field guide to songbirds.
o1. Rue knows what it's like, when the world is large. She sees it, the sun breaking the line of the horizon and burning through the morning sky. It sets the fields on fire, stalks of wheat crackling golden from within, burning off the morning dew. It pools soft and rosy where the sky and land meet at the farthest point you can see, and because she can't see any farther she doesn't know what else is there. She doesn't think about borders and perimeters and fences, about other Distracts, about the apples you pull from the trees and where they go when they don't stay with you. The sun kisses the earth with gentle lips and illuminates the whole of the orchard and from where she is sitting, in the very highest branches, she is at the top of the world.
These are things she can always remember: the way the air shimmers in earliest June, caught between the chill of the night and the warming day; how the small apples fit in your palm as if the two were made for each other and how the tart juice will cling to your lips the rest of the day even after you've buried the core and the stem when the peacekeepers aren't looking; the smell of grain and wet soil and astringent crocuses that herald winter's end.
The jeweled blue sky; the breeze catching you as you jump from branch to branch.
She doesn't know it yet but she writes these memories into places that can't be touched. She writes them into her voice and her spine, and when she sings at the start and end of the day she'll always feel the soft hands of an early summer breeze. When she straightens suddenly in fear, she'll remember the sensation of catching herself on a branch, more sure than anything else, and she'll be braver for it.
She loves District Eleven; it loves her back.
o2. Dad teaches her sleight of hand by passing a coin back and forth between his fingers so fast that she never tracks it, except when he slows down. He shows her what it takes: quiet, focus, and a smile to distract whomever you're fooling.
She laughs at Dad's distraction, silly and grandiose, and she practices what he shows her. She practices that crucial moment between passing the coin from one hand to another, how to make your fingers move even faster and quicker. It's harder than palming the tiny apples, the ones you can sneak past the mayor and the peacekeepers, but she practices it after dinner and in bed before she falls asleep. She learns how to make it look as if she's pulled it seamlessly from behind someone's ear, then from thin air. She learns how to make it disappear even when someone is looking right at it.
In the late evening, between dinner and sleeping, she sits next to Dad. Mom is usually holding one of the littler ones, and maybe her next oldest sister is pressed against her on the other side. Sometimes they all listen to the Capitol's radio. Sometimes they all take turns telling stories. Sometimes everyone is quiet and those are the hardest times.
But they are all always together.
o3. Let's fix that hair, Rue.
Her mother's hands have always been deft with her hair, styling its thick curls without pulling hard enough to hurt. Both of their hands are stiff with calluses but Mom is always careful and precise. She pulls back the pillowed bulk of Rue's hair into a smaller bun, softly encircles it with braids. When Rue were young, her mother said it was like a crown. Lifting Rue in her arms high enough that she might see herself in the worn glass of the mirror over her dresser, Rue smiled and pressed her fingers against the intricate updo, and she understood what it felt like to be pretty.
The warmth of her mother's hands; sunlight illuminating the old, warped mirror; a crown braided into her hair.
When they call her name, that is all she can feel. She doesn't move, not at first, because she's drowning a little in the feeling of Mom's hands working their clever, competent magic in her hair. She remembers what it feels like to be held close and see yourself with a crown on the top of your head, of laughing with her father and the thick wrought coin they passed between each other.
Sitting together, just last night. Her mother just this morning, making her pretty.
It was going to be a tradition — every year on the Reaping, she'll do it for Rue. Braid her hair before everyone assembles, just one of so many of District Eleven's children — thousands that congregate every year, waiting for someone to be Reaped so that they can be released back into the sun drenched orchards, waiting to go back to work and back to the realest life any of them have ever known.
Eventually, someone moves her to the stage. No one in the crowd says a word; no one in the crowd applauds when her escort congratulates her. No one says a word when she calls for a volunteer. Rue's never been to a Reaping before so she doesn't know if this is normal, if this is what it's like for the ones who watch or the ones who wind up standing on the stage in front of the Justice Building.
