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The moon has always been something Lamina found interesting.
Her solitude. Her way to reflect the blinding and intense light from the sun and turn it into something not as bright, but as pretty and comforting.
It was as if she had a quiet, distant friend who would always comfort her even without saying a single word to her. When she cries, she’s always there. When she wants to scream and rip her hair out of anger, she’s always there to calm her.
She listens. She gives silent advice. The moon is something untouchable, unreachable, very high in the sky, surrounded by stars and planets.
The moon is never alone — very unlike her.
She hugs her legs tighter, digging her nails through the ripped and thin fabric from her dress. The pressure she applies to her calves is definitely going to leave a mark, if not to cut through her skin and make more damage. At this point it’s irrelevant.
The sound of something moving behind her doesn’t make her look away from the sky, staring directly at the natural satellite she’d been admiring since she arrived at the Capitol and before.
Lamina hates how polluted the Capitol skies are, barely allowing her to see anything aside from some stars and, of course, the moon. Once again, something behind her moves, making her sigh with defeat.
“Can’t sleep?” She says, still looking at the night sky.
The sound stops, but she knows she has the whole attention from him. Lamina doesn’t turn to face him, she just adjusts herself on the rock and brushes the dust from her dress.
She hugs her legs again, straightening her back and waiting for him to do or say something. Nothing can be heard besides the light breeze and the breathing of the other tributes, who are presumably asleep now.
“Not gonna say anything?” She tilts her head to her left, addressing him once again, but not looking. She doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable.
The sound appears once again, and she knows he’s standing up from the floor. Lamina waits a little more, not sure if he’s going to sit back down or do something else.
He actually does something else: he sits beside her. Not too close, but he does. She waits, now expecting him to say something.
And so he does.
“You can’t sleep either,” his voice is calm, and she knows he doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he somehow needs it.
Oh, how easy it is to read people these days. It sometimes pisses her off, but she can’t help it.
She keeps her eyes on the moon and its silver glow. Lamina wishes she could touch it with just raising her arm, brushing the cracked skin from the tip of her fingers with its rough surface. She wants to be able to hold it in her hands and never give it back to the sky, even if the stars miss her.
Maybe her brother was missing her as much as the stars would miss the moon.
That’s right — she needs to keep up with the conversation.
“No, but I don’t need to,” she says. “However, I do think you want to talk about something more than my lack of sleep,” she finally looks at him. “Am I right, Treech?”
He looks… tired, to say less. Expression-less, clenched jaw, heavy breathing. It’s something he always seems to be: prepared to jump at the mere look of somebody else on him. And let’s not talk about someone else slightly brushing his skin.
Treech is a very mysterious kid, she’d noticed. They hadn’t talked a lot since they got reaped, not even in the cattle car.
She knows this would probably be their longest conversation.
Treech seems to also realize this, because he readjusts himself in the rock. “I know you might be expecting us to be an alliance,” he says, thinking very well of his words. “But I honestly don’t feel like it.”
Well, it was not what she expected, but at least he’d finally said it. His tensed shoulders relax. He had been waiting to tell her that. Why?
“I wasn't expecting us to be an alliance. You know, since we haven’t talked about anything at all,” Treech’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “And, in all honesty, if I wanted to get one, I was not going to ask you to form an alliance with me. Not when that mentor of yours looks at me like I’m some sort of idiot,” she shrugs, loosening the tight grip on her legs, but not letting go.
Treech looks even more confused at that, and Lamina can’t help but smile a little at that: it’s funny, she’d admit it.
How clueless is he feeling now? Might be a lot if he looks away.
“You already knew I was going to ask that, right?” He’s still not looking at her as he makes the question. Lamina can’t blame him.
She looks deeper in his features: Treech is a pretty guy if she’s completely honest, just not what she would look for in a man. Perhaps because she would never look for a man in the first place.
He has tan skin that glows with both sun and moonlight. His dark-brown eyes that are always filled with melancholy and something else she can’t quite figure out, and that drives her insane. Black curls hidden under his hat that remind her of the night sky she so deeply loves, that look soft like cotton.
Lamina knows she shouldn’t be looking that much into his appearance. She had always done that, somehow finding entertainment in it.
The looks of a person can tell you as much about them as their personality.
