The Capitol had a distinct flavor of revenge. Each action tasted of anger and chemical matter left stewing over long stretches of time.
Not to mention gallons upon gallons of innocent blood.
Katniss's mouth overflowed with these flavors as she sat crying on her doorstep.
The creature that sat there, staring at her, was small. Brown. Sleek. And the intricately woven '11' was still laced into its collar.
It stared up at her with Rue's eyes, filled with sweetness and adoration.
Those monsters.
Katniss sat down beside the mutt and laced her fingers through its fur, feeling the creature hum beneath her fingers. She caressed it and petted it, and it lay beside her, trusting itself to her care.
Those sickening, insignificant, overstuffed creatures. They lived in their polished homes, paraded around with their grotesque and mutilated bodies, flocked together on the streets like a parade of exotic zoo animals, feasting on the gifts, blood, and terror of the other districts. They lived lives of extravagance, of leisure and pleasures.
Such conditions allowed their minds to fester, breeding such acute degrees of cruelty that all kindness and any morals the animals had once possessed were eaten away by years of mutilation.
Only monsters could turn a small and innocent girl into such a mutilated creature, and then send her remains to the doorstep of her tentative and grieving friend.
Tears glistened on the creature's pelt as the two sat together, mourning all that had happened.
Katniss dreaded all that was to come, without question. But that dread was slowly drowning beneath a growing ocean that desired nothing but the sweetest revenge.
Yes indeed. The Capitol created monsters out of everyone it touched.