Here it's Safe, Here it's Warm
(~ PiP ~ Peeta's Paint Box ~ Day 3 ~ Yellow ~)
"Do you want me to push you?" he asks her, though he knows it will only make her scowl.
She glares at him and pushes her lips together into a pout, "No, I can do it." The girl is barely tall enough to reach, but the little boy watches as she stands in front of the swing and reaches as high as she can on the chains before she pulls herself up to sit on the black rubber seat.
Green tulle puffs out behind her as her pink rain boots dangle without touching the ground. Her legs begin bending in and out, causing the swing lurch awkwardly at first, then rock back and forth slowly, making her braids sway in the breeze too. "You swing too, Peety." He blinks once, coming back to himself and quickly grabs the seat next to her. He is tall enough to get the swing started by pushing back off the ground. Soon they are flying through the wind together.
"Look Peety," she squeals as she lets go of the chains, gliding through the air to land easily on her feet. She begins running before the little boy knows what is going on.
"What is it? Kit Kat wait," he chases after her as she runs toward the lake. Even when he runs as fast as he can, she is always just a little faster. Just when he thinks she is going to run into the water, she stops near the edge and stares at the ground. It isn't until the boy finally reaches her that he can see what she is looking at. An egg. It looks perfectly white, lying in the emerald grass by the lake.
"Wow!" he exclaims gazing at the big egg.
"Can we pick it up? Where's its mama?" The kids look around the lake, but the ducks are far off on the other side.
Suddenly he looks so upset. The boy sets his mouth in a hard line then and lets out and angry huff before he says curtly, "She left it, she didn't want it."
The girl looks at her friend with worry and then back at the egg, "I'll take care of it," she tells him before she reaches down to pick it up. His eyes watch only her as she cradles the abandoned egg in both hands against her black leotard.
"Oh Peeta, Katniss, what are you doing down there?" The kids look back up the hill to see the boy's aunt coming toward them, with his cousin following close behind.
The woman carefully making her way down the grassy slope wore a black leotard similar to the little girl's, but had on neon pink sweat pants instead of her dance skirt. Peeta's aunt Chiffon taught the pre-school ballet and tap class that the kids were in together. Katniss's mom signed her up so she could "try something new." Peeta got pulled in because his cousin didn't want to be the only boy in the class.
"What did you find Kitty Kat?" the boy with strawberry blond hair says when he reaches them first.
"Finn, I told you not to call me that. I hate cats." Katniss glowers at him as he smiles.
"Fine, Kat-n-issssss," he pronounces her name teasingly. "Would you please tell me what you have found?"
She hesitates, unsure whether to show him, but when she looks at Peeta he nods to encourage her. Slowly, she turns and leans her hands out so that Finn can see the egg.
"Cool, an egg! Are you going to throw it? I bet I could throw it to the middle of the lake. Let me see it," he says as he reaches his hands out to Katniss.
"Noooooooo!" she screams, turning away as Peeta steps between them.
"Leave her alone Finn!" the blond boy shouts at his cousin, stretching his arms wide to protect his friend.
"Hey, hey what's going on boys?" Chiffon puts one hand on each of the boys and looks down nervously at Katniss, who has started to cry.
"Aunt Chiffon, Finn tried to take Kit Kat's egg! It's hers, she found it and she wants to keep it safe, and Finn wants to throw it in the lake! And I'm not going to let him get it! It's her egg!"
"Okay, Peeta, okay, just hold on a minute. Katniss, honey, come here, alright?" The woman holds her hand out to the little girl slowly, trying not to startle her. Katniss looks up at her, big gray eyes shining with tears. "Let's go sit on that bench, okay?" The little girl nods and timidly follows her teacher. The boys walk over too so they can hear what Chiffon will say.
"Can I see?" Katniss nods again and then very gently opens her hands. "Oh, it is an egg, and you saw it down here all the way from the playground, wow. You have great eyes Katniss." The little girl gives her a small smile, which causes Peeta to beam at her and Finnick to huff in annoyance. "So, what do you want to do with this egg?"
"I-I want ta keep it safe," she says, her breath still catching from being upset.
"Of course, of course. Was it just laying here by the lake?"
Katniss nods her head 'yes' then leans up to whisper (a very loud whisper) into her teacher's ear, "Peety was sad cuz the mama left it here, and I don't want him to be sad." Chiffon's eyes dart over to her nephew as he gives her a sheepish smile and looks down at his shoes. Now she understands, this egg was left by its mother. Katniss wants to protect her friend by caring for the egg. "What could we do?" she thinks.
