give us this day our daily bread (sergio/junie)

Junie St. James

Junie's Pa used to tell her to keep her elbows off the table. It's impolite, he had said. Pa wasn't here now, however, and so Junie props herself up, abandoning every table manner she's ever been taught. 

She sits up on her knees on the chair, so she can reach the table properly. When she had sat on her bottom, her legs had swung and her dinner had been at her breastbone, so she had propped herself up for a better view.

Her mentors had scolded her several times already: once, for not wearing any shoes down to the dining hall, twice, for arriving with her hair unbrushed and face unwashed. Junie had stuck her tongue out at them. They had scolded her for that, too. 

Junie nibbles at her bread roll, eyeing the rest of the food on the table as though it is poisoned. She is, historically, a fussy eater, on a perpetual mission to prove that a girl can survive on nothing but sugar and water and compliments. Perhaps this is why she has not grown much, not shot up and began to develop womanhood, like many other girls her age. While her brother and sister grow in reedy spurts, like weeds between pavement cracks, she remains childlike. Children born of the forest do not behave like other children, though, so this is not unexpected.

Across the table from Junie sits a boy. He is from Five, Junie knows. His name is Sergio, and he, like Junie, was reaped in the fallout of his twelfth birthday, a specially tragic case. They share something: Panem's absolute certainty that they will not live to see their thirteenth. She stuffs the remains of her roll into her mouth, hungrily. Crumbs cling to her lips.

"Hey-" she whispers, a hiss. "Are you going to eat that?" she points to his bread roll. Since she has arrived in the Capitol, she has eaten nothing but plain bread and boiled sweets, discovered in the bottom of her dress pockets. She is hoping to save something, in case she gets hungry later.