nico davenport | district four | fin

hunger of the pine

realization grew on me

as quickly as it takes your hand

to warm the cold side of a pillow

pt. i

Forest floors and kids whose parents made too much money were how this all started. He toured Abadeer Institute with a friend named Ryder, and for all of its exquisite beauty and claims of being the finest in the District, Nico couldn't help feeling a bit bored of it all. The boys who were already in attendance walked in single file lines, wearing stag-emblazoned sweaters and a permanent look of entitlement, and teachers stood outside the doors of their classrooms like wardens of a prison.

He leaned in close to Ryder's ear.

"You aren't buying into this stuff, are you?" he asked, pressing his lips together tightly in hopes that no one else would hear. Apparently, he had outdone himself. Ryder, who had been busy admiring a statue of some god of a religion Nico hadn't ever heard of, clutched his new, empty school bag in both hands, completely ignoring him. "What?" he asked, still only half paying attention.

"Do you like it here?" Nico asked, this time a bit louder than last. A boy near the pair shushed him and continued listening to the tour guide as she droned on endlessly about numbers and stupid things that hardly mattered.

There was a long while where Ryder did not answer, and Nico decided he would just wait until after to talk about it, if he made it that long.

"Yeah," Ryder said after a few minutes. "Yeah what?" Nico replied.

"I like it here."

He rolled his eyes, playing himself in a thumb war and trying his best to look attentive. His parents had paid a good bit of money on this tour alone, and if they decided to make him go, it would cost a lot more. Not that money was an issue— there certainly were perks to being the son of an ex-peacekeeper who had lost a leg on the job and an heiress to the biggest construction company on the eastern side— it was just that all of these people looked deeply unhappy with their lives, and he wanted no part in it, and he would go down swinging if his parents signed him up for classes.

Perhaps the one thing he liked about the school was its location, which was in the middle of nowhere. As the tour (finally) came to a close, he grabbed Ryder by the elbow and dragged him into the forests before he got roped into some lame ass prep school party where someone's parents let them share a bottle of wine with their richest friends if they promised not to mention the affairs, or whatever.

As soon as they were out of eye shot from the school, Nico ripped his name tag off of his shirt. He looked at the engraved letters of his name amid the ivory antler-pattern and the forest green ABADEER in proud letters across the top.

"Who the fuck gives out engraved name tags at an open house?" he groaned. Ryder pulled his off too, blonde hair falling in his face as he tried his best to act unimpressed. "Dude," Nico said. The guy's acting was pitiful. "I'm sorry! I thought it was fucking awesome in there! Did you not hear what she was saying? Most of their students go on to—" Nico interrupted him mid-sentence— "To cut corners in whatever business they are running, sink most of their fortune into trying to fix it, lose their money-hungry families along the way, and end it all with a nice long stay in the Detention Center for embezzlement. What a dream life!" Ryder scoffed. "Real charming."

"Where is your sense of adventure, Ryder? I mean, look where we are right now!" Ryder, with his back turned to Nico, said, "You do understand this District is literally sitting in the middle of a gigantic forest, right?" To which Nico wrapped his arm around Ryder's shoulder and said, "But have you ever seen this part of it before?"

"No," Ryder remarked. He sounded how Nico had felt on that tour, which wasn't entirely uncommon. "So how do you know the adventure of your life isn't right on the other side of this hill?"

"It's not. I promise."

He still walked next to Nico, though, which was good enough. To his surprise, just around the hill, there was another institute. For a moment, he thought they had somehow rounded back to Abadeer. He looked back behind him, not making sense of it until he noticed a wrought iron gate that said "Eden Institute" on it.

"Isn't that the all girls school?" Ryder asked. Nico looked him dead in the face. "Don't." Laughing, Ryder slid Nico's hand off of his shoulder.

"You were the one who was saying all that stuff about adventures!" he called, trotting toward the fence. Nico felt inclined to scream I meant with me, but instead, chose to go with, "Meet at my house later. Mom is cooking!"

"Later!" Ryder called.

—————

Nico stayed up all night waiting on Ryder to show up, and when the sun was soon to break the horizon, he decided to give up and go to sleep. He blinked, eyes opened: ceiling fan. He blinked again, and watched as it began to blur. His eyes fell heavy, and when he opened them again, his mother was knocking on his door a few hours later.

