Hearts Out to Dry (open)
Jan 16, 2012 3:18:38 GMT -5
Post by Yzma on Jan 16, 2012 3:18:38 GMT -5
The mousy-haired girl was just let out of school, making a beeline way straight for the wheat fields, bordered by coniferous trees. Approaching the fields, Anemone made sure to hide herself in the shadows, careful not to allow any of the field workers discover her presence.
She was forging for herbs for her dad’s clinic. Not stealing. Forging. Technically, all that grew in the district belonged to the Capitol, but next to all injured plowers, ailing elders, and even the occasional ill peacekeeper came to the Harrison Clinic for treatments. And ever since her mother had left, keeping the clinic supplied and well stocked had become a challenge. With her father turning to alcohol to numb his pain and being drunken three-fourths of the day, it became next to impossible, and the clinic’s business began to spiral down.
And that is what brought the fourteen year old to the base of a fir tree her father scribbled down in his herbal information book as a “Heateater”. The round pinecones that grew towards the top of the tree could be mashed and turned into a poultice to eliminate fever. Anemone accepted the responsibility of gathering what her father could not himself.
Scaling the tree, Anemone swung herself unto the first and lowest branch of the tree, hanging the strap of her backpack securely onto it. Scanning the surrounding field, the nearest worker was a good fifty yards or so away from her, well out of earshot should a certain girl noisily clatter up a conifer. Not that Anemone was noisy. The squirrels made more racket than she did.
Anemone easily swung herself upward inaudibly, tier after tier. She had been climbing for years, knowing how to test a branch for its stability and ability to hold her weight in under two seconds. In less than thirty seconds she was seventy feet up the tree, gripping its skinny trunk with her left hand when she halted. A dull pain shot through her upper chest. Unbuttoning the first three buttons on her makeshift dress she fastened out of her older brother Sage’s flannel, Anemone slowly peeled back the sleeve over her left shoulder to see how her bash was coming along.
It had been a good month. Her father had only gotten drunk seven times and beat her once, leaving a large, plum-colored, fist-sized bruise on her left clavicle. It was larger than most of the bruises she received, but it only pained her when it, for example, thrashed against a solid tree limb.
Anemone looked up the length of the tree; it must’ve been at least a hundred-twenty feet tall, and she still had a good forty feet or so to climb. Nevertheless, the brown-haired girl sat down on a moderately sturdy branch, swinging her feet back and forth, looking out onto the field. Hugging the tree’s trunk, she emancipated a sigh.
She was a lucky one, wasn’t she? Sure, she had to face her father’s occasional hand, but most of the nights Anemone could run and hide from the thrashings. The majority of her peers at school had one meal a day and had to harvest late into the cold night. You couldn’t run away from hunger and fatigue.
No, Anemone decided to herself, I am one of the lucky ones. I live in town. I have enough to eat. I am a lucky one.
The girl absentmindedly reached into her “dress” pocket and retrieved a piece of hemp twine. I am one of the lucky ones… she reminded herself as she tied up her dull brown hair into a high ponytail.
But as much as she told herself that, as good as a liar she was, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Not once, she thought, furiously tugging at twine and hair, not once did dad ever thank me for gathering materials for him. And with a particularly angry jerk, the stretch of hemp uncoiled from her hair, descending helplessly to the ground far below.
Anemone released a groan and began to meticulously make her way down.
But then again, he never asked.
Her father had hardly spoken ten words to Anemone since she was eight, the year her mother abandoned the Harrisons and the drunken beatings began.
Scaling down, tier after tier, almost plummeting when a sharp twig had nestled itself into her clavicle bruise and the fourteen year old had lost her grip, Anemone hovered twenty feet above the soft grassy ground. As she was prepared to leap down unto the last few tree limbs, she heard the slightest crack of a twig and instantly placed her back flat against the tree’s trunk, submerging herself in the shadows. Too afraid to peer out into the light at her company, Anemone convinced herself it must’ve been a wild rabbit or ferret. Just about to swing down unto the last set of tiers, the young girl saw the faintest outline of a foot in the corner of her green eyes. A human foot.
Please, not a peacekeeper, she begged inside the confines of her mind. Anybody but a peacekeeper.
Perhaps she wasn’t one of the lucky ones, after all.
