When I wake I see clearly again. I feel odd but when I bring a hand to my face I recall all the treatments I've undergone in the past few hours. I'm still in the room where Dew worked on me, however Dew is nowhere to be seen. I tilt my head behind me to try and find a mirror, luckily there is a full length mirror leaning on the wall near the curtain entrance to the room. I stand and make my way over, hesitant to see the new face that will look me in the eyes.
I don't think I was ready for what I saw. Everything was so different. My entire face has been transformed into someone new, someone (dare I say it) pretty. I don't look like a rugged Twelve, but I look like a natural Capitolite.
My hair is a blonde colour with blunt bangs and a straight cut. Even my hair looks intimidating. My eyebrows have been shaped and dyed to naturally fit the new hair. My eyes are green with flecks of gold near the pupils. Then I see my face as a whole. It's no longer round like my mothers', but has more defined features. I can't help but feel like I'm looking at someone else's reflection and mine is simply being obscured. I almost miss my old appearance. Almost.
"You look gorgeous." Priscilla says. I nearly jump in surprise when she speaks but quickly mask my surprise. I turn to face her and see she's holding a metal tray covered by a black cloth.
"Come, you're ready to be released." Priscilla tells me. She exits the room and I follow, shaky on my new legs.
She leads me to the elevator and we wait in silence for the doors to open. When they do we both enter and Priscilla keys in the floor code. After the elevator begins to move Priscilla speaks.
"I'm so sorry, Willow. But you have to understand I had no choice but to call his name." I don't reply to her pleas for forgiveness. Its not that I'm angry, nor that I've forgiven her, but I simply can't formulate a response. I feel numb to the subject.
"I can't stand this anymore. Seeing all of you right before you get sent off into the arena, it may not seem like it, but the escorts really do care." This statement makes me scoff. I see Priscilla make a face and she falls silent.
When the doors of the elevator open I see night has fallen. Priscilla walks out from behind me and places the metal tray on the long dining table.
"Most of the others have already eaten, I'll fetch the others." She tells me as she walks down the hall toward the other rooms. I hear her shoes clicking softly as she walks. It's odd to see her dressed as a normal person, and not an escort. I never thought they had lives outside their duties in the games.
I peel back the black cloth that covers the tray and find an impressive display of food laid out on the tray. Meats and cheeses are accompanied by fruits I don't recognize. As I inspect the food I hear a familiar voice call out behind me.
"Willow?" I hear Cassius call. I quickly turn around and see a man with short, messy black hair and blue eyes inspecting me. His nose is larger than average but suits his face.
"Oh my god." I say in a near whisper.
"I would never have known." I take a few steps toward him.
"You look so different." He tells me, I look up at him.
"You're one to talk." I say as I pull him into a hug. It feels good to hug someone again.I close my eyes and wish I could feel something, anything. I haven't felt any real emotions since I woke up, and it leaves me feeling empty and alone, even when I'm next to someone I trust with my life.
The elevator door opens with a ding and both Cassius and I turn to see who will emerge with a new face. A girl with long, wavy light brown hair exits the elevator, looking around the room as she does. I immediately assume she's Athena when she meets my eyes. Her eyes are now hazel and her skin is much paler than before. Athena quickly crosses the floor to inspect our new faces more closely.
"This is so weird." She says. Cassius chuckles.
"Its been weird for awhile now." He counters.
"Fair point." Athena says. After a moment a few more people emerge from their respective rooms into the dining hall. Altogether there are six of us. Priscilla returns and tells us to eat and that tomorrow we'll be assigned our relocations within the Capitol. The taught is daunting, we'll have to continue on with our lives in the very place we despise most in all of Panem.
I take my seat between Cassius and a girl I no longer recognize thanks to her transformation. As we all take servings of the food in the middle of the table the room falls silent apart from the sounds of chewing and slurping. I'm reminded of the comment Priscilla made on the train to the Capitol about Rye and I having good manners, I see that in place now. I'm the only one using all my utensils and pausing between bites. Everyone else, apart from Cassius and Athena who I assume were taught manners in one, is eating with their hands and chewing with open mouths.
After the silence has become deafening I turn to Cassius beside me.
"They assign us jobs within the Capitol, right?" I ask him. He finishes chewing his bite of a vegetable I've never seen before and then replies.
"Yeah, everything from shop employees to peacekeepers. They give us something they think we'll be good at." He tells me.
"I even heard there's going to be a stylist position!" Athena says excitedly. Cassius raises an eyebrow.
"Honey, I think I'm a shoe in for that one." Cassius says with a flamboyant tone. Athena laughs and I almost smile. Almost. I notice that everyone else at the table is staring down at their plates, not engaging with anything but their meals. I realize I've only taken a few bites of mine and decide it's probably best I eat, saying how I've been living on hardly anything since the games started.
I take a bite of something I recognize, a red apple. I can't imagine the food they have in the Capitol. Right now we're essentially refugees getting scrapa compared to what's available out there. The thought of not being able to recognize food scares me more than it should.
"We'll need new names." The girl beside me pipes up. I turn to look at her. She's been given red curly hair and green eyes.
"She's right. You think they'll let us pick?" A boy sitting across from me adds. Unlike the others he's been given a more unnatural style, he has white hair and blue eyes, I assume they have something in the entertainment business lines up for him.
"Why don't we pick ourselves?" Athena suggests. No one protests.
"Everyone write down a few names and put them in the middle, then everyone picks a new name at random." Athena instructs as she stands and finds a pile of papers and pens on the side table near one of the televisions. She passes some to each of the six of us. Cassius shoots me an amused look at Athenas enthusiasm.
I look at my paper and try to think of names that would fit someone in the Capitol. I jot down the first three that some to my mind and toss the slips of paper into the middle. After a minute of two everyone is finished and looks at the small pile in the middle.
"I'll go first." Athena says and she reaches forward into the pile. She selects a paper and reads it aloud.
"Lea." She pauses. "I can see that."
The red haired girl next to me leans in and take her own paper.
"Isadora, better than Ashina." She says with a shrug. Ashina. My heart skips a beat when I realize she's one of the tributes I killed in the arena.
When I hear the white haired boy speak again, announcing his new name is Shea I realize he's Gourd from Three, another kill of mine.
Cassius goes next and announces his new name; "Cal." He nudges me and encourages me to go next. I do. When I select a paper I realize my name for the rest of my life is written on this paper. It's weird, but I find that thought scary. I open the slip of paper and read the name to myself.
"Anastasia." I say aloud. I like it. The last one to go is Cora, the girl from Eleven. She's kept her skin tone but now has her hair done is braids, with the occasional one being a bright colour. I can't say I'm fond of her district partner Dale, but she seems nice enough.
"Apollonia." She announces, I recognize that name as one that I wrote down. After a few minutes of small talk Gourd, or Shea now, stands and yawns, telling us he's going to his room for the night. We all agree and go our own ways for the night. I stay behind for a few minutes and watch the nightlife below in the Capitol. They all seem so carefree and oblivious to the fact that they enjoyed the supposed murder of twenty three youth a few days ago. On one of the large screens below I see highlights of the games being shown, most of which I'm in. After I can no longer watch I turn and head toward my room.