A/N: This one shot has been written for Starvation's November One-Shot challenge. The prompt was "Dust." Let me know your thoughts! I would very much appreciate it!
A piece of half burned wood crumbles under my boot as I tread through the ashes of my home. Nothing here is how I remember it being just a few hours ago. Just a few hours ago, it was not perfect but it was home. District Twelve where I lived with my family in a small shack in the Seam for almost fifteen years, had been burned to the ground.
It started when that young girl was Reaped, everyone knew her name by now, Primrose Everdeen. Her sister had taken her place in what was seen as a great act of courage. And I suppose it was, most siblings would not risk their lives for their younger brother or sister as Katniss Everdeen had done.
I crouch down and rest on the thin soles of my older brother's work shoes, the only thing I had seen as belonging to my family since the fires first began. My sisters had both been playing outside when it had started, I'd been inside helping my mother with the chores. She'd run out of the house in a panic, searching for my younger sisters after shoving me into a far corner of our home. There I had remained, too scared to do anything but bury my eyes in my hands and cry, screaming out for my family to come running in through the door and call out to me. Telling me that everything was alright and that no one had been hurt.
But people had been hurt. Once the screams and hissing fire had stopped their decent on my district I'd looked outside my house through the broken opening that had ravaged through half of my house. Soon after leaving its walls the entire structure had crumbled, leaving behind nothing but a thick coating of dust and ashes that covered everything from the dead grass to my pale cheeks. I'd coughed and choked out black dust until my throat had seemed to turn to fire, still feeling the sensation of ashes in my lungs.
My fingers trace along the thick dust covering that coats the streets outside the Hob. Few people are walking around like I am, most either choosing to remain inside the now unsteady houses or unable to get up from their ashy coffins. A small boy peers around the wreckage of the district square, his tiny, filthy hands taking hold of a piece of wall that crumbles almost immediately beneath his finger tips. Salty tears run down his face, creating streaks of grey down the thick, black coating. No one rushes over to comfort them, no one speaks. Everyone lost in their own thoughts and losses.
I pull a silver metal ring from the hot dust and rub my fingertips over the surface to clear away the ash. Engraved in the metal is the unmistakable symbol of the Mockingjay, the symbol of the Rebellion started by the District Twelve volunteer. I throw the ring down into the rubble and sit down amidst the warm ashes, my hands covering my face and bringing more dust into my eyes as I attempt to clear away the tears. I sit like that for what feels like hours, and could have been for all it mattered. No one cared about my home that had been killed, returned to the dust from which it had come. So long as the Girl on Fire was alive no one would care about the places she had burned to the ground.