And, by the way he looks, she knows that Treech doesn’t pay attention to what others might think about him when we talk about his appearance.
His hair looks messy and tangled. Two dark circles under his eyes show how much sleep he has. The muscles from his arms tell her that he takes his job in the lumber yards very seriously — maye he even takes extra shifts — and he must be very skilled with an ax.
Anger boils in her stomach as she remembers what she heard from the Capitol people on their first day at the zoo cage, when Treech was juggling to get some food.
Girls and boys will comment on how handsome the juggling boy looked. On how pretty he was.
‘Does he have a girlfriend?’ ‘Or maybe a boyfriend?’ ‘I bet he’ll get a lot of sponsors, look at him! I will sponsor that beauty.’ ‘What if you go say hi and see if he says something back?’ ‘I’m sure he’ll be the winner.’ ‘You think so? Imagine if a beauty like that wins. I wouldn’t mind it.’
Bullshit. Pure and solid bullshit.
How is it that you look at miserable, starving, melancholic kids that are about to fight to death and your first thought is to think if the ‘pretty one’ would date you?
“Lamina? Answer me.”
She blinks, reminded of the fact that she’s having a conversation and that she has to answer a question. She needs to stop her train of thought.
It’s always so messy and chaotic.
Lamina looks back at the night sky. “Not that specifically, but I knew you wanted to ask me something,” she says, trying to not let her anger spill out. “I knew by the way you shifted in your ‘sleep’, and the way you looked at me:” she looked back at him. “With pity, like everyone else.”
She hates pitiful glances. She hates pitiful eyes. Fake sadness that only makes her uncomfortable and makes her want to cut her head off.
Yes; she cries a lot. So what about it? Why do people always think she’s in pain?
Even if that’s true — which, in fact, it is — it’s not anyone else's business.
If she wants to cry instead of breaking stuff, she will do it because she wants to. She wants to drain that miserable feeling stuck in her chest through tears instead of violence. It’s a perfect way to do so.
Why do people always make a big deal about stuff? Why can’t they see through the first layer of the situation?
Stupid. So, so stupid way to see the world. Living in a denial and clueless state must be so frustrating.
A confused look from Treech makes her realize that she, once again, had left the conversation hanging from a thin thread.
“You know something?” She looks away from him and to the other tributes. They’re the only ones awake. “I always thought that I would die surrounded by the forest, like my Ma did,” her eyes land on the tributes from Five as she says that.
She scoffs. “Turns out, I’m going to die surrounded by rubble and stone.”
Treech looks uncomfortable. Maybe by the fact that she’s talking about death. Maybe because tomorrow they will have to fight to the death with the other people in that cage.
She puts a strand of her long, greasy hair behind her ear. “I guess it’s weird to talk about this now. I’m sorry,” her apology is followed by him removing the hat from his head and placing it on his lap.
He runs a hand through his curls, probably as a nervous tic. Hers is to put her hair behind her ears. His eyes land on her, and she can’t quite read his expression, which is something she’d been able to do since they met.
Lamina waits for him to say something. He’s taking his time with it.
“Do you think you can win this whole thing?” He asks, and that catches her off guard. She thought he was uncomfortable with the subject.
Now she knows he isn’t, he’s just… scared. Lamina sees it in the way his eyes flicker as he asks the question. On the way his body tenses again, preparing himself for something.
She frowns, thinking about what to answer.
Lamina knows she would definitely fight to go home. That 's for sure. But, what about surviving? Will she make it?
Her eyes look at one corner of the cage, where the girl from Eleven, Dill, coughs in her sleep, shaking as she does so. She looks at the kid from Eight, Bobbin, who’s missing an arm. To the boy from Ten, Tanner, who had lost his district partner and was now in a last-minute alliance with the kids from Four.
To the pair from Twelve, so different yet so close. The boy, Jessup, definitely has rabies, she knows he was bitten by a bat in their cattle car. The girl, Lucy Gray was her name, has a very bright and bubbly personality, but deep down, Lamina can see how scared she is.
It’s the eyes: it’s always the eyes.
“No.” It’s her conclusion. She knows she can try, she can fight them all and try to win, but she knows she wouldn’t make it.
