Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Born to the purple
They've really made a mess and Madge isn't certain it's worth it.
Madge had only suggested making ice cream as a joke. She didn't expect the kids to take her up on the offer. But Posy and Vick's eyes had bulged out of their faces and even Rory had a flicker of interest at the mention.
So she'd taken them back to her house and dug out the ice maker from under the cabinet and gathered the supplies.
Now Rory and Vick were hacking at a rather large hunk of ice with a pick, putting the shavings in a little metal bucket, and Posy was mashing some soggy blueberries with great gusto while Madge mixed the cream, sugar, and eggs.
The blueberry juice is all over the back porch, in puddles around Posy. It's also in her hair, on her lips, smeared across her cheeks like a purple blush, in splatters on her dirty tan colored shirt, and somehow she'd even managed to fling the brilliant hue on her brothers. Madge knows she's made quite a job for their poor mother.
"Okay, Posy, are the berries ready?"
Posy nods, her pig tails sway with the motion, then stands and trots the bowl over to Madge, sloshing a bit more down her front. It's a thick soup of violet, some of the skins are still visible. She holds it out importantly to Madge.
"Here, dump it in."
She carefully helps Posy tip the bowl over, emptying the contents into the metal canister, before adding the milk.
"Okay, boys, now for the really important part." She begin explaining to them how they need to alternate ice and salt in the empty space around the canister and turn the handle, spinning the churn inside and mixing the contents.
They listen, almost comically serious looks on their faces, nodding before beginning their task.
Madge supervises. She hates digging in the ice and she's reasonably certain there isn't anything they can do to ruin their treat until the freezing finishes.
They've been so absorbed in their task that they don't notice the sun sinking lower in the sky. It isn't until someone whistles, a short burst, that they even look off the porch.
Gale and one of his miner friends, she remembers him as Thom, are at the back gate watching them, bemused looks on their faces.
"What's going on here?" Gale yells up to them.
Posy waves her sticky, purple hand at him, "Hi, Gale! We're making ice cream!"
He and his friend jump the fence and saunter up to them. He's covered in coal dust, coating his olive complexion and dark hair with a deathly pallor, his eyes are as alive as ever, though, as her surveys the mess that is the Undersees' back porch.
His friend, Thom, gives Vick a tap on the back with his helmet.
"Building you some muscles there, huh kid?"
Vick grins and continues cranking the handle.
"We need to get home soon. Mom sent me to pick you all up." Gale tells them, eyeing the multitude of smears and splatters covering his sister.
"We're making ice cream, Gale, we can't just stop," Rory tells him.
"Madge needs our help," Vick adds importantly. He shoots Gale a very sour look, plainly telling him to leave if he's going to spoil their fun.
Thom snickers behind him.
Posy sticks her filthy hands on her hips and glares up at her brother and Madge knows he's done for.
It takes nearly an hour for the ice cream to fully freeze. It would have been done quicker, but Rory and Vick kept getting in arguments over just exactly whose turn it was to work the crank and how much salt needed to be on the ice.
Madge scoops out the light purple mixture into bowls for each of the kids, Thom, Gale, then finally herself.
Gale is almost hesitant to eat it. She expects him to make some kind of snide comment about how it must be nice to have the luxury of such a sweet, but then his eyes flicker to his sibling, noisily and messily eating the dessert and he remains quiet.
Thom is teasing Vick, Madge catches what sounds like her name, then the little boy has flung a spoonful of ice cream at the man, narrowly missing him and splattering the wood at Thom's feet with purple. Rory is laughing and Vick is pink in the face.
"Thanks," Gale suddenly says as he takes the seat next to her on the bench swing.
She arches an eyebrow, "For what?"
He gestures with his bowl, "Taking their minds off crap."
The last few months have been hard on them, she knows that. First Gale's whipping, their mother having trouble getting work in the aftermath, the Quarter Quell announcement, all the training Gale had been helping Katniss (and, much to his annoyance, Peeta and Mr. Abernathy) do…
It's been a rough year, and with Katniss and Peeta gone to the Capitol to what will likely be their death, it's not promising to get any better anytime soon.
"It was nothing. Besides," she lets out a dramatic sigh, "can't be getting my hands dirty doing such menial tasks, right?"
He snorts, "Don't think you quite reached your goal there, Princess."
One of his huge fingers comes up and pokes her in the cheek. With a frown, she licks one of her fingers and rubs it over the spot and it comes off purple.
She wrinkles her nose before looking down to see if Posy's handiwork has spread anywhere else when Gale's thumb is back on her cheek. It's moist, he must have licked it, and he rubs the patch of purple off gently.
"There, perfect again."
Madge isn't certain her eyes have ever been so close to jumping out of her head. She's stopped breathing, she's positive she's going to pass out. She forces herself to take a breath. He's staring at her, not through her, not glowering, but ather.Her stomach rolls and she suddenly feels like she might vomit blueberry all over him.
Why doesn't he say something? What do I do?
Her mind races for a way to break the tension.
"Did you just lickme?"
That ought to do it.
He snorts, "I licked my finger."
"And you put it on me. You are a heathen."
He laughs, that deep booming laugh that she loves. It's probably one of the few things in her life she's truly proud of, that she can elicit that particular noise from Gale Hawthorne.
Then Vick bellows a sort of war cry and has Rory on the ground and Gale has to break up the fight.
It's a big, sticky, purple mess they've made, but Madge decides it was worth it.