Thunder practically shakes the house and I see lightning light up the sky out my window. There is no way I'm going to be able to sleep tonight. Especially with my cold. The rain is still pounding at my room and I'm burrowed under my covers.
I know since I'm officially seven years old as of last month, stupid things like rain and thunder shouldn't scare me. I don't think it's brave and I like to be brave, even though no one really needs me to. My dad says that not everyone can be brave all the time. Thunder pounds through the sky again and I can't take it anymore. I throw my blankets off me and run into my parents' room just across the hall.
I quietly open the door and see my mom asleep on the edge of the bed on her side how she always ends up in the morning no matter how close she is to my dad when she falls asleep. My dad is on his back on his side of the bed and his blond hair is all messy and I stifle a giggle. Dad always looks so messy and funny in the mornings. Thunder booms and the rain intensifies and I nearly trip over something as I scramble to the bed. I look and see that it's my dad's fake leg. He says it's uncomfortable to sleep with it on so he takes it off before bed. I crawl up and burrow slowly under the covers and curl up by my dad's side. I close my eyes, hoping I haven't woken him when I feel his arm move assuringly around me. I look up at him. He is looking at me with a groggy smile, his blue eyes that I have inherited shining at me.
"Did I wake you, Daddy?" I ask quietly.
He chuckles softly and moves my blonde curly hair off my shoulder and out of my face. "A little. The rain scaring you?"
I nod and cuddle closer to him feeling his warm, bare chest under my trembling hands. "It's so loud," I say with a sniffle. My nose is a little runny from my cold and I didn't even think about getting a tissue before coming in here.
He must have heard my sniffle because he sits up and straps his fake leg on and picks me up. "Let's go check your fever," he says and carries me into the kitchen. He sits me on the counter and I pull the end of my nightdress over my knees as he turns on the thermometer. I open my mouth and he puts it in and I hold his hand, looking how small my own is in his, because the rain is still going. The thermometer beeps and he pulls it out and sighs.
I reach into the cupboard above my head and get a glass and fill it halfway with water and drink it down, realizing how thirsty I am and set the glass in the sink as Dad is putting the thermometer away.
"Still over one-hundred," he tells me and let's me climb on his back and he walks back into his and Mom's room.
"Grr, it won't go down," I say and climb off him onto his bed when thunder booms again. I watch Dad take his leg off again and get back under the covers and I curl up to him under the blankets. He puts his arms around me protectively. "Just go back to sleep, baby," he tells me. "The rain won't hurt you, I promise." And I close my eyes and start to doze off, knowing I am in the safest place in the world in my dad's arms.
I'm still asleep early the next morning. Mom is gently shaking me saying my name. "Felicity, baby, come on. Get up," I hear her voice say gently. My eyes open a little and see Dad putting his apron on over by the door. Dad runs a bakery and he is already dressed for work. He can make any kind of cake or pastry for that matter look so beautiful.
I groan softly in response to my mother and feel her hand on my cheeks and my forehead. "She's still got a fever. I'll just stay home with her today. On your way to the bakery could you get some medicine from my mom's house, Peeta?" she asks my dad. "Of course," he says and I feel him sit down on the bed next to me and gently caress my cheek. I open my eyes and see him smiling down at me.
"Hey, you feel better, all right?" he says. "Maybe if you are when I get home we can make cookies and decorate them."
My eyes brighten. I love doing that. "I'll feel better!" I promise and smile at him. He leans down and kisses me then my mom. "If she feels better, Katniss, bring her down and you can get the medicine and I'll have a surprise up there for her," he tells her and my mind starts to wonder what it could be. Dad always has the best surprises.
He kisses Mom once more and ruffles my hair before going off to work.
"Are you hungry, dear?" Mom asks laying next to me.
I nod. "What surprise does Daddy have for me?"
She chuckled and smiled at me. "I don't know he didn't tell me. Looks like we'll find out later."
