A/N: Written for the Starvation August prompt Lullaby.
Song lyrics are made up. I almost want to write a tune to them now. I have a weird interest in the duality of folk songs, so this sort of came from that.
They're a pathetic bunch. The teenage girl with blood on her face and a cut above her eye she can't be bothered to wipe clean, the tiny little boy, sitting bewildered on the threadbare rug, and the girl in the corner, sobbing, dust caked onto her face.
The bombing is louder now.
"Kenza, where's mama?"
Luca stares up at her, blue eyes bright, dark fringe flopping onto his face. Just a tiny thing, really. Four years old.
"She'll be back soon. Should we eat? I made some things."
Outside on the street, Peacekeepers march past, but the shades are drawn down, the residents barricading themselves in their houses.
Boom, boom.
Kenza spoons out three bowls of mushy ration grain, a pathetically small meal by any standards – supplies have been cut off since the Capitol started cracking down, and nobody dares leave their houses now. They are the lucky ones – as they ran home from school the day the bombs had started, Kenza and Mae had escaped the worst. Only streets away, every building was reduced to burning rubble. Kenza pushed the images from her mind, but Mae just cried. She hadn't stopped. Luca didn't know what was happening, and all the better for him.
Kenza helps her brother eat his dinner, and notes her sister's total lack of interest.
Mae has stopped crying, but stares blankly at the wall, not speaking a word. She hasn't said a thing since they got home. No, not quite, she'd spoken then, through the sobs, but when their mother had gone out to find their father, she'd just stopped.
Looking around for something to wipe her face with, Kenza scratches a bit of dried blood out of her eyebrow. Their house is practically empty – there was never any money to buy things to clutter the place up. In some ways she likes it, but sometimes she wishes they could live somewhere else, somewhere nicer, somewhere the bombs don't just start falling one day, where mothers don't go out and not come back…
Boom, boom.
Kenza shakes herself. She'll come back. She's too smart to get into trouble.
She walks over to her sister, drapes a threadbare blanket over her shoulders, still shaking, though she's not crying anymore. Mae stares blankly at her, tears drying on her face.
Kenza draws her into a hug, wraps her arms around her sister's skinny twelve-year-old shoulders, feeling how cold she is.
Luca tugs on her sleeve as another round of shells pounds down. The sharp crack of gunfire is briefly overruled by the deafening explosions.
The streets are smoky, Peacekeepers and rebels alike choking for breath in the dust and haze.
"Where's mama, Kenza? She needs to sing. Then I can sleep and all the bads go away."
Boom, boom.
The song makes all the bad go away, their mother would say. Sing a song before you go to sleep and the nightmares will stay away. But with the nightmares in their street, Kenza is too old to believe that anymore. Luca, with his big blue eyes, still believes.
She swallows her nerves. This is her job now.
"Take care of Luca for me, just for a bit. Make sure you eat dinner, I'll be back…"
Part of Kenza's mind says it's been hours, lifetimes since she said that, so many rounds of shelling since then, so many gunshots. The rest of her refuses to think it, because that means that the mess is hers, that her silent sister and tiny, innocent brother are her responsibility and she can't. She just can't.
But she can. She can sing. She can't do anything about the noise, or the food, or the smoke, but she can sing.
Closer, closer. Boom, boom.
She takes a breath, the way her mother taught her. One breath to calm yourself, one to steady yourself, and one to start.
Sing. For her mother and for her father. For her sister who can't, and for her brother who needs it.
"Today, I walked the rolling hills, like when I was a child,
I walked upon the sea of green, among the flowers wild."
Luca stares up at her, eyes wide.
"I met my love under the trees, and sang to her a song – "
BOOM.
Luca screams. The floor seems to shake.
Close. A street away at most.
Luca whimpers and pulls closer to her. He can't know what was happening. He can't possibly. He's just scared of big noises.
"Shh," she whispers. "It's okay. It's gonna be fine."
There's a tiny choking sound, almost like someone clearing their throat, and then:
"I met my love under the trees…"
Mae coughs, her voice cracking.
"I met my love under the trees, and sang to her a song,
The prettiest girl you'll ever see as fair as summer's long."
She's the better singer of the two girls, and the prettier. She's tall even at twelve, and already she's gorgeous, with dark hair and bright blue eyes like her brother. Kenza is just plain and boring, mousy haired and sensible.
Kenza stares at her. A few seconds of eye contact tells her that she knows. Oh, she knows. No tears, but she's not Luca, she's not a child, and she knows.
Kenza bites her lip, then continues.
"I wept unto the daisy flowers, I wept unto the rose,"
Mae almost smiles, a bitter little smile that looks wrong, wrong, wrong on her pretty twelve-year-old face as she counters:
"I wept unto the lilies there, so that they all might grow."
Luca stops crying, and stares as his sisters sing. To him, it's just a song.
Boom, boom. Closer and closer. Louder and louder. There are no Peacekeepers in the streets, now.
The chorus of the song never made any sense to them as children. It doesn't make sense to Luca now.
"Mother don't you cry for me, mother don't you weep,
Lay me down under the green, lay me down to sleep," Mae sings.
A question. One Luca won't understand.
Kenza bites her lip.
Boom, boom.
She's crying now, and Luca is confused and she has to, she has to sing. What else is there?
"Mother don't you cry for me, mother will you sing?
Lay me down under the green, I'll see my love again."
Boom.