Chapter 32: Peeta's Greenhouse

[Summer of 74th Hunger Games]

The next few weeks and months were happy ones for our district. Not only did citizens rejoice in having two victors from our own district, but also everybody got a benefit from the regular bonus supplies which were going to be delivered on a monthly basis; this was supposed to last for a year, until the next games started. The supplies were not really that much, but at least enabled even the poorest Seam people to eat something else but food made from tesserae once or twice a week. Besides that, we also hoped to get more practical stuff, like new and more sturdy work clothes for the miners.

Prim and Lizzy started to spend a lot of time in Peeta՚s greenhouse. They wanted to make sure that it was at least partially set up and filled with plants before winter was coming, and although winter was still a few months in the future, they worked a lot, most of the summer holidays actually. My girlfriend was getting so busy there that once or twice I complained about it and said that she had so little time for me nowadays; hearing that, she simply suggested that I help working there, and a few times I did. Working with plants was not normally my favorite pastime, but at least I had my girlfriend next to me, and she enjoyed being able to teach me in gardening.

A few times, when we worked together, we managed to get some soil and mud on our clothes, and occasionally this escalated into a friendly mud fight between Lizzy, Prim and me, usually with the two girls being allied against me. Naturally, most of the time all three of us ended up rolling on the ground, sometimes in a big heap together, and we got very dirty, but happy, and those fights made me feel like a kid again. After those fights, we took turns to take a shower in one of Peeta՚s guest rooms before we left for the day.

As a victor, Peeta was not allowed to work in the bakery any longer, but sometimes he volunteered, which was tolerated if he was not getting paid. Philip, the apprentice, learned more about decorations, and soon he could do some of the simpler ones on his own; Peeta continued to teach him, but at least for the time being none of us came close to him in decorating. Dad was a little bit concerned about the long term business outlook; Peeta was supposed to take over the bakery, but now he was not allowed to do so; neither Wheat nor I had the real 'baker's genes' in us, and both of us pursued other options anyway. However, as what Wheat and Leevy were doing with crafting was not really an official business, maybe they would eventually run the bakery officially and do the crafting as a hobby; I could help out from time to time, and Peeta could still do occasional decorations for free. It was not perfect, but it might have to do.

Neither Katniss nor Peeta talked much about their relationship, and they were rarely seen together, which was kind of odd after the closeness they had demonstrated in the arena and during the victor interview before. Prim told me one day when we spent a few hours on our meadow:

"I start getting asked by people why Katniss and Peeta do not go out more together, and if there is something wrong."

"Yes, so am I" I replied. "What do you tell them?"

"I always tell them what Katniss asked me to say – that they need time to recover from the exertion of the last weeks and months."

"That's probably the best to say" I responded. "I tell something similar when being asked."

"But it's somehow wrong, isn't it?" my girlfriend continued. "When you have been through the Games together and won, won't you be able to recover best by being together? I surely would want to be with you as much as possible, and recovering with you would be so much better than trying to do it on my own!"

"I am quite sure that Peeta would actually love to spend much more time with Katniss, but your sister is keeping her distance, or at least that's what I think."

"Yes, she is, indeed, but she still has nightmares almost each night."

"So does Peeta, I think."

"It's a pity that Katniss does not realize that Peeta is really good for her."

"I agree. But, Prim, you need to understand that love can be tricky at times. What the two of us have experienced, with liking each other right from the start and growing together like we have done, does not happen for everybody. A lot of times when somebody falls in love this is unrequited and unhappy, I believe."

My girlfriend nodded and told me:

"Yes, this is what I have also heard a few times. I am so glad and happy that we found each other and that I don't have to worry about all of that with you, my love."

With those words she climbed on my lap, wrapped her skinny arms around my neck, rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes, once again feeling totally at ease. And yes, getting together like it had worked for Prim and me was a gift and indeed something to be grateful for.

About a month after the victors had come home the first of the bonus supply trains was supposed to arrive. The event was scheduled for a Sunday, so that everybody could attend. All businesses and the coal mines were closed, and Katniss and Peeta were requested to hand out the packages personally.

As usual, the train was late, but not too much. First off were a small group of people with cameras, and they placed themselves around the train, before other doors opened. Katniss and Peeta were now arriving from the Victors' Village, and they stepped close to one of the big doors opening into a larger cargo car. Helpers from inside pushed packets out, and Katniss and Peeta started to hand them out to district citizens, who were already waiting in line. For a few minutes this seemed to work quite well, and the procedure was apparently recorded.

Some time later, though, one of the Seam men, who was supposed to received a packet from Peeta, refused to accept it and shouted out: "I do not take charity from a Merchant!"

Before Peeta had a chance to react, the peacekeeper next to him snorted: "Your choice – take it or leave it."