"Nico?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"There are some peacekeepers here to see you."

He kept his face where it was: buried in a pillow, and tried to think of things he might have done recently that would deserve a visit from his father's old work pals. When he came up dry, he lifted his head.

"What for?"

She had a look. The look. The Grandma died, the cat ran away, we are getting a divorce look. "You should get dressed, okay? They want to speak with you." He pulled a shirt on, running a hand through his dark hair before trudging down the stairs.

His dad leaned against the wall, resting the side with his prosthetic.

"Son," he hadn't ever heard him sound so concerned. One of the peacekeepers placed a hand gently on his shoulder.

"We'll handle this, Todd." First name basis. Naturally. It seemed like every intimidating person was on a first-name basis with his parents: all the people who could either lock a person up and let them rot, or the people who could pay to make it happen.

"You went to an open house yesterday evening with a Ryder Beckett, correct?"

Oh no.

"Yes."

"Do you have any idea where he might have gone afterwards?"

Fuck.

"He went to check out the Eden Institute and then he was supposed to come here for dinner."

"He didn't show up?"

Nico shook his head; "No."

"Is this type of behavior typical for him? Not showing up, I mean?"

"Not really. I mean, he can be kind of a klutz sometimes, but he's not, like, a rule breaker or anything."

Thoughts of the pair of them sitting on the rooftop of that very house smoking cigarettes, of sneaking into the pond behind the Auger Estate and going swimming, of Ryder getting bitten by a snake while they were walking home from a party they had crawled out the window in order to attend, and Nico having to help pay for the medical care so their parents wouldn't find out, and many other things flashed across his mind.

"Rule breaker," the man asked. The way he said it made Nico feel like he was supposed to be justifying himself. But he didn't. Surely the guy had already talked to Ryder's parents enough to get a general feel for who he was. Why was he still character building this late in the game?

"Alright, he decided after Nico didn't say anything, "Well, just let us know if you hear from him, okay? His parents are worried sick."

—————

All through the day, Nico waited for Ryder to show back up, or for his parents to show up and tell them he had been found, and when it didn't happen, he walked into his father's study, leaned against the door frame.

"Have your friends heard anything?"

His dad, who had been in the middle of a sip of whiskey, swallowed hard.

"They're officially ruling it a missing person's case. They have search parties all over the forest."

"It's a little early for all that, isn't it?"

"That's the way money works, Kiddo." Nico noticed his dad hadn't looked at him once since he walked in, which meant he was either really busy, or he was hiding something, and Nico had seen the paperwork his dad did for the peacekeepers. It wasn't exactly mind-boggling stuff.

"What is it?" He asked sternly.

"What?"

"What are you not telling me?"

A moment of silence. He better not have said what Nico was thinking.

"They think he might have made a run for it." He said it in a can you believe that? voice, but his posture made Nico think he might have believed it more than he wanted him to know.

"As in, they think he fled the district?"

"It's common for people of high status to want to leave. Money is a powerful thing, son. Adds a lot of pressure." Nico squinted at his father, at the crystal glass in his hand, the contents of which were a specialty whiskey sent in from the Capitol, at the enormous bookshelf behind him filled to the brim with paperbacks. If he could have, Nico would have looked at his father's robotic leg, too, since it was certainly a step up from a wooden one with a hinge at the knee, which was what most people would have had to settle for.

"I just mean that sometimes, parents pressure their kids to grow up too fast. They become teenagers, which means they'll be expected to work soon, maybe they are being pressured into joining an elite boarding school to increase their chances, tensions get too high, and they split."

"He's fourteen; same as me. He has a long way to go before he starts worrying about inheriting the family business. And you didn't see him, Dad. You didn't see how excited he was for Abadeer. He was practically jumping up and down for it." When his father didn't say anything, Nico did. "He didn't run away."

"Hey," the man bargained, "I didn't say he did anything."

"Yeah you did," Nico retorted, turning to leave, "Just not outright."

He shut the door with a sigh. His best friend was lost somewhere out in the woods, and the only people looking for him weren't expecting to find him. Or maybe they were, but they weren't expecting him to have a pulse when they found him, or maybe they weren't expecting him to have one long after they found him. Regardless, he made a decision right then, that if they couldn't do their job, he would.