It is a very devastating realization, and it leaves a sour taste in her mouth and an itchy feeling in her throat, but it’s the truth.
She comes to another conclusion. “Even so, I know you can do it,” Treech’s mouth opens: he is about to say something, but closes it immediately. She continues. “You know how to use an ax, you’re athletic and a good climber,” she fully turns around, facing him properly. “I’m absolutely sure you can win this.”
Lamina feels bad. She feels disgusted at herself — she had just said that Treech can win, ignoring the fact that so many other tributes can also do it.
Think about the girl from Four, Coral: she was probably the biggest contender. Then, was the boy from Eleven, Reaper.
She comes to a third conclusion. One she doesn’t say out loud, because she knows Treech has also realized it.
They will be enemies in that arena.
If it comes down to the two of them… Lamina feels burning in her eyes. She’s going to cry, and with crying, there’s sobbing, which means she would start making a lot of noise. That would wake the others, and they’ll be mad at her.
She feels how one single tear trails down her cheek, staining it and mixing with the dirt from days without taking a shower.
The sudden weight of a hand on her shoulder makes her jump, quickly moving away from it. Treech looks at her with a frown, one that she returns.
Didn’t he hate physical contact? She saw it when she leaned on his shoulder, wanting comfort even if that meant touching somebody.
He had given her a weird smile, and that was it: he’s not a fan of it, she realized. So why was he touching her?
“Don’t touch me,” it comes out with more anger than she expects it to, and she immediately regrets it. “I thought- I thought you hated-” he cuts her off.
“I do, but I thought you needed comfort and- I don’t know how to do that,” he says, his hand slowly moving down and back to his hip. “My mother always says that a hug or a pat in the back helps. And I’ve never been good with words, so I thought it would’ve helped you if…” Treech is desperate to make his point clear.
Lamina sits normally again, waiting for him to calm down.
Stress: what a bitch you are.
With her forearm, she wipes the tears away. She shuts her eyes, tilting her head back and taking a deep breath, feeling the soft light from the moon bathe her face. Right now, she needs her advice, always perfect and accurate.
Her head feels lighter, and the burning in her eyes and itch in her throat goes away easily. Oh, dear, dear moon, the best friend she could have.
Her eyes open again, finding the mesmerizing silver circle.
When she dies, she hopes she can finally be able to touch it. To walk on its surface and feel something else.
Not sadness. Not grief. Not anger.
Feel something else: it could be happiness. Satisfaction. Love, even.
She doesn’t care at all, she just wants to feel. That’s everything, nothing else comes after that statement.
Something needs to come after that sentence, though. “You don’t need to prove your point. I get it,” she says, aware of how much Treech is shaking due to how anxious he must be feeling now. “Have you ever loved something so much, you feel the urge to keep it with you forever?” She looks at him, almost laughing at his confused face. He looks at her like she’s crazy.
Her question obviously caught him off guard, because he seemed to expect anything but that kind of question. It’s also a little too personal, so she would not be surprised if he decides not to answer and change the subject.
Lamina is gladly surprised when he decides to answer.
“Probably. Maybe my family,” he looks at her with a calm expression. “My sister, my brother. My mother. They’re everything to me,” he says, looking up to the sky. He smiles. “Now I understand why you’d been looking up all night. It’s very pretty, even though you can see it better in-”
“The forests,” she completes, making Treech nod and they both giggle. She looks up as well. “They’re probably the thing I miss the most about home. And the only one,” she says, raising her shoulders and tilting her head to the side with indifference at her simple statement.
Treech, however, seems puzzled by it.
Lamina is starting to realize she can’t blame him in most of his reactions. Funny if you ask her.
“The only one? Nothing else?” He asks, making her tense a little. He sounds truly surprised by that, and Lamina thinks it’s because of how much he must love his own family, that he’s impressed she does not miss her’s.
Should she tell him? She’s not sure how he would react, especially since they just started to grow a bit more comfortable with each other.
“Well, you see. Not all families are as close as others,” she puts another strand of hair behind her ear. She’s not looking at him. “My parents died when I was very young, during a bombing. We-” she pauses, the very well-known itch in her throat reaching her eyes. “We are from one of the poorest sides of the district,”
Lamina has Treech’s gaze glued to her head, burning and making her shrink. She takes a deep, shaky breath, trying so hard to calm herself.
