Please Rewind. [K!]

YOU COULD HIDE IT IN YOUR PILLOW, OR IN AN OLD DOLL'S HEAD

"Dialogue!"

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If he closed his eyes, and was very quiet, he could almost pretend that the only sound he could hear was that of the starling that sat on the wires above his head. Of course, this was not the case. This was District One, not Seven, and even at six in the cold December morning traffic noise swirled around him. Like most children in his district, he had never known silence, never known what it was like to be alone. When asked the difference between alone and lonely, he would say that there was none, simply because he had never known the difference.

A soft tug on his hand reminded him who he was, where he was. He looked down to the little girl, who was wrapped in layer-upon-layer of warm clothing, and realised how lucky he was. He had food in his belly, warm clothes upon his back, and if nothing else, the undivided love of his daughter. The way the two-year-old girl looked at him, he knew that she hardly saw anyone else in her world. It was something that Zuiz acknowledged was not going to last forever, but gosh, he enjoyed it now.

She was the first person he knew loved him. His father never had, and he had never been sure of either his mother or his sister’s emotions. But he was definite that his daughter did. It was in the way she smiled when he blew raspberries on her soft stomach, the way that he was the only one able to calm her crying when she fell, and the fact that anyone but him had difficulty putting her to sleep.

The garden of their grand house was covered in a layer of frost. Pixie Dust, his sister had called it when she was little, for the shimmering appearance it gave their world. Four tracks of footprints, two large and two small lead to the swing set that stood proudly at the bottom of the garden, where Metzuiz stood with his daughter, his Arianna. He brushed a layer of icy slush off the swing seat, and then placed the little girl into it, making sure the harness was fastened securely. He weight was nothing to him, having bench pressed heavier even right at the start of his career training, and it was hard to believe that something so small would eventually grow into a fully fledged human.

It hadn’t been too long ago that he had been pushed on this swing, and now it was his turn to do the pushing. He pushed her carefully, and almost immediately a thin stream of giggles emitted from her mouth. This was what he lived for. Her laughter, her happiness, had become the sole purpose of his life ever since his sister had been killed in the games.

After ten minutes in the swing, he took his daughter out, and watched her toddle around the garden. Although it meant getting out of bed earlier than usual, he felt that this was the only time he got to spend with his daughter by himself. Soon, the rest of the house would start waking up, and the day would begin. He would have to reapply the mask, the facade that she was but his niece, the daughter of his dead sister. He liked the time they spent as father and daughter, as nothing else.

‘Duck duck.’ The little one said, in that incomprehensible babble of babyhood that only parents can understand.

‘Really? Duck duck it is then,’[/b] said Zuiz, using a tone of voice that he would not dare use around anyone else, for fear of looking weak.

After a quick trip back into the house for a pair of gloves for Zuiz and a bag of slightly old iced buns for the very spoilt ducks, Zuiz was walking down the pavement, carrying his daughter in a piggyback.

The duck pond was just at the end of the street. A walking track ran at a ninety degree angle to the road, and a short walk down that path lead one to a rare green space encircling a large pond. It had been a favourite place of his sister and him when they were little. They would swim there in the summer, build forts in the reids around the pony. It was one of the only places that they were genuinely children.

Today the pond was frozen solid, so much so that the ducks walked over the top of where they generally swam. He tore up a bun and handed it to his daughter, his gloves now decorated with pink icing. With all her might she managed to throw it about half a foot in front of her, but these ducks were well adjusted to human interaction, and were quite content to eat the pieces of dough from around her feet. Zuiz laughed at their boldness, at the clear joy of his daughter at something so simple as feeding ducks.

He had dropped his tough act. This was when he was at his most vulnerable.


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