Chapter 51: Lyme Terra
Belle Foley giggled and tried to weakly protest as the handsome Seam boy dragged her by the hand out of the Square in front of the District 12 Justice Building and down a side street into the shadows of some of the Merchant shops.
"Glen! Wait, Glen, I couldn't possibly…"
"Just come on!" he shushed her, giving her a daredevilish wink.
"No! No, Glen! I don't understand, why on earth would we….? Mmmmmm….."
Glen suddenly crowded her up against the wall to the shoemaker's shop, took the face of the gorgeous Merchant girl in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. It only took a moment, and his one hand floating to down to rest lightly on her hip before Belle was giving in to the excitement of something that felt forbidden by closing her eyes and kissing him back. "Mmmmmhmmmmm….."
She hadn't known what to make of Glen Everdeen when they first met while watching in the Square during the Quarter Quell last year. The alliance of her best friend, Maysilee Donner, with the ballsy Haymitch Abernathy had left Merchant and Seam back home feeling awkward about which of the two finest tributes Twelve had seen in generations they should back. Maysilee's ultimate and untimely death at the hands of pink birds mutts had tragically made the decision for them, and Glen had been one of the few Seamers to cross over to the Merchant side of the Square. There, he had encountered Maysilee's inconsolable twin sister Kaydilyn, the beautiful daughter of the apothecary Belle Foley, and her boyfriend, Dannel Mellark, boldly sticking out his hand and asking for each of their names. Belle had felt a weird churn in her belly when the handsome Seamer's look had lingered longer on hers.
In the year since, Belle and Glen had moved from being nearly strangers, to acquaintances and then something resembling friends…. And then they weren't even that.
Belle hadn't intended to move on so quickly after she and Danny broke up a two-year-plus, fairly serious relationship that probably could have led to a Toasting had they not drifted apart. The first time Glen had kissed her in the shadow of the new school play-yard statue of the Abernathy boy – their second Victor, and first in decades – Belle had slapped him across the face in affront. But then, one morning while she had been working in her parents' shop and Glen had been hired out to tend the gardens outside (many Seamers took on odd jobs for Merchants to supplement working in the mines), Belle had heard the loveliest voice she had ever heard float over the windowsill.
A few days later, Glen had kissed her again. This time, she hadn't pulled away, and even dared to kiss him back, a little.
Glen and Belle now finally broke apart, and when they did, the Merchant flower's entire body had seemed to glow pink. Even so, she stressed, "It's dangerous! What if someone sees?"
Glen grinned in a cocksure manner and shrugged. "Let them. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
She giggled, daring to loop her arms sinuously about his neck, playing with the nape. "You Seamers have the strangest sayings…. Hrrrrmmmmm….." Glen's lips sealed over hers again and she swooned, the kiss deepening into a make-out session with tongue before they got a hold of themselves.
A swelling of gasps and screams of shock could suddenly be heard from the Square around the corner, where the 51st Games were playing on a massive Jumbotron. For the first time anyone in Twelve could remember, they had a Victor, a representative in the Capitol to help the latest crop of coal miner's kids. Haymitch was away in the city learning how to be a mentor and possibly save the lives of his tributes. Before the scrappy Seam loner, it had only ever been Lucy Gray Baird's name what was read at the Reaping, but there were few people left alive in Twelve today who had known her. Thus, most people tended to believe that their first, and for a long time only, Victor had been nothing more than a ghost. A fairytale. Lucy Gray was the subject of many an All Hallow's Eve ghost story, and her spirit was used to discipline wayward children.
Belle quickly got a hold of herself and put a halt to all the kissing, discreetly taking Glen's hand and leading him out of the back alley. "Let's go. If the Peacekeepers catch us…."
The forbidden couple arrived back at the edge of the Square without incident, and when Belle got her Mandatory Viewing update, she wanted to groan. The leader of the Career alliance was guiding her followers into a rumble with a gang of outlier tributes who had organized to try and stand against them. The kids from 3, 5, 7 and the boy from 6 against the Careers of 1, 2 and 4.
The pitched battle occurring now on screens thirty feet high was not much of an even match more so than it was a near total rout. The vicious girl from 2, who at 2 to 1 odds was the clear favorite to win, was clearly having a grand old time, skewering human flesh left and right while actually singing to herself. Belle had been at least happy being brought up in a time when the Capitol lapdog districts had landed themselves in a bit of a losing streak rut. From following her Hunger Games history lectures in school, only two Careers had come home alive from the previous ten Games – one of whom had simply refused to fight at all and got lucky back when she, Belle, was seven years old; and the other being that sadist Brutus Barsetti who had triumphed a couple years ago.
From the looks of things now, however, it would seem that the Careers' time lost in the Hunger Games wilderness was over, as Lyme Terra continued singing a patriotic anthem from her homeland while hefting a sword dripping with blood above her head:
"Now Fatherland, Fatherland show us the sign your children have waited to see! The morning will come when the world is mine! Tomorrow belongs to me!"
Belle whimpered, turning in to her new lover. "Hold me!" she whispered, pleading.
And he did, until the Games were over and long after.