A/N: Hello everyone! So it's midnight and a tuesday...I should be in bed. But for whatever reason i thought of posting this tiny piece. It was an english assignment from about a year ago and i just thought of putting it up, just because. So enjoy :) tell me what you think!
Night :)
Run.
He told her.
Run.
She did.
The girl emerged from the brush of the statuesque Evergreens and dense, thick bushes soundlessly, leaving the discreet sound of disturbed leaves in her wake returning only to their positions to rest for the evening. Her legs pumped a course of adrenaline up bound towards her head and her arms were busy with their own strenuous task of clearing a way to which her legs would follow. She couldn't help but think to herself that it was her fault. That she was accountable to the events that were disclosed in her village. That they were slain by her own deeds. She could vaguely recall the lifeless bodies of the fallen; breathless, pulseless, inanimate bodies. To think they were alive only a second ago was almost hearsay in her mind.
Don't think. Don't think about them. There was nothing you could do.
And yet, she felt this overwhelming sense of dread rising upward from the pit of her hollow stomach. She forced the guilt down down down. As the girl's long, dark braid swung in an alarming pace back and forth, whipping alongside the wind, thoughts conjured up in her head. Thoughts of her life. Thoughts of what could have been. Thoughts of what will never be.
Run. Faster! They are coming. He is coming.
She cannot afford to think such things, especially with them so hot on her trail. Her lungs burned with necessitate for air. Her heart pounded; each thump increasing in speed to the point where she felt like it would erupt out of her chest. An ache formed there alike, but not because of the lack of oxygen. An ache that craved and yearned for the pleasantries of home, of her village, of her sister.
Her sister.
The pain spread like a wildfire. Up this way and down that, twisting and turning and making the ache in her chest only increase, pent along with the need to breathe.
Yet she could not stop.
Sorrow overtook her entire being as she ran strategically through the thick brush of the woods. She had been running for so long, it was as if her body knew what to do on its own, and she wished her spirit would leave. Evaporate and blend with the cool air, the dark sky. Tears blurred her vision almost instantly and she was nearly blindsided. As the rugged, overgrown grass and trees transformed to unruly shapes and figures, there was no way she was able to see where she was going. She didn't know where to go.
But the anguish she felt when the leaves and the branches and sticks left their marks on her pale skin, the hurt when they began to bleed and ooze, did nothing in comparison to the numbness she had when thoughts of her baby sister sat themselves in her mind.
Don't stop, you can't stop! Just a little farther.
Despite the circumstance she was in, she could almost ideate her dearest sibling in the same position as the dead. Her blond hair matted with a beastly concoction of rust and coal and blood. Only ten years of age, her beautiful face scratched three times; one on each cheek and on her forehead, in an attempt to disrupt her beauty. For they did not know no manly thing could disrupt her beauty. A knife planted in her torso, but they couldn't fool her. Katniss knew about the poison he had used, the poison Snow had used to kill them. She knew his wicked ways and how she resented him. They all resented him.
She just hoped her sister was unharmed. Then she shook her head, willing away such inane and childish thoughts. The sudden movement threw her off, yet she still ran. This was not foolery. This was a sad and depicted reality for all District 12's inhabitants. She wasn't a child. She was eighteen years of age, old enough to marry and bear children. But never his children. Never.
Can't breathe, can't think, just run. You just need to run.
She shuddered from the remembrance so clear in her mind as she fought her body; willing her lungs to hold on for just a little longer.
King Cornelius Snow came to their village of one hundred and two seeking a bride. She recalled his menacing demeanor firsthand. The way he strode into her hut of straw, sickle bush leaves and manure, whilst she soaked in her tub of ice cold water. She was perfectly used to the cold temperature of the water, so she was needlessly staggered when her goose bumps flared up, that is until she spotted his stare. She would never forget his face. How his vomit colored condescending eyes gleamed maliciously over her submerged figure. How when he smiled, he resembled a snake and how she felt so insulted, so degraded, but it was quite obvious who had the upper hand in the given situation.
Katniss knew she was gorgeous.
She knew she was cunning.
She knew she could maneuver anything and get out of a conversation with her clever remarks and witty appeal.
But there was no way she could escape the ever-present grasp of Cornelius Snow, King of Panem.
For six grueling months, she was under the influence of castle guards with every waking moment of every day. It was a tiresome cycle, being prepared to be the Queen of Panem. She despised it so, so much in fact that when being prepared for bed, she would silently overlook the kingdom on her balcony, wishing to fall. Wishing to be done with this cruel place she called her home. But being with Snow meant her family and village would eat, would be fed and taken care of. Their needs first always; that was the evident creed of her district.
Her feet seemed to soar above the ground in a quick haste that seemed almost inhumane; her heart was beating so profusely quick, so hard that she heard the drumming in her ears. Burning. Everything was burning.
