broken wish-bones // all tributes {blitz}

"They tell you all your dreams can come true, but they forget to mention nightmares are dreams too."

For a group of people who would almost all certainly be dead by the time the week after next was out, they were a surprisingly talkative lot.

My mind was an intricate web of ever forming connections, so for the most part I was content to let others do the talking while I simply stared off into space and hoped slitting their throats would be someone easier for my lack of socialization. I had never had a friend before, but I couldn't be friends with these people, and they couldn't be friends with me. That was hard. Looking at the faces around the table, one could almost mistake it for a school cafeteria. A bunch of teenagers chatting genially (perhaps the imminence of our own impending doom was enough to make people a bit more affable, as, as far as I could tell, everyone was getting along,) enjoying their break before work was to begin anew.

Yeah, work towards killing one another.

Why was I so preoccupied with death? No one else seemed to be, at least as far as I could see, why deny myself a good time with the rest of my compatriots, it could be the last opportunity of mine to even have good time. What did it matter if we would all be dead soon? I could save the distrust and the killer instinct for the arena, not the lunchroom.

But my reveries never last, do they? They never seem to end of their own volition, but rather are usually interrupted by some varied source of, well... interference.

Although this time, I couldn't quite say the interruption was what I was expecting.

A small girl who looked about half my size but who must have still been older than me, who I thought recognized as one of the District Twelve tributes (who's face looked eerily familiar...) jumped up onto the marble table we all sat eating our portions at and gave what amounts to one of the most awkward and at the same time, oddly courageous speeches I've ever seen given. She was asking us for our wishes.

A wish? What good did wishing do anyone? When faced with the prospect of my imminent death, wishing and hoping and dreaming didn't really seem to come into the equation.

But something about the oddity of the speech, how this girl went out on a limb to give it to us, for whatever reason, left my cold, ice encrusted heart strangely warm. I didn't like it when I got like this, as I always seemed to make stupid mistakes when I felt like this.

Still, a request was made, and logically, I figured at least someone should humor it.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so, as the girl from one and the boy from three seemed to be me to the punch. Well, better late than never.

After a few moments, they each seemed to scrabble something short and curt on their papers and then gave the little pieces of paper back to the girl from Twelve.

I got up from my seat, sauntered over to the girl, took a piece of paper and a writing utensil, and made my way back to my seat.

I stared at the paper for a while, not knowing what to wish for, not remembering if there was ever a time when I had even made a wish. But I could feel the others' eyes on me, and I began to feel uncomfortable.

After a time, I decided to settle on the one thing I could think of, the one thing I had never really had.

"A friend." I sprawled across the paper messily.

I thought for a moment about signing the paper, as a means of distinguishing it from the others, so that she would know that it was from me, but another, better thought of how to do that occurred to me.

I remembered. Sierra. Sierra Birdbrook was her name.

My eyes, for a fleeting moment, were drawn to the ring appropriately on my right ring finger, the red crest engraved on it.

"A mockingbird." My sister's voice rang through my head involuntarily.

My gaze dropped from the trinket and returned to my stiff piece of paper. I began to crease it and fold it and make all the proper alignments wordlessly. At length I was finished.

"It looked like a bird. Not a mockingbird though, she wasn't a mockingbird, I was the mockingbird, it would seem. I didn't know what kind of bird I had created, if any, but then again, I didn't know what kind of bird Miss Birdbrook was either, so I simply shrugged and decided it was appropriate enough.

Then I walked over to the girl and her jar and simply placed the small figurine inside of it. My eyes met hers for a single moment, and then I walked calmly back to my seat. My mind had trailed of once more.

I wondered if they would be serving dessert today...

...unlikely.