❝I'd rather die kind and forgotