Wednesday, 3rd week of November, 73rd Winter Anno Nix
Crumb, pt. 1:
crumb – n. – the interior of a loaf as defined by its holes; pl. - fragments, bits, or pieces broken off from various original sources and mixed together into a homogenous blend
She arrives at her house broken in more ways than one. To begin with, her skull feels like a tortuous seam is being mined deep within, coiling and curling like a smoldering snake who swallows all withstanding words and feelings. Thinking is impossible, especially when blood is running into her eye and she's trying so hard to place one foot in front of another, dodging the trail of blood-drops weeping from Gale's back.
It's a forty-minute walk from the Square to home and her shirt is sopping and icy from where Leevy's snow-pack has melted into her body heat. Katniss doesn't think she has the balance to bend down and scoop a fresh dressing, so she clamps her hands tight over her abdomen and hopes the bleeding stops.
The stairs up to her porch are slippery as pondweed and sloping like the Goat Man's buckled back. It takes precious minutes to maneuver Gale's inert body up the flight, but this is not the first time Thom has done this. Katniss doesn't trust many people, and especially not with the lives of loved ones. If she were to trust one person to carry Gale home, it would be the dark-eyed man in front of her who's held secrets longer than he's held kin.
Even while they burst through the door, Katniss hangs frozen at the base of the stairs like a dark stalagmite, all bruised and bloodied and blue. It's the baker's boy who sees her beyond the open entry and rushes outside, slipping on the glassy ice in his rush to wrap his arm about her shoulders and guide her up the steps. Her mother barely looks up when they stumble inside. Instead her hands are preoccupied with bottled herbs and tinctures and murky liquids that Katniss smells from ten feet off. Gale is lying facedown on the tabletop, lifeless and still while Thom tugs the jackets out from underneath him.
Mrs. Everdeen thrusts a bowl each at Bristel and her husband, saying, "Snow. Fresh, clean snow. As much as you can find."
They slam the door behind them on their way out.
"You." She points at Peeta still steadying Katniss in the entryway, "I need as many rags torn up from these shirts as possible. Set them in the kettle to boil as you go."
Katniss feels his absence acutely in the chill that settles around her shoulders, but he takes up his task resolutely, glancing over at her every other rip and stretch.
"You can build a fire?"
Thom nods promptly.
"Good. I need a nice hot one – as high as you can make it."
There's a dull blur of time passing as Katniss sways, disoriented in the speckled snowfall light. Mrs. Everdeen gropes in the dark corners of the cupboard for sour wine and upends an entire bottle into a steel bowl with methodical glugs. Between her palms she crushes herbs and flowers, pinches powders and salt, scattering them over the vinegar.
Katniss forms the names numbly in her mouth, Oregano, Thyme… Yarrow, Elm. She shivers and replays the memories of gathering those remedies with Gale three months ago. When the leaves were just beginning to turn brown and their mouths turned away from frowns – when the only blood let down was hers. She had slipped with the knife while whittling slippery-slick elm quills off the tree and Gale had laughed at her. Afterwards, he ripped his own shirt to bind her hand and walked all the way home barebacked in the cold. Somehow, today feels risibly mirrored to that moment, turnt upside down by some perverted maker; a game made just for him.
Remorselessly, the present comes skulking back with the clank of the vinegar soak on the table stool and the fire's cackle when the kettle boils over.
"Help me wash him."
Mrs. Everdeen enlists both young men to help, wringing out steaming rags and demonstrating straight, smooth strokes on his arms and neck. They come away gory and black with soot and gravel.
She tends to his face herself, dabbing delicately at his split lip and bashed forehead, skimming over the welts on his cheekbones and wetting his blood-crusted eyelashes with clean cloths until they are as black and thick as before.
"Good, good. That's good."
