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analiza-beta · 1 year

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Emory Nonsense, for @lorata

So, long story short, I thought I’d be normal this week and then Emory waltzed into my brain and took root and now I have over 6k of baby!Emory just sort of existing and I have a feeling this is only going to spiral worse? Also, no clue where I got the idea that Emory’s parents were lesbians. I could have sworn I’d read it somewhere but I went to look for it and tumblr did a “search function, what do you mean? Our search doesn’t function!” so I guess I made that up.

Without further ado: I give you part 1/me losing my mind.

Click for baby!Emory:

There’s a pond near their house. It’s out past the back door, behind the quarry and it’s mines, after a massive drop-down cliff, with tumbling weeds and rockslides and a million trip-hazards. It’s Emory’s favourite place in the whole district.

Sometimes, when the weather’s nice, her parents will let her wander over and she’ll sit on the rocks scalding hot from the heat, and dip her legs in the water up to her knees. It’s the sensations that she likes, really. The warm breeze which swoops down into the valley, the water brushing up against her, the sand beneath her feet. Even the sounds and smells are nice; wildflowers and crickets chirping and the faint hiss of humidity which reminds her of solstice nights in summer.

There’s a lot to be found out here, and Ma says that it’s important to take what they can get; to stretch it as far as they can because no one gets hand-outs in the quarries. Emory’s not entirely sure what ‘hand-outs’ are, but she does know that Ma’s right about using what they have. It’s no good to be wasteful, she says, and Emory knows that it’s good of her to help where she can.

That’s how she finds herself in the quarries each morning; with a bucket under her arm to hold whatever she finds. There’s a trail through the brush, a winding path dug out of the grass, marked by grey rocks and rubble and she knows if she follows it, she’ll find the area of the quarry that’s far enough from the mines that animals and plants are undisturbed. She hums as she walks, kicking up the pebbles on the path with her feet as she goes. The sound will scare off the animals, but that’s okay. She didn’t want to kill them anyways, not if she can help it. Mama knows how to skin them and use the hide, and she taught Emory how when she asked, but they’re all sorted for meat and materials at the moment, so Emory is looking for greenery today.

There’s a blackberry bush hidden beneath a copse of low-crawling vines, and if she’s very careful she can hold as many as she can in the bucket and in her hands and take them home to be made into a jam. It’s this bush that she’s looking for, but because summer is approaching, there might be strawberries lining the fence. There’ll definitely be dandelions, which even Emory knows how to make into a salad and she can’t even reach the kitchen bench without a stool. She ducks beneath a tree branch, hand scraping against the rough bark, and steps out into the meadow. It’s a nice day, she decides, breathing deeply and stumbling out into the clearing as she twirls in circles. She giggles breathlessly when she finds the strawberries and plops down onto the ground to start plucking them. For each strawberry, she plucks them off the bush, removes the stem with her teeth, and places them gently in her bucket. One by one, over and over. Rhythmic. She’ll have to be fast, because she can feel the day creep along into night as she works.

Once the strawberry bush has been sufficiently scoured, she crawls out into the dirt to pick dandelions for dinner. Handfuls and handfuls make their way into the bucket before she decides there’s enough. She wipes dirt of her hands onto her pants, and frowns slightly at the dirt scrapes and grass stains on her knees.

“Damn,” she whispers, borrowing the word she heard Ma swear the other day after dropping a bowl. Her and Mama will have to clean her clothes when she gets home. The normal procedure is to wash them in the left over water after a bath, which works out. By the sweat and dirt in her hair after today, Emory figures she’s about due to bathe anyways. She grabs her bucket and stands. It’s overflowing, but not so badly that she’ll have to hold anything. That’s good, since it means she’ll be able to make her way back up the hill much easier than usual, as she’ll have both hands to pull herself up. She plots the trip home in her mind as she walks. Her memory’s pretty good, but she doesn’t know how to read the signs yet, so relying on memory alone is as good as she’s got. By the time she’s home, the sun has begun to set and she can feel the evening breeze sift through the air. She clicks open the back gate and swings open the fly screen door, making sure that she grabs the spare key from under the garden bench to lock the door behind her. She has to stand on her tiptoes to reach though, because even though she’s hit her growth spurt before everyone else on her class, she’s still not tall enough to reach unassisted.