She was on fire.
Breath was coming in and out in short breaths as her lungs fought to take in air but she felt nothing, she was aware of nothing as she flew. And she flew, faster faster faster.
Faster faster FASTER!
Katniss could grin and bear it until her cheeks swelled and bled.
Katniss could deal with the animosity practically radiating off of Snow and his ignorant remarks about commoners alongside those who were not from gentry descent.
Katniss could handle the constant prodding of sewing pins and endless amounts of strings fit tight around her body.
Katniss could put herself along with the other many wives of his menacing majesty and play games and sing joyful songs full of false hope with his kin.
But when Katniss discovered his plans to terminate those in the village, her village, once they were married she became enflamed with a seething fury she had not known she had possessed. She scolded herself at why she was cloddish enough to set herself in the position to be deceived in the first place; for it did not matter if she married the dictator, her village would die anyhow. So she did what she knew best.
She ran.
Back to her home.
Back to her village.
Back to the safety and the certainty of her hut.
She convinced her fellows villagers that District 12 would not go hungry, that she would somehow find a method in gracing some food to nurture them with. And few fortnights, later he came.
While she was away in her safe haven, hunting all of the grazing does and scurrying squirrels, he came. For she returned to mass chaos, with men and women screaming and attempting their very best to depart, children yelling, babies crying, blood. So much blood.
It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault. Keep running!
And the smell of death so evidently vile in the air. Katniss returned to her hut as quickly as she could but found no hope of finding her sister there. She did find her mother though. And was it bad that she felt no feeling, no remorse for the sad and wretched corpse that left them to fend off on their own? No, she answered her own question.
She searched for her sister in the craze, but found no trace of her dead nor alive. But she found Gale, sputtering blood and half-dead with a dagger buried deep in his abdomen. Her gray eyes filled with unshed tears as he clutched her hand like a vise.
Run he told her with his last dying breath.
And here she was.
The once white night dress, now matted with dirt and blood, whipped her legs. Prudence filled her and black spots dotted her eyesight; for there was no way possible that a human could run this long and not collapse of exhaustion. Yet she was on the brink.
What's the use? I do not care anymore. I do not care if I die.
With her thoughts conflicted and her body worn out to the point of breakage, she did not know if the sounds of horses and men were a hallucination or real.
Getting closer.
She panicked, even in her haze and cut through the forest faster faster…
CLUNCK!
A inconceivably hard object collided with her head and she fell. Hard. She did no such thing as to try and get up. She wished for death. The same death that came to her village, that claimed her father when she was just a child. The same death that probably had gotten her sister and woven its claws into her being.
Katniss finally gulped for the precious air, mouth opening and closing like a fish on land. Sputtering and coughing and wheezing and oh how her muscles ached. She couldn't fathom how she went so considerably long sprinting and curving like she did. Yet, the breath wouldn't catch up with her. The thumping of her heart was so that she could feel the blood enter and recede her ears, her vision slowly had begun to fail her.
And as she had lay on the moist murk of the soil beneath her, grasping her throat to try to breech the air surrounding her, she most certainly did not hit a tree.
A boy, or man; tall and stocky looked over her in what? Concern? A flash of recognition crossed his features as she heard the familiar trampling of hooves and reigns gaining on her. She whimpered, and even that she could not do.
The man seemed to hear it to as she lay limply, gasping for breath unforeseen. He hurriedly reached out his arms and scooped her as if she was a feather weight and made haste in a clearing she hadn't seen before. She should have been afraid, for she knew not who he was or where her destination aspired to, but she found a sudden peace. Maybe she was dying after all.
She glanced at his face and without much forethought, hovered a hand on his jaw. He clenched it in some sort of anguish as he looked at her in awe and pity. He was handsome. And his blue eyes shined at her; brighter than any moon, any light. His blond bush atop his head made him appear like he had a halo. An angel. An angel of the night, she thought.
"We're almost there, Katniss," he said. His voice, soothing and masculine. How he knew her name, she had no knowledge of but in his eyes, she saw an unforeseen trust. Her eyes gazed over and found a small house, a cabin of some sort.
The hooves grew louder.
He began to run, like she had. Her body secure in his muscled arms, he rushed into the place and locked the door tight.
There was no way he could find them here; they were completely secluded; sheltered from the horrors and sensations of her village or any other village in Panem.
The blond man strode over into a room and placed Katniss in what she felt a bed. She sunk in it, already beginning to slip away from what was real or not real. If he truly was an angel and she was dead and gone; if Primrose would appear soon enough.
She could not speak, for her hoarse throat forbade her to do so, or speak such notions. She could not comprehend anything other than a bed and the man in front of her as he scurried this way and that, taking items here and there.
She did not know what would happen.
She did not know what he would do to her.
But as her eyes closed, she concluded that he was the only star she had seen that night.