The boys pause at her praise and she nods once to relinquish them. Katniss has a starry gaze that quivers at every movement, but she doesn't respond when the baker's boy gathers her fingers around a damp cloth and holds it to her nose. The cold has made it bleed and Katniss hadn't noticed the hot blood running down her chin.
"Hold him down for me."
Blue eyes look at the healer questioningly, "Hold him down? He's been passed out for over two hours."
But Thom just grunts and grabs a shoulder.
The vinegar trickling off the rag drips like chimes and seems innocent enough. Yet in the instant Mrs. Everdeen lays the cloth over the weeping lacerations on his back, Gale Hawthorne comes alive.
There's a horrific gasp, like a purple-faced newborn gulping for air after the umbilical cord is loosened from around his neck, and then his back arches and he whimpers in a way Katniss doesn't recognize. Still, her mother never falters, soaking the rag and dousing his back in calm, repetitive strokes.
Gale rocks his shoulders and shudders under her hands. He moans, and the world is too bright for Katniss.
"You need to give him something first. You need to – no, please. Please, just wait until – he needs something for the pain…"
Her mother doesn't look up so Katniss reaches for him. She runs her hands through his hair to comfort him, to comfort herself.
"Please stop. Please…" he struggles and keens in her arms, "You're not listening! Can't you hear – you're hurting him! Stop!"
She does stop. She looks Thom straight in the eye and asks him over the erratic requiem of Gale's labored choking and Katniss' hyper ventilations, "Is she hurt?"
Thom grimaces at her clinical tone, but grips Gale's bicep harder and says, "They shot her in the side. We got snow on it right away."
She raises her eyebrows, whether at Thom's explanation or Katniss' quiet pleading underneath her breath, Please, please, please. Gale.
Peeta speaks up from the opposite end of the table, "She fell twice and hit her head both times. I heard it."
"Katniss, look at me."
Her head snaps up, eyes hopeful. Mrs. Everdeen stares for a brief and analytical second, then says, "She's in shock. Take her to the back room."
"No! Please, just listen to me! You're not listening!"
Katniss' hands try to knock the vinegar bowl but Thom snatches her wrists like fireflies in a bottle and pulls her away from the table.
"STOP! I need to help him! I need – Git off me! Git off – Gale!"
She fights like fire on a windy day in Thom's grip, no matter how hard he tries to pin her arms to her sides. It takes Peeta's additional strength to drag her to the only other room in the otherwise open-floor house: a small 10-by-10 square tucked in the back corner and enclosed by two poorly erected walls stuffed with straw-mud for insulation. She screams all the while.
"I know how it feels! Please, just listen to him! I can feel it! Just listen! It hurts! You're hurting him!"
Thom grabs her shoulders and pushes her against one wall, feeling it rattle and sway beneath her. "Hey, okay, okay. Stop. Katniss, stop!"
She is all sharp elbows and snapping teeth. Thom can tell from the corner of his eye that Peeta doesn't quite know what to do.
"He's safe, Katniss. There's nothing more you can do. He's safe."
She screams and rocks against him because she can still hear the table groaning and Gale hissing in the next room.
Thom lets out a frustrated breath as he pins her once more against the wall. She's taken to wailing, long and endless, never taking a breath. So, Thom pulls his hand back and smacks her square across the jaw, enough to make her gasp and break for air. Her eyes are wide and on display. She turns into the wall, holding her hips as she slides slowly down to the floor. Peeta stands in the corner, stunned and angrily bewildered. Thom only shakes his head and mutters, "There. You're done now. Stupid girl."
"Hey!" Peeta admonishes from behind him, "Leave her alone."
The blonde boy walks past Thom with hard eyes and kneels down next to Katniss on the dusty floorboards. He moves a tentative hand towards her shoulders. Katniss shivers and turns her head slowly, gazing frigidly into Thom's eyes. It's enough to turn the room's climate to bitter winter and for Peeta to withdraw his outstretched hand carefully.
"I hate you," she grates darkly.
