We worked. That was what I learned made time pass. We worked, all day to fix up the bakery. Finnick, Annie, and I.
Katniss was in school. Making it easy for me to fully engross in my work.
Finnick and I became fast friends, as neither of us could really build. We blundered through our work before training in the evenings.
Times got easier after the damn thing was built. I could finally start working. I could do what was natural to me. When I wrote down recipes from memory and baked my first batches of bread, I could feel memories surge through me. Good memories for the first time in a long while.
I remembered my childhood. I remembered the good days of marriage. I remembered the happy days of family, that were sparse but wonderful.
I didn't find longing for the past as I normally did when these memories surfaced. I only found the intense desire to build up.
I soon made my small business an essential part of Victor Village. I befriended many people in town and grew to even like surly old Haymitch.
Katniss would spend her free time walking along the beach or roaming through the woods. We'd sometimes walk hand in hand, other times we wouldn't even speak, we'd just enjoy the presence of one another.
Our lives all seemed to come easy, and when spring hit I found an intense love for this new life of mine.
"Come on Peeta, I have to show you something." Katniss pulls me along. It's a late spring day, the clouds have finally passed after having rained us in the past three days. This is the first time I've seen Katniss in a week, with being so busy and then the storms.
Now we run through the soggy patches of mud. She won't tell me where we're going all I know is that it's far from town and uphill most of the way.
"Well, maybe if you tell me what we're doing." I smile back at her.
She stops and turns to look at me. Her face bright with light. Beautiful, quaint, content with her lot in life. Content now to be standing here with me.
"Where's your spirit of adventure? I'm taking you somewhere only we'll know of. It'll be wonderful I promise you." She leans up and kisses me. I don't let her pull back for quiet some time. "Trust me?"
"Trust you? Always."
"Then come on." She laughs tugging me along. After a few more minutes I see the top of the hill we've climbed. "Close your eyes."
"Katniss-"
She kisses my nose and my forehead so I comply. She leads me by the hand up to the peak of the hill.
Her hands guide push my shoulders down so I can sit on the cool dewy grass beneath me.
Her hands release me and the sound of rustling leaves follow her. She sets something in my lap as she kisses my temple.
"Open your eyes." She says.
I do, and for miles around all I can see are colors I could have never even dreamed of. At the top of this hill I can see the vastness of the trees. I can see the slate colored mountain side. Greens, blues, oranges, yellows, pinks, purples, reds, only the best and brightest colors one could ever hope to see.
"My god." I say. "Katniss-"
"Look," She points to a small speck of blue.
"What?"
"That's Victor Village."
"No." I whisper in shock.
"That's the lake down there. It seems so small doesn't it?"
I turn to look at her. She's slipped off her shoes, she's wearing her school assigned free time dress. A simple short sleeved, dress that holds her just right, cut right where her knees end. She was too thin when I first met her, now she looks perfectly healthy.
She radiates freedom, that fire I search for is blazing in the sunlight. Mercury colored eyes that only brighten her rosy cheeks.
Her long hair braided back with wisps of free hair flying away. You'd never guess just five months ago we lost almost everything we had.
I lean forward and kiss her. But when I do lean forward what she's placed on my lap falls to the ground.
She chuckles picking it up and handing it to me.
It's a brown package, not large but makes noise as she hands it to me.
"Twenty one today." She tells me.
"My birthday present then." I smile. She kisses me again.
"Open it." She tells me so I do. Inside is a boxy metal contraption. In my hands it's cool and heavy. I've never seen anything like it, but it fascinates me.
"What is it?" I ask her.
"It's a picture taker. These are what people before us used to take pictures." She says, "They told us in school, that before all the wars happened no one used have picture takers of their own. They didn't rely on the government to take photos for them."
I hold the picture taker in my hands more carefully, "Does it work?"
"I hope so." She laughs, "Beetee found it in his house, when I was helping him clean out his wife's old things. He said I could have it. I spent the last three days cleaning it."
"Well let's try it out." I say and spend a few minutes trying to work it.
"Here, Peeta." She says taking it from my hands and aiming the lens at me. "I think you turn this and then... Alright smile." I chuckle at her request. She clicks a button and the contraption starts whirring.
In a moment a picture pops out. She looks at it fondly. "Look Peeta it's in color and everything." She hands me the picture maker. I start taking pictures of the meadow and of her. Every image just as wonderful as the last.
She has me set the picture maker down and takes my hands. She runs through the flowers with me behind her.
I hold her close to me kissing her when the moment feels right.
"I love you." She says burrowing into my chest.
"I love you too." I tell her taking her hair down from her braid so my hands can glide down her smooth black velvet hair.
I pick her up and take her back to where we sat at the peak of the hill. Now that the afternoon is late trees shade the area.
Her hair knots in my fingers now. She's kissed the tips of my fingers, the tip of my nose, my cheekbones, anywhere she feels she wants to kiss.
"Peeta." She smiles, "Look." I look over and see the sun start to set.
I quickly grab the picture taker and snap a few pictures. And then I see her laying in the grasses absorbing the sun. I take pictures of her.
"Should we go back?" I ask.
"I don't ever want to go back." She says, "This is the only place I'll ever want to be."
I kiss her again before telling her we have to go back. She only goes because she doesn't want to be anywhere without me.
See you Tuesday my love. And I pinky swear it won't be late. (If I lie I'll post two chapters the week after.)