He waited until the sun set, and he slid on his leather jacket, a pair of boots, and hat to keep his ears from getting cold, and out the window he went, and into the night he ventured.

—————

The start of sixth grade meant the start of a new school. Middle school. There were schools in each corner of the District: the Havemont Bears to the east, the Wayland Wolves in the north, the Pulsar Lumberjacks in the west, and then the three private schools in the south (The Abadeer Stags, the Eden Crows, and then the PTA, the Ivan Foxes.) Now, even as a child, Nico had a huge sense of adventure, but this was not one he wanted to take. He liked his old friends, liked his teachers. He liked the familiarity of his old school. His parents wanted him to have the full school experience, meaning they chose to put him in Pulsar knowing they were exclusively an elementary school, knowing he would eventually have to transfer to Havemont or Wayland once he was old enough.

A lumberjack thrown to the wolves of Wayland, he sat in his first period class with a ringing in his ears and a huge group of strangers staring at him like he was a foreign object. The teacher paired all of them up for one of those lame get-to-know-each-other exercises, and made them each write down three things that they liked. Nico looked at the boy he was paired with: tall, lanky, with blonde hair and abnormally clear skin for a preteen.

"I'm Ryder," He said, smiling with a mouth full of white teeth, "Ryder Beckett."

Nico had already met the Ryders of the world. Handsome, rich as his parents, entitled to things that did not belong to them. Never had Nico liked any of the children his parents' rich friends brought with them to dinner parties. Never.

"Nico Davenport," he replied cordially. He felt like his mother was standing just behind him, expecting him to be the proper young lad her friends expected him to be.

"What kind of a name is Davenport?" Ryder asked. He cupped his chin with his left hand and leaned on it.

"Oh, uh, my Dad grew up in District Four."

"What, did he, like, run away or something?"

"He became a peacekeeper. Got stationed here, lost his leg and retired."

Ryder didn't seem impressed with how dry Nico was being, but he just nodded slowly. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"He's fine. It happened before I was even born, so."

There was a moment of silence, and then Ryder cleared his throat.

"Okay, so three things I like." He held up the first flashcard, which read caves.

"Caves?" Nico asked before he could remind himself to not take an interest.
He sat up straighter in his desk. "I think they're really cool. My older brother and I used to hunt them down in the forest before he moved out and got married and junk." Nico accidentally smiled a bit. "Did you ever find anything in one?" Ryder racked his brain, trying to think of the right story to tell him.

"We found a bear in one, once. It was winter, so he was hibernating, but we went back the next day and he was gone. We went to that cave all the time hoping to see him again. I guess he woke up and decided he didn't like that one so he went and found another one."

Nico's eyes grew wider and wider as Ryder talked, his mouth hanging open by the end of it when he realized the boy was telling the truth. "You found a sleeping bear, and instead of running in the opposite direction, you went back to visit?"

"Yeah. The creepy thing is that the cave was only about a mile south of my house, so who knows what else is out there." A silent moment, then, "Okay, your turn," he cheered. Nico looked through his flash cards: lasagna, building things, and adventures.

He decided to pick the last one first.

—————

It was cold. Freezing, in fact. He breathed into his hands to keep them warm, cursed himself for not bringing a pair of gloves.

At first, he wasn't entirely sure where he was headed, until he realized he was walking towards Ryder's house. The woods were eerily silent, as if they knew he had figured them out; as if they knew he had come to take his friend back. He could see the lights of Ryder's house shining bleakly in the distance, and Nico guessed they wouldn't be turning them off any time soon for fear that Ryder might not see it and walk right past his own house. But he wasn't headed for the house. He made a big semicircle to avoid it, watching as the lights crept into the corner of his vision, and then out of it completely.

"Where is that cave?" he said aloud. One of the first times the pair had decided to hang out together, Ryder had shown it to him, and they had revisited it a few times since. Deep in the woods. There was a pine tree with a twisted trunk he was supposed to turn left at— where the hell was— wait no there it was. He walked the final distance, both hoping he would find Ryder and fearing he would. A big step down from the embankment, and he squinted into the darkness. The cave wasn't deep at all, and now that he was older, he completely understood why the bear had decided to leave for something better. Even from where he stood, the moon reached the other wall and bathed the stones in a silvery light.