Thom stares back like it doesn't hurt. It does hurt, only because he's heard it before, in this room.
"How could you just stand there and let it happen? You were watching the whole time. You would've sat back and let them kill him. You would've watched him bleed out –"
He opens his mouth to defend himself but her voice rises.
"You're filth! You're no better than them! You don't care at all whether he lives or not! You don't care about any other life than your own! You selfish scum, you –"
Thom shoves his hands in his pocket to keep from hitting her again and glances at Peeta, "You got this?"
He doesn't wait for a reply before he exits the tiny room. Ignoring Bristel and her husband's curious looks from the kitchen, he slips out the back door into the stinging snow. With his boot he sweeps slush off the first step and sinks down on his haunches. With his hands he palms his eyes until he sees colors pop and flare. With his mind he remembers.
When he finally comes inside, she is sleeping on the lumpy floor mattress, eyes fluttering and breath hitching in dreamland. He has to check to make sure Peeta and her mother are preoccupied with Gale before he rakes his back against the doorjamb, clutching his ribs until he can breathe again because cripes, she looks so young, and he remembers the seven hells he went through the last time he watched a dark-haired girl sleeping in this room. Even the way she groans a little, holding her belly with sleepy-drugged-drapey arms reminds him of her, of when losing her seemed like the worst thing that could happen in this world.
And it was.
It's hard to wade through the Town's grape-vine of Seam slander without gleaning juicy accounts of their legendary temper. But such is the way of the Town. They plant whatever bits of coal they find in their seed bag and cultivate it into a fruitful crop. Then when the yield is heavy and full, they crush it between their tattling teeth and toast the woes of their neighbors. The drink of partiality is sweetest when shared amongst friends of the garden variety.
Peeta can remember the weeks following the birth of the Overtons' second son. He was born with a seam running from his gums to his nose, fated with the permanent sneer of a hissing alley cat. He remembers how the Town women would wait in line at the bakery, murmuring under their breath, Let the Capitol have him. May he be reaped, Snow bless us.
But the fact remained that such a flaw had been associated with the pale-skinned, yellow-haired faction, so naturally, they hunted for a scapegoat.
See that one grazing on the hill there? Yes, that one – the dark one with the mischievous silver eyes. He came in the middle of the night and ate all our pasture grass. Ate it all up, can you believe it? Have you ever seen such a horrid creature?
And the truth of the matter is, this boy is not ours – not wholly, you see. It was that one, the dark one, who came and took advantage of this woman. It was the coal that did this. Not us. The boy is not one of us. He will never be one of us. He is cursed by Them. They did this.
It was the polite thing to do to smile and nod, to placate the old women. But soon the young girls began preaching it and couples quoted it as something holy, and the entirety of the town aimed to evangelize their blame like the Second Rebellion.
Soon their blame became a prophecy, for one night, Mrs. Overton left the quaint Town bungalow she shared with her husband and children, and crossed the boundary where the cobblestones turn to torn gravel and the people are as dark as their quarter. She left a swaddled squirming curse outside the gates of the Community Home and the Peace Patrol found her two days later, dangling from the District fence. She was snarled in the sparking electric wiring. She was blackened head to toe. She was covered in coal dust.
Standing in the barebones bedroom of Katniss Everdeen's house, he watches warily the interactions between the tiny spitfire girl and her tall, imposing companion. He's not sure what to make of her wrathful words and frantic fights. He's not sure how much is warranted to shock and how much is a deeply ingrained defect that makes night brawls a popular pastime in this part of Twelve. He's not sure how far he's been brainwashed by the people who raised him, kissed him, wrestled him. He's not sure about a lot of things now.
But in the instant Thom slaps her and calls her stupid girl, Peeta knows she doesn't deserve it, any of it. If he can make up for the sins of his people, he will do it now as a penitent blockade between them.