I get up and follow her into the kitchen and take a seat at the island in the kitchen. Mom goes out into the woods and hunts for meat and berries and stuff while Dad works at the Bakery and I go to school. She managed to trade some deer or something at the meat shop place the other day for bacon. I watch as Mom makes pancakes and a strip of bacon for me and start stacking the coasters on the table. My mind is still exploring the possibilities of what the surprise might be. I have to feel better.
Later in the day I convince Mom that I am feeling good enough to visit Dad at the bakery. We walk in and I go right up to the counter and ring the little bell a few times. Dad pokes his head out from behind a door and smiles. "Hey, feeling better?" he asks coming over wiping flour and icing off his hands on a rag.
I nod a bunch. "Very!" He puts a hand on my forehead and gives me a suspicious look.
"You're still very warm, did you trick Mommy into bringing you here?" he asks me raising an eyebrow.
"Nooo..," I say.
"More like bugged me out of my brains," Mom says taking a seat at the counter and rubbing her temples as if she had a headache. Dad chuckles and hands Mom the medicine.
"Now where is my surprise?" I say now standing in my seat. Dad ruffles my hair and goes back into the backroom and brings out a small bare yellow cake. "Why isn't it decorated?" I ask pointing to it.
"Because I wanted you to decorate a cake for my display," he says tossing me a purple apron that is just my size. I gasp and am bouncing in my seat. "Really? So people will see it?"
He nods and pulls me over the counter. "Go back and wash your hands and you can get started," he tells me and I put the apron on and run back into the bathroom to wash my hands. When I come back Dad tells me that Mom's gone home to get her bow so she could go spend a while in the woods. I nod and he ties my apron for me and puts my hair up in a high ponytail and takes me and the cake back in the decorating room.
I've been back here before but every time I come in, I'm even more amazed than before. There is one long table in the middle with little sculpting tools and another long table at the far side of the room where they put cakes together at. In the back are big machines that make the icing and Dad has already set up a table big enough for me to work at near the front window that looks into the main part of the bakery. I go over to the table and immediately start running my fingers over the tools Dad has laid out for me and he sets the cake down in front of me.
"Daddy, can I use that flat icing? The kind you cover your cakes in?" I ask looking around for the machine that makes it. Dad chuckles.
"Sure, let me go get you some."
While he is getting it for me I pick up the plastic knife he has set out and stick it in the cake carefully. By the time Dad is back with a plate of the icing, I've carved the cake into the shape of a heart. Dad raises an eyebrow at me and I giggle.
"It's a surprise!" I say and he just smiles and paws at my ponytail and goes back because a customer rang the bell.
I place a pink icing sheet over my cake and smooth it down like I see my dad do all the time. Then I start decorating the sides with little candies and I outline the edge of the top of the cake in little pearl sprinkles and I see that Dad didn't give me any of the icing in the tube thingy. I look to make sure he is busy then go over near the icing machines and find a shelf of different colours and I grab a few of them and hurry back to my table.
Somewhere along the line of my decorating, a nozzle went bezerk and I got icing all over my face and the apron and even a little in my hair. Mom probably won't be happy about that. I make sure I finish before licking my hands because Dad tells me that no matter how clean you keep your hands, once you've licked them no one wants anything to do with them. I make little roses here and there. Just little basic ones that I got Dad to teach me how to make. I finish and poke my head through the window to see him putting the 'Closed' sign on the door and walking back to the counter.
"Daddy! I'm done!" I say giggling and begin licking the icing off my fingers and where ever I can reach on my face. Dad comes in and I guess I made a little bit of a mess. There was icing on the wall and floor and table here and there from the incident with the icing tube and I spot a few sprinkles and candies on the floor that must have gotten away when I bumped the table of something. He looks like he does whenever I make a mess in my room really quickly.
"I like the cake, sweetie, but, um, what made all the mess?" he asks getting a cloth and wiping some icing off the ceiling.
"The icing didn't want to go on my cake," I say with a giggle. Dad just laughs and puts my cake in the display window and makes me help him clean up.
