My World Turns Slowly

"But why can't we keep 'em?"

Laurel's question kept repeating over and over again, like a soundtrack looping endlessly for their trek to the Black Market, and no answer Poppy could give her seemed good enough for the three and a half year old to accept. Because there's too many. Because other people would like them. Because there will be more babies soon. Because, because, because.

But she persisted.

The rabbit situation was getting out of control, and Poppy understood, now, where the phrase she wasn't supposed to echo came from, about bunnies and how...easily they bred. Some of them had to go, and they would be of far greater use to others in the District, and maybe, in return, she could make it a little easier to afford next month's herbs.

It hadn't been easy, selecting which of her rabbits to pluck up from the makeshift run she'd built, side by side, with her father nearly a year earlier, the one that twisted and turned throughout the yard to give the animals room to roam, and munch, without secluding them to the hutch at the far end, closest to their small house. The fattest ones for sure, Basil had named one Sunny, the other her mother had taken to calling Pokey because she was so large, she practically waddled with each hop.

The other two were babies, a male and a female, and she'd hesitated for a few moments, not entirely certain it was a good idea to sell off a mated pair, give her competition in the Market, but in the end, she'd decided it was better to give another family a chance at having extra meat around.

All of this, from two scrawny rabbits Gough had cast off as unsellable. He'd told her they were two males, but it didn't matter, they'd be dead by morning. A year later, they were very much not two males and had bred so many times Poppy could barely keep up.

Laurel asked again, and finally, she'd had enough. She sighed and led her little sister into the Market, taking cover inside the warehouse just as a fresh rainpour dumped down over the District. Gingerly set the wriggling bag down between them and crouched down, looked up into the not-quite-toddler's eyes.

She was about to tell her that Pokey was going to become stew meat and, she was sure, take away her innocent babyhood forever and ever (dramatic, much?) when Laurel's eyes widened and she took of running, rabbits forgotten entirely, clearly having seen something, or someone, that was far more interesting.

"Wait!" She swung the bag up on her shoulder and stumbled a little, getting her footing, "Laurel, wait up!"

Poppy was worried she was going to hurt the rabbits, render them useless for trade she was running so fast to keep up with her sister, but Laurel was the priority and the animals were, of course, secondary to her safety. She was thisclose to yelling again, putting actual anger into it, when the dark-haired girl came forward, around a group moving through the Market, with Laurel in tow. She breathed out and her face literally flooded with relief.

It quickly reddened, however, and with anyone else it might have been rooted from anger or at least annoyance, but Poppy was just embarrassed. She'd not grown up around children, no, but she thought she wasn't half bad with the twins, and the baby, and the idea that she could be doing better gave her pause.

"I'm so sorry, she ran, and there were people, and--" She broke off, taking Lauren's hand from hers, moving the bright-faced little girl beside her again, holding on firmly. She shook her head and apologized, again. "I don't usually bring her, but," she shrugged helplessly; Basil was sick with a cold, and there was the baby, and their mother hand her hands more than full and she'd thought it would be easier to keep track of Laurel while she traded. She'd underestimated her little sister's energy levels, apparently. "Thank you." Her voice and eyes were filled with genuine gratitude; someone else might not have stopped Laurel, thought to return her to her guardian. It was a thought that almost gave her chills.

She was trying to place the girl, trying to decide if she knew her, at least in passing; she looked younger than her, by a couple of years at least, but she was taller, and it gave the suggestion, however incorrect it was, that she was older, even as she recognized that wasn't likely.

"My kid?" Poppy was so surprised, she couldn't quite censor her own feelings toward that suggestion; she'd not had so much as a boyfriend since Wilder Samson held her hand at lunch in the third grade, the idea of being a parent was...she couldn't even come up with a word for it, it was so out there.

Her head shook wildly, little bits of shaggy hair swishing across her forehead, falling still again once she stopped moving. "No, no. I don't have kids, I'm only seventeen." That was emphatic; there seemed to be an alarming number of teenagers with pregnancies as of late, but the general consensus, at least among the girls she'd grown up going to school with, was that having children before you were done with the possibility of being Reaped, was preposterous and maybe a little foolish. Why would anyone put themselves through that?

She ruffled Laurel's hair, and the toddler ducked away from it, pretending to be irritated, but she failed, because she was giggling. "This is my sister, Laurel, and she's going to be much more careful from now on or she won't be allowed to come back, isn't that right?"

She adjusted the bag full of rabbits on her shoulder, and the little girl nodded solemnly, but there was that look in her eyes that suggested, just maybe, she was only saying it so Poppy wouldn't send her home. Her older sister didn't notice the expression, luckily.

"How old are you?" This came from Laurel, and she looked up at Wren with wide, fascinated eyes, in that way little girls often see those older than them--beautiful and brave and exciting and new.

"Well," Laurel shuffled one foot and shifted her weight to one hip, suddenly looking surprisingly sassy, and it was all Poppy could do to not burst out laughing; she coughed instead, which wasn't difficult considering she was always coughing, and cleared her throat and looked away, letting her sister talk with the other girl for a minute without interruption. "I'm three but really three and a half, I'll be four very soon, my brother will be four too 'cause we were born at the same time--almost th'same time, I came out first so I'm little bit older than Baz-l," she never could pronounce his name without jumbling the last syllable together, "but not lots older. I can go to school when I'm five and that's not a long time now 'cause I'm almost four, d'you go to school? D'you like school?"

Well then. Poppy was on the verge of cracking up, again, and it took everything in her to keep it all inside. She gave Wren a helpless look; now that Laurel had her cornered, it was going to be impossible to sneak away. Apparently she had deemed Wren cool in her book and that was that; her little sister was persistent, at the very least.

((OOC: That is totally fine, and very similar to how I pictured her, so, there we go, rock on. ))

"See?" Poppy nudged Laurel in the side, and when the not-quite-baby looked up at her, she merely raised her eyebrows, causing the golden-haired girl to giggle and nod; her older sister had been talking up school for quite some time, maybe at least in part because she was afraid for Laurel's future. A good education set no precedent for a good future, not in the world they lived in, but it certainly couldn't hurt and, more to the point, the more focus she developed, the better survival skills she'd develop right alongside it.

"I'm gonna have lots of friends," Laurel informed them both, almost airily, swinging her hand linked with Poppy's between them.

"Priorities," the older of the two grinned at Wren and shrugged; she wasn't one to be surrounded by people, she was a little too shy, a little too awkward for that, but she had a handful and that was more than enough for her. Laurel, on the other hand, had a very...dominating personality, and she could believe, without a stretch or suspension of belief at all, that her sister would have people flocking to her. That was just who she was.

"What's your name?" Laurel demanded of the older girl, rising up on her toes expectantly, and Poppy actually flushed; they hadn't even introduced themselves, she was slipping up left and right today.

"M'Poppy," she told the younger girl with a crooked, shy smile, "And Miss Talk-Too-Much is Laurel."