It's a relief when Thom leaves the room. Katniss' verve sputters out quickly and she curls inward like smoke from a wet fire, shuddering. Peeta swaddles her in dry blankets from the foot of the metal bed and follows her to the mattress in the corner, spilling with hay and goose down that breathes delicate milk feathers when she collapses on the edge.
She won't respond to his questions – her teeth are chattering too hard to speak anyhow. While he has no desire to return so soon to the gore of the kitchen, he certainly isn't going to strip her out of her sopping clothes. Especially with her injuries, though he's not certain that's the extent of his reasoning. He leaves her with promises of a hot drink for her and a hot brick for the bed.
Mrs. Everdeen is packing snow onto Gale's back in level handfuls, pressing cold deep into the yawning stripes. Without looking up, she directs Peeta to the hanging tin mugs and the loose pine sprigs drying from the rafters.
"Put this in hers," she says after he pours steaming glugs of water over the dried needles. She holds out a capful of dark spackled syrup with bright blushing hands.
"What is it?"
"A tincture. It'll numb the pain and help her sleep."
Peeta lets it flow molasses-slow and takes the two mugs in hand as he steals back to the bedroom. Katniss doesn't blink when he places the tea in her hands, only looks down with a knot between her brow as his thumb brushes against her thin, brown fingers. He's surprised by the number of scars and callouses he discovers, and lets her eyes linger on his own disfigurements and blemishes while she takes the cup. It's hard to hide similarities, yet even harder to notice them.
Peeta sits with his back against the wall to cultivate a safe distance between their sprawling limbs. He imagines they are like radish sprouts whose roots will grow gnarled and knotted if they are planted too close together.
She watches him as he takes a scorching sip of his tea, sputters, and blows on the surface to cool it down. Tentatively, she takes a ponderous sip of her own. Bringing her other hand up to the warm tin, she pulls her knees to her chest and the mug to her lips. A swallow, a sip – she carries her eyes to his with the coyness of a fleeting smile, a sporadic stab of sun, a secret, slanting tear.
The silence is comfortable and easy as they drink, but when Peeta sucks on the last bits of his pine tips, he finds he's not quite ready to let her go. It's pathetically ironic, but he doesn't want to leave her coal-rimmed eyes or her rough and ravaged hands. Even when he feels the imminent ache of the Townspeople's simmering disapproval, he remains. Because there's something about this girl, with her scars and callouses, that emboldens him. After a lifetime spent in a cage, clipped of his wings and forced to hold his tongue, he feels the stirrings of a song in his throat.
"You know, my friend Delly always used to read me her tea dregs when she was little – she said a nanny taught her mother eons ago and its stayed in the family ever since. She would tell me these intricate little stories that the leaves had whispered to her while she drank. She never could tell the same story twice, though."
He pauses. They're neither of them children anymore, and the events of today might have just graduated them to adulthood, but he throws a penny to the well anyway, "Do you want me to read you my leaves?"
Katniss stiffens, then nods weakly, serious eyes somber.
"Well, they were whispering about this couple – a boy and a girl, who lived in a horrible terrible place where there was never enough to eat. The house was full of drafts and the children were habitually gobbled up by monsters that came both day and night. They had lived there all their lives, terrified of when the food would run out or the house would blow down or the monsters would get hungrier. Until one day, the girl said to the boy, Let's run away together. We'll live in the forest like deer and eat berries off the bushes in summer. And when winter comes around, we'll burrow into the mossy mountainside and blow hot breaths on each other to keep warm.
"The boy agreed immediately, so the two friends ventured out into the forest. A short distance from their town, they came across a simple shack, small enough for them to lay in at night without being afraid of the dark hiding in the corners. They entered in and found a long table set with gleaming gold silverware and crystal glasses filled with the sweetest cider and endless dishes of rich, costly food: roast beef, stewed plums, soft rolls, cheese and butter, and every type of jam imaginable. After they had eaten fit to bursting, the table presented desserts of every kind: cakes and pies, frosted cookies, figs and oranges, and melted chocolate to drizzle over everything.
"The pair could hardly believe their luck, but they were so full, they wished for nothing more than a soft pillow to lay their heads on and a warm blanket to cover them. Magically, the table disappeared and a mountainous bed took its place, with twenty mattresses and one hundred golden pillows. They had to climb a ladder to get to the top, where invisible servants tucked them in and sang lullabies as they fell asleep. They dreamt that night of warm clothes to dress in before they continued their journey: a jacket with less patches and a scarf with no holes. When they woke, the most magnificent fur cloaks hung over the chairs, with wool ear muffs and leather gloves that stretched to their elbows. They were delighted and stayed another night to feast and sleep.
"The second night, they dreamt of little songbirds to wake them at dawn. Just as the sun's light was yawning over the hilltops, a choir of mockingjays perched outside their windows and sang the festival songs of their people to rouse them.
"They lived at this shack for many months, eating their fill, sleeping in a warm bed, and never once thinking of the child-eating monsters. And each day, the house gave them everything they could dream of and better, for that was the house's design. But one day, the girl dreamt of her family, her brothers and sisters whom she had left behind in the village. She missed them more than anything. When morning came, she was overjoyed and ran outside to meet them, but –"
"Peeta."
Her voice rasps like a rusted hinge. The rose in his cheeks betrays his surprise, and his delight, at her address. He didn't even know she knew his name.
"Peeta," her lashes are heavy with sleep and her head lies facing him against the soft lumps of the mattress, "I know you put sleep syrup in my tea."
Immediately, Peeta is filled with regret and guilt and something oddly nurturing that bubbles out as he rushes closer, babbling, "I know, I'm sorry, I just wanted to help, I'm so sorry… I'm sorry."
Her eyes are closed already, flitting fitfully with her shallow breaths. All Peeta can do is stroke her hair away from her face and apologize again, and again, and again. Maybe when she wakes up, this will all be a reverie that she forgets, but Peeta will dream this on loop, a relentless circle of what might have been. He knows better than to dream of reality.
When Katniss returns to the waking world, she is sticky with sweat and syrupy sleep and there's a tightness in her chest like cold leather cracking. She hasn't felt this way since she was eleven years old, when her father died, when she would silently cry herself to sleep on a belly aching with hunger and emotion.
It feels impossibly hard to move even the smallest muscle, so she raises herself tenderly on her forearms, ignoring the black and blue throbbing of her bruised back and elbows. Her head swims like a deep-water sculpin and her eyes flounder away from the light. She hears the clanging of a lantern being hung from the kitchen rafters and cringes at the streams of bright candle-glow winking through the cob in the wall seams. With a jolt, she scrabbles for the chamber-bucket to retch long, dry heaves into. The tea comes up sour and sharp.
She hangs shivery and wary over the bucket a little longer before she whispers, "Time to get up, Katniss."
With flimsy fawn-legs, she stands and stumbles over to the corner dresser, pulling open a drawer and fumbling for a dry shirt. Her sopping shirt clings to her, a second skin of blood and snow and sweat. She rips the sides while taking it off and doesn't care. Probably not even Hazelle could have erased the crimson stains.
Standing frozen in the small bedroom, Katniss quakes a little at the gore around her abdomen, all smeared carmine around a cramping crater. She takes a deep, tremulous breath and whispers, "Get dressed, Katniss. It's time to get dressed."
The shirt goes on over her head with a few small cries as she stretches and pulls.
"Now you have to move, Katniss. Walk!"
Her feet are creaky against the floor. Someone had taken her boots and wet socks, and now her toes scratch blue and clammy against the splintered planks. She scrapes the tumble-down door open and peeks outside.
It's a surprise to find the two boys still here. Peeta and Thom sit in the living room together clutching hot bowls of broth and watching the fat ferocious flurries beat boisterously on the window.