It’s alway so fucking hard.
Slowly, she hugs her legs again, digging her nails in her calves and, this time, cutting through her skin. She bites her bottom lip in an attempt to not scream.
Ignoring the warm, sticky liquid staining her fingers, she continues. “I have an older brother. Once, two, but the other one was shot down by peacekeepers due to ‘rebel activities’. We never found his body,” she says, hugging her legs tighter than she thought she could. “Elwood, he- he gets angry at times. I spend most of my nights in the high trees.” She 's losing it. She can feel it — the tears blurring her vision, the knot forming on her throat and chest.
Lamina thinks about Elwood: is he okay? Is he mourning her? If she knows him, he’s definitely not doing so.
She looks back at Treech, who’s offering her his shoulder. He wants her to lean on it and cry. She shakes her head, whipping her tears with the back of her hand.
Instead, Treech offers his hat.
Lamina takes another shaky breath, taking the hat on her hands and placing it on her head, covering most of her face, and she holds it tightly.
Tears run down her cheeks, staining them and her already very dirty dress. She presses the hat more over her head, hiding her face as much as it allows her to. None of them say anything, both waiting for her to calm down.
She wishes she was in a tall, hidden tree back in Seven. She wants to feel the rough and cracked wood bark against her feet and back.
She misses the different scents, according to each different tree she visited.
All she has here is a rock, her knees, and the hat from her district partner.
Gradually, her tears stop coming out. Her body stops shaking with the suppressed sobs, and her grip on Treech’s hat starts loosening a little. One breath at a time: in and out. Inhale, exhale.
Her head’s spinning around. Or is the world spinning around? Who knows. She remembers Lucy Gray’s song.
Why is she thinking about Lucy Gray right now?
Why is her mind wandering on things that had nothing to do with her situation? Yet, the soothing voice of Lucy Gray playing on her head calms her.
She tries to picture her features: tan skin, maybe due to always being outside. Her floral scent from the flowers braided in her dark, brown hair that also reminds her of the wood bark of the hawthorn trees.
Her colorful and bright dress that catches everyone’s attention, as it first did when they were all at the train station and she caught the first glimpse of it.
Lamina remembers how her face lights up whenever she smiles, even if it’s a fake smile, it always makes her look more gorgeous-
More gorgeous? What do you mean by ‘more gorgeous’?
“Better?” Treech’s voice brings her back from… whatever was that.
She nods, still not taking off his hat. She wants a few more seconds of privacy, mostly because she doesn’t want to show him her now red and puffy eyes — and her probable flushed neck as well — that were doing no favor to her big and prominent black eyebags.
Lamina takes one last deep breath, and slowly takes the hat off of her head. She hands it to Treech, who takes it and places it in his lap.
Her head is turned away from his gaze, not capable of facing him yet.
Where is the moon when you need her?
She looks up, finding the pearly white sphere that always shines above her with such majesty that nobody has been able to replicate.
Don’t you even dare to think about her, Lamina.
She finally looks back to Treech, who’s playing with his hands while waiting for her. His eyes look straight ahead, staring into the depths of the zoo enclosure.
He looks entranced. Hypnotized by either his own thoughts or whatever he’s looking at over there.
“Do you ever feel like you’re missing a part of yourself?” His questions are starting to make her rethink a lot more stuff than she should be.
She guesses she can allow herself to do that, since it’s her probable last normal conversation with someone.
The answer to that question, however, is more easy than others.
“Yeah. Pretty much all the time,” she says, letting out another scoff followed by a smile from him. “It’s a constant state I live in apparently,” she sighs with resignation. They share a look, one that says something among the lines of ‘ha, what a fucked up thing right?’ which can’t be more accurate.
Treech’s smile turns into one full of melancholy. “I’m not very sure about tomorrow…”
Reality hits her again like an ax to the stomach, and she’s about to throw up.
Tomorrow. The Hunger Games. Kill people in order to survive. Her death.
What a way to ruin a light atmosphere. But she knows that it was the elephant in the room. One of them would eventually spit that out.
She’d hoped it would’ve taken a bit more time.
The silver glow from above stops her from having another panic attack, but not from feeling sick.
