the shadow of my brother | [tick/umber]

The boy sitting next to him was quiet so far. Normally, this would've been fine with Umber, who was more than used to dealing with moody older boys thanks to a lifetime of living with Terrence. But now, even sitting groggily in the aftermath of his forced sedation, he felt a lot of pent-up nervous energy pumping through him. If his district partner felt the same, he was hiding it better than Umber was.

He was clearly a Seam kid, which Umber had always preferred to the Squares (despite technically being one of them.) The boy they called Tick at the reaping was older and probably wiser than he. Umber was inclined to follow the other's lead, sitting in silence with his hands folded in his lap, staring at all the minute details of the room. Like how there were no hard corners or sharp edges on anything, or how the glasses stacked on the shelves overhead were clearly meant to look like glass or crystal, but from the dull clacking sounds the stacks made, it was clear they were plastic. The walls were mostly taken up by windows and shelves and cabinets, but what was left to observe seemed to be a mural of old coal miners walking in the same direction. And then, at the right-most point of the cart there was a large cave: the thing the miners were walking toward. Umber stared at it, at the unrealistic golden light pouring forth from it as if treasures and gold waited within.

His teacher was just talking about how to interpret art the other day. Two of his classmates were arguing over a portrait in the class literature book. It was a story of some girl losing her necklace while on a walk through the park one day, and then later trying to find the necklace because her rival kept getting compliments on her necklace. One boy thought a green patch of paint in the portrait was supposed to be representative of the main character's envy at her rival's compliments, the other thought it was supposed to be the patch of grass the character lost her necklace in. There was no answer in the text, because apparently that was all a part of the appeal. This was why Umber preferred music: he knew exactly what to feel when he heard a certain note, or listened to a certain lyric. But when he looked at the portrait, he only saw a smear of green paint.

Unable to take the silence any longer, he cleared his throat and nodded. "Ever seen a coal mine glowing like that?" The only mines entrances Umber could recall seeing were solemn things. It was like looking down the throat of a beast in the moments before being swallowed by it. For most in Twelve, it was never a matter of if something happened in the mines, but when. In that regard, Umber was acutely aware of how much he preferred his family's ways of circumventing this. Up until today, he hadn't ever really had to wonder what he would do when he grew up because it'd been handed to him: a better alternative to working in the mines. It wasn't without its faults but like his dad always said: so long as people live, people die.

And so long as they are given a hole in the ground to rest in, who cares if they lose a few precious organs and jewels along the way?

"I mean, you know... one that wasn't on fire or something?"