She places the bucket on the table, and creeps into the kitchen, where she spies her Ma setting up the tumbler.

“I brought dandelions,” she tells her. Ma smiles, kind, eyes crinkling.

“Thanks, sweetheart. Do you want to help me make the salad?” Emory grins, and runs up to her.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll go grab the bucket.” She dashes back with the dandelions to the sound of her Ma’s laughter. It’s a good night.

——

Most people, Emory learns, do not have guns in their house. Emory’s Mama keeps her rifle and shotguns on the top shelf of her wardrobe, where Emory can’t reach, even with a stool. She says that she has to have guns because she’s a peacekeeper. The peacekeepers protect the people of district two, she explained once, but sometimes that means protecting them from other people as well, or wild animals. That’s what the guns are for.

When Mama’s peacekeeper friends go out hunting, they sometimes take Emory with them. They don’t go to the quarry, but they do go out into the woods. Emory has to catch the train there with her Mama, because most of the peacekeepers don’t live in the quarry towns like they do and so the woods where they meet up is out past Peacekeeper HQ. The first time she went with them, Emory wasn’t allowed to shoot anything. She hadn’t minded, though, because it was exciting just to be out with the adults. She’d liked the woods too. They’d smelt like smoke and honey and sap, and when she took her shoes off, she could dig her toes into the dirt and play with the bugs.

While she was playing with the dirt - trying to build a sandcastle out of dirt when there was no water wasn’t very easy, she was rapidly discovering — a loud bang had blasted, and she’d nearly fallen over out of shock.

When they’d gotten home, Mama had cooed and said she looked to be in a right state. Having looked in the bathroom mirror, Emory had to agree. Her hair was blown askew and her eyes were still wide and alarmed. Mama had gotten the brush out of the bathroom drawers, and sat Emory on the floor between her legs. Brush, brush, brush, until her hair was smooth again. She’d plaited it for bed, too. One strand over the other, over the other. Emory had watched her do it in the mirror until her heart stopped beating so fast. Mama had tucked her hair into place with a tie, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“If you don’t want to come with us again, that’s okay,” she’d said. “I know it can be scary the first few times.” Emory had frowned then. She hadn’t been scared, just alarmed. No one had told her how loud it would be.

“I wasn’t scared,” she had said. “Next time, will you teach me?” Mama had smiled.

“Of course.”

The next time had been easier. Her Mama had brought a smaller shotgun with her. Not a rifle because that would have been too big for Emory to use. She’d placed it over Emory’s shoulder, and held her small hands in her larger ones. Positioning them delicately over the handle and it’s trigger, she’d whispered directions in her ear. Quiet, so as not to disturb their target. The squirrel had been nibbling at something up high in the trees. Emory had knocked the gun into aim with her mother’s guidance, squinted until she could see her path clearer. Her Mama had told her when to shoot, and she’d fired the gun with a quick squeeze of the trigger.

She hadn’t been prepared for the recoil, which sent shocks down her arms and sent her sprawling back into her Mama, sat behind her. Mama had laughed and held her arms still, and told her to go get what she’d caught. Emory had grinned, thrilled with adrenaline. The squirrel had fallen some metres away, and when Emory had gone to pick it up, she’d been alarmed to find it blown through the stomach. The sight had sent a swoop through her stomach, but she knew she wasn’t meant to cry. Ma always says that there is no use in wasting your tears on things that can’t be fixed, and Ma is always right. Emory had stepped over a twig, weary of her Mama’s watchful eyes, and bent down to pick up the squirrel. It was bloody and leaking insides, and when she’d held it, she’d felt the snap of small bones. She’d bitten down onto her tongue to stop herself from crying out and slowly walked back to Mama with the squirrel cradled gently in her hands.