Right: Treech wants an answer.
“Me neither, if I’m honest,” she says, hugging her legs again. “It’s almost surreal: how all this is supposed to happen. One of twenty-four kids goes home on a train, while the others return in a coffin,” she says. Well, that’s if they’re lucky enough to even have their bodies.
Lamina wants her body to be as complete as possible. She may get injured, but she wants to at least have her head still connected to her body. The last time Elwood sees his little sister can’t be with her decapitated.
That’s if he even bothers to open the coffin, which Lamina knows would not even cross his mind. A shame.
She opens her mouth again. “Do you think that, if all of this was not happening, we would’ve met in the lumber yards?” She asks, the question lingering in the air between them and filling it with slight tension.
Treech looks at her, scanning her face as if he would find an answer there. Apparently he does. “Maybe. Not sure if we would’ve been friends, though,”
Now that leaves her with wide-open eyes and a slightly opened mouth, all in surprise. Because, if Lamina read correctly between lines, he’s saying that they’re friends.
Treech thinks they’re friends, even if this is their first proper conversation.
Actually, it’s they’re first conversation at all.
How can you say somebody you started talking to forty minutes ago is now your friend? Is he being for real?
By the way his jaw clenches a little, she understands that he didn’t mean it that way, which makes the tension in her shoulders relax.
It would’ve been so strange if he meant it. Absolutely and totally strange.
Lamina tries to picture them both meeting in another scenario.
As she said, probably at the lumber yards. They could’ve been paired in a group together, and meeting due to that.
Or perhaps they would’ve met on the streets. Or wandering in the forests. Or in one of those public dances the pub organizes once in a while.
She winces at the thought of them dancing together. She doesn’t think either of them would like it, mainly due to the fact that they both hate the touch of somebody else over their skin. Lamina would probably chop Treech’s arms off with her ax before allowing them to wrap around her waist as she’d seen other’s do it.
Again, she realizes neither of them would even try to do that.
Treech looks like someone who really enjoys solitude. He likes being alone. That’s why this is the first and last interaction they would ever have before one of them — her — dies, and, likely, the other — him — returns home safe and sound.
Her stomach flips and sinks at the thought of her death. She had contemplated it before, but it was always her who provoked it.
Not another human being. Although, peacekeepers were a very feasible option.
She doesn’t want to die. Lamina wants to live, to go back to her beloved forests and feel the cold grass under her bare feet. To touch the rough wood bark from the different trees that guarded the path she took to go home after her shifts in the lumber yards. To hear the birds singing.
Not that bird, shut up.
She puts one more strand of hair behind her ear. She never liked it. It’s long, dirty, tangled, and the color makes her stand out back in Seven, since most people have either dark-brown or just plain black hair.
Lamina is a blonde. Ash-blonde if we want to be specific. She felt a wave of relief when she saw how the Capitol people paid more attention to other kids than her.
Even if that meant them being air headed and extremely superficial.
In the Capitol, she didn’t stand out because of her ‘unnatural’ hair color, instead, she did because of the prominent tears that would not leave her eyes every single time she is in public. She still despises that histrionic and loud man with his silly mustache who tried to interview them their first day at the zoo.
He has a stupidly long and complicated name. Locritus? Leucritious? Whatever.
She wants to say something else, but nothing comes to mind. She remembers how the girl from Five, Sol, would ask an oddly specific question and the boy from One, Facet, would answer first. Then, the other’s would start answering with their own experiences, ideas, etc.
It always turned wickedly violent with the response from either the girl from Ten, Brandy, or the boy from Four, Mizzen.
“What are you going to do if you go back?” She whispers, reminded of the first question Sol had asked their little group of west-side tributes in their cattle car. Not all of them had answered, and one of those who didn’t was him.
Treech looks startled by it, but quickly frowns, something, she noticed, usually does when he considers what to say.
His hands stop fidgeting, finally settling down on his lap, and he straightens his back while still thinking about his answer. He’s definitely taking his time.
With a slow nod to himself, he turns and eventually answers the question.
