a casual welcome | dersders

jordan snow, district 10

She hadn't written much since the shepherd boy had died.

Darius had been only a few years older than Jordan when he was reaped, on the brink of turning nineteen in a couple of weeks. Funny how they'll get you like that. She remembered seeing his dazed and confused look as the Peacekeepers dragged him up to the stage by his toes. Lines dragging in the dirt behind them leaving a trail. He'd never been the present-in-the-moment type, and that's why they'd stuck him on the farms with the sheep, "couldn't do any damage out there." But Jordan knew he was harmless. When his calloused fingertips brushed through her long fiery strands, it wasn't the work of a monster but that of a loving and caring misunderstood boy.

Before he'd left, Darius had confessed he'd loved her. She knew. If actions spoke louder than words, then Darius had spent months screaming at her window. She could not love him back. Never would. But still, she held his weeping head as he admitted his fear in the face of death. Jordan had even let him kiss her as their final goodbye, not saying aloud what she knew to be true: he'd never return home. Like a valkyrie leading a fallen gladiator to Valhalla, Jordan had kissed Darius and led him to get stabbed in the eye in a desert hellhole. The Games were not a friend to any. Hopefully, he'd found what he was looking for in Jordan's lips and not the dead flesh she'd felt on impact. The frozen lips of the corpse she felt in her nightmares. Jordan found herself longing for the simple nature of the shepherd boy from time to time, his unconscious presence was somehow comforting in its emptiness.

She still resided in the Orchards all these years later. Tenured, she would joke. No one would laugh. Perhaps she was past the need for their services. After all, Jordan was old enough to find some livelihood now. Ileana had. But she fancied herself as the unofficial welcoming services of the community. She helped usher the new little ones into the home, teaching them the bearings of the land and how to work.

Ileana had finally come to join her sister at the Orchards, hesitant at first to leave their younger siblings alone once again after Jordan had abandoned them years before. They were now together in the betrayals to their family. But Ileana was stronger than Jordan ever been and quickly had found her lay of the town. Jordan didn't resent her sister. After all, it had been the happiest she'd ever seen her. Young, in love with a young farmer boy. Soon she figured, Ileana would move out to Warren's farm and start working full time with his mother. He had a good family too. Jordan had met them on a couple of occasions. Jordan served as Ileana's guardian at this point, though Warren served as more of an annoying little brother than a son-in-law. Both the Snow sister's trusted the boy, and if he ever broke Ileana's heart, Jordan would - do something? She wasn't the violent type.

She hadn't felt comfortable sharing stories in the years since Darius had died. Those who remembered Jordan's story circles would whisper about them on occasion but dared not ask her to do them again, sensitive to the loss of her friend. But even Jordan knew the time for mourning had long passed, and her friend was no longer anything but a distant memory and an excuse for her own mediocrity. The reality was Jordan didn't move forward because she stopped herself from doing so. Jordan's head had grown clouded by the idealization of what she'd built up the Orchards to be: a utopia. But the creeky floorboards and moldy wallpaper of the well-lived-in home told a different story. No one paraded around singing the praise of Julia Orchards anymore. It simply was what it was: a landmark for those who need refuge in a time of crisis, and as such, Jordan manned her position to guide the inhabitants like she once had with Darius, to retribution and a higher purpose.

She snuck a hardcover book beneath her arms and gravitated towards the front lot. An old willow tree wept over the yard, its tendril-like extremities creating a layered level of shade to anyone who sat beneath. It had long been Jordan's favorite place to read. The willow tree provided a relaxing recluse from the beating summer heat. Shoeless, Jordan tip-toed beneath the tree, dirt wriggling beneath her toes. Donning a white floral-patterned summer dress, she carelessly threw herself to the ground, uncaring about the stains it would bring. Perhaps she no longer told stories, but she still read them, still helped create them. Maybe one day they'd come back together again.