She clears a patch of ground for my own pack, kicking away the stray twigs with the toe of her boots. I sit down on the end of the log, my bag still open, the fabric pressed against my chest. She stirs up the embers with a long stick, tossing the glowing branches so that the groosling cooks faster. The sight of the dripping fat and the crispy bubbles in the skin of the bird makes my stomach growl. When the groosling is properly browned on all sides, Katniss picks it up and deftly breaks it into pieces. She offers me part of the breast, the pale white meat gleaming.
"I..." I start, dipping my hand into my own bag, "I've got some things we could eat with that."
Carefully I take out my stash of roots, herbs and berries, laying them all out before her like an offering. Since she is feeding me, I feel like I should give her something too. I like the idea of this friendship being an exchange, rather than me owing her food upon kindness. Ma and Pa have taught me to hate the feeling of being indebted, and so I push my meagre collection of food across to Katniss.
"That tastes really good roasted," I tell her as she eyes a particular white root with suspicion, "Here, I'll just bury it in the fire and it should be done in five minutes."
Leaving the pile of berries and herbs beside my bag, I kneel down to place the dozen or so roots into the glowing ember, pushing the hot coals back over the top with a stick. It's a method of cooking that is used commonly back at home, because it allows two things to be done at once. When I am finished, Katniss hands me the steaming groosling breast from earlier. She hasn't eaten yet. I think she was waiting for me.
"Thanks for the roots, Rue," she says, using my name for the first time, "They look great, and I'm sure they'll taste amazing too. Maybe even as good as that lamb stew from the Capitol."
I laugh at that. That lamb stew was the thing that made Katniss Everdeen's interview such a success, and now she is comparing it to my homely roots. The earnest look on her face as she tries to make me feel good makes me giggle, because somehow Katniss Everdeen and intense seriousness just don't go together. I take the juicy piece of meat from her hand.
"Here's to the Hunger Games," she says mockingly, raising her own groosling breast as though it's a toast, "And here's to us."
I follow suit, grinning at the silliness of it all. The steaming groosling is screaming out to be eaten, but I restrain myself to a small polite bite because I don't want to be rude. But Katniss goes for it like how my littlest sister would, holding the piece with both hands and tearing out a large chunk. I copy her, eating as I would back at home, biting into everything with relish. In a few short moments she has made me so comfortable, and for that I am extremely grateful.
"You're lucky with this groosling," I remark in between bites, "It's not the season for it."
"Really?" she replies, wiping the congealed fat from her fingers before picking up another piece of meat, "I had no idea. I didn't even know what it was until you told me. I was praying that it's edible; it looked similar to some of the birds we hunted at home, but that's about all I knew."
"Yeah, they're grooslings," I confirm, finishing up the last morsels of my meal, "In autumn, when they migrate pass our orchards, people would try to shoot them down. A single groosling would feed a whole entire work unit. Groosling days are lucky days. They're so fatty that even a tiny bit makes a decent lunch."
"A whole work unit?" she asks, aghast, "Isn't that like thirty or so people?"
"No, twenty," I correct her, looking down at the remaining pieces of groosling, "We have smaller teams in the orchard, mainly because the work's lighter. In the fields, where Thresh works, well, worked, each team's about thirty to forty people."
"Take the drumstick," Katniss tells me as she sees me looking, picking up the leg herself and pressing it into my hand, "Stuff yourself."
I take it up in my hands, pausing our conversation momentarily to eat. Katniss digs into another piece herself, and for a while we sit in silence as we devour our first real meal in days (well, it is my first real meal. I'm assuming it's the same for her). I scramble onto my knees to dig out the roots as I finish my groosling, blowing on the char grilled plants before I hand them to Katniss. It's a little overdone, and we have to scrape some burnt bits off, but it tastes delicious. Although I suspect that may be because we had the groosling beforehand. I've eaten these roots raw for days, but with a little fire it turns from a necessity into a nice meal.
"Tastes like parsnip," Katniss remarks, blowing the ashes off her fourth root, "Between you and me, we have a real feast here, eh?"
"Uh huh," I nod, still filling my nowhere-near-full stomach.