The man left without further comments. Most district residents had made quite some progress overcoming the rift between Seam and Merchant, but some had not; this would take much more time, I thought.

In a similar way, a few Townies, who were supposed to get their parcels from Katniss, snorted and made some comments about 'dirty Seam girls'.

Close to the end of the event, another resident came back to the train and shouted:

"What have you given me? This is poor quality, and not much better than tesserae! Why does the Capitol keep all good stuff for themselves?"

As the man continued to shout and complain, he was taken into custody by the peacekeepers quickly, and two of them lead him off. Prim and I looked at each other, but did not say anything. Peeta sighed and continued to hand out parcels, and Katniss looked a little bit uneasy.

Later on, when we were at home at the bakery, Prim and her mother joined us and we opened the two big family packets we had received, to share what we needed. Some of the stuff in there was helpful and nice, like some sugar, a few pieces of fresh fruit, and such. Some others, like the flour, was of pretty bad quality, and certainly inferior to what he had at the bakery. Part of a bread loaf was stale and moldy, and I could understand why that man at the train station had complained.

"It's a shame that they not even manage to properly prepare the special packages" my father sighed.

"Indeed it is" Mabel Everdeen agreed. "They obviously do not respect victors any longer."

"Have they ever respected victors from the districts?" I asked.

"Not those from ours at least, I think" Dad replied.

"By the way" Prim changed the topic, "have you noticed that Katniss and Peeta really tried to keep distant from each other today?"

"Yes, I have noticed" I told her. "A couple of times one of the camera team tried to prod them to hug and kiss and such, but they refused."

"What a pity" Prim said. "They still feel uneasy with each other, I guess, even after the events of the last games."

"Or maybe because of the events during and after the recent games?" I mused. "Do we really know what happened, specifically behind the scenes?"

On one nice and sunny day Prim told me with some excitement, when we had some time off together on the meadow:

"Guess what, this morning I spent a couple of hours at Katniss' new home, and when I was changing clothes in my room there I heard Gale coming up outside."

"Well, Gale is her hunting partner, and he sure also wants to talk to her from time to time." I replied.

"Sure, but not that kind of talk!"

"So, what happened?"

"I felt a little bit bad about eavesdropping, but I just could not resist the temptation" my girlfriend continued. "Gale was standing just below my partially opened window, and Katniss came out to meet him. They did not talk loud, but I could hear almost everything."

"So?" I prompted her.

"It seemed like this was the first time the two of them really had a chance to talk after my sister had come home from the games" Prim told me. "Gale had just been hunting, and first he told her that he missed his hunting partner. Katniss hinted that she might go hunting again in the future, and Gale then opened the topic of her relationship with Peeta."

"Oh, I see." I commented.

"It was quite clear that Gale does not approve of the idea of Katniss being in love with Peeta, and he seems to believe that with him being her hunting partner and best friend for years, he should have been her first choice regarding kissing and falling in love with."

"Since when is this a choice?" I could not resist the temptation to throw in.

Prim talked on, ignoring my comment for now:

"Katniss did not elaborate, but Gale got kind of angry, telling her that she needed to stop being close with Peeta. Katniss also got angry, stating something about not allowing Gale to dictate her feelings and behavior. And then, although I could not see it directly, it looked like Gale must have pulled her close and kissed her."

"He did what? He kissed her? And she allowed it? Really?"

"Well, I do not think that she actually allowed it. I did not see it, of course, but there was silence for a few seconds, and suddenly a noise like someone had been slapped. Have you seen Gale today yet?"

"No, I have not" I had to admit.

"I have," Prim added with a smirk showing on her face, "and he looks like somebody slapped his face with quite some force."

"Wait, are you suggesting that Katniss slapped him for kissing her?"

"Yes, that's what I believe happened. You know as well as I do that Katniss would never allow somebody to kiss her without her permission. When Gale did that and surprised her, he probably pulled her in strongly, and as strong as my sister is, Gale is much stronger. Slapping him was probably the only option to make him understand."

"Did he say something after that?"

"Yes he did. He said something like 'I needed to do this at least once' and admitted that he had had feelings for Katniss for quite some time, hoping that she would eventually 'come around' and reciprocate his feelings. I know that Katniss has always been honest with him, telling him that she's never going to marry and will never have kids, but obviously Gale still had hope."

"Oh, I see. With what Gale saw during the games, he must have assumed that Katniss changed her mind."

"Yes, and now Katniss is probably feeling bad about her reaction to Gale." Prim said. "She probably even thinks that she kind of owes him, for all of the years of hunting with her and teaching her."

"Indeed, caught between her relationship to a boy who is totally in love with her and her hunting partner, and herself being unsure about her own feelings."

"Something like that, but I do believe that Katniss loves Gale like a big brother and not more. Rye, this is so confusing, and I do not know what to do!"

