A/N: Seems I'm in a rather drabble-y mood at the moment. Prompt is 'sunset', like that wasn't obvious or anything. xD
In the bakery, sunsets are rare.
Not in that they don't occur—that much is obvious—but I never get much of a chance to see them. More often than not I am up to my ears in chores after I finish my homework, and by the time I am finished dusk has already settled, the moon beginning to glow under the night sky.
Sometimes, though, when I'm making the dough for the next morning, I get the chance to look out the window. I always try my best to let it linger in my mind, to memorize the pinks and reds and oranges (my favorite), hoping that one day I could paint a picture in more than my mind.
A picture I could share with her. It's all too easy to imagine—to sit somewhere, somewhere far away from the bakery and watch it with her, wrap my arms around her.
But that's all it will be, I remind myself as I knead the dough.
Nothing more than imagination.
In the arena, sunsets are a blur.
In between the running, the injury, the hours upon hours of lying in pain, I only catch a glimpse here and there. It's a sea of haziness; terrifying with the tracker jacker venom, and only a smear of color when it feels like every part of me is burning up.
These aren't my sunsets either way. The arena is drenched in a blood red sky, and I turn away from it. Turn away from the boy I used to be, the one who envisioned watching them with Katniss. That boy is gone, and when I slip into the inviting darkness, I don't expect to ever see him again.
In the Victor's Village, sunsets are bitter.
I can watch them all I want now, no longer loaded down with chores at the bakery. I'll still walk over there and help out when I can, but it's not the same. Nothing ever is.
Now that I have paint I bring my easel outside from time to time, dabbing at the canvas without success. The colors are never come out the way I have seen them, both over the years and in front of me, and there are moments when I just want to throw the whole thing away, and never look at it again.
Because whenever I paint, all I can see is what is never there.