.|It's A Farmer's Life|. (Open)

Flek didn't turn as the boy dropped out of the tree to stand beside him.

"I'd love to give you a winter apple, but other than the fact that they have been genetically altered and have to be processed before edible, the Peacekeepers will see it and I'll disappoint Grandma--maybe get her in trouble... so, uh, sorry? It's awfully tempting sometimes. We work with food all day and yet we're starving. I find that funny. Sometimes I wish--"

Flek listened with mild interest, that only showed through because he was bored. Usually, he was quite a good listener. This boy seemed to catch on quite quickly, and slowed his babble to a stop.

"Never mind," the boy finishes. Flek doesn't probe him for more. He didn't want to get anyone into trouble.

The person that had come from across the field stopped a short distance away from the tree. He can see a few more features now, pale skin...not normal pale skin. He couldn't think of how torturous it would be for her to be working in the sun. His own skin was thick with years of burns, and it wasn't necessarily light to start with.

"Hello. My name is Collett." The voice came in a near whisper, and Flek had to strain to catch hold of it.

The boy beside him responded first. "Hi. I'm Jason Willowever." Flek rolled both of the names through his mind, associating them with the foggy faces of the people that they belonged to.

Flek gave an exhausted smile, accompanied with an equally worn voice. "Hello, Collette," He began. "My name's Flek," He said to both people.

.:A few trees into the orchard, was another girl, also picking some winter apples placing their delicate fruit gently into a woven basket secured between two thick branches. Every ten apples or so, the girl would stand up and climb the tree a litle bit, stretching out her muscles and listening to Mother Nature's sounds. Her shoes, dainty, dark green flats had a good grip on the bottom, surprisingly. Perhaps not as good as her own bare feet, but better than some other shoes she had tried on before, the ugly, expensive ones from the Capitol. In the summer, she expected them to blend into the leaves, but she hadn't had them that long. She had gotten them for her thirteenth birthday last November, her family saving every single penny to give her this present. She'd worn them everyday since.

.:Having decided she had picked enough apples for the day, enough to get her a fairly good wage, she climbed to the top of the tree, her faded, flared blue jeans waving slightly in the small breeze. From the top, she could see across the whole orchard, as the trees had been altered by the Capitol to be almost the exact same height all the way across the field. Not far from the edge, her ears picked up a conversation, multiple people talking. That's odd... no one really talks to each other during work hours... She decided she better take a look, maybe something interesting was going on, but perhaps she should watch from a distance, in case there was trouble.

.:Dropping her basket of apples at the base of the tree, she skipped from branch to branch, almost monkey-like, deciding to come back for the apples later. Finally, she reached a tree that had a pretty good view of the place where the conversation was taking place. She climbed up a little into the tree, and then stopped dead. There was someone already here, a malnourished boy was watching the three others below. He looked quite a bit older than her, probably by about four years. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't know this tree was taken. Do you mind if I sit here?" she whispered so quietly, she was afraid for a moment that he might not have heard her.

.:Sitting down, she nodded to him, hoping her prescence wasn't a bother. "I'm Becca."