cloud brooks. 11.

In a way, my Mom named me.

She lay in a field with tiny little me in her arms, body broken and decaying from the inside-out, and she looked up to the sky and said to my Dad:

"Look at the clouds."

And then never said anything ever again.

She's buried in that field. I don't remember putting her in the ground but Sunshine sort of does. She doesn't like to talk about Mom, so I don't. Not around her. She gets upset and I don't like it when she cries. Enough people at school pick on her, she doesn't need it at home.

I didn't kill her, by the way. This isn't the beginning of a warped guilt complex or anything. Two months into pregnancy she started to cough up blood. Healers said there was something eating up at her, probably cancer, but that it wasn't my fault. Was probably already in there months, maybe even years, prior to me coming along. She managed a few more weeks after I was born. I think she wanted to make sure I was okay before she left. That Dad and Sunshine would be okay on their own for a while. At least that's what I like to think - and I have to thank her for that. She knew she couldn't be here long enough for me to remember, but despite that she stuck around to see me live a little. Maybe, in a way, she was hoping for the opposite. She was hoping to remember me, even after she left.

I can see the irony in someone with my name being a wishful thinker. Head in the clouds. I'm actually the more realistic one in our little family of three. Sunshine only looks for the good in life and Dad does his best to tell us everything's going to be okay. It worked on me for a while. It's always worked on Sunshine. Somewhere along the way I started to falter, to look behind the curtains and out the windows of our tiny house and see what was really going on outside. Past our little field with our goats, past the dusty driveway and the rusty old letter box, past the neighbouring valleys and shacks. I saw Izars getting reaped, I saw ash billowing from the District Square when that bomb went off, I saw the stern faces of Peacekeepers handing us grain when another one of us won the games. I saw the parcels getting smaller and smaller with every Victor. I saw Dad pretending he didn't notice, too. 

But I stay quiet. So I don't stress Dad and Sunshine out and don't get myself into trouble. You learn quickly in Eleven that speaking up and standing out will land you in hot water. I'm not afraid to burn, I just don't want those that I care about choking on the smoke. I learned from a young age to dim the fire in my heart, to keep my head down and swallow my pride. But just because my mouth is shut doesn't mean my eyes are.

I try to keep myself busy, bury myself in feeding the baby goats and naming them after colours and plants and types of cheese, selling our goats milk at the weekend markets and to parents at the school yard after class. The baby goats are my thing, and the chickens are Sunshine's. She loves collecting the eggs left in straw nests and throwing bits of corn and feed to the baby chicks and setting up fox traps along the edge of our fields. I prefer the goats, their little bleats and swishy tales enchanting me since I was a kid. They've also got a little bit of grit, goats. I like to see a bit of myself in them, and vice versa. Chickens are a bit too airy for me - they're more acquainted to the likes of Sunshine.

I love Sunshine, despite her naivety. I have to be the big sister sometimes, even if she's three years older than me. I don't mind that, but I do worry for her. She needs to learn how to fight her own battles, not run away with tears in her eyes. I might not be here forever - god help her if I'm reaped. If she's reaped. I wouldn't put it past the Capitol to raise the nicest girl in the whole world and ship her off for slaughter just to prove a point.

I love her - but not enough to volunteer in her place. Because the truth is I'm just as scared of the arena as she is. I'm not like those kids that can throw their life away for their sibling. I wish I was, I do. But I'm not, and it eats up at me every day. Maybe it's why I try distance myself from her at times, be harder on her than I should be. Because if we're not close, the guilt gnaws a little less inside my chest. It's still there, but I can deal with it in small doses.

So she sits in our fields, picking flowers and swatting away flies, looking up at the sky and beaming- "Look at the clouds!" she points, turning her head to search for my face. Instead she finds my back, mousy brown hair dancing in the wind, figure shrinking in the distance with every step - because I'm already halfway home.

It's better this way, I tell myself.

The guilt gnaws regardless.