Chapter Twenty Five
What do you do when you feel homesick? I know that it isn't a feeling I would have if I had already said goodbye to it. For a couple of seconds in between eating the stew and the bread, I take a moment to look at the bread. I didn't notice this before, but the bread is from our District. It is enough to wish to be home. This bread came from my father's bakery.
It is what we did last year during this time frame. We would bake bread for the Capitol for the Hunger Games. We would always add a little bit of cinnamon in the bread to get it that little twist. The taste is something that we done so that we would hope that the Tributes from our District would have a little bit of home. The cinnamon also when cooked would give it a glow orange color, like how coal does when it is burned.
It was our way of making it to symbolize everything that was good from our bakery. I look at bread for a while. I feel it in my hands. I can still remember the day we made this. If my father was watching right now, he would know that I was thinking of him, and home. The bakery feels like such a far away dream. When the door opens and the bells rings, I can still remember it, I can still hear it.
The lightning and thundering, snaps me back to reality.
I look down; I don't want Katniss to know that I am missing home
I feel her hand on mines. "Peeta, something wrong?" she asks.
"You see this?" I show her the bread.
"This was made in our bakery." I tell her with a smile to try and mask the longing for home.
"Really? How could you tell?" She asks.
"Can you taste a little bit of cinnamon in the bread? It is a hint, not many people can taste it." I ask her.
"I thought there was something different about this bread. Thought it was something that I imagining it." She tells me.
"Well we would do that so that people would know that it came from our bakery. It gives it this orange color." I saw as my voice cracks.
She caresses my hand with his fingers. It is the same thing I did for her at the reaping.
"Katniss."
"Hmm?" She looks up.
I want to tell her that I want to go home too. That I miss my family, I miss my room, and I miss the fence, the tree that I would just sit back on in the meadow. It is the first time in all this time that I have let myself go there. Even when my name was called in the Reaping, I had already said my goodbyes to the District and to everyone in it. I pushed out the memories of them, and didn't let them back in, until today. It is something that I had locked long time ago. It isn't fair. To let myself go there, I can't be thinking of home.
I change my thoughts and I see that it is a dream and have to think about the here and now. My mother in my thoughts, I guess.
"Well we have to talk about what our strategy is going to be?" I ask.
"Strategy? Well we really can't do anything Peeta. Not in this weather anyways. We would have to wait until the rain stop if ever."
"Okay, well if Thresh is gone, it means that either the Gamemakers or Cato killed him." I tell her.
"It also means Cato will be back hunting us." She tells me.
"And he's got supplies again," I tell her.
With the fact that Katniss blew up the supplies, I am pretty sure that Cato was hunting Thresh to get his bag and Thresh's supplies. That would be his first priority, to see what the Gamemakers think he would need the most.
I wonder though, if I needed medicine, what would Cato need? He still had his weapons that he had on him. The only thing I can think of is food, or a way to get food. He has a shelter, the Cornucopia, and a water source. He has a way to defend himself, so the only thing he needs is food.
"He'll be wounded, I bet," She says.
"What makes you say that?" I ask.
"Because Thresh would have never gone down without a fight. He's so strong, I mean, he was. And they were in his territory," she says.
"Good," I say, "The more wounded Cato is the better. I wonder how Foxface is making out."
"Oh, she is fine," she says. "Probably be easier to catch Cato than her."
"Maybe they'll catch each other and we can just go home," I tell her, hopeful. "But we better be extra careful about the watches. I dozed off a few times."
"Me too," she admits. "But not tonight."
We finish eating our meals. Before I tell Katniss that I would take the first watch. Have lots to think about, and to come to terms with.
"Okay, but as soon as you get sleepy you wake me up ok," she tells me.
She immediately falls asleep, guessing the rich food causes one body to shut down quicker. The thundering in the distance gives me cause for concern. We are after all near a water source and close to trees. I wonder if the Gamemakers can control the weather, can they control where the lighting would strike. With one of the main competitors, Thresh, out of the Games what could their plan be? Foxface is much too smart to fall for some game or some 'natural' disaster. So what then? If the rule change is to gives us an advantage or a curse with Cato then would the Gamemakers turn their attention to us, to separate us?
