It's spring. She knows because the days are longer, the animals are young, and Peeta plants flowers. Without those clues, though, she wouldn't have noticed. There was a time when she was so in tune with the seasons that she could have predicted the spring equinox within days even if the snow hadn't stopped. She knew the land. She knew the district. She doesn't know anything anymore.
She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know who Peeta is. She doesn't feel surprise or anger or anything but dullness. She sits on the porch and watches the rebuilding around her, watches people pick up their lives, but she can't do that. There's too much to pick up. Her hands can't hold it all.
There are strappy green leaves coming up in a bushy hemisphere next to the house. She doesn't know when the hemisphere was planted, and it's strange that everything is flowering except this plant. Once, when Peeta comes by to make sure she's alright, she asks about it.
"Why isn't that flowering, Peeta?" she says, and he seems startled to hear her speak at all, much less to him. She's startled too. Her voice sounds even less like her own than usual. "Do you know?"
"I'll find out," he says, and it's quietly vehement enough that she knows it's a promise. When Peeta says he'll do something, she knows he will.
He comes by later in the week and he's blushing. That wasn't uncommon during their romance in the games, but it's not normal now.
"I found out why they aren't flowering," he says, rather than starting with his standard greeting. She just looks at him, waiting for him to tell her, waiting for him to know, as he has before.
"They don't flower until the fall. They're called surprise lilies," he says, but that doesn't explain why he's blushing. It's kind of cute, though, and she smiles at him, which just makes him blush more.
That's the start of it.
As the summer goes on, they talk more. She wouldn't call them friends, exactly, but she's not as lonely when he's around. She thinks he's not as lonely when she's around. The animals get bigger. The days get longer and then get shorter. The flowers die and the strappy green leaves disappear. And then, one day, late in the summer, she looks out.
There are tall pink flowers. No leaves. No stems. Just tall pink flowers. They're beautiful and they're unexpected. Flowers from nothing.
Peeta cuts a few and brings them for her. They're fragrant, sweet, and the heat of the sun makes the whole porch smell like them.
"Thank you," she says, laying the flowers on the table next to her, and he smiles. He tentatively holds out his hand and she puts hers into his. He squeezes, just a little, as if he isn't sure they're actually holding hands, and she squeezes back, just a little more.
"What else are they called?" she asks, because he might tell her now. He might tell her why he blushed.
"Surprise lilies," he repeats, and she gives him that look, that look that always made him tell the truth before, even when she didn't want him to do it. But she wants him to now.
"Naked ladies," he admits, and she laughs, roughly at first, but then freely. No wonder he had blushed! And no wonder he had told her they were called surprise lilies. It was just like him.
She leans over and kisses his cheek, and when he stares at her, she smiles impishly.
"Surprise lilies."