He wasn't here.

Nico turned to climb back up the embankment when something caught his eye. Something shiny, metallic. He squinted down at it before realizing it was a bear trap.

He had completely forgotten that Ryder's dad had gone out and set them up after his older brother mentioned the bear at dinner once. Nico had been made to go home that night, since Ryder got in trouble for keeping the fact from his parents, but the next day his mom made him go back over and help them set the traps up.

He tried to think of where they had set them up. Ryder's dad had drawn a map for the two of them, so they could know which areas to avoid while playing, and Nico didn't know what had happened to it. He was pretty sure Ryder had it last, which meant it would have been in his bag, which meant it was with him.

No.

He remembered the day before, on the tour, Ryder had been holding a new backpack. It looked completely empty. Surely, if he hadn't even put his books in it, he hadn't made the effort to put a map from when they were kids in it, even if his Dad asked that they carry with them at all times.

He pushed himself up on the edge of the embankment and sprinted for Ryder's house.

By the time he got there, he was sweating, inhaling dry air too quickly and feeling it dry up the back of his throat as he made it to the pipe he and Ryder used to sneak out. He coughed, trying his best to keep quiet while not suffocating, took in a deep breath, and climbed onto the roof. He prayed Ryder hadn't locked his window. Dumb ass was always locking it, even though he knew Nico was liable to show up in the middle of the night asking him to open it. He closed his eyes. Please.

Hands against the surface, he gave it a push, and it slid open. Relief filled his chest. "Thank fuck," he whispered, climbing through. He surveyed the room, realizing for the first time that he probably hadn't ever been in it alone. Posters and wooden walls and beer caps nailed up with fairy lights. Rustic, simple, but fun. Classic Ryder.

Nico opened Ryder's closet, hands fumbling over boxes and clothes, trying to find that stupid backpack: nothing. He scanned the floors: nothing, opened the chest at the edge of his unmade bed: nothing. His bed.

He dropped down to peer underneath it, and there it was: brilliant red, with frays along the seams, and "R.B." written in permanent marker. Underneath it, Nico had scribbled "Sucks." with a pencil.

He opened the front pouch, pulled out the map, and was out the window before anyone would have ever known the difference. Before he closed it back up, though, he grabbed a flashlight off of Ryder's desk.


Two hours later, and it was very, very deep into the night. Nico was wandering around so much, he worried he would get lost himself. He had checked nine of the twelve traps, and all of them had shown up empty, which was a good thing. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was odd, being so hot and so cold at the same time. His ears burned and his knuckles ached every time he made a fist, but the knowledge that Ryder was going through the same thing without a coat or a hat, and that he was doing so while potentially bleeding out, was enough for him to keep going.

He climbed a particularly steep hill, cursing himself for not looking for this trap sooner when he had more energy, and fell to his knees after slipping on a bit of frost. "Damn it!" he groaned, climbing back up. According to the map, the trap should be— he shined his flashlight to the left, scanning the area. Over, over, over. Nothing, nothing, nothin—

"Ryder!"

His friend was curled in a ball, a pool of blood circling his right leg and coming from the wound on his ankle. He had been asleep, probably because he had gotten hypothermia, and when Nico screamed his name, he snapped awake.

"Oh, Nico. Good. Hey bud." Nico sprinted toward him, adrenaline granting him energy he didn't have before. His leg was still in the trap. "Shit, Ryder."

"It's cool. I think my boot kept it from breaking anything. It's just uh, in there really deep, and I can't get a good enough angle to—"

"I'll get it," Nico said, handing him the flashlight. "Hold it in your mouth and shine it so I can see."

Ryder looked at him, confused. "Why my m—"

"This is going to hurt, Ryder. It helps to bite down." Terrified, but nodding his head furiously to make it seem like he wasn't, Ryder slipped the end of his flashlight into his mouth.

"Deep breath."

It sounded more like a pant.

"One, two, three!"

sleeplessly embracing; yawn yearns into me

plenty more tears in the sea

and so you finally use it

your heart wears knight armor