“Decent shot,” Mama had appraised, turning the quarrel over. “Next time, aim for the eyes. It’s quicker and it means we can use more of its body afterwards.” Emory had nodded, not sure that she wanted a next time. The sight of splintered bones had stuck in her mind, and she hadn’t managed to wipe it away. Mama had wiped her hands off on her trousers, and placed the squirrel on a sheet of paper. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get home and you can see how we use them afterwards.”

Mama was right. When they’d gotten home, Ma had shown Emory how to properly skin the squirrel — hook the tip of the knife into its head, beneath the skin, and slowly flay away the fur until it’s a mess of blood and bone — and how to cut around the bones so that they can get the most meat out of it. Emory had liked that bit better than the killing. At least the squirrel was being used for something. Even the hide can be used, she’d learnt. Ma had said she would turn it into a holster for Mama’s gun, and sent a soppy smile her Mama’s way. Emory had sat on the kitchen counter and poked the hide sullenly. They’d gotten hardly anything out of the squirrel because she’d failed to shoot it in the right place. She’d have to make a better shot next time. Ma had smiled at her, and tucked Emory’s hair beneath her ears.

“Thanks for bringing this home,” she’d said, smiling. “It was very helpful.”

——

The quarry towns still hold some of District Two’s oldest traditions. Every solstice, Emory sits with her Ma and bakes a pie for the whole town to eat. The best part of solstice nights, is that Emory gets to stay up as long as she likes. Everyone gets together to make what Ma calls a potluck — everyone contributing their own share of a feast — and Emory gets to laden up her plate with all the foods she likes best. Soups, bread rolls, lasagne, the works. She loves it best because she gets to talk to people. Old man Dave from the house two doors down brings his grandkids and his hounds, and Mary from the butchers brings her new fiancée to meet everyone. Emory spends the night curled up by the bonfire at her Ma’s side, sipping on her pumpkin soup and watching as the sky turns from blue to black to dotted with stars. Fireflies and sparks from the fire light the navy darkness of the night with gleams of gold, and once the chatter has died down, everyone takes a roll of bread and scatters it’s crumbs across the bonfire.

——

When Emory turns six, she starts going to school. Emory’s happy to go to school and sit on the carpet and run her fingertips over it’s looped bristles over and over to comfort herself. She can listen contentedly as her teacher talks them through craft projects. She’s got a mini art easel made of popsicle sticks and covered in glitter which she’d taken home and propped on her window sill. School is fun largely because her teacher likes her — she doesn’t scream like the other kids when they get excited or wail when she’s dropped off and her parents leave — and she gets to sit calmly and enjoy the comforting atmosphere of the classroom.

The day everything shifts is a day like any other. Emory is sitting on her designated piece of carpet — no one said it was hers, but she sat there on the first day because it’s beneath the window and gets the sun, and she’s at such a vantage point that she can see the chalkboard, and now it’s the place she always sits — when her teacher starts writing symbols on the board. Letters, she says. The letters make sounds, and the sounds strung together are what makes words. Emory learns that the writing is when you put down the sounds onto paper — is spoken turned to written. Her teacher assigns them each a reading list — ten words to learn before next week — and Emory tucks hers into the pocket of her pants for safekeeping.

On the walk home, Emory takes the slip of words out and tries to sound out the letters. In class, her teacher had walked them through the different sounds each letter made, and that made enough sense, even if Emory doesn’t understand why shapes can make sounds. The problem isn’t that she doesn’t know what letters make which sounds, it’s that she can’t tell what the letters are. She squints at the list in the bright light, and tries to make out what the words are.

She doesn’t know all the letters yet, so it’s difficult. And more than that, when she looks at them, they move. One second she’s certain there’s a “d” and the next, when she looks back at it, it says “p.” It’s nearly enough to drive her to tears. She whispers the letters aloud as she walks, trying desperately to string them into words. The whole thing is awful. She knows her words, she knows how to speak, so why don’t the letters make sense?

She tucks the lost beneath her pillow when she gets home. Lights off is at seven, but if she’s careful, she’ll be able to light her lamp and try to read it afterwards. It’s probably fine, anyways. There’s no way she’s the only one who doesn’t get it. Plenty of the other kids will be struggling too, she’s sure.

