/ strange birds / 75th train thread /

It only took two words to break Lethe the first time.

“Lethe Turner.”

She was 18, a wisp, shivering in the cold air as the District 5 escort announced her name. She remembered how her back stiffened. She remembered her heart stopping. She remembered the silence as she stumbled to the stage.
It took two words to break her the second time.

In the pouring rain, Razor approached like a shadow, his sword glinting. He grinned. He jested.

“Hello, Lethe.”

She killed him anyway.

It took two words to slowly sew her back together, too. Two by two. Lying on a horse blanket, drenched in sweat, she heard the sweet cries of life.

“A girl!”

Later, she’d hold that girl’s hand as she looked into Jasper’s sunset eyes and repeat the words: “I do.”

And later, that same little girl would kneel at the edge of her bed, forehead gleaming, and glue her mother back together even further, shouting gleefully, “A boy!”

For all of the sweat and blood, for all the kisses and nights contained under the weight of blankets that it took to sew Lethe’s open wounds back up, it only took two words to break her yet again.

“I volunteer.”

For a long moment, Lethe wasn’t sure if the words came from her daughter’s voice. Stiff in the stage, she momentarily imagined that she was in one of her usual nightmares. But in those, they called “Eden Turner!” from a glass ball. Never once did her daughter…Lethe’s head slowly turned to face the screen to her left, and her heart nearly stopped. All of the screens had her blonde beauty, standing in front of the crowd of District Five children, offering up her voice, her body. Almost instantly, Lethe’s body seized up and all of the blood drained from her face. In a second, she knew the cameras would turn for her reaction and her mind was blank. Her head was light, her vision dizzy, with only Eden’s face dancing before her. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed Patricia’s arm. She felt a brief rush of gratitude when Patricia’s arms snaked around her, holding her up. Neither woman looked at the other.

The next few minutes were a blur. She felt the stage creak under her feet as Eden joined it, but she couldn’t look at her. Biting on her lower lip so hard she knew she was drawing blood, Lethe managed to keep staring straight ahead until the ceremony ended and Patricia helped her inside the Justice Building and onto a couch. There, Lethe collapsed, wracked with heaving sobs. “No, no, no,” she begged no one in particular, as the room filled with Jasper and Phelix and Patricia. “Someone tell her no. It’s been a mistake.”

If any of them spoke to Eden, Lethe would never know because she remained tucked away for the visitation period, rocking back and forth on the couch. At some point, Phelix climbed into his mother’s arms, and she hollowly held him to her rapidly beating heart. Jasper kissed her forehead and promised, in a shaking voice, to write. The man of many words, Jasper, her husband, who had charmed her with her clever poems and letters, suddenly had nothing to say.

In the Justice Building, she could feel the presence of her daughter nearby. In her many years of motherhood, Lethe had grown accustomed to seeking out her children. She could match their pattering feet on wood flooring anywhere. She knew their voices. She knew what foods they liked. She knew exactly what to do with Eden’s hair when she didn’t want to hear it in braids to school. She knew how Phelix liked his chocolate milk.

With a chill, Lethe wondered if all of these years she’d been kidding herself. This morning, when her daughter spat out the words, “I hate you,” Lethe had felt her stomach drop, but she’d managed to shake it bitterly off. All children say these things. What did Eden know about hate? What did Eden know about hating someone, until they’re standing before you in the rain, or they’ve come clattering at you with an arsenal of weapons? Not until they’ve killed your only friend or gouged your eye out. Not until your body is wracked with agony like fire, that you find solace in the mud like a bed, not until then do you know hate. Eden was lashing out, Jasper told her on their walk as she stewed silently just ahead of him. Don’t let it bother you. But now, as the District Five escort and Patricia together roused her from her couch to prepare her to bound the train, her skin had gone cold. Perhaps Eden did hate her and here was her punishment for not noticing her daughter’s resentment before.

On the train, Lethe felt swollen. Her eyes were out of tears, but her body felt full of something. Standing outside the door, through which she’d have to face her daughter and the other tributes, she wasn’t sure if a lion was about to burst free from her or she’d run like a scared mouse. Camalia rode her shoulder, but even the lizard seemed exhausted. Was she about to yell at her daughter or advise her? If she’d been unable to save her brother, how, in the world, in a Games with more children than ever, will she save her daughter?

Lethe thoroughly chewed her lower lip into a pulp before she decided to push open the door, out of necessity to finally look in her daughter’s eyes and ask her why? How could you do this to me?

With a deep breath, she did it, entering the room and once there, in a room full of children who had willingly chosen their own path, one that could easily lead to death, Lethe felt more distant than ever. “I’m Lethe Turner,” she heard herself say in a whisper. They all had their eyes on her. Searching her. Never before had she noticed how x-ray-like her daughter’s green eyes were. They knew all of her secrets. She was about to ask them if they had any questions, needed anything, but she felt naked before them. And so, she asked, in a bit of a stronger voice, “Why are you here?”