flop from the top / open!

These stories all seem so predictable. Georgie has a few paperback picture books pilled up on the desk she is sat at – thanks to Umber for showing her that there are desks in here! The District Six crew aren’t going to be happy as now she can get comfortable here, unlike to Training Center. She’s getting bored of the fiction, there’s not enough time to read a whole trilogy or series but there is time to read a manual. A guide to…whatever. She’ll find it and she will burn time in this library reading it.

Georgie looks at the messy desk she is about to leave behind, someone else will tidy it up. There’s libraries back home, in the universities and in the school she used to attend. A bookshelf even fills half a wall in the mayor’s office. Most of the books are inherited from the previous mayor but Georgie and her dad have added their own. She used to consider the librarian at her school as one of her best friends. She has yet to find any librarian amongst all these shelves – maybe it is a robot that comes out when everyone is asleep. It hoovers up all the misplaced books and puts out new titles. It is not something out of science fiction, even the hospitals have robots back home now.

It is easy to just stroll along the shelves, letting her allocated time in the training center dwindle. Sometimes she can hear her mentors shouting her furiously to get her ass on a training mat or maybe it is just her imagination.

Anyway, she’ll get hurt in the training center, there is no way she will get hurt in the library…

”OUGH!” Something blunt and heavy smacks her right on the top of her head. Georgie immediately rubs the top of her hair with her hand and looks down at what hit her. A book – a deadly book! Then she looks up at where it came from and there’s a girl with striking red hair on one of the ladders.

”You’re not supposed to try and kill me right now!” Georgie bends down to pick up the book, her head is throbbing and there is a little dizziness obscuring her orientation. ”Here, try and catch it!” Georgie lobs the book in the air, if she must practice target throwing, she will do it in here!

Dars.

”Great you caught it, now put it back and not on my head!” A disgruntled look hangs on Georgie’s face as she rubs her head one last time. The pain is only temporary, nothing to throw a fuss about. She’s good at sucking up the hurt. Something about being brought up by a man, one who particularly dislikes crying babies. She’s good at tantrums but they come from not getting her own way. Not from a graze on her knee or a bump on her head. Every little injury has its treatments and tantrums are her treatment for being spoiled!

Her arms cross over her head as she steps back from the ladder, letting the other girl climb down. It is one of those from the fancy career Districts, Andromache is not the first one Georgie has met. The first encounter with another went better than this.

"That wasn't actually a bad throw,”

And she’s hit with the same old careersplaining but she’ll take it onboard. Georgie has learnt more from other tributes than she has the trainers. Maybe this is some real good strategy. Act like the helpless naïve little girl and they’re all cuddle her with knowledge and advice. It may well play in her favour when the time comes.

”Yeah I have been in and out of the training room.” Georgie says as she unfolds her arms, opting to rest them on her hips as she tries to make herself look serious. ”No I have not thrown anything yet. Just swung a few heavy glaives and fired some bows.” The latter she has done, not to some great success but she’s done it. The first thing, yeah that’s a lie.

”Are you really clumsy or do you hate that book?”

Dars.