——

The thing is, the other kids aren’t struggling with reading. Sure, they did at the beginning, when the letters were unfamiliar and the onset of reading daunting, but they’ve picked it up. The others fly through their lists quickly each week, but Emory can’t even manage to learn her first. It makes her gut twist and her cheeks flame and her eyes burn every time she has to go up to her teacher at the end of the day, and admit that she still doesn’t know what the words say.

She begs her teacher to help her. Actually begs, even though Ma says that she shouldn’t let anyone debase her to begging. The fear is palpable though, and Emory just needs to know how. In the end, her teacher just repeats what she’s already said; she seems at a loss, too. Eventually, she concedes to let Emory take home material with her, stacks of picture books and lists and a sheet that breaks down the sounds made by consonants and vowels.

When she gets home, Emory hauls up in her room and presses a chair against the door so that her parents won’t come up and bother her. She spreads the sheets and books over the floor and flicks on her lamp. She spends hours there that night, knees and ankles aching from where they press into the carpet, trying desperately to stumble through each sentence. She doesn’t get very far.

The next day, she packs away all the reading materials into her bag to give back. She’s not giving up, she tells herself, but, well- . It’s difficult, is all. She’ll try to stumble through all the reading exercises, but she figures there’s no use putting her effort into something hopeless. She’s spent hours pouring over her lists, over the words and the books, and it never gets any easier. Not even a little bit. When the teacher raises her eyes hopefully at Emory that morning, she just wordlessly shakes her head. The teacher’s face falls, and she offers Emory a hug.

It’s okay, if she doesn’t think about it too hard. She’ll find some other way to be useful. It only makes her panic when she thinks about it too hard — about how Mama needs to be able to read for her work as peacekeeper, how Ma needs to know what the signs say in the quarries, how her teacher needs to read to teach — because then all she can think about is how there’s hardly any work in the district that doesn’t require reading. How is she supposed to help the district when she can’t even read? When she asks her Mama, all she says is that little girls don’t need to worry about such things. Emory thinks there’s a lot of things for her to worry about, but keeps her mouth shut.

——

The good thing is, not everything requires reading. Emory’s tall for her age, and strong too because of all the work she does with Mama, and there’s plenty of kids smaller than her who tend to get picked on. Those kids need help fighting off the bigger kids, and that’s where Emory comes in. She can’t stand the mean kids — the ones who steal lunches and sneer at the younger kids and disrespect the teachers who are only trying to help. When they take a kids lunch out on the play ground, and kick him to the floor when he tries to get it back, Emory knows that no one else is going to stop it.

The teacher isn’t outside, so Emory stomps over to the fight with a determination that can’t be broken. She grabs the boy’s wrist — thicker than hers, but not by much — and yanks him aside.

“Give it back to him,” she says steely. The boy looks at her gormless for a moment, before his face resolves to rage.

“Yeah,” he mocks. “See, I don’t think I will.” He spits at the floor. Emory frowns, considering. She draws her hand back. The boy laughs at her. She punches him across the face, fingers drawn in with the thumb on the outside like Mama taught her, and feels the crack of his nose against her fist. The boy stumbles backwards to the ground, falling flat on his back in the sandpit.

“Give it back to him,” she repeats. The boy is still clutching his nose, but now looks to be in a state of fugue shock. He blinks wetly, and hands over the now smashed sandwich. Emory smiles. She thinks she should probably make him apologise, since that’s what you’re meant to do when you’re in the wrong, but she also doesn’t want to push her luck and so she stays quiet.

——

She gets into more fights after that. She scraps with kids who bully the younger students, and defends anyone they try to fight and eventually they start ignoring the others altogether and just annoy her. By the time it’s summer again, Emory’s gotten into six fights across two weeks. It’s not deliberate, she tells her mums when they ask. It’s just that there’s plenty of kids who can’t fight back, and if she’s able to fight their battles for them, why shouldn’t she? Her Ma purses her lips, but Mama beams at Emory and ruffles her hair, and they have her favourite soup for dinner, so it’s worth it.

