can't catch me now , the hunger games

001 | calm

CHAPTER ONE : calm

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IT'S STILL DARK OUTSIDE when Evangeline Sky wakes, still chilly enough that she shivers when she removes the blankets and places her bare feet on the floorboards.

She sneaks out of bed as quietly as she can, not wanting to stir Finnick before his body tells him that he's ready to rise. She dresses in a neat, warm robe, secures her dark hair into a high ponytail, and lets herself out into the cool Spring air. She makes the journey out of the Victors' Village, down winding streets already busy with merchants readying their stalls for the day, and after a quarter of an hour of walking, comes to a stop at the back of the Delphie Bakery.

At the door, she knocks thrice, then steps back and waits. A pan goes clattering to the floor inside moments before the door whips open, nearly smashing right into her.

A young woman with brown skin and curly, dark hair pulled back from her face and covered with a hairnet stands in the doorway, a smear of white flour on her cheek.

"Aha, right on time!"

Dillan Alcrest steps back, allowing enough room for Evangeline Sky to enter. The bakery's kitchen is warm and smells of freshly baked bread — salty and seaweedy, District 4's specialty. Evangeline Sky removes her robe, folding it over her forearm, and takes a seat at a small hardwood table in the corner of the room while Dillan grabs a dish from the bench and plops it down in front of her.

It's a green chocolate scroll, Evangeline Sky's favourite pastry. A crispy dessert made with District 4's signature salty, green bread, drizzled with milk chocolate and thickened cream. It's part of the Capitol's version of a Continental Breakfast, but instead of foods from the varying continents of their planet, it's foods inspired by each of Panem's districts. District 12's food at the breakfast spread, for example, is a dark chocolate loaf baked until it's rock hard to the touch — like a lump of coal. Most of 12 can't afford a block of dark chocolate, let alone an entire loaf made of the stuff, but why should the Capitol worry about that when they can have some tasty treats?

Dillan sits down at the other side of the table, scooping up her golden wedding band from the corner of the surface, where she'd placed it before she'd begun baking for the day, and begins to fiddle with it. "Sometimes I think you only like me for the food," Dillan hums, a cheeky smirk appearing on her lips.

Evangeline Sky raises an eyebrow as she takes a bite, smearing cream up into the space between her top lip and nostrils. "Well, you'd be mistaken, but it's certainly a bonus."

Her accent is thick and virtually unidentifiable. Time spent between the poshly-accented Capitol and the less refined District 4, coupled with spending ample time with Nana and Auntie Baird, who'd snuck in from far away all those years ago and who have even thicker accents than those from 4, have transformed Evangeline Sky's voice into something not found anywhere else in the country. Your voice is one of a kind, Nana Mags would tell her, back before she lost hers.