my youth is yours. { leia + lapas }

Mingling in a crowd is easy. Standing out in a crowd is another task altogether. They flock, curious, enticed, bored, perhaps a mixture of all three. I feel their questions in their gazes, their unsure tongues, and I look back at all of them the same way.

To win over a majority is difficult, even if you know their wants and needs. I know District One wants glory and fame and for their precious lives to keep on being easy. I know District One wants their alternative motives kept hidden, their secrets to stay secret, their lives kept in the shadows. I know how both halves operate and I know how both sides turn a blind-eye to each other. I know what they desire.

What I don't know is what the ones in-between want.

You can't truly know someone unless you walk in their path, so I make my way into the crowds and follow their gazes directly to their origins. Faces, questions, wants and needs and desires, I listen. I respond. Some seem convinced, others not so much. I don't blame them - I admire their wits.

A pair of little eyes almost lost in the great big ocean of glares and squints and soft looks, capture my attention. I smile at the little hand waving, copying those around him, and take a step toward him in his mothers arms.

"Why hello," I smile - and it's feigned for the cameras or a scripted television spot. He is simply charming, young and bold and beautiful. "Aren't you sweet?"

He holds the future of One bundled up in tiny hands.

"Tell me," I begin, turning to his mother. "What would you see in his future, if you could craft it how you'd like?"

Mouth dry of answers, it's my turn to ask the questions.