Peeta's Reaping.
Reaping day did not mean sleeping in at Mellark bakery. It meant work. Miners and merchants alike had saved their coins for weeks to have a good meal and a leisurely, sweet breakfast on such a bitter day. The day began long before dawn. Peeta tried not to resent that his friends went to bed hours after he did, that he and his brothers had to pin dark cloth over their windows in the summer to go to bed hours before sunset in order to wake up to haul flour, stir fires into the ovens and knead endless balls of dough.
Leffsa, Peeta's oldest brother, was always the first to rise. In his quiet, gentle way, he would rouse both of his younger siblings by ruffling their hair and lighting the lamp. The few times Leffsa was sick, it had been their mother who hovered in the doorway of their room, rolling pin already in hand, sleep still creasing her face, with sharp commands for Ciab and Peeta to get up, get up. It was best if the morning began with Leffsa. Their father had been awake for an hour already, baking the first bread of the day, the only fresh bread they ever tasted, adding yeast and salt or sugar to water he warmed on the coals from the day before.
Peeta was relieved to feel Leffsa's hand on his head. He had been awake for awhile, the knots in his stomach had roused him in the middle of the night and rose and fell like snakes. Despite himself, Peeta liked reaping day work a little more. It was his special job to frost the doughnuts they made but once a year. To bring just a little bit of beauty in a bleak, awful day. He watched his oldest brother rouse Ciab, and noted that his hand lingered on his cheek, just for a moment. Leffsa was safe. Leffsa was going to be a baker, and soon, Peeta surmised, he would propose to and marry the Storekeeper's daughter. Ciab's future, and Peeta's, floated on tiny slips of paper in the reaping ball. Probably not even on the stage yet, Peeta thought to himself.
Peeta worried year-round about the reaping. He worried that his brothers would be reaped, wondered how the bakery would function without the three of them all working together. He had voiced this once, in the makeshift darkness of their room, and Ciab had scoffed at him, well, we were all three of us babies once, dad and mom managed, right? Right. Don't worry too much about it, Peets, Leffsa had said. But still, Peeta worried about his family. He worried about his friends, he worried about her.
Peeta had, of course, tried to keep his crush a secret, but his brothers missed nothing. Unfortunately, his parents didn't miss anything either. Every time his mother caught him staring, he could count on a hard smack to the face, or a rap on the hand. Maybe a burn from a pan, yet uncooled from the oven. Peeta knew she didn't like Seam folk, but wondered if it had more to do with the wistful way his father looked at Mrs. Everdeen; the rare, strange look of concern and jealousy he had in his eyes when tiny, golden Primrose flitted in to trade her goat cheese.
There would be hard work before he could frost, he knew. Special flour for the pastries to be brought in, extra coal for the fires. As Peeta dressed in his simple clothing and his apron, he felt strangely grateful for his family. He watched Leffsa splash water on his face and begin his morning routine of shaving the light, downy hair off of his chin. It was always Ciab who broke the silence of morning, poking fun at Leffsa's practice nearly every day, It's no use, brother, you'll never tame that beast of a beard.Today, Ciab was silent. maybe he was tired, but maybe he had been lying awake as Peeta had. Ciab's name was in the reaping ball the bare minimum for a 17-year old boy, 21 times. At the end of today, Ciab's name would be out of the reaping forever, no matter the outcome.
Peeta combed his hair and rubbed his teeth with a toothbrush. When he was ready, he noticed his brothers were waiting for him. He had an overwhelming urge to hug them, but hugs were not frequented in the Mellark household. The boys wrestled instead, their only moments of closeness in strange, faux combat. Ciab usually won, the only one of the three who could, in his heart, put pressure on his brothers. Peeta thought that maybe, if he were mad at him, he could pin him, but he couldn't remember being mad at Ciab, not since they were little.
They trooped down the stairs, and found that their father had lain out three tiny loaves with their initials baked into the top with spare dough, L, C, P. Reaping day tradition, their mother bestowed on them their yearly affection, three small pecks on the tops of her sturdy sons' blond heads. They ate their breakfast quietly, then trooped out to work. Many hours of hauling and kneading followed, and before the sun could even rise, the bell above the door rang. Peeta saw it was Gale Hawthorne, a boy in Ciab's year. His last reaping too, but his name would be in many more times than Ciab's. Peeta watched the Hawthorne boy with almost as much interest as he watched Katniss, as he couldn't help but tie the two of them together.
But just as he was craning his neck to see what the older boy had brought to trade, his mother gave him a little shove. Time to frost. Peeta was glad that his family let him do this himself. He had a knack for it, that was for certain. He began simply, layering chocolate and marzipan on in simple waves. Then, with the precious few colors he had purchased himself, he mixed some icing in orange, blue, purple and green. He would make flowers this year, he decided. He had been working on flowers for awhile, trying to perfect cakes. Someday, he hoped to frost all of the wedding cakes in the district, somehow bring them to newlywed Seam couples free of charge.