Emory still doesn’t have people she really talks to at lunch, but her teacher’s taken to keeping her company at recess. She’s not her teacher anymore — Emory moved up a class during the holidays just like everybody else, even though she still can’t read — but she seems to have a soft spot for her regardless. When Emory gets in fights, it’s her who brings her up to the principal’s office to call her parents. That happens more and more often nowadays. It’s not like she gets in trouble either, or she’d have stopped. They just call and talk, and talk some more. She hears whispers of a centre one day, but she’s not sure what they’re talking about and so she usually just reverts back to swinging her legs under the chair to keep herself entertained instead of trying to listen in.

“I’ve always thought she’d go when she was old enough,” Mama is saying. “That’s what I did. Went through to sixteen and drifted out to the Academy. She can do the same thing, if she wants.” Emory keeps half an ear on the conversation, but has rapidly found herself enthralled by the pitted wood texture of the desk.

“Well,” Principal Hudgens says, adjusting a stack of sheets. “We’ve got all the paperwork here for a recommendation. She might not be as vicious as some of the other kids we have here, but she’s stable, and she’d enjoy it, if nothing else. Send us a memo if you want me to put it through.”

“I thought the centre didn’t send people to the quarry towns,” Ma says, though it sounds more like a question.

“Not for recruitment,” Hudgens tells her. “But they ask us for a report on the kids here, so that they can streamline the application and interview process. I don’t think your girl will have any problems getting in.” Ma makes a sound in her throat, drawing Emory’s attention away from the wood carvings.

“Getting in to what?” Emory asks. Mama hums, probably pondering her answer.

“Well,” she says. “Do you remember when we talked about the Hunger Games a few months ago?” Emory nods, because yes, she does remember. The Hunger Games are the price the district pays each year for rebelling, and District Two offers up two eighteen year old volunteers every year so that the district can remain safe. The Centre is what gets them there. It teaches kids how to protect the district. She knows because one of the girls in the year above at school goes to the centre, and she says that going to the Centre is great because she’s learning how to save people. Emory’s not sure what the Hunger Games themselves are yet — they haven’t talked about it in school, and some parents tell their kids early, but hers haven’t — but she does know that they’re something good. Mama continues, emboldened. “The Centre’s primary function is to train people for the Games, but they take in children like you at seven and you don’t have to go to the games if you don’t want to.”

“What do the kids do there?” Emory asks. She doesn’t want to commit to anything if she’s not going to like it. What if she goes there expecting it to be fun, and all they make her do is read.

“Mostly, you exercise and run and play games,” Mama says, and that sounds good actually. Emory likes running, and sport is her favourite lesson of the week, because she gets to have fun and strategise, and she doesn’t have to read ever. “It’s after school, and if only goes for a few hours. We can take you there for an interview if you like.”

Emory thinks for a minute. She knows it’s a minute because she trains her eyes on the clock as she considers it, and the minute hand makes one full rotation.

“I’ll go,” she decides eventually, and tries not to catalogue Mama’s smile and Ma’s frown.

——

The interview isn’t for a while yet, Emory knows, because the centre takes you in when you’re seven, and she’s still six for a few months. During those months, she spends most of her time behind the quarry. She knows that during the interviews, they give out tests. Not real tests, not like the ones at school where she has to memorise and write things, but one of the older kids who already goes to the centre said that they make you do all sorts of things on application day. She’d asked him what sorts of tests there were, but he’d just made a face and said that it wasn’t fair if she knew and the others didn’t. Emory hadn’t protested, because he’d made a decent point; it wouldn’t have been fair if she’d had a head start.

Still, not knowing means she has no direction. She spends her days running as fast as she can around the quarry, lap after lap, until her lungs burn and her legs shake and she can hardly make it back home without collapsing. She practices push ups at night when she’s meant to be sleeping, and makes sure to ask Mama all sorts of questions about how the process works. She tries not to ask when Ma’s there, because she gets the feeling Ma doesn’t like the idea of Emory going all so much. Mama though, is prouder of Emory than ever. She beams at Emory’s excitement and tells her every night that she’s so glad she’s taking this seriously. Emory smiles, because by the time she’s being tucked in for the night, her bodies exhausted and tired and she can’t fight off the desire to be coddled like she does during the day — the big kids at the centre won’t be tucked into bed by their Mommies, but Emory’s not at the centre yet, so maybe it’s fine.