"Mom, I'm hungry," Finn whines, reminding her that she is as well.
"Well kiddos, how about this? Lets go have our little picnic lunch, and I will think about what we can do with this egg to keep it safe." The kids agree and Finn runs up the hill ahead of them all, while Peeta and Katniss, the latter still clutching the egg, hike up the hill more slowly with Chiffon.
The group eats their lunch after Chiffon fashions a little nest out of her coat for the egg and finally convinces Katniss that it will be safe. Just when she is chewing the last bite of her sandwich, she shouts, "I've got it!" making all three kids jump.
"What?" Peeta asks.
"Who lives close by and knows a lot about eggs?" She asks the kids.
"The guy with the big hat at Waffle House," Finn guesses. His mom just shakes her head. "Oh, oh, that weird guy at the grocery store!"
"No, Finn. Peeta who do you think we could talk to that probably knows exactly how to keep a duck egg safe?" Chiffon looks at him encouragingly. Katniss watches him, waiting for the answer. Finally, a flash of recognition shines in his eyes, but as quickly as it appeared, it is gone again. "Peeta? Did you think of who can help Katniss with her egg?"
"Yeah," he says flatly.
"Who? Peety, tell me," Katniss pleads.
He looks at her and then down at the egg, before he answers with little enthusiasm, "my Uncle Haymitch, but I don't think he likes me very much."
Chiffon pats his knee and says, "Don't worry too much about it kiddo, I don't think people in general are his sort of thing."
"I'm sorry Abernathy, are you ready for me to call my Pop?" Chaff asks. "I think we're gonna have to get another machine out here."
"Even if we call, you know he'll take his time getting here. Let me get a few more branches under there and try again." Haymitch needed this done now. All the rain from last night turned the field into a massive mud pit, but the sunflower seed should have been in the ground last week. For the last 3 years, their sunflower festival on Fourth of July weekend had been a great success, bringing in more people every year. They sold more in one weekend than during the whole rest of the year combined.
The planting couldn't wait any longer, but just as soon as Chaff got the tractor into the middle of the field, it was stuck. The two men had been working at it for several hours and hadn't moved the tractor an inch.
"Haymitch, Chaff, your lunch is ready. Come take a break," Chaff's wife, Courtland, yells from the house. Haymitch was about to tell her they would be in soon, but Chaff is already heading for the house. He curses the older man under his breath, though he knows they both need a break. "One more try," he thinks, but just then he hears the sound of tires on the gravel driveway. As he looks up, there is a pink Volkswagen Beetle parking near the house.
"What the…?" he says, but just then he sees a redhead wearing neon pink pants with a tight black top getting out of the car with three kids. A smile crosses his face, but he clears his throat and hastily schools his features before the group can see him.
"Freckles, is that you?" he shouts. Chiffon waves as he walks up from the field. "Are you selling those dance classes of yours door to door now?" he asks, and then laughs at his own joke.
"Goodness Haymitch, I would hug you, but I think I better not. Did you fall in with the pigs?" The man is so covered in mud that the children are looking at him like he is from another planet.
"Oh, I sleep with the pigs now, didn't you know? I just prop my head up on Porky and my feet up on Petunia, and all three of us sleep nice and cozy in the soft warm mud. It's not too bad, unless they get hungry."
Chiffon heard this joke before, so she just plays along. "Really Haymitch? Oh dear. What happens if they get hungry?" The kids are completely drawn into the story at this point, almost leaning in to hear every word.
"Well, the other night Chaff forgot to feed them dinner, and when I woke up this morning something was missing." Haymitch quickly throws out both of his arms, and the three children scream. His right hand waves at them, but on the left he had pulled his hand inside the sleeve, so it looks like the hand is gone.
Hamilton, Haymitch's dad, used to play that trick on Chiffon and her brother, Miche, when they were little. Their fathers were as close as brothers growing up, and Hamilton became their honorary uncle. Both families were devastated after the accident that killed Hamilton and his youngest son. Seeing Haymitch now gives Chiffon hope that a piece of that time lives on. She couldn't be happier to see the boys and Katniss falling for the same trick.
Once the kids stop screaming, he pushes his hand back out and then waves it around. "I knew that he was making that up," Finnick says quickly. Peeta presses his lips together in a hard line, while Katniss scowls at him and narrows her eyes, mad that he tricked her.
