Mud // [Open]

The rain in the morning and then the afternoon sun had made the air heavy, and even as the sun was close to setting Nori could feel the sweat dripping down her spine under the old t-shirt she’d been handed down from Ezra. She didn’t mind; they were used to the sweat around here and she liked the hand-me-downs; she liked knowing she could withstand something, and that she was saving her family some money. As she was walking home down the dirt road she made a game of tiptoeing over the cracks in the mud. She could be a child, still, when no one was watching.

The Hallidays had approached Reaping Day with mixed emotions. They hadn’t been ready to “get it over with” exactly, but the weeks leading up to it had been achingly quiet as they considered the gravity of possibility. Though they had done alright for themselves since they’d been old enough to make at least a meager living, Nori and Ezra both had to take out tesserae when they turned twelve to help feed the others. They could have easily had their names called this year. But the with Reaping, if you survived it, came at least another year of certainty, and Nori could sleep better knowing she only had two more years until she was free to grow up and be an old grump like Nana.

But she hated the grave atmosphere in the house just before it. Why did they have to spend that time contemplating and moping, thinking about how one of them might be taken away? If it were up to her she’d want to make sure she was making as many memories as possible before that day, that way there would be good ones that stuck in her head if the unthinkable happened.

Fun was hard to come by, though. Kids grew up too fast here, and they had to even if you weren’t likely to be reaped--you had to grow your skin on thick and freckled before the heat made it blister, and the tree bark tore it away from your hands when you climbed, or the Peacekeepers whipped it off of you. Nori didn’t mind being strong, but she wondered sometimes what it would be like if her skin wasn’t rough and thick but smooth, like the inside of her forearms but all over. Like Jade, who in her eyes was still a baby. But then if she was soft, she wouldn’t really be Nori.

She hadn’t expected to see anyone her age out here this late in the evening, but Nori saw a girl stooped down in the mud, squishing it between her hands, and she had to laugh. She recognized the red hair from school; there weren't too many redheads around here, and there weren’t many who ran around with no shoes on, either, so it had to be Amaryllis. Nori hadn’t talked to her much; she was a year ahead, but she’d always noticed that the girl had the kind of gumption that she admired, the kind that she liked to think she had herself.

Amaryllis was barefoot, and for a moment Nori wondered what Nana would say if she came home with her own feet caked in mud. But having worked in the garden every day, she was no stranger to dirt under her nails. What the hell. Nori walked up to her and took off her own shoes, plunging her toes into the warm, squishy earth. 

"I don't think you have enough mud there," Nori observed with a laugh. Bending down, she scooped up a handful and plopped it down right on top of Amaryllis's hands. "Here's some more! I'm Nori, we go to school together, do you remember me?" Nori let out another slightly nervous laugh, hoping her messy joke hadn't offended the other girl.