Wandering in the Morning [open]

Dark shadows twisted into obscure pictures of Jon's deceased brother Bobby as he slept. As though from a distance, Jon could make out some features on his brother's face—the same pale gray eyes with flecks of emerald green, Bobby's square jaw, and the slight furrow above his brow. In the dream, Jon would run toward Bobby only to have the image dissolve into more shadows. Frantic to reach him, Jon began to scream, "Come back! Come back!" Moments later, Jon awake still screaming, but with nobody around. For a moment, he laid in his bed silently as tears poured down his face. Wiping them away, though, he decided that it would be no use trying to go back to sleep. As he walked through the kitchen, he grabbed a small, stale piece of bread before heading out of the house. The sky was a dull gray, making everything in the Seam look even more drab than usual. The sun had not yet risen changing the gray to shades of orange and russet so Jon estimated that it couldn't be any later than 5:30 in the morning.

Not knowing what to do so early in the morning, but dreading going back to sleep, Jon began to walk down a trodden-dirt path through the Seam that leads toward the district square and merchants. Not wanting to think anymore about his dreams or his brother, he tried to concentrate on nature. Though the sun had not risen, the temperate was already a bit warm and humid since District 12 lies in the south. Jon thought to himself, If it's this warm now, it will be burning up out here by midday. As he continued to walk, he didn't look ahead but rather at the grass growing to either side of where the dirt had been trodden. Looking off to the side, where the grass was thicker, the word meadow came to mind and the tune of that old nursery rhyme his mom used to sing whose words he could not remember came to his mind, and without thinking about it he began to hum the tune. As he approached the edge of the district square, he realized what he was humming, and the pain of not only his brother's loss which he had been dreaming about but now also his mother's loss overwhelmed him. He refused to cry again, though, and feeling weak to his knees, he simply sit down on the grass to the side of the road, his knees pulled to his chest and his arms folded on top of his knees.