seeing is believing // [stare]

The little drop of blood slowly slid down her finger, morphing from a perfect ball into a tear drop.

"That's because it is easy." Zanita whirled around, her knife automatically raising between herself and the strange voice. Years of living on the edge of the district had made her reflexes sharp and the girl was prepared to face whoever was taunting her. However, what she found was very different. A small girl, splattered with freckles, was looking at her. She raised her hands showing off all the bandages that were wrapped around her fingers. "Keeping it in, that's the hard part."

Zanita lowered her knife. This girl wasn't a threat, and she certainly wasn't mocking her. She looked weak, and didn't exactly look like a model volunteer for the Hunger Games. Then the girl's eyes shifted to something behind Zanita. "Especially when they're around. I think they intend to kill us in our sleep."

Zanita looked behind her, and saw the observation deck where the Gamemakers sat watching them. She assumed that was were the stranger had been looking.

"I wouldn't worry about that, they need us alive," Zanita said, giving the girl a shrug. "For now, anyway."

As the girl talked on Zanita began to realize that she might not exactly know what this tribute was talking about. Something about hitting things, and how the "things" get angry when they do. Everyone gets angry when you hit them, or at least Zanita does. But as Zanita lost herself in this girl's strange speech she found herself a float again in the discussion of names. Big names and small names. Her eyes shifted over the rest of the gym, on the Victor's daughter from Five and the three Eckharts from Six. To a Hope and a Summit and a Fray. To a Hammerfell.

The girl was right. They were small names in a much bigger games. Many tributes had been forgotten as time moved on without them, and the risk to be hidden in the median of statistics was all too high for Zanita and this wisp of a girl.

The name Luzell meant nothing. Zanita was nothing but a street rat who lucked into a chance at glory.
"Not you, though. You're name's small, but you know how to fight them, don't you?"
The girl pointed to her knife and suddenly she didn't feel like such a nothing.

Zanita looked at the simple knife. It felt like an extension of her own arm. She had killed animals, gutted and skinned them all with a knife like this one. She had pressed the tip of her dull blade into the chest a certain boy who dared tread on her territory. Zanita was a small name, but she had a lot of fight in her.

Her brown eyes met the glazed over eyes of Fallon Payne. Another small name, but with little fight behind it. However, there was something there. In her eyes, in her mind, how she saw things that Zanita didn't understand.

No Fray, Turner, or another other big name could see anything quite as clearly as this girl had.

"I can," Zanita said, gripping her knife tighter, looking at her reflection in the clean Capitol blade before meeting the girl's gaze. "But you see everyone. They're blinded by their money and their big name. Us small names, we see through the facade. You see them for what they are."