"Prim, it is not really your responsibility to do something about it. Your sister needs to find a way to handle that, and she may or may not ask for assistance."

Our conversation was interrupted by Prim suddenly shouting out:

"Rye, what is this over there?"

I checked the direction she was looking, and I soon found what had caught her interest. From the meadow, we have a nice view towards the east, beyond the fence, showing more meadows, forest, and such. The air was very clear today, and an object was visible, slowly moving up in the air across the horizon, many kilometers from us. We could not see a lot of details due to the distance, but it did not look like one of the Capitol hovercraft at all, and it also moved more slowly than a hovercraft usually did. In order to be clearly visible at that distance, the object must have been quite large, probably more than 100 meter in length and thus significantly larger than the hovercraft we had seen so far. It looked like a big long cylindrical hull, tapering off at both ends, with a few smaller parts attached to the bottom, but further details were not visible from the distance. I had never seen anything like that before, and neither had my girlfriend.

"What is this, Rye?"

"I do not not have a clue, Prim. But, do you recall that we talked about potential planets in other solar systems quite some time ago, and about how nice it would be to be able to travel there?"

"Yes, I remember, but why?"

"You know, maybe some people living there thought the same, and now they come to visit us in something like big flying saucers or so..."

"Flying saucers? Are you serious, Rye?"

I was not, of course, but I did not have another explanation either. We made a few more jokes and silly assumptions, but at least for now we decided not to talk about that sighting to anybody.

After a few nice and relaxing weeks, school started again, and Prim was now in 7th grade. Like the years before, I sometimes managed to join her for lunch, and most of the time some of the kids were gathering around us, asking all kinds of questions about Katniss and Peeta. Having not just a single victor from out very own district, but even two had spurred everyone's curiosity, and some hoped to get inside information from us.

When Lizzy joined us as well, I looked at her and noticed, not for the first time, that she had had a growth spurt. By now she was almost one head taller than her best friend and one of the tallest girls in class, whereas Prim still was one of the smallest. Seeing the two of them side by side, one would never guess that they were about the same age.

Lizzy was at least not bothering us with stupid questions. She seemed to be quite happy with her friend now being much more well known than before, and she was happy just to be at her side and them being good friends. Above and beyond that, Lizzy was also quite comfortable with me, and sometimes she asked me for help when she had a question about school or so.

Occasionally, when we were eating, Prim was still sitting on my lap, but this had happened so frequently in the past years that nobody paid attention any longer, except for those kids who were new at school, the first graders.

In Peeta՚s greenhouse, it was astonishing to see what the two girls had achieved in the last few weeks of the summer holidays. Not only had the containers been properly arranged, quite a few of them also had plants in them, and I was told that most of them were medicinal plants and herbs. Peeta had also ordered a selection of vegetables seeds and plants, and those were used in a different section. The large center area was still empty, and we did not know yet what to put there.

Peeta had a plan, though:

"Look, they gave me a catalog to go with the greenhouse, and it shows all of the plants I can order. For most of the plants we already have, we use plants we can find around here, just to enable us to also grow them in winter. What about getting something which does not grow around the district at all?"

The catalog had a number of plants and smaller trees which were highlighted as not being able to survive exposition to negative temperatures, but inside the greenhouse that would not be an issue. Specifically the center part, separated from the smaller side wings by glass walls and doors, was designed to maintain the highest temperatures, and after some discussion Prim, Lizzy, Peeta and I agreed on a number of smaller trees who were part of a group called 'citrus fruits', images were shown for lemons, oranges and clementines, and they were supposed to taste very well. Peeta called in an order for those and a few others he wanted right away, and we were looking forward to the delivery.

Meanwhile, at the bakery my father was very happy to have Philip, our apprentice, around. While he was not particularly good at decorations yet, at least not above and beyond the simpler ones, he was by now quite well acquainted with the basics, and he already could prepare the basic types of dough by himself as well as bake some standard types of bread. Once or twice a week Peeta came over for a few hours and did some of the cake decorations 'just for fun' as he said.

During one of those visits Peeta complained that he was getting a little bit of pressure from his prep team about picking a hobby.

"Can you imagine?" he asked Dad, and Wheat and me when we sat together for a chat in the bakery living room. "They believe that each victor should have a specific hobby to demonstrate to the Capitol, and ideally one that the Capitol can gawk on. Baking does not count, they say, as it is an occupation rather than a hobby. Do they expect me to start knitting now?"

We all laughed for a moment, but I had an idea:

"Brother, what about the sketching and painting?"

"Oh, yes, maybe, but there are some paintings I'd rather not show."

I knew that he ad lost of sketches paintings sporting Katniss, and some of them were indeed not meant to be shown to a larger audience.

"But you don't have to. You can still paint what you want, and the more personal ones you can keep from their prying eyes easily, I should think."

