(every fire is a lesson learned)

[burnwithus]

She finds herself singing lately, more often than not, and Katniss doesn't really know why. It feels as if suddenly, everything comes rushing back to her. All of the songs her father taught her; old ballads and the songs coal miners used to sing. Love songs and those that tell stories alike. She sits and sings, hands busy with the knot of a snare or the sharpened point of an arrow while she does. And if asked, Katniss could honestly not say why this was. She'd shunned music entirely after her father's death, dismissing it to the point where she was half-convinced that she'd never loved it at all.

But some things always come back, even if they're not entirely welcome.

Katniss sits there for hours, running through songs - she likes the ones that tell stories the most.

There was a youth, a cruel youth,
Who lived beside the sea,
Six little maidens he drowned there
By the lonely willow tree.

The morbid ones remind her of 'The Hanging Tree', and how oddly she was drawn to it, and not only because it was forbidden. This story, at least, has a happier ending than the others she'd sung that morning with the backdrop of the waves accompanying her. The good thing about the beach was that it was so vast, and it wasn't hard to find a secluded area here or there.

He turned around, that false young man,
And faced the the willow tree,
And seizing him boldly in both her arms,
She threw him into the sea.

Lie there, lie there, you false young man,
Lie there, lie there, cried she,
Six little maidens you've drowned here,
Now keep them company.

He sank beneath the icy waves,
He sank down into the sea,
And no living thing wept a tear for him,
Save the lonely willow tree.

When she'd first arrived, her voice had been raspy and terrible. Destroyed from inhaling too much smoke, from screaming too loudly and too often. But like the redness of the burn scars, even that's faded.

There's a metaphor to be found there, she supposes, but she never liked those anyways.

Comments

[likesboys]

There's something in it, the worn look of her expression, that has Kurt suspecting that she's never really been able to dream. That her life's caged her in, dusty and worn, chaining her to a reality that doesn't leave enough space to stand, to imagine, to run wild with possibility. Her personality might put as much of a damper on it as anything else, but at the end of the day, personalities are always shaped by situations. Kurt knows that he wouldn't be half as bold as he is now, half as proud of who he is, were it not for the acceptance of his father, the love of his friends. He wouldn't be capable of even thinking about Broadway without his father supporting him over time.

Here, though, things are supposed to be possible. Here, they're supposed to get a blank slate. So Kurt peers over at her, the luck that she's sent his way, and decides that he doesn't need it. Not half as much as she does.

"I'm hoping that I won't require luck to get where I'm going, but..." Kurt smiles thinly, just for a fraction of a second. "Maybe you should keep the luck for yourself. And learn to dream a little."