Above her, the large television screens broadcast her face. When she looks at them, the angle hides her hair crown until she can't see it anymore.
o4. The food is so strange and vibrant and rich that on the train ride Rue eats until she can't move. Her escort tells her the names of things, chitters excitedly about pacing herself, but Rue doesn't remember the names of the hundreds of jams and unidentifiable meats, and she doesn't pace herself. No one yells at her or drags her off the train when she eats a whole plateful of fruits she's never seen before, and she doesn't realize that the other boy from her district — Thresh, that name she does remember — has let her lean against him until she notices how warm the space between them has become.
Still, that night, she dreams about apples.
o5. Whenever she smiles at Thresh, he smiles back at her. That is enough to get through the parade and parties and the overly large bedroom they give her to sleep in, larger than her house in Eleven. She thinks of her mother and father and little siblings, how they would all press close together in the tiny living room on the couch that her family has had since long before she was born. There's nothing this soft and silky in Eleven — not the mattresses or the blankets, not the rug underfoot, and part of her delights in feeling the new and startling textures. The other part thinks of telling her little siblings about them, and then all of her shrinks at that.
Rue doesn't understand why it's so wonderful and so staggeringly painful all at once; these feelings are bigger than her and born of orders of magnitude that eclipse only one person. And she is still only twelve years old.
Thresh gravitates towards the weapons — the large, heavy knives, the big weights. He tests them, what they feel like, and she watches him do that until he drifts over to the survival stations. The plants are all familiar; leaves from trees that she has lived in, berries that will kill you at a taste and others that are full of sweet juice and water.
Some of the others — the ones from One and Two, mostly — spar with each other. They laugh sometimes, concentrate other times. She watches them too, the way they move with resolve and trained strength. But also the way that some of them are slow on turns and others move loudly, loud enough to be heard throughout the whole training center. Their arms and eyes are quick, but they don't watch the ground.
She learns their pattern, and eventually, she tests it. They never find her or the knife she steals from them, and from up high she can see the whole of the training center. It's not as big as an orchard at the end of the world, but it's everything she needs.
o6. The Girl on Fire notices her after a day of Rue trailing her. She's faster than the others, but not as fast as Rue. But when Rue smiles at her and the boy from her district, they smile back, like Thresh.
o7. The spotlights are unnaturally warm and her dress is oddly stiff, but she speaks to Caesar Flickerman with all the confidence that comes from watching twenty three other tributes train from up higher than any of them ever look. She's fast, and she tells him that. She has a chance, she also tells him. He agrees and she doesn't hear the same showman voice he uses for everyone that sits across from him. Because Rue believes it, really believes it, in the hollows of her bones; she's fast and smart, she knows how to stay alive and sneak fruits to eat.
She doesn't know what it's like, yet, to feel your mortality and worry about how to hold it so that it doesn't shatter in your hands. She's bright and capable, but young.
When she's done, Thresh quietly puts a hand on her shoulder. He doesn't say anything, he never really does, but he stills smiles at her when she smiles up at him. That's just fine. They don't need words. Besides, Rue's soon too busy watching the Girl on Fire be that girl on fire again, spinning in a circle of flames, and when her partner talks about his crush on her, Rue wonders giddily what it's like to be in love.
o8. The world shatters around her, and all she can do is hold onto the things she knows so well she doesn't have to think about them. Run fast, climb high. Lucky for her, these things save her life. She avoids the clash of weapons that mark the bloodbath and grabs something, just one thing but one thing more than what she had, and she runs. She runs, ducking beneath low branches in trees and over sprawling roots. The forest is cooler and more densely packed with foliage than the rigidly structured orchards at home, but nature is all around her and that is close enough to her world that her instincts remain steady and reliable.
She pushes deeper into the heart of the forest and only when she's lost the sounds of everyone else for a long, long time does she climb the nearest tree. They are similar to what she knows — thick, some of them bearing little fruits, many of them safe to eat. Animal sounds echo, like squirrels digging around for food or rabbits hopping unevenly through the brush far down below, but Rue only ever sees a few. Like a bird, once, perched on the edge of a branch. It watches her curiously, and flies away when her weight displaces its branch.