Peeta scratched his head: "You know, that's a good idea. I have actually started to paint again since I came back, and there might even be a few I could show."

"Just be careful about what you give away" our father warned. "They might take the paintings to the Capitol for a special 'victor's sale' or so, and there better not be any critical parts on them, such as showing people outside of the fence, you know."

"Hm, well, I guess I could do that."

"You can also mix in a few scenes they might like to see, like coal miners entering the mines, or diligent peacekeepers patrolling the roads."

The fall season was one of the nicest I had ever experienced in my life so far. Many Seam citizens, who had had to worry about their daily food in the years before, had their needs taken care of at least partially by the monthly deliveries, and the mood in general, both in the Merchants' quarter and the Seam, was slightly merrier than usual. Probably everybody was a little proud of having two victors from our own district.

Prim and I took turns to visit Peeta or Katniss in their luxury homes, although I found it easier to talk to my brother than to Katniss. Prim՚s sister somehow behaved like she had a few skeletons in her closet, and I suspected that she had experienced something I did not know about. Maybe, though, it was just her attempt to cope with the situation, supposedly being madly in love with Peeta, but not having the feelings for it.

At this time I started to realize that life as a victor maybe was not as glorious as I had always assumed. Yes, you did not need to worry about daily issues like food, a warm house, clean clothes and such any longer, but I had an inkling that other, maybe larger problems were piled on a victor. Peeta hinted at something a few times, but never elaborated.

During one of our visits to Katniss Prim and I asked if she was willing to tell us ow she got the highest training score of all tributes at the end of training, and this question actually made her smile:

"Oh, sure, I guess that I can tell now. See, when I was supposed to show off my value to the Gamemakers, they looked quite bored, not expecting anything special from our district. Some of them were already focusing on their next meal, a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth, which was already placed right before them. I got angry and annoyed, and after a practice shot with the bow I hit the apple in the pig's mouth, from quite some distance. I guess that this really impressed them, maybe together with my attitude."

"Was that high training score the main reason for the Careers to consider you their primary target?"

"Well, yes, but I also may have insulted some of them with words during training. I know that was stupid, but they were just so annoying..."

Wheat and Leevy had by now implemented the concept to use her big shed mainly for crafting, and the much smaller bakery shed as a sales hut. We had a few exhibits in the bakery, and when customers asked about them, we just directed them outside across the courtyard, where they could see more. Business was not great at all, but sometimes a few items were actually sold, and there even had been a few orders to craft something, like a piece of furniture, on demand.

Eventually a large delivery was brought to Peeta՚s house in the Victors' Village, and it had the plants he had ordered. Right away he told me about it, and I organized for Prim and Lizzy and myself to be there in the next morning, which was a Saturday. We opened the big central greenhouse door and got ourselves busy getting the saplings inside. Once we had read the instructions, we got them into the ground with proper distance, made sure that plenty of nutritious soil was around them and watered them. When the doors were closed again, the heating was set to recommended values and now we would need to wait.

The greenhouse had a wonderful modern heating system with solar panels and batteries as backup for the times when electricity in the district was out, which happened even in the Victors' Village. It would be nice to have something like that for other houses, too, but that was quite unlikely to happen in our poor district. Once more we mused about all of the wondrous things the Capitol had and did not share with the districts, or at least not with ours.

Over the next days and weeks, Prim and Lizzy frequently stopped by and checked on the growing of the new plants. Of course they knew quite well that this took time, but they checked anyway and just liked to spend time in the greenhouse, also tending the other plants while they were there. In addition, with temperatures outside dropping, spending time in the greenhouse was very comfortable.

While fall progressed, days became cooler, we had some frost during the nights, and leaves turned into vibrant colors and eventually fell down to the ground. Normally that was a time of the year I enjoyed, but I could not fail to notice that the mood in the district changed somewhat. The peacekeepers were more alert, the fence was on more frequently, or so we heard at least through the grapevine, and there were various rumors circulating around in the Justice Building. Even Mayor Undersee did not know or at least did not tell what was going to happen, and I was more than slightly worried.

For the time being, that was all, though, and no significant changes were implemented. However, people got a little more antsy and worried, and there was general concern about something big going to happen, although nobody seemed to know any details.

Prim and I enjoyed the time on our meadow whenever we could, and sitting there on sunny days while watching the yellow, red, and brown leaves falling down in a light breeze while eating a cheese bun or slice of bread with butter was always nice. When we were together like this, we managed not to worry about the changes in the district in general and the relation between Katniss and Peeta in particular.

[Author's Note: I will get back to the 'unknown flying object' in a later chapter. Feel free to write a quick review if you guess what it could be!

The expression 'negative temperatures' is if course related to the Celsius scale, not Fahrenheit or anything else.

For those of you who like Gale: I promise that he will get a chance to 'behave' much better, and I will try to find him a proper partner for love, too.]