When she’s not trying to outrun her racing thoughts, she fills out the last of the paperwork. Most of it has nothing to do with her really — there’s a form her parents need to sign and another that needs to be filled with her medical details, and another after that with school grades and teacher statements and recommendations — but there’s a section with questions for her to fill out. Mama says it doesn’t matter too much, as most of the important stuff is covered in a verbal interview, but it’s Emory’s duty to fill it out herself, and so she takes it with her up to her room and asks Ma to read the questions out to her slowly, so that she can think through her answers. When Ma leaves, Emory takes out a pen and slowly tries to write her way through the answers. Why do you want to go to the centre? What motivates you? Hoe can you best describe your relationship ship to school? Emory thinks the questions are a bit complex really. Why does any of that even matter? She knows this is the right thing to do. It’s what she needs to do. Mama says the centre is about protecting people — just like peacekeeping is — and Emory wants to protect people. In the end, she figures that’s probably a good enough answer, and spends the whole night staying up trying to write it down even though the letters are still squirrelly and run away from her when she tries to grab them.

When the day of the interview comes, Emory wakes bright and early. Maybe it’s silly to feel so overeager, but she’s spent the last while trying desperately to figure out what the Centre really is, and she’s so excited to find out. Her parents don’t own a car, so she walks down to the train with her Mama whose on her way to work. She won’t be able to pick her up until her shift is over, and so Emory will have to stay late at the regional centre afterwards — the nearest testing centre to their house is in Calgaratt, and Mama can’t get off work early enough to pick her up when the interview will end. The train ride is peaceful, and Emory spends much of it picking at the knees of her pants and periodically straightening her posture. When the train ride ends, her Mama helps her off and gives her directions to find the actual centre building, which is further down the road.

“You ready?” Mama asks, bending down to Emory’s height. Emory nods solemnly. She is. “I’ll come pick you up at five o’clock, okay.” She waits for Emory to agree, before ducking down to press a kiss to her forehead. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Emory says, and turns to look up at the centre.

—

The centre building is enormous; gleaming white walls and sheets of window pane and a sprawling oval behind it, where Emory can see kids running frantically and chucking things at each other in what must be some kind of game. Emory would be worried about gawking, but there’s plenty of other kids here who are gazing dazed at the building. Still, she snaps herself out of her staring and crosses the gravel car park up to the entrance. There’s a small line of children there — those born in the month of July, like Emory — and Emory goes to join them in the waiting room.

The room is sparse but still nicer than anything else Emory’s seen. The couches are some kind of dyed leather, she thinks, and the floor is tiled white. She takes a seat on the couch when a woman directs her to, and has the number seven printed off and taped to her back and front. What seems like hours pass as she sits there. There are three rooms available for interviews, and so over the course of roughly half an hour, those waiting are called in. Emory knows she arrived at 9 A.M, so by her estimates she been waiting for roughly three hours. There must be some kind of backlog, she thinks, because Mama said that when she’d had her own interview she’d gone in immediately.

When they call her name and Emory stands, she find that she’s sweated so much that her thighs are almost stuck to the leather. She looks at the couch briefly with a sense of betrayal. They don’t have much leather at home, and Emory had forgotten how much she hated how it sticks to the skin. She walks over to the aide who called her, and tries to ignore how ominous her footfalls sound against the loud tiling, with nothing else to muffle them.

“My name is Amelie,” the woman explains with a kind smile. “Follow me through to room three, and I’ll conduct your interview.”

Amelie takes a seat behind a desk and gestures for Emory to do the same, and so she sits. Amelie explains that the first portion of the interview is done through some routine tests and identifying games. She pulls out a sheath of papers, each of which has a pattern printed on it. She tells Emory to identify as many as she can. The patterns, Emory finds, are pretty easy. One is a repeating sunset, the other is a hidden image. Some of them are strings of numbers, and she correctly notices that each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. There’s some math after that, too. Addition and subtraction, and even some of the basic multiplication that they’ve started to learn in class. Emory likes math too, so that’s not so bad.

The only real problem is when they get to reading. It’s basic, and Amelie asks her to read as much of it as she can. There’s only a few sentences but Emory looks at it and just as always the words don’t work. Her eyes swim and she presses her nails into her legs so that’s she doesn’t cry. The centre won’t want crybabies. She straightens her spine and tries her best to stumble through the sentences, but it’s clear she’s not succeeding from the look on Amelie’s face. She reaches out and takes the papers away from Emory.

“How about we move on?” She asks, and Emory nods gratefully. She doesn’t want to spend any longer on this than she has to. Maybe once she’s in the centre, she’ll never have to try to read again. Amelie produces another stack of papers — these ones have printed images on each of them, of people in different scenarios — and she asks Emory to walk her through what each person in the images are thinking. It’s not too bad. Emory thinks she understands people pretty well, and at the very least, nothing she says here makes Amelie frown the way she did when Emory did the reading section. Most of the images are fairly simple — a boy crying looking out his window, a girl who’s spilt her block tower on the floor — but one catches her eye. A little girl learning how to shoot. When Amelie asks her what the people are thinking, Emory tells her that the little girl is being taught about duty.

“What do you think duty is?” Amelie asks, and Emory frowns.

“Duty is what we have to do,” Emory says, thinking. “It’s what we need to do,” she amends.

“What do you need to do?”

“I need to pass this test,” Emory says wryly, in a bout of candour she doesn’t feel. Amelie laughs. “I need to help.”

“Alright,” Amelie says, now far more relaxed. “I’ve got to go grab some final paperwork before I give you the tour, but I’m going to leave a marshmallow here.”

“What’s a marshmallow?”

“It’s a kind of lolly,” Amelie explains. “I’ll leave it here, and if you want to have it you can. If you wait until I get back though, I can bring another one and you can have two.” Emory wants to ask which is better — if she should wait or not, but she figures that like with the rest of the tests, she needs to find the answer herself.

“Okay,” she says instead. Amelie places the ‘marshmallow’ on the desk and leaves. It’s a weird thing — it looks like a small, white pillow. When she pokes it, it’s gelatinous, and powdery too. Emory thinks it probably doesn’t have much substance, because it smells cloyingly sweet and almost airy. She sits back and waits, watching the marshmallow with a vague sense of apprehension. She’s at least curious as to what it is — Amelie called it a lolly, so it must be for eating, but why would anyone eat it when there’s better things that aren’t as sugary? By the time Amelie returns, Emory hasn’t even begun to answer her own question, and the marshmallow is still there, plain as day. Amelie smiles and withdraws a second marshmallow from her pocket and hands it to Emory.

“Patient,” she praises. “That’s good. Come on, you can eat while we walk.”

She leads Emory out through the back door, and they head out into what Amelie calls the pavilion. There are kids sparring on gym mats, and more classes whacking each other with foam swords, and a group on the ropes, and everything about it makes Emory’s blood sing. The sounds of shouts and yelling, and the stick of the gym mats and the sound of steel on steel. Emory’s sure she looks positively deranged — she catches a glimpse of herself in the windows, and her eyes are wide and her grin exuberant — but she can’t bring herself to care. The Centre is perfect, and Emory feels everything about it settle into her chest like a missing limb. She needs it like she needs air. Nothing ever felt right at school, but here, Emory thinks she can finally find what she’s been looking for. She’s not sure what that is, exactly, but she wants it with a vigour she hasn’t felt before. Amelie let’s her climb the ropes course, and it’s great because Emory’s strong for her age and manages to climb all the way up to the top, and she only scrapes her foot a little on the way down, because she’s climbed ropes before in the quarries. Emory can’t even find it in herself to be ashamed for the show of emotion or the excitement she feels, because by the time she leaves, she thinks if they don’t accept her, she’ll lose the one place in her life where she might belong. This is what she needs.

#the hunger games #thg #we must be killers #lorata #emory (we must be killers)#my feeeeels

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