Chapter Text
Coal dust is the Seam's salt. You taste it everywhere, in everything, whether you like it or not. Sometimes when you taste it, it's real. There is coal in your fucking food-- fiber my dad might say. It certainly gets into the black market dealt groceries at The Hob, and if you're not eating a little of that you won't last very long.
Other times it's just in your head, just the memory of the taste lingering, haunting you, taunting you.
I feel like The Hob should probably have a deep fryer. First because a deeper fryer kills everything: parasites, bacteria, and any items put on the menu prematurely; second because dead weasel tastes better baptized in saturated fat. That's just a fact. Boiling hot grease will push the poor right out of even the nastiest meat, I'm surprised nobody's put one in yet.
On the other hand, years of coal dust deposited generously in every nook and cranny would probably make that a bad idea. But, shit, it would be fun while it lasted.
I come in from "poaching" some anemic-looking pigeons from the justice building where they've been hanging out, pooping on the shoulders of a statue of President Snow. I'm going to pass them off as quail, because for some reason people will eat squirrel but they get all uppity about eating pigeon.
Maybe it's because they prefer at least somebody gets the freedom to shit on the government-- Can't say I blame them.
Across the room I see Gale is already here. Darius is with him, his Peacekeeper uniform white as angel's wing in the front, with big gray handprints on the back that I suspect Gale is not inclined to inform him about.
"Fuck," Darius says, more as a statement than a curse. "They cook up some crazy shit to turn your eyelashes neon green and make flowers that smell like belgium chocolates, but you think they don't genetically modify grow crops?"
"I say they don't," Gale says. "They don't care about us, why waste their time making our food better?"
"Better? Better?!? Man, listen to yourself. Think about this for a minute. Let's say you have a post-apocalyptic hegemony--"
"A what?"
"A hegemony … you know, a collection of city-states where one state rules via indirect imperial dominance."
"I thought that was unipolarity?"
Darius reaches down and pulls his white Peacemaker uniform away from his body so that the symbols on the buttons and detailing around the crest lie flat. "Does this look like a situation constrained by anarchy to you?"
To this Gale shrugs and taps his cigarette against a 70th Annual Hunger Games commemorative mug, the ash dropping quickly in one huge chunk, leaving the end glowing orange and live.
"Anyway," Darius continues. "What I'm trying to say is that if you've got to rule the people, you got to control the food, but first you got to have food and lots of it. So of course they modify the shit out of that stuff. Bitch, if you want more proof look in the fucking mirror. You is fucking six foot a thousand and you eat less than two thousand calories a day. There is no other country in a world where people starve and grow so tall they have to duck in through doorways."
While Gale considers this, Darius finally notices me and my big old bag of dead pigeons.
"That's why all I eat is fresh, Grade A, organic. Hey sugar, damn look at you. Nobody makes their jeans look so good."
I assume he's referring to my pants on this particular occasion, though with the way he licks his lips it is hard to tell.
No matter, his attention is quickly draw to the cloth I have wrap up my kills in. I've used the slack to fashion the bundle into a little bag but loose pink blood stains seeping through the bottom make it obvious what it is.
"You looking to trade that?" he asks.
"Maybe," I say. I should slip a sly smile and play along, but I'm not that kind of girl. It's too exhausting to be that kind of girl. Instead I sit down next to Gale and hope his big presence gives any other passing suitors a pause.
"What you got?" he asks.
I keep my voice level and my expression bored. I accept a mug of whatever he pours me from the coffee pot. "Quail."
A sip confirms my suspicion that this is coffee like the rats with wings in my cloth bag are quail. It's brown, it's hot, it has a sludge consistency. It tastes vaguely of coal. I know better than to ask for milk or sugar.
Darius brightens at the suggestion. "Shit, really?"
I can feel Gale watching me nod. He knows as well as I do that our woods don't have any quail, but he also hates the Capitol and Darius is an extension of that. I don't think he'll step in.
"What you want for them?" Darius asks.
I shrug, tap the rim of my coffee cup and remark off hand "It's reaping day."
"So it is."
"You got any…?"
There's no point in finishing the sentence. Gale coughs loudly.
"You'd trade for that?" Darius doesn't believe it. Good thing it's not true then.
"Nah, I got a family to feed. Little sister, mother, you know. But it's reaping day and you might not see me anymore, so I figured you'd share. One for the road?"
Darius looks uncomfortable with this suggestion so I have to force a smile. It might look seductive, but it's fucking hard to look seductive while smelling of moldy wet leaves and bits of mud in your hair. I deserve the pouch of dry grass that comes out of his pocket.
But more to the point, the more stoned he is, the less likely he is to notice he bought five dead pigeons for six times their value. It seems like a fair deal to me. We are friends after all.
Darius shrugs his shoulders. "Gale?"
"Uh, no thanks."
"Suit yourself."
"That organic too?"
"Don't get me started. You know in the Capitol they have weed that tastes like bubble gum?"
"No fucking way."
"That's what I heard. If either of you get reaped you have to send back some."
I roll my eyes. "Sure thing, on the top of my list."
"This is District 12 honey, if you get reaped your to do list might as well be a bucket list."
He has a point there.
After sorting a pinch of the lamb's head into a thin pile and rolling his joint, Darius licks the edge of his paper with quick stabby darts of his tongue. He's staring right at me as he does this, which gives it kind of a weird sexual overtone like he wishes that wasn't a joint he was tonguing. Shit. I feel Gale tense in his seat. I can feel his fists squeezing tightly in my defense and let me tell you I am not in the mood.
Luckily, the first hit on the lit joint and Darius is no longer so interested in my pants or what's inside them. The situation defuses.
Without a word he hands the joint over. Darius is an okay guy. I decided this a long time ago, but the hit just confirms it.
"Shit," he says. "How many times you in this year?"
"Don't know." I shrug. "A lot. They've got nothing but a huge fishbowl full of papers with my name on them."
"Mine too," Gale notes. "All for some extra bread made from genetically modified grain."
"Just be thankful you're not blue and your dick hasn't fallen off," Darius says. "Being gigantic is not the worst side effect I can think of."
Then he leans forward and whispers over the smoke. "I possibly got something … you know, a little bit stronger than this. For friends, you know. For a discount on your quail. You want some?" He raises an eyebrow, blows a big cloud of white smoke into my face just to see if I cough. I don't and the narrowing of my eyes makes a simple 'No thanks' all that's needed.
But I think if the reaping doesn't go well, I might have to reconsider that.