It's almost comical in the way they contrast each other: Peeta with his pale skin and flaxen hair looks like he belongs in the snow, like the ice and rime would frost him with a million sparkling diamonds and leave his image on the morning windows. But Thom is warm and brooding and dark, like an untended hearth fire, deceiving in his heat.
Her mother catches her eye in the kitchen, "You're up. I was just coming in to check on you."
She dries her hands on a rough kitchen linen and beckons her towards the table.
The table. Gale lay so quiet on the rough-hewn counter that Katniss has almost forgotten the morning's proceedings. Looking at him now, eyes closed but chest gasping erratically and neck strained like a downed goose, she remembers how rapidly the day has fallen apart. From Vick scraping his knee on the walk to school and riding on Gale's shoulders, fussing over the tear in his last pair of pants, to Gale's tightlipped disclosure of his future intentions: taking advantage of the junior mine enlistments. She remembers, then, how the cover of the woods around them hadn't helped to quell her fears or soften her footsteps as she ran away. The bread, the whip, the gun, the knife – she suffers all over again the loss and the guilt and the pain.
"Katniss." Her mother's voice draws the stares of the boys, but Katniss can't tear her eyes from Gale. Though herb-fleckled snow hides the worst of his injuries, there are still plenty to inspect: the double handprints on each arm, the welts along his ribs, his eyes wandering frantically under his lids as if to escape the pain. If he were awake, she would tell him running doesn't work. She seems to be the expert in that area.
"Katniss," her mother touches her arm and she flinches, drawing back a hand she hadn't known had been drifting to Gale's cheek.
"Sit down," she nods at the stool and Katniss takes a seat mechanically. A bowl of warm water is set on the floor next to her as Mrs. Everdeen rings out a clean rag and dabs along her daughter's brow. If Katniss closes her eyes, she can pretend this is a motherly gesture, but she's run from her problems enough already today. So instead, she gazes straight into the healer's eyes, watching her analyze, assess, appraise. She treats her with all the clinical professionalism of a Capitol medic, emotional as a sterile needle.
The rag wanders over the gash across her brow and Katniss recoils from the sting.
"Don't move," her mother scolds, and holds her chin between her fingers. She smooths a glossy translucent sap that Prim squeezed from marshmallow roots over her gash, then stands back to admire her work. "I don't even think we'll need stitches for that one. Now, let's look at this bullet bite."
Katniss pulls the bottom of her blouse up and the boys turn their backs deliberately, though at this point, Katniss would be willing to bathe right in the middle of the living room as long as she could wash away the horrors and chills of the day. She wants it gone, but it can't be and she knows that, and it burns like regret.
She grits her teeth as the rag drags over the wound – a little snake hole going in just above the right wing of her hipbone, and an exit where it shot out the back. Her mother sighs, pursing her lips.
"Through and through. You're lucky they only carry drill guns here. The rubber bullets don't have as much bite."
Regardless, a marble of colors blooms around the two punctures and Katniss hisses and chokes when vinegar is flushed through them, gripping the table with bony white knuckles and blood-rimmed nails.
"Stitches," her mother murmurs, darting a needle nimbly into the fire, "You want some sleep –"
"No," Katniss spits, breathless from the lingering sting.
"You have to hold still," she warns, but pulls Katniss' hips closer into the light of the kitchen window.
The hot needle crimps neat little rows of gut string over front and back, and a coarse green paste that smells sweetly of oatstraw and comfrey soothes the burning and pinching.
Katniss had jumped at her own reflection in the silver bedroom mirror and knew nothing her mother could do would magically erase the path of bruises, storm clouds sweeping down the side of her face and across her jaw, but already she felt the normalcy of control coming back to her. It was good to feel less pain and more power. It gave her an upper hand that she so desperately needed at the moment. It gave her an extra edge that might make up for the absence of a hunting partner to watch her back. It gave her an opportunity to right some wrongs, abate the guilt gnawing at her stomach, redeem herself to Gale. He didn't deserve this. And he certainly didn't deserve her. What kind of a hunting partner was she, to leave his side the instant fear presented itself in tangible form?
