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AVANI HATED EVERY SECOND SPENT WITH HER PREP TEAM. Not that they were rude or anything, they were kind. But everything they did to her was insane.
First of all, she had to have zero hair on her entire body except for her eyebrows, lashes, and head. Which meant wax. So much wax, everywhere, ripped off with burning agony, and not a single member of her prep team knew a thing about privacy. Actually, privacy wasn't a thing. They saw her entire body in all its malnourished, District Twelve glory, and didn't even bat an eye.
The soles of her feet were scrubbed and scraped until they were baby soft, as were her hands, and the amount of skin that came off nearly made her dizzy. The cuticles of her toes and fingers were clipped and shoved and prodded at, her nails filed into perfect round edges with a little saw that made a terrible noise. Her hair was re-washed so violently she thought her scalp had probably bled, and her teeth were brushed and flossed and shined and whitened until they didn't even look like human teeth anymore.
Then, once all of that was done, she had to be shiny. Which meant a gallon of lotion globbed so thickly against her skin she could feel it when she moved. Breathed. Blinked. After that came makeup. Not face makeup, makeup for her body. To make her legs shiny and tan, to make her collar bones shimmer, to make her shoulders look sunkissed and glossy. Even parts of her no one would see were airbrushed and perfected to her great disdain.
All those hours of work, and she hadn't even met Cinna, her outfit and makeup stylist yet.
The man who seemed to be the most in charge of her prep, Flavius, with orange hair and black lipstick kept circling her like a hungry vulture, spitting out little tasks as he spotted imperfections on her. There was still a hair on her leg. The left collarbone was more shiny than the right. Her left pinky toenail was a quarter of a millimeter longer than all the rest.
By the time Flavius finally smiled, Avani was ready to fall over. "You look... nearly acceptable." He said with a forced little grin. "Go get Cinna."
One of the women in the room (Avani thought her name was Venia, but she wasn't sure.) scuttled along to fetch him. There was a robe on the back of a the chair she laid in when they washed her hair, and she kept eyeballing it. Why did her entire body have to be exposed like this?
"Stop looking at that robe. Cinna has to approve your appearance first," Flavius announced. Avani huffed.
Not five minutes later, her stylist was brought into the room.
She remembered seeing him faintly during Katniss's games; he looked nearly the same. His deep skin and cropped hair were the exact same as last year, and the only odd thing about him seemed to be the gold eyeliner he had swiped across each deep brown eye. His hair was a natural color, and his button up and pants were normal, as opposed to Flavius's flamboyant, rainbow ruffled get-up.
Okay. So maybe Cinna was pretty normal even if he worked for the Capitol?
"How does she look, sir?" Flavius questioned. Cinna did the same circle-and-scan technique that made Avani want to hurl.