I'm only picking at the roots, because even though there's about a third of a groosling left, I don't dare take any more. Katniss would probably want to save them anyway. I would, if I was her. Popping the last piece of meat into my mouth, I throw away the clean-picked bone.
"Oh," I sigh, sucking the last of the groosling juice off my fingers, "I've never had a whole leg to myself before."
"Take the other," Katniss tells me, motioning at the remaining leg sitting before us.
I didn't mean for it to come out that way, like I'm desperate for a piece of food. Well, to be brutally honest, I am, but I don't want to come off like that at all. I look away from the meat, trying my very hardest to control myself. I do want that groosling. Rather badly.
"Just take the other leg, Rue," she repeats, working through my self control.
"Really?" I blurt out before I can stop myself.
"Really," she tells me, "Take whatever you want. Now that I've got a bow and arrows, I can get more. Plus I've got snares. I can show you how to set them."
I want it so much, but I don't want to take it. Goddamn etiquette.
"Oh, take it," she says, shoving the drumstick into my hands, "It will only keep a few days anyway, and we've got the whole bird plus the rabbit."
She motions towards a skinned rabbit by the fireside, cleaned and ready to be roasted as soon as there's room on the fire. The sight of the extra food makes me feel less guilty, and so I raise the second drumstick to my mouth. Once the sweet juice of the groosling fills my mouth, I can't resist any longer.
"I'd have thought, in District Eleven, you'd have a bit more to eat than us," she says while I chew religiously at my huge mouthful of meat, "You know, since you grow the food and all."
"Oh, no," I reply as I swallow down the mouthful, surprised that she even though as such, "We're not allowed to eat the crops."
"They arrest you or something?" she queries, replacing the groosling with the rabbit and stirring up the fire some more.
I wish! If only that's what they do.
"No, they whip you and make everyone else watch," I tell her, trying to choose my words carefully, "Or worse. The mayor's very strict about it."
"Oh," she says, clearly shocked by the way my district operates. I wonder why.
"Well, do you get all the coal you want?" I ask her, genuinely curious.
"No," she answers, "Just what we buy and whatever we track in on our boots."
So it is the same everywhere else in Panem. We steal fruits, they take coal. And I bet in every single other district people sneak out their produces to maintain survival too.
"So I guess you take tesserae too?" she asks, steering the conversation away from illegal doings, "What with having to hand in all the food that you produced."
From the way her eyes darted to the trees around us, I realise that she's looking out for cameras. I've forgotten that this is broadcasted all day around Panem. It wouldn't do to talk bad of they way the Capitol has treated us.
"They feed us a bit extra during harvest time," I chime in, wanting to erase my wrongs, but can't resist adding in at the very last minute, "So that people can keep going longer. From sunrise to sunset, you know. It wouldn't do to have fainting workers."
"Don't you have to be in school?" she queries.
"No, not during harvest," I tell her, "Everyone works then."
And by everyone, I mean everyone. From my great aunt who is turning seventy this year, to my baby sister who is just five. I swear Willow has spent more time scaling apple trees than inside a classroom.
"But I'm in school for the other half of the year, where it's not the season for anything," I continue, "So I guess I'm like the rest of the other kids in Panem. Well, assuming that they do the same thing as us. We were never really taught about the other districts at school. Save the titbits about the Dark Days and the Hunger Games. But that stuff's depressing."
"I don't know about the other districts, but Twelve has school for all the children as well," Katniss tells me, "My sister's there now, actually. Her name's Prim, you know. Primrose Everdeen."
I do know. The blonde girl with a sister who loves her enough to give up anything for her. Even her life.
"She's twelve too?" I ask, my voice soft as to not stir up too many painful memories.
"Just like you," Katniss confirms, her grey eyes sad, "But it's okay, Gale's looking after her now. And I'll look after you."
"You don't have to, you know," I tell her, knowing full well that this friendship cannot last, "It's okay."
"No, I do," she tells me, her eyes a million miles from here, "I want to. I want to protect you, Prim."
And with that she turns away to flip the rabbit over, leaving me sitting alone on the log. I don't think she noticed her slip of the tongue.
She called me Prim.