, has grown progressively harder since she came back from the arena. Before she was sent away, the young blonde would love to lay in the fields behind her house where she knew nobody would go. It's one of the only times that she would leave the comfort of her home. She'd lay amongst the long green grass and watch as the clouds moulded into shapes and from that, would form her own narrative as to why they'd done so. On occasion, she would stay out as late as sunset and watch as the oranges of the sun seeped through the fluffy white shapes and vanished out of sight. The colours were beautiful and it was because of that, she decided that orange was her favourite colour.

Since returning home, she has not returned to her field. Orange no longer looks like orange to her, the colour constantly morphing into that of blood red when she stares at it for too long. The same colour that was once splattered upon the surface of her skin, painting her as if she were a canvas — some sort of horror filled painting.

Instead, she spends the days sitting on the couch in her brand new home, reading sappy romance novels or children's books — tales where there is more than often a resolution, a happy ending rather than a tragic finale.

Her peace comes from living through fictional characters, pretending that she was living their lives instead of her own broken one. Rare smiles usually arise from reading her novels, otherwise to evoke them you have to be somebody she trusts and there are not many of them.

Sometimes she thinks of returning to the field, allowing the grass to tickle her skin and the scent of the flowers to invade her senses but she can never bring herself to do it. It's more than just the sunset that evokes the memories, everything crosses her mind — the grass where her last opponent lays with shallow breaths and the flowers which she'd placed around the body of her District partner when he was killed. She was unable to see anything remotely beautiful without seeing the tragedy behind it.

It became a curse, her inability to see the beauty in things like she used to. Flowers no longer adorned the windowsills and she refuses to hang the photo that her brother had taken of the two of them in the field. The memory is a happy one but all it does is taunt her, remind her of a time where she had some sort of love for life rather than just a deep hatred for the world she lives in.

She cannot bring herself to look for gorgeous things because she knows that the second she indulges in them, the moment she begins to enjoy them again, they'll be ripped from her hands. They'll fall to the ground in tatters and leave her with a world of black and white, one that she very much lives in now. A world without colour is dull but it offers her security, safety.

Right now, that's all she has.

Made by @/caradunes