it in her palm for a moment, glancing at the glinting metal. It would be completely selfish of her to dip into her family’s ever-dwindling funds just to purchase a bit of jewelry, but the man had succeeded in attaching her to it. The perfect salesman. “I don’t have a lot of money,” she muttered, more to herself than the man, before sighing heavily. “How much?”

The man named his price, which might have been seen as a steal from anyone else’s view, but in Scarlett’s eyes it was one little necklace eating up the majority of her earnings from that day. Scarlett gritted her teeth in frustration, thinking of the meager amount of food she could buy for dinner instead, before yanking the proper amount of money from her pocket and shoving it in the man’s direction. He snatched it away and then turned his back to her, hobbling back toward the counter without sparing her another glance. Scarlett pressed her lips together tightly before glancing down at the dog tags again. Blank, just like her. They had potential, of course, but no clear future. Nothing to define them, to make them unique. Half of her mouth managed to quirk upward as she struggled with the clasp, the metal digging into her fingertips until she finally properly fastened it and pulled her long locks through. She caught her reflection in an ancient mirror tilted against the wall nearby, and almost smiled at the sight of something - even if it was just a pair of dog tags - glinting at her throat. Just before she left the store, though, she tucked it beneath her shirt collar.

She was an unnamed soldier, and she intended to keep it that way.

the streets are swimming with the sharks