terrene. tris.

Months pass and the District freezes over. You turn eighteen on January 1st, no real birthday so the Year of the 6th Hunger Games marks the turn of your age. Some time ago you'd constructed a ladder out of ripped up floorboards, rested it against your empty home, watched snow thaw and spring bloom from the rooftop.

Always a knife, always in your hands. Peeling an apple, carving a branch into a tipped spear, flipping it through your fingers with your eyes closed. There's something comforting about being up high with a bird's eye view of the world. You can't hear your enemies approaching, wherever and whoever they might be, so you might as well see them coming.

And then there's the ringing. Always the ringing.

They slip envelopes underneath your front doorstep, a good morning greeting from the Capitol on bleary-eyed days. Sometimes they were schedules, sometimes little notes about appearances and expectations, other mornings thick folders filled with information for you eyes only. Photographs of strangers, targets on their backs the second you memorises their names and occupations. Train tickets, contracts, a blank list for you to send your required equipment. Whatever gets the job done as quickly & as quietly as possible.

But this morning's was a single piece of paper, hand-written but stamped with a Capitol seal.

New tutor. Midday.

Be nice to this one.

Lunchtime is oranges plucked from the tree in your backyard, sweet like sugar dripping down your chin as you perch on your roof. You wipe the juice away with your wrist and imagine who you'll spot coming. You think fondly of Mohamed in Five, smile at the memory of him furiously attempting to communicate with you on the platform, hope he and his beautiful heart are keeping as well as a Victor can. No, they won't be as kind as he. Another impatient, hopeless Capitol case, you'd think they would have given up on you by now.

You've certainly given up on them, settling with a life of drowning in teleprompters and hand-written notes.

But the knife stops mid-slice when your senses sharpen in on a little figure making her way up the path to the Victor's Village. She's not from the Capitol, you can tell that from a mile away. Young, hair the colour of straw, clothes that could have come out of Terra's old wardrobe.

A Ten, you muse to yourself and your demons. Huh.

This should be interesting.

You keep your eyes on her as she gets closer, furrowed brow, watching like a hawk. This past year you've gone from an invisible girl to the most intimidating person in most of Panem. It's a shield you've learned to be okay with wielding. Better to be feared than pitied - it's easier for people to forget that you killed six children on television when they learn you can't hear what they say about you.

Eventually the girl arrives, face in focus as she approaches. Young is the first word that comes to mind, and you wonder how she got roped into teaching the most terrifying girl in Ten how to speak with her hands.

The second half of your lunch is abandoned with one toss to your side, pocketing the knife for safekeeping and jumping down from the roof to the brown-green grass below in two swoops. You never know what a young face can yield, looks the most deceiving of them all.

You would know. You've spent your whole life hiding behind your youth, and now you hide behind a stone-cold glare.

'Hello', you say, hoping your words are as monotone as you're trying to make them sound. A voice can give away so much, and without sound you're beginning with a hand tied behind your back. You're far more curious about her than you want to admit, wondering where she's come from, what she knows, how much they're paying her to dance with death on a Tuesday afternoon.

What her voice sounds like.

'You'll have to write your name down because I can't lipread letters yet.'

C is like Z, B like P, Q like U, G like J. Impossible. Left hand reaches to your front door, fresh coat of paint hiding any trace of the branding you returned to when your Tour had concluded. Your right gestures indoors as the door swings open, you've been training yourself on how to speak with your body - even without a proper language- for months now.

'Come on in. I don't bite.'

You can't quite catch the smirk from blooming, biting down on the curve with your teeth.