We go home and Mom is cooking some bunnies or something that she caught today and when we walk in she just shakes her head at us and points us to the washroom. While Dad and I were cleaning up we had a little icing fight so now he was covered in icing as well.
After dinner and a bath for me, Mom heads to the family room, knowing that whatever mess Dad and I are about to make when we make cookies, she doesn't want to witness.
Dad puts my hair up again and tells me not to get icing on the ceiling or Mom will get upset and takes the cookies off the cooking rack. They are simple round sugar cookies but then Dad brings out his special icing thingies and he tells me he's going to show me how to make more little flowers.
I first watch him while he makes a couple then he helps me until I get the hang of it. Mom comes in to inspect the damage and is pleased to find out that we've only gotten icing on the cookies, the counter, and our hands.
I watch her walk by and kiss dad and giggle when she takes a cookie while he is distracted and then eats it as she goes back into the family room. Then Dad sneaks up behind her with his tube of icing in hand and puts some icing on her cheek.
She chases him back into the kitchen and they get icing all over each other's faces and end up kissing each other in the end.
"Eww!" I say and get up on the counter with icing on both my hands and smoosh it into their faces which makes them stop kissing and Dad pulls me off the counter and throws me over his shoulder and laughs when I squeal.
"No fair!" I say but I can't hide my giggles and Dad takes me back into the washroom and dumps me in the tub. Before I can make a break for it, he turns on the shower and I'm being pelted with raindrops.
Mom could probably hear me pulling Dad into the tub with me and trying to figure out how the shower works because she walks in and tells Dad he is setting a bad example and that he's getting icing all over the walls of the tub. Dad and I are laughing now and she just throws him a towel and tells him it's his job to bathe me this time.
Dad pulls off my wet clothes and tosses them in the hamper and wraps a towel around me while he washes the icing off the sides of the tub and gets the hot water going. He tells me when I'm not so icing-y, I can take the bath by myself and then I climb in and get my hands wet and ruffle his hair like he does mine. We both laugh again until Mom says that Dad better get me in bed soon or else something like his cakes are going to be without her icing for a while. I'm not sure what that means so I just try to sop giggling and let Dad get the icing out of my hair.
It's raining again by the time Dad has me back in bed. I'm sitting in my bed hugging my knees staring at the window and Dad comes back in with the thermometer. He puts it in my mouth and after it beeps he nods a little.
"Only a few points over one-hundred," he says turning the thermometer off. "Maybe you can go back to school tomorrow."
"Aww but why can't I just work with you in the Bakery all day, Daddy?" I say taking his hand and waving it around. "That's way more fun than going to stupid school."
Dad smiles and kisses my forehead. "You have to go to school because they can teach you stuff there that will teach you how to do lots of different things at the Bakery. Maybe you can be my helper on Saturday." I smile then thunder pounds the walls and I grip his hands a little tighter.
"Can-Can I sleep with you and Mommy tonight?" I ask looking at the window.
"Of course." Dad scoops me up in his arms. I keep my arms around his neck as he carries me and puts me in bed next to Mom who kisses my cheek and caresses my hair. "Daddy will protect you from the rain, won't you, Daddy?" she says looking at him. He's now just in his shorts and he's got his fake leg off and is sitting next to me. He puts an arm around me.
"Definitely," he says. "That rain will be so afraid of me it won't come anywhere near you." I smile a little and curl up under the covers to Dad once he's gotten comfortable. Mom is still reading so there's a soft glow from the candle but it doesn't bother me.
Dad puts his arms around me and I snuggle as close as I can and close my eyes, feeling sleepy all of the sudden.
"Go to sleep, baby," he tells me and kisses my head right before I doze off thinking about how in his arms I am in the safest place in the world.
*Author's Note*
I don't own the Hunger Games or any of the characters from the books mentioned in this chapter. All of the Hunger Games characters and references belong to Suzane Collins.
Thanks, I hope you enjoy ^^
-Tatiana :3