"Can't fool you, can I Finn? Gimme five." Finnick lifts his hand as high as he can in the air, before bringing it down and making a loud slap as it hits the man's regenerated hand. Then he turns to Peeta. "Hey there boy, who is your pretty girlfriend here?" Peeta's cheeks turn bright red with embarrassment, but Haymitch bends down to talk to the little girl anyway. "What's your name little miss?"
"I'm Katniss Soleil Everdeen, and that wasn't funny," she tells the man flatly.
Haymitch lets out a laugh, "Look at her, look at this one, I like her. Lots of," he thinks for a moment until he finds the right word, "spunk!"
"Well Freckles, what can I help y'all with today?"
Chiffon explains to Haymitch about the egg they found near the lake. "I was wondering if you had someplace to keep Katniss's egg safe."
Haymitch nods along, "I'll tell you what, let me go wash up a bit and grab some lunch and I can meet you in the barn. Go have a look around at the animals and such. Then he leans down to whisper in Finn's ear, "Look out for the pigs." Finn's eyes go a bit wide, before he lets out a nervous laugh.
Fifteen minutes later, Haymitch meets them in the barn. To say the man is clean would be a stretch, but he has clearly brushed off the large chunks of dirt besides washing his face and hands with water. He is holding an empty toilet paper roll and a flashlight. After finding a dry patch of wood chips, he sits on the ground and waves the kids over.
"So where is your egg sweetheart?" he asks Katniss, and after a nod from Chiffon the little girl hands it to him. "You say you found it by the lake at the park?" he asks, as he turns on the flashlight and examines the egg for cracks. Katniss nods. "And the mama wasn't around?" he continues.
"She left it," Peeta says, speaking up for the first time. This makes Haymitch look up at him. "Well some mamas leave for a good reason boy," he tells Peeta bluntly before looking at the egg. "Sometimes they are in danger, or if it's a young mother duck, sometimes they just don't know what to do." Chiffon wonders if the boy understands all that Haymitch is telling him, but says nothing.
"I don't see any cracks, so that is a good thing. Now the next thing we do is called candling the egg." He set it on the cardboard tube with the pointy end down. Then he turns on the flashlight and holds it at the other end of the tube. The light shining through lights up the egg like a jack-o-lantern, giving it an orangey glow.
The kids lean in to look closer as he explains, "What we want to see is a reddish group of veins that sort of look like a red spider." He rolls the egg around on top of the tube so they can look at all of it.
"I see it!" Finn exclaims as he points.
Haymitch spins the egg again, "Yup, that's right, there it is. That means that this egg can grow into a baby duck if it is kept safe and warm."
"Wow," Peeta says.
Katniss is amazed, "Oh, Mr. Uncle Haymitch, if I keep it safe, it will make a baby duck?" The man can't help but smile and nod at that. "Peety, we could have our own baby duck!"
"Hey, what about me?" Finnick chimes in, sounding hurt.
"No, no. This is my egg and Peety's egg, you wanted to throw it in the lake!" Katniss has no sympathy for Peeta's cousin. Peeta reaches out to carefully hold the egg in his hands, as Katniss leans down to talk to it, "Hello there, little duck. Me and Peety are going to keep you safe, okay?"
Peeta looks up then. "Uncle Haymitch, how do we keep it safe and warm?"
"Well, I think I can help you with that. Come outside with me." Haymitch walks out the back of the barn to a large cage. It is completely closed-in with a large gate at one side, and a wooden box with a small, duck sized door at the other end. The cage is large, but not large enough for all of them to go in at once, so Haymitch motions for only Katniss to follow him with the egg.
Chiffon takes the boys around to the back of the wooden box, where there is a window that lets them look in. Haymitch takes out a pencil and writes "K&P" on the egg. Then he bends down and Katniss watches him slowly reach his hand in the box to nudge it under a pretty brown striped duck with one patch of purple on her wing. As the duck moves a bit, Katniss gasps when she sees there are many eggs under her.
Haymitch leans over to Katniss and whispers, "is this a good place?" Katniss nods enthusiastically. Then Haymitch shows her the egg one more time before sneaking it under the broody duck.
Haymitch explains that duck eggs normally take about four weeks to hatch, but he welcomes them to come back anytime to check on it. Four weeks is an eternity for a child. After only one week of listening to the kids ask about the egg night and day (Is it okay? How big is it now? What if it's not a duck? How much longer?), Chiffon promises to take the kids to visit the farm after dance class each week, so they can ask Haymitch all their endless questions.
