Hello there guys!
I know, I know, I should be updating my other stories, I know. BUT writer's block is a thing so I decided to start this to see if it frees up my mind a bit, also trying out a new writing style, so hope you like it! :)
Alex
Dying is a funny thing.
At one moment you're having the time of your life and then, in the blink of an eye, everything you have come to know doesn't exists anymore.
You are left with memories of a life once lived and apparently memories of a life that is not yet done with you.
I opened my eyes slowly, the surroundings were strange but at the same time familiar, there was something I couldn't place, something in the back of my head that was not comfortable, something telling me that the safest way was to get the hell out of doge. A dark room, and everything looks falling apart, but I know this place, I do.
My mother walked into the room, a plate of something smoking in her hands and a small smile came upon her lips when her eyes met mine, I smiled back at her because my body was doing its own thing.
The strange woman, my mother, she was my mother, she sat on the edge of the bed next to me and place the back of her hand against my forehead. The feeling was comforting, but there was something missing, my mother's hair was blonde and it was wrong, this blonde woman smiling at me, it was wrong.
She helped me eat and the wrongness of it all refuses to go.
"You'll get better Prim, you'll see" she said and I nodded, Prim, my name… no a nickname, so foreign but yet so familiar.
I decide not to trouble myself on it, I feel weak, so weak, but I'm alive and that is what counts.
I close my eyes and dream of my other life, warm brown eyes and laughter, wide open spaces and sunlight, then my dreams turn dark and there is fear and grief, everything is dangerous here.
When I wake up again it is not my mother who is by my side, but my sister, my older sister and that is a strange thought, I had never been a younger sister before, I never had a sister before, but I do love my sister and the love that I feel for my sister is more than the love I feel for my mother.
"Hello little duck" says the familiar voice and I can't help but smile, a real smile.
"Hey" I croak out and my sister, Katniss, my brain supplies, smiles and I realize that I am beyond fucked.
Prim, Primrose, Katniss, Primrose and Katniss, Everdeen.
I want to cry but it is only my pride that keeps me from it, I refused to cry, I wouldn't cry, because Katniss is looking at me, young eyes filled with concern and I can only pull myself up and hug her with arms that feel to small to be my own.
I am ten years old, two years before the fateful reaping that will change the lives of the twelve districts forever. I am ten years old and I'm clinging onto my sister, the only person in this fateful world that loves me more than I love her.
"Prim? Prim?! What's wrong?" Katniss asks and the concern is evident in her voice, I tighten my hug around her.
My voice comes out as a faint whisper "I'm scared"
It is two weeks later that I find out that I had a close encounter with death. A Fever, Katniss had explained, a fever that had taken Primrose Everdeen's life and had entangled it with mine to purposes unknown.
District 12 was dull and bleak but I soldiered on, keeping my head down whenever peacekeepers were near and trying not to outshine my peers at school much, if Katniss noticed anything amiss she didn't say, and if she noticed that I was clingier than before it didn't seem to bother her.
Buttercup, the devil in disguise that was my cat, didn't mind the change much, but it could sense that something had change, I was sure of it.
In the months that follow I try to acclimatize myself to this life and this body once again, I am Primrose Everdeen, Primrose Everdeen is me. Soon enough a routine is born, I wake up early in the morning and retrieve milk from my goat, some for drinking, some I save to make cheese later in the day. Afterwards I say goodbye to Katniss as she goes out to hunt.
At first Katniss tries to stop me, she cares too much, she wants me to sleep better, to have a better life, but I want to do this, I want to help her care for our mother for ourselves, she relents after much arguing, she almost lost me, she's scared and that I can understand, so I try to comply most times.
It is weird not being the oldest, but all my instincts are there, and even though the brother I once had and I didn't have the best of relationships when we were younger my parents used to count on me to care for him. Having Katniss care for me, Katniss who was fourteen and looked too young for all the things she did to keep our family safe and fed, felt wrong in so many levels.
Gale was fun, he was incredibly tall for a sixteen year old but he was kind and even though it was probably due to his crush on Katniss he cared for us. He walked with us to school every morning along with all his siblings. It was a disheartening thing to see.
I tried not to think about it much, the games, the poverty, everything really, I tried to live my life in my day to day. I did my chores, helped my mother, whose name I found out was Clara, and waited for Katniss to come home at night.
It doesn't take much more days for the annual reaping to come this year, and I realize and count that even though I'm ten, I'm several months away from my eleventh birthday.