Pull and Release
Just pull and release. Simple and quick.
A young girl, dark hair pulled back into a braid, fingers wrapped tightly around a bow. A leather quiver was strung across her back.
"Pull," whispered her father, guiding her hands. She dragged the bowstring back, the arrow sliding back with it. Raising it to shoulder height, she aimed the tip slightly above her target.
"Release."
She let go, the string twanging and the arrow flying through the air, plunging into the rabbit's brain. It fell back, still among the leaves.
She released a breath she didn't realise she had been holding and lowered the weapon.
"Well done, Katniss," said her father, crossing to the rabbit. He started to gut it while she looked on, feeling sick. He finished, slipping the entrails under a nearby bush, and packed it into his game bag. Standing next to her, he took her hand, not looking at her.
"I know your first kill is difficult," he said. Katniss shook her head. The guilt was wrenching her apart. She had killed that innocent creature, and its blood was on her hands. He looked at her tenderly.
"My first kill was a badger," he said quietly. "I shot it with a bow I had made myself, but my aim was off. I hit him in the leg and crippled him. He fell to the ground. The sounds he made..." His voice caught and he dropped his gaze. "I finished him with a knife, but I couldn't bring myself to skin him and bring him home. I buried him under some strawberry bushes." A single tear dropped from his eye. "I cried."
Katniss was stunned. She had never seen her father cry before. Maybe he did understand after all. He held up the arrow she had killed her first rabbit with.
"This arrow," he said. "This was the weapon I killed that creature with."
Katniss's brow creased. "I thought you killed it with a knife."
He shook his head. "The arrow made sure he would die. The knife just finished the job." Katniss took the arrow from him, examining it.
"Keep it," he told her. "Remember your first kill. Accept that it must be done, but never grow indifferent. Now come on. We need to go home. It's getting dark." She followed him through the woods and home, where her mother cooked her rabbit. The meat was succulent, but to Katniss it was tasteless and dry as paper. She was remembering the moment when the tip of the arrow entered its brain, and she first set down the path of becoming a killer.
Months later, she returned home from the presentation of her father's medal of bravery. Her mother and sister were crying, inconsolable, but her eyes had remained bone-dry. Taking down the box in which her father's memorabilia was kept, she removed the arrow, still in perfect condition. She removed her father's jacket from the chair and took a thread and needle from her mother's sewing box. Making a long slit down the inside of the jacket, she slipped it in, sewing it neatly up both sides of the arrow shaft to hold it in place. When she was done, it was almost impossible to tell she had made any change.
The next day, she slipped on the jacket, running to the forest. Taking up her bow, she strung an arrow, eager to test out her work. As her arm bent her elbow brushed against the head of the arrow. An image of the day in the woods with her father flashed by, when he told her the most personal story he had, and she killed her first insignificant rabbit that would haunt her for years to come.