His gaze is warm, but with a hint of fear that reaches his voice. “I’d like to start with theater. My family used to perform all around Panem, but with the rebellion and the Dark Days, they had to go back to Seven,” he says, sounding excited about what he’s saying. “Or perhaps I can try music. I’ll have to figure it out,” he chuckles and Lamina smiles at that. So he was a performer.
Seems like they’re everywhere these days, don’t they?
“I bet you’re going to be the best actor or musician Seven would ever see,” she says, and Treech’s smile grows wider. His walls are starting to fall, one by one.
She quickly glances up, catching a glimpse of the moon. She could swear it looked as if she was smiling at her. Lamina shakes the thought away. She likes this moment: her and Treech just… silent. Enjoying each other’s company, even if it’s inside a tailor-made bubble of idyllic reality. It feels comfortable and safe.
They’re not shoulder-to-shoulder, or holding hands, or giving each other any sort of glance that stories always told her about. That does not apply to them. She realized it after one of those shitheads of teenagers did try to flirt with Treech, and he just winced and walked away.
Some might say that it was just the normal reaction to that kind of thing, but Lamina has always been able to see through the first layer of the situation. Of other people’s reactions and responses.
It was very implied: Treech is not one for feelings. Not romantic one’s, at least. He seems disgusted and purposefully oblivious when that kind of thing is merely suggested to him, and sometimes even cringes at the thought.
Lamina is like that as well. Or that’s what she used to think until-
Not now. Don’t wander, focus.
Her eyes look at Treech, examining him. He looks tired, like always, but this time it’s more. He needs to sleep — she realizes she should do it too. Tomorrow is going to be crazy, and if she’s really planning on lasting as long as she’s able to, then she’ll need to have enough sleep.
The same question from moments ago pops into her head.
What are they going to do if it’s just the two of them in the end? Would they turn against each other?
Lamina concludes that it's probably the most feasible option. And the one they’d definitely choose if the situation ever happens.
Still, she needs to know his answer.
“What would happen if it’s just the two of us in the end?” Her voice is shaking when she makes the question.
Again, the perfect way to destroy a light and quiet atmosphere. The boy beside her freezes. His arms tense, his breathing stopping, his eyes wide-open in horror and understanding. He knows what she means. He’s aware of how difficult the situation is. It scares him to even think about the possibilities.
Lamina notices how he comes to a conclusion. The same one she already got.
Treech takes a deep breath, coming back to normal. “I guess- well, we’d have to fight each other,” he looks up. After a few seconds, he looks back at her. His eyes are filled with sorrow… “That’s what I’ll do.” And pity. Fucking pity.
She’s not surprised he says that. She already told him: she’s not making it out alive. But the pitiful look. The way his face has a sort of mixture of expression between sadness, regret, fear, insecurity, grief and pity. She wants to rip her hair out of frustration. Now it’s her turn to look up.
She throws her head back, closes her eyes and breathes. Because she needs air, and it is not entering her lungs.
Lamina listens as Treech whispers a ‘good night’ and gets up.
She listens at how the fabric of his clothes removes and brushes against the back of the rock. How, even if he wants to hide it, his breathing is still heavy and shaky.
He might be crying.
Silent and discreet, but still audible for her to know.
She feels bad for him, in all honesty: he must think that she got mad at him because of his decision, which is far away from the actual reason.
His pitiful eyes made her feel sick. Sick to her stomach and on the verge of tears. Now that she thinks about it, that’s all she’d been doing during her whole life. That’s probably why everyone hates her.
Fuck — that sucks.
A numb feeling strikes her calves, and she looks down, finding her nails fully dug inside them. That’s bad, of course. But she needs to deal with one thing at a time, or else she’ll lose it again. Her eyes focus once again on the moon. What else can she say about her? Everything has already been said.
It’s pretty, always surrounded by others, reflecting the light provided by something bigger than her, but making it look beautiful in her own special way. She brings comfort, hope. She gives advice. She listens patiently to whatever you say to her.
The moon is always there, waiting for others to appreciate her the way she appreciates them.
She wants to be loved back the exact same way she loves.
The moon also judges.
What are those lovers who cuddle in the grass about to say to each other? That little boy who’s hoping for something good to happen? How are those friends going to give the other comfort after a devastating event? And, what about those strangers sitting on that rock? What are they going to do with their situation?
For the first time, the moon does not give her an answer.