His flowers bloomed as the sun rose over the bakery, and his first creations were sold and gone before he could admire the bouquet all together. After the doughnuts were done, there were cookies and cakes to be frosted as well. Many families would be in this afternoon after the reaping, to celebrate their children being passed over another year, to celebrate their youngest's last year in the reaping, a family kept together, spared from separation.
The work calmed his stomach a little. But soon there were no more tiny cookies, no more round little cakes to design flowers on. His mother and father stood at the counter, counting their coins in a lull between customers. Usually they counted before bed, after his father combed out his mother's hair, but today they would have to count twice, having to open the store a second time when the reaping was over.
Leffsa's strong arms seemed to glow red hot as he reached a poker into their biggest oven to close the grate in the back. The bakery was rarely unattended, and a fire could consume everything his family needed to survive. Precautions needed to be taken. The oven smoked a bit when Leffsa closed the door and smothered the flames entirely, depriving them of oxygen. Peeta, who didn't like fire- he had been burned too many times for his taste- felt for the flames as they spattered out of existence. He felt a little deprived of air, today, too.
Peeta wiped his hands with a washcloth, attempting to remove dye from the frosting that had stained his fingernails.
His father came up behind him, and spoke in his quiet, low, voice, "Better go get cleaned up, bub."
Peeta nodded silently. He and Ciab climbed the stairs together, and dressed in their only nice clothes. Peeta found some oil and slicked his hair back, but mused it up again, feeling silly. The effect of oil and the ruffling made his curls stick up at odd angles, clumped together. Oiled it was, then, he supposed. He regarded himself in the mirror. It was hard to recognize the face that looked back at him, so serious with his clean clothes, a clean face and slicked hair. Ciab nudged him over, he was maybe an inch or so taller, and looked a bit more like their mother, a narrower face, a smaller nose. But otherwise they could be twins, with the same, scared, empty expressions on their faces.
Ciab, ever joking, said, "Well, Peets, may the odds be ever in your favor." Peeta knew it was meant to be an attempt at lightness, but he only felt heaviness in his heart.
"You too," he replied with a forced smile.
The Mellark family gathered around their table, after Mr. Mellark had flipped the store sign to closed. Lunch was stale bread and cheese. It was just as well, everything tasted like dust. He looked at his mother, who was so often so hard, seemed to be softened a bit as she stood, halfway through the meal and took the honey off of the shelf, and passed it to Peeta for his bread. He offered her a shy smile, feeling about four years old. He wanted more than anything for his mother to hold him as she had when he was young, so young, and burnt his hand for the first time on the ovens. Her baby, she had called him then. Now, she spared him only a slight upturn of her lip. It was enough.
The quiet meal was quickly over. Sounds of people gathering outside of their home, in the square began to fill the silence. Their mother found the big, brass key they used to lock the doors at night, and shooed them all out, after checking to be sure the ovens were cool one last time. There was no walk to the square. Only for Peeta and Ciab to walk to the peacekeeper's tables to have their fingers pricked. Leffsa, seemingly unsure of what to do gave his brothers a desperate, apologetic glance, and followed their parents into the crowd.
Peeta veered toward the line with the other 16-year-old boys. He nodded to some of his friends from school, and then, by force of habit, sought her out. It would be little Primrose's first year at the reaping. There she was. Peeta felt his breath catch in his throat. "Steady, Peets," Ciab intoned, before leaving him for the 17 years. It wasn't the reaping that had knocked the wind out of him, though. It was the sight of Katniss, beautiful always in her simple clothing and long, thick braid, but stunning with her face clean, her hair done in more intricate weaves at the nape of her neck and a blue dress that only drew out the steely, sharpness of her eyes. He watched her embrace her sister, then send her on her way to have her blood taken. Though he couldn't hear her, he could imagine her words, how certain she would sound as she comforted her sister.
He tried to divert his eyes as she came toward him, to line up with the others in their year. He breathed deeply. His feelings for Katniss were almost as hopeless as the two glass orbs on the stage. Every part of him felt tense, the others around him were tense. Silent tears slipped down Delly Cartwright's face; she looked terrified. Madge Undersee, looking as beautiful as Katniss, but in a very different way, stared at a point far off in the distance, her blue eyes as empty as the sky. Everyone trying to get through the day in any way possible. He and the other children were silent, but the adults around them grumbled, called out to one another. An out of place laugh would echo through the square now and again. Peeta tried to focus only on the microphone in the center of the stage. His classmates, reaping balls and even the sky seemed so horrible in this moment.
Peeta knew in the depths of his heart, as he watched the Mayor and Effie Trinket take the stage, that things were about to change. He took one last glance at Katniss, and hardened himself for what was to come.
_
A few notes: Peeta's brothers are named after bread, as he is, Leffsa is a twist on Lefse, which is a Scandinavian potato flatbrad (think delicate potato tortillas), that's traditional where I'm from here in the north. Ciab is of course a shortening of Ciabatta bread. Thank you for reading! Also, if you like my writing, please check out Unity, a fic I'm working on with Super V: .net/s/7970927/1/Unity