I can still feel the warm bread in my hands. I wonder if he is still thinking of me. I think of him almost every day in the arena. Making sure to do everything I can to make him proud of me. Sometimes I can feel him watching me, and I know those are the moments that I feel most grounded. This all seems too far off, and I feel like I don't belong. How did I survive so long? What kept me going when I knew that I was going to die?
I turn and there in the dim light of the lightning I can see her. Without the moonlight in the night sky, only the flashes of lightning allow me the glimpses of her. Is she the reason that I fought to stay alive? Even now, is she the reason why I wanted to go home? That hope has crept into my heart like a thief? If we were to somehow survive together, would we be together, or is this all just due to the Games that we are allowed to be free to express ourselves?
It may have been the reason why I fought to stay alive, but it may also be the reason why I fight now to keep her alive. I am content to have these Games to have gotten to know her, to love her freely and without circumstances dictating how we should be.
My stomach begins to growl, and I fight it by drinking a little bit of water. It helps fight the urge to eat. Before I was able to go days without eating and it never bothered me. Almost dying, I guess the body has better things to do that to ask for food. I think its greater need is to keep the heart going. The body only needs the heart to keep going. I think about that for a little bit. Your thoughts are secondary to your emotions, well if you want to think of the heart as the emotional center and not just a muscle that pumps your body and keeps you alive. Although now, that I am thinking about it, the desire to eat has grown to an overwhelming want that has overtaken my mind.
A couple of hours have gone by, and I feel that my eyes are starting to close. I come near Katniss, and move the couple of strands of hair away from her face caress her cheek and can see her eyes begin to open.
I hold out the half of roll and crème cheese.
"Don't be mad," I tell her. "I had to eat again. Here's your half."
"Oh, good," she says and take a huge bite. I can tell she is enjoying this, and I hadn't made the suggestion to ration it, we would have probably eaten it all yesterday and then be throwing it up right now.
"We make a goat cheese and apple tart at the bakery," I tell her.
"Bet that's expensive," she tells me.
"Too expensive for my family to eat. Unless it's gone very stale. Of course, practically everything we eat is stale," I tell her.
She looks at me with a curious face. Most of the people from the Seam think the Merchant people actually live the "good life." They think of us like we think of the people from the Capitol. We hardly ever get to eat what we make, especially fresh. We typically always eat the things that no one wants or buys.
I close my eyes and think of home. Probably the only place where I can see it and it is ok. I dream about the day we made the bread that made it all the way to the Hunger Games and our gift from our mentor.
My father would always save fresh bread for us to eat once in a while. He says that we have to be able to try the things that we make to see if they are any good. We don't mind of course being product tasters, we get to eat the good stuff, until we try something that hasn't been done yet, and those are the times we wish weren't product tasters.
It took us several tries to get our signature cinnamon bread down to a science. The first time was too much and it almost choked me to death. That whole day, my mother told me we wasted trying to do something that made no sense.
"We want to make something that we can stand on," my father told her.
"Stand on? You are a baker, not a chef." She tells him.
"Well we Mellarks are going to have a legacy, and if it is this bread, then we will just try until we get it right." He says, grabbing a handful of cinnamon in his hand.
He tosses it to her, and she just looks with a look of shock. He just laughs and she huffs and walks upstairs.
"Well Peeta, let's get back to work," He tells me.
"What combinations do we have left?" I ask him.
"Well we could try this one, and it may work." He tells me.
We worked for hours, until we finally had a working prototype to try. We must have given free samples to everyone who walked into the bakery that day. Most of the time they didn't even noticed. Until one little old lady came in. She is a cook down at the Hobb, Sae I think her name is.
She walked in and told us that the bread had something different to it. A hint of something sweet, like a twist to a story that has already been told she said. She is an older lady and most people in District Twelve trusts her food choices. My father just smiled at me and gave me the thumbs up.
We were both proud that day and not even my mother could bring us down. We sold more bread that day than what we have done in a while.
Little by little, people starting to catch on, and they enjoyed it. So we stop making the regular bread and continue making this one. It has done well. It became a symbol of what District Twelve was. Well that is what the Mayor said. We started to make that bread for the harvest and for the Hunger Games.
'A twist to a story that has already been told', I repeat the sayings of an old woman and think this will be the same. A legacy for the Mellarks, a twist to a story that has already been told, this will be a twist, something that people have never seen, the opposite of what I should do. Something that we can be proud of, that my father can be proud of.