The eggs and the mama duck don't look much different of course, so they quickly lose interest in the duck pen. There are many animals to see and Haymitch finds other ways to keep them busy when they visit. Once, he offers to pay them each a dollar if they can fill a five gallon bucket with rocks they find in the garden. Another time, he takes them for a ride on the tractor. They watch him care for the strawberry plants and get to eat some of the first berries of the year.
Peeta becomes less afraid of his uncle. Even as a child he can see the way Haymitch is with Katniss, how he smiles at her when she is not looking or takes extra time to show her something new. He can see that Haymitch is drawn to her the same way he is, something about Katniss makes them feel a need to protect her, Always.
One day while they are eating lunch with Miss Courtland and Mr Chaff, Finn asks Haymitch in a hushed tone, "What happened to Mr. Chaff's hand?" The man had lost his hand in a threshing machine as a teenager, but Haymitch leans over to Finn and tells him in a whisper, "He got too close to one of those hungry pigs." Finn's eyes get as big as saucers, but he doesn't say a word.
Finally, after exactly four weeks, when the children arrive on the farm, Haymitch tells them it is time for the eggs to hatch. They scurry through the barn and out to the duck pen. They can hear the high pitched *peep peep* before they reach the cage and when they peek inside, they can see 4 brown ducklings poking out from under their mother.
"Oh they're so tiny," Chiffon coos.
"Uncle Haymitch, how do we know which one is our little duck?" Peeta asks.
"Well, let me see here, wait just a minute," Haymitch tells them before going into the cage, "come here old girl," he says as he lifts a very fussy duck off the nest. He carries her out of the pen and shows her to her food, then quickly waves the spectators inside. The mama duck protests a little before wandering into the lake for a swim. Haymitch explains that she is an experienced mother that trusts him, or else she would not be so nice.
Now it is much easier for everyone to see the eggs. Katniss points out the one with the K&P written on it. Haymitch reaches in to turn the egg, and finds a hole as he rolls it over.
"Peety, look! It's our little duck in there!" she squeals. "Mr. Uncle Haymich, can we get it out? Is it stuck in there?" she asks with concern.
"No sweetheart, it's fine, but we have to let it find its own way out. It makes them stronger," Haymitch tells the girl. "We are lucky it is a rainy day, great weather for ducks."
Most days the children would be off finding more interesting things to do on the farm, but today every little crack of a shell is exciting, and there is nowhere else they would rather be. Half an hour goes by, and another duck pushes it's way out of the shell. All of the ducks hatch looking rather ugly, their pale skin covered in brown, stringy feathers. It doesn't take long for them to become adorable brown and tan-striped fuzz balls.
"Guys look!" shouts Finnick, as a large chunk of shell breaks away from their egg. Inside, they can see the difference right away, all of the other ducklings had dark brown beaks peaking at their shells. The duckling from the park has a pale orange beak and what looks like stringy blond feathers. They watch as the duck fights its way into the world. When all the ducklings have hatched, it is easy to tell Katniss and Peeta's from the rest, fluffy and yellow, surrounded by eleven other brown fuzzy heads.
Haymitch picks up the yellow duckling and hands it to Katniss. He gives the boys and Chiffon one of the baby mallards. The kids sit on the floor of the pen holding the babies, petting their soft fluff.
Katniss and Peeta sit side by side leaning against the cage as they hold the ducks. "Look how pretty it is Peety. It's so soft and yellow," Katniss tells her friend.
"I think the little brown ones are beautiful too," he tells her, smiling. "What are you going to name it, Kit Kat?"
The girl thinks for a moment, then tells him, "Little Duck," with a big smile on her face.
"Good, that will be easy to remember," Haymitch says with a chuckle. "Okay, one more minute then we have to put them back for their mama, alright."
Katniss holds the duckling close to her body and it is so perfectly warm that the baby becomes sleepy. The girl brushes one finger between its eyes and they begin to drift closed with each stroke. She leans down to whisper, "Good night Little Duck, sleep tight, we will keep you safe."
Thank you so much for Reading! and a very big thank you to ghtlovesthg my super helpful always encouraging beta. Also a big thank you to Prompts in Panem for giving so many authors inspiration. This story is set into the future of my The Soul Waits story, but it the past for us and THG (I can't tell you how confusing that was to wrap my head around while writing late at night :) But it does give you a few lovely character reveals ~ like Finnick will be Peeta's cousin in TSW AU, and Haymitch is Peeta's Uncle. Thank you so much to anyone that takes the time to review, I will always respond. I am flip-fantasia on Tumblr as well, come visit for more fun posts about HG and other things I find interesting.