At home, even the peacekeepers can't keep the mockingjays from eating the bits of fruit that fall from hands and baskets and thin tree limbs. They pick at what's left over until someone sings to them and then they take off all at once like some cloud on earth, calling the same melody over and over again. Against the sinking sun, everything painted gold and dusty red and gentle violet, they wing freely through the orchard, singing without shame or fear
When the urge comes to sing to this bird, Rue remembers where she is and stays silent. Instead, she watches it fly away, then pulls out the extra socks she's gotten, pulls them over her hands, and finds the thickest cluster of leaves to tuck into and sleep.
o9. Rue finds her before she can die. When she communicates without words, the Girl on Fire understands, and she manages to run away from the tracker jackers hurt but alive. There is no room in Rue to question her instinct to make sure that she is well; there is no moment when she sees the Girl Who Is No Longer On Fire and worries about being attacked. Because all she can remember is the way the girl smiled at her in the training center, just like Thresh.
When she wakes, she smiles at Rue again. Rue's managed a little caution — caution she abandons at Katniss' soft words, caution she never picks up again when Katniss hands her a leg (a whole leg!) of groosling, then another. She thinks of her mother doing her hair up in its crown, and she thinks of Katniss' glittering, fiery dress and the way that Peeta looked at her and she asks her about being in love. Katniss laughs, kind and warm like the flush summer sun.
At night, Rue shows her what the things in her pack do. Katniss already knows the plants and berries like Rue does. Her sleeping bag is large and like a miracle and when the two of them fit it's so warm (warm like home; home is warm, it's warm even in the winter, not like here) that Rue falls asleep more easily than she has since her name was called weeks ago. Katniss is a candle in the darkness and she is not afraid of her flame.
Katniss helps her, but she also trusts her and listens to her, and when she gives her a job it is the first time in a long time that Rue feels power come back to her hands. It's different than successfully palming an apple when the peacekeepers can't see, or moving a coin back and forth, but it fills her all the way with the burn of determination. She doesn't question Katniss' plan, because it is not only hers, it's Rue's too — it's theirs together, as if they are two mockingjays calling the same song to each other.
There are no words for this kind of trust, because that is what trust is: a thing that exists because it does not need words.
1o. Rue has never questioned if the cycle of day and night are true in the arena; she doesn't question it now. She's not cold anymore and maybe that's because Katniss is with her. Katniss who is shaking so much that Rue can feel it even though it's hard to feel much of anything (maybe part of her is thankful that she doesn't have to feel the parts of herself that aren't there anymore because the sharp end of a spear took them away). But Katniss still looks at her with the kind of expression that reminds her of her mother and the older coworkers in her group — like home. Like the place she loves and the place that loves her.
Sunrises and sunsets burning at the horizon; mockingjays singing; the tart-sweet bite of small apples; the wind through the highest leaves on the highest branches of the highest trees.
There is a part of Rue, lucid and aware and afraid of her mortality now, that hopes Katniss wins. The both of them are still in the Games, after all, and not in District Eleven, and winning is part of it. Katniss should win because Rue loves her, she decides; she's never needed more reasons than just the ones that feel right.
But fear and sorrow and guilt ebb with her lucidity. As her life begins to gut like a dying flame, she forgets what it feels like to feel bad. Katniss sings, soft and low, and Rue looks up at where the day is dappled by trees and their leaves, painted a gentle yellow in the light. Distantly, she thinks she'll have to get back to work soon, won't she? She's taking a break that's gone on for too long. But it's warm and peaceful and quiet, and she wants to watch the sky a little longer.
Katniss closes Rue's eyes for her long after Rue can feel it. She never has to stop looking up at the sunlight falling through the trees.
apparently ffn doesn't allow second person pov? wild. anyway! reviews are loved! disasterganes on tumblr / clairenchanted on twitter