a double heart | [Lyons JB]

There are more Lyons in District Five than Peacekeepers. It's a never ending cycle of new faces with familiar features filing in to either pull me into an embrace or keep me at arms length. Lots of thanks, lots of honor. Honor I'm not sure I deserve.

It hasn't hit me yet. I'm still smiling for cameras and trying to remember all the given names being shared, I haven't thought about the Games. But don't worry I will.

For now I'm simply trying to keep up with the parade of Lyon family members. If I wanted attention and praise I certainly picked the right pair of twins to volunteer for. Every generation has seemed to slip in- old and young, quiet and talkative. So many different shades of people, so unlike my own family. My family felt like a blank page that I was a stray mark of paint on. The Lyons felt like a mosaic of hues, all different but complimentary.

The eldest Lyons had slipped an object in my hand just as she left. A movement so slick and so smooth I wondered if she also managed to steal my wallet in the process. It was a ring of smoothed wood. Instead of a stone there was a carving- the Lyons family crest.

I bit my cheek. How odd to feel so welcomed into something just as I was about to leave.

The hinges squealed again signaling another visitor. I slip the ring on my hand, the wood carved for a finger a size or two larger than mine.

"How many more of them can here be?" I ask myself louder than necessary.

table by jay <3