That 'durn disease {the apothecaries tale}

Garsh Durnit. Griselda Olivenel, self proclaimed apothecary's wooden clogs tapped against the quite dirty dirt floor that lay in her house. She wore the same hat she had worn every day since the war, the tin collander hat! Yes, the one that protected her during those dark days of the war. Her intellect had somewhat paid off, she supposed, by wearing the hat. She had fell a'many'a'times, and the hat kept her head functioning as properly as a seventy four year olds head could function. Those dark days sure had screwed with her head. Shaking her head, she slammed her hand on the table, sending a small shock wave to her hand.

"Durnit!" She cried, grabbing her hand in pain. "Durn Athritis is acting up again!" Waddling across the kitchen, her shoes scraping the surface, she looked at the bowl that one of her many cats sat in. This one was grey and white, with yellow eyes and a short coat. A knick in it's ear it had. She tried to recall the name of this one. Was it Velma? Or was it Ethan, the one that she knew that was her favorite last week? She stroked the fur of the cat mindlessly as she tried to recall why she had came into the kitchen... was it to make oatmeal? Yes, it was for the oats. She nodded in satisfaction about remembering the task at hand and went to grab another bowl from the counter. It was a wooden one her daughter had made when she was just a sliver of a thing.

Oh, the golden days of the district. She recalled them fondly, when hunting for meat was the main thing to do. Griselda thought of those days fondly, still. When she and her husband would set up a scavenged chalk board and her daughters, Marie and Loretta would sit on hours end with charcoal from the fire, burning their fingers as they wrote on the green, chipped surface. It was a wonderful thing, the girls sitting in the front room, by the window with the nice curtains. Marie with her dark brown eyes and fair blonde hair and Loretta with her dark hair and dazzling green eyes. The good days, they would get to eat fresh rabbit and green onion stew, when they would talk about the day they'd had.

She started to boil the water in a small kettle on top of the stove. The water she could find was scarce now'a'days, probably because of those factories taking up all the resources. Why did the capitol even need rubber gloves and picture frames? Couldn't they invade their own durned district? She shook her head as she imagined the frivilous things they would need. Plastic pieces were being melted, and childrens games were being assembled as she spoke.

She shuddered and took the pot from the stove, throwing whatever oatmeal she could spare for todays breakfast. The bag was nearly emty, and she shook her head. Another sign of the times. Shakily, she placed the bag back where she had found it and waited for a little bit before draining the oatmeal and finally putting it into the wooden bowl that the cat had once inhabited, even though it did have some fur in it.

Ignoring this, she ate the oatmeal with her hands, with no particular care. She was an apothecary that didn't practice safety habits quite well. She finished eventually, setting the bowl back onto the counter and moving to the front parlor, the clogs kicking up more dust than earlier today.

She then opened the curtains with a thrash of the hand, and saw something quite odd. There were people outside, with guns and large masks. She hadn't seen anything like it since the... Fever of the thirty-fourth hunger games! She gasped, recalling the time that a deadly case of Phielopa, a strain of flu, had appeared in the district. She heard it was from the eating of wild opossum, but she wasn't quite sure. Was another case of Phielopa appearing? She wondered this for a second, before realizing that if another strain were to come of anything... She'd be in business again!

With a slightly toothless grin, she straightened her skirt and pulled her collander hat just a bit tighter on her straggly blonde hair. She cleared her throught and looked at a few cats sunning themselves on the newly found light. An orange one with long fur, a black one with short and rough fur, and a Mother cat and her two kittens. With some form of enthusiasium, she picked up a cat, a grey one, she was sure, and held it to her chest. It pawed around, looking for an escape route, before finally attempting to claw at the sleeve of the woman, but she lost interest and dropped the cat on the ground.

Shuffling around the front room, she tried to pick up what she could. Despite her obsesion with keeping animals, she was quite tidy, so she felt she couldn't busy herself other than stacking the books a precise way and dusting off some cat hair from the beat-up sofa. Of course, it was going to get back, but there was no harm in cleaning up a mess. Slowly, she dusted off the sofa with no intentional effort.

She finally recieved the effort to go outside and see what was happening. "What is it?" She asked a woman with intelligent red hair and who was wearing obvious district six lab wear. She was wearing high heels, for the sake of her cats. Nude high heels and a white dress and lab coat. Stylish square lense glasses and red lipstick.

On the other hand, Griselda sported a long woolen skirt, a puffy sleeved blouse and a collander on her head. The woman gave her an odd look, and finally replied in a slightly displeased voice "Spattergroit, ma'm. Are you a district official?" She asked in a slightly mocking way. "because if you are, we need all the help treating the patients." Her sarcasm rang out loud and clear, but obviously, Griselda didn't quite...get it.

"Oh, no, but I am an apothecary. I served through the thirty-fourth hunger games as an apothecary, and I am proud!" She held her hand to her chest, wheezing slightly, before bringing her hand to her side.

The woman, who Griselda now noticed had a nametag with the name "Eunice" printed clearly onto its clear plastic. Griselda was sure that those nametags we're made in their factories! She wanted to go onto a spitting rage, but she sighed and waited for an answer as this Eunice character looked down at the clipboard in her hands.

"Well, it seems about half of you're district is affected by this disease. And we are a bit short staffed..." She pondered this with some point of hesitation, before taking a piece of white paper from the clipboard, and with hesitation, handed it to Griselda. "Fill this out... and take it to the CADS tent in the district square." She saw the lost expression on the older womans face and said "Capitol and District Six tent. It's where the reapings are held."

Griselda held the piece of paper between her fingers like it was a birth certificate, savoring the clean white paper. Dirty fingerprints indented where she had held it, and she was given a stick of a pen that she knew was made, of course, in this district. She scrawled the information onto the paper and walked to the city, with its pollution and garsh darned the capitol for their inconsideratness.

She meandered towards a large, white, startched tent and opened the flap. At least a hundred people lay on stretchers, with doctors treating nearly every one of them. A few people were in the corner, enjoying some coffee in the low heat; were talking in that garsh darned district six accent.

She knew she had something of an accent, but it was different, because those district sixers were the foreigners here. She walked to the small front desk, being managed by what seemed to be a doctors apprentince, for he was teenaged and quite bored looking. She handed him the paper, and he shot her an odd look.

"Are you sure you are an apothecary?" He asked nervously, probably afraid he would screw up. She nodded uncertainly, thinking about her cats at home. He finally just let her pass, waving her through, then resuming looking at the book on his desk.

Fevered and bleeding people were laying on the stretchers, each of the people seeming quite devestated. She looked at them, and saw the herbs that sat on the table on the far end. She reached for a few herbs she knew enough that could cure bleeding, and she walked to a person.

"Hello!" She said cheerily to the body.