Threnody [Eva & Salome]

There is history across these walls. With every step you take in the training center, you can’t help the gnawing feeling inside your stomach, or the moments when the hair stands upon your neck. There are many, many that came through these doors, shuttled in, pushed out. Carried off to a fate where the world watched their deaths, where you watched. First as a babe when Benat fell to his allies. Then as a child, you saw the fear and power that was Iago, the hate and malice that transformed someone so small into a monster. Levi, sweet, gentle Levi who fell in just seconds. All of them walked these halls, ate this food, slept in the same beds. What would they say now, dear girl, seeing you holding all of it together?

Never had an Izar woman dared to volunteer. Yes, you were secondary—always there but not so loud, never bold. Steady. You were trailing behind with the mop and bucket, cleaning up the tantrums, or whispering to neighbors not to tell peacekeepers that one of them was out after curfew. “You can’t protect us all forever!” Your sister had once fumed. The night of her thirteenth birthday, when she and the others were going out to the fields to celebrate and drink moonshine, you begrudgingly trailed behind her. But in truth, you never knew what to do when you weren’t protecting someone else. Magdalena had been right, though. They would learn to live without you, one way or another.

Your body aches after the long day spent throwing yourself across the matt. Hand to hand was not your forte, much less against those twice your size. Then there was your embarrassing attempt at aiming a bow that ended in you nearly spearing an avox with your arrow. Far better was the end of the day, when the lights would go dark on the training floor, and you could wander the halls in peace. Portraits hung along the corridors, and part of you believed they served both as a memory of past tributes but also a reminder of what was to come. You liked to stare at the different scenes, especially those from your childhood.

At least they lived on, not just in their home districts. You had that to cling to. And as the evening slipped away you sat on a bench at the end of a long hallway, just short of the elevators, staring at a scene from the 70th games. Circe, fierce and powerful stood over the trembling girl from eight. You close your eyes. It would be better if, for just a little while, not to feel much of anything at all. If only you could be so strong. Instead you sit, feet crossed, hands flat at your sides on the bench. You hear the sound of footsteps, but don’t move.

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” You whisper out.