Light A Fire

Part 2: The Book of Memories

Part 2: The Book of Memories

In the quiet that follows, I try to imagine not being able to tell illusion from reality. Not knowing if Prim or my mother loved me. If Snow was my enemy. If the person across the heater saved or sacrificed me. With very little effort, my life rapidly morphs into a nightmare. I suddenly want to tell Peeta everything about who he is, and who I am, and how we ended up here.

― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

I brought her bread afterwards. Everyday, without fail. I helped Greasy Sae make breakfast. It was quiet at first, as Katniss fed all her bacon to Buttercup. But I watched as slowly, after many lost days, she came back to life. At first, it was barely a slice, then two, until the day came when she had no more bread left from the day before. She set out to hunt more often and that thing happened that I'd been waiting for - the color came back to her cheeks. She filled the hollow confines of her clothes. She lost the appearance of a wraith and slowly returned to herself again.

I came to her every morning, at first just for breakfast, but then I stayed longer. It's funny how it happened. She didn't ask outright. She didn't say, Come stay with me, I miss you and I'm lonely without you. That wasn't her way. Not at the beginning.

Instead, she started with showing me things. Her father's bow. Her parent's wedding picture. The spile from the arena. She described the woods, plants she'd found, asked me to plan a garden with her.

I tried to reciprocate, tried to talk of my parents, my brothers, of life in the bakery, but it was all very confusing in my mind. Memories poured over each other like cataracts, a jumble of disjointed images that were familiar and yet strange. I wanted to remember - they were my family, after all, with all their defects and imperfections. And they had died horribly. Sometimes that realization came on me as if it were the first time, and I stayed in my room, to wrestle with that truth, either in silence or with paint.

I kept all these things to myself.

"It's almost lunch time," she said one day, her voice so low, I thought it might crack. "I caught a few squirrels today."

"I can help you cook them," I offered.

She gave me a half-smile, the first one I'd seen since the Quarter Quell. Her face strained under the strangeness of the expression but soon, her muscles remembered and she eased into it. It brightened her face, making me feel a little dizzy. I had forgotten the effect she could have on me.

After that, we cooked together often, saying very little and only ever about the food. But in that quiet kitchen, I didn't feel the awkwardness of the silence. I felt calm and at peace because I was with her. And to some degree, she seemed to feel the same way. She was serene as she cleaned meat or cut vegetables. I knew her nights were terrible - I barely closed my eyes for fear of what I would see on the other side of them. I saw the faces of my family and watched them become consumed by flames and bombings, unable to stop it from happening. I could barely remember anything else - the hijacking had made my mind a strange place when it came to drawing out the memories of things - but I could bring to mind their deaths in vivid detail, though I had not witnessed them myself.

And I heard Katniss's screams pierce the night. The routine of each day seemed to ward the evil away for just a little while, but it came back every night to visit us both.

One day, when we'd had our lunch, Katniss left the kitchen and brought back a large box. The Capitol seal on top made me wary.

"What's that?" I asked.

She moved the flaps aside, pulling out the packaging that held a large, leather book. When she handed it to me, I was impressed by the elegance of the cover and the quality of the thick paper inside. I thought of all the sketches I could draw on paper as fine as this.