brass collars | [d11 train 88th]
Jun 9, 2021 18:18:23 GMT -5
Post by sbeeg on Jun 9, 2021 18:18:23 GMT -5
What a way to live and die
She feels older than her two decades. This will be her sixth round of tributes and yet some bars still won't serve her. Her fourteen year old face stares out of the frame set in the dining hall. They're all there: Kirito, Harbinger and Katelyn squishy faced and crowned preserved in time by the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
There's another Izar this year, a volunteer of all things. Kassandra keeps an eye on her. The family is large, but not big enough to keep losing children every year. They're close to her heart, especially Vasco, and to see the family tree trimmed down branch by branch made her chest hurt. Why would someone volunteer if they had a family? Especially a family so wounded by the Reaping.
Kassandra drops into a booth, kicking her feet up on the end so no one would slip in next to her. Despite the height many had promised her after she won she had failed to grow and still hovered around everyone's elbows, but she refused to be shoved against the wall by the bigger people on board. Even the ginger named a number was taller than her.
The Victor made a silent bet with herself on which kid would start crying first.
"Six. What's it mean?" she asked, pouring herself a generous helping from a flask. Some bars in Eleven may not serve her but the train and the Capitol certainly did. They were accustomed to rich underaged Victors shuffling in looking for something to fill the hole the Games had tunneled through their childhoods. Kass didn't think she'd lean on vices like the older victors, but she was becoming older and the longer the years stretched and the closer Peacekeepers sniffed into her life the more she enjoyed them. Her bag sat in her assigned room in the sleeping car and all it held was her cards and a pack of cigarettes. Avoxes showed up with everything else, there was never any need to pack. Eleven didn't have the box Trish carried with her, instead Kass had a small white box with wheat symbols painted on the front. In the Capitol she'd get Trish's the kind, the ones that burned more but released more of her sorrows on the exhale.
Kass took a sip of her drink. She should look at Estelle but she's finding it difficult to. She can only think of in a few weeks when the train pulls into the station and Vasco and the Izars are mourning another child. Another grave, another argizaiola. And this time it wasn't beyond their control but a choice. She couldn't help but resent the child. So instead of saying anything she pressed a fingertip against a plate of pastel macarons and shoved it across the table towards the tributes. Pull a Persimmon, offer them sweets.
lyrics from Be an Astronaut by Declan McKenna | table by griffin