She slides the stool to the head of the table and keeps a vigilant watch over Gale's writhing form covered in a glistening sheen of misery. Together, they will overcome this. Together they will share the pain. She will be strong enough for the both of them. She won't leave him again. This she knows.
As much as their shared pain is harsh and wild and vicious, the house is grey and hushed and still.
And then the door raps loud and bright-rattling-the-sun.
Katniss jumps from the stool in the same moment that Thom moves cautiously towards the door. They meet eyes and share gazes. They both know who it is.
"They can't have him," Katniss bursts.
Thom turns grim and ashen, like his fire has been untended for too long.
"They're done with 'im," he nods at the table, then glances back at her, "S'not Gale they'll be lookin' for."
He puts a heavy hand on the wobbly doorknob and pulls slowly, opening the door just enough for Katniss to see the flash of white-on-white uniform. Thom braces his shoulders in the doorway, exchanges a smattering of low growls, and turns around, shutting the door with his eyes downcast. When he looks up, Katniss feels the weight of his concern full on and watches his grief-honed wall of defenses collapse in a hundred broken shards, giving way to something viscerally connecting: fear.
But she had vowed to be strong; she had vowed to stay by Gale's side, so she doesn't run when the boy before her can only say three words:
"It's for you," he croaks.
Oh, how the world crumbles terrible about them.
A/N :
The purpose of these little crumbs is to give you a perspective that you would not otherwise see in just one character's point of view – little holes in the big loaf, so to speak.
In regards to the configuration of the Everdeens' house, I imagine that, due to Mrs. Everdeen's healing business, they would have tried to make the house as open as possible, something like an old general hospital where there are no obstructions of view and the space can be maximized much more easily. What I'm picturing is a regular coal shanty with all the interior walls taken down to make one big room. That way Mrs. Everdeen can line up cots, keep her eyes on many patients at once, and move quickly between them. That being said, the regular commissioned shanty is no bigger than a living room and dining room combined. And of course, the girls have a tiny bedroom in the back where they can sleep, change, bathe in peace no matter the crowd.
Oregano, thyme, yarrow, and elm are all plants that help to reduce inflammation and infection, slow bleeding and promote blood clots, clean the blood, and expedite healing processes.
I really wanted to show Peeta here questioning his own preconceptions of the Seam characters. Being raised in a racist, prejudiced Town leaves him feeling confused and guilty about what he "believes", especially when some of the things are true (though largely exaggerated), such as the Seam temper. Of course, Peeta being Peeta, he acknowledges the existence of a partiality within and strives to correct it. Note also, that the Seam people are not inherently "angry" people. The roots of their rage are circumstantial, meaning their situation (discrimination, low wages, high death rates, starvation, etc.) angers them, and without change, they will not be happy.
A deep-water sculpin is a fresh-water fish that resides on the bottom of lakes. They can be found in the Appalachian Mountains, where District 12 is thought to be located.
I imagine the peacekeepers would use rubber bullets for two reasons: one, District 12 is the furthest district from the Capitol, therefore, the cost of shipping real bullets and larger guns would be exorbitant. Also, they weren't exactly expecting a riot at the whipping. If they had, I'm sure they would have been armed with sprays and shields and more 'keepers. Don't forget, too, that any type of gun is a bit of an upgrade from the regular batons they carry.
Marshmallow root is a mucilage, meaning, when extracted, it releases a gluey substance containing flavonoids which reduce inflammation and induce phagocytosis (its cells eat bacteria and dead skin cells, encouraging overall healing).
Oatstraw helps to rebuild the outer layer of skin and comfrey does much the same thing, as well as guard against scar tissues.
See you in the comments!
Much love,
theory of mice