katniss everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burnwithus) wrote2011-02-22 01:05 am
burnwithus) wrote2011-02-22 01:05 am
they won't ask you why (they'll just watch you die) ➴ homeplot
I taste ash on my lips, heavy and choking. It's in the air, along with the smell of coal fires that only remind me of District 12.
District 12.
My eyes snap open, face pressed against the fallen ash. Trying not to breathe it in. There was a disease that all the miners got after too many years of working, a cough that no amount of salve could take away. Black Lung Disease, my mother used to call it. I already feel the burning begin in my lungs as I pick myself up from the floor. This was District 12, and it didn't feel like a nightmare. After a year and a half of fighting them repeatedly, I knew all of my nightmares.
This was something else. This was...focus. I press a hand against the scar on my temple, the one I automatically associate with confusion in hopes that it will help me think. It doesn't. After a minute I give up on trying to figure out why and focus more on figuring out where I am. In the distance, the red flames of the slag heap are still visible. With all that residual coal dust, it might be burning forever. Still burning, I think numbly, reaching automatically for the quiver at my shoulder, except it isn't there. Just the knife I sleep with underneath my pillow.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something beginning to move. Someone. Multiple people whose faces I can't quite make out. How is this even possible? There was no one left alive after the firebombing, except those that Gale managed to get out.
Maybe it's the dead. It sounds ridiculous, but if this is a dream, if it's my dream...it's entirely possible.
District 12.
My eyes snap open, face pressed against the fallen ash. Trying not to breathe it in. There was a disease that all the miners got after too many years of working, a cough that no amount of salve could take away. Black Lung Disease, my mother used to call it. I already feel the burning begin in my lungs as I pick myself up from the floor. This was District 12, and it didn't feel like a nightmare. After a year and a half of fighting them repeatedly, I knew all of my nightmares.
This was something else. This was...focus. I press a hand against the scar on my temple, the one I automatically associate with confusion in hopes that it will help me think. It doesn't. After a minute I give up on trying to figure out why and focus more on figuring out where I am. In the distance, the red flames of the slag heap are still visible. With all that residual coal dust, it might be burning forever. Still burning, I think numbly, reaching automatically for the quiver at my shoulder, except it isn't there. Just the knife I sleep with underneath my pillow.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something beginning to move. Someone. Multiple people whose faces I can't quite make out. How is this even possible? There was no one left alive after the firebombing, except those that Gale managed to get out.
Maybe it's the dead. It sounds ridiculous, but if this is a dream, if it's my dream...it's entirely possible.
no subject
Rising to her feet, she tries to wipe the soot from her clothes but soon gives up, the endeavor pointless. Whether this is another dream or not, she can't just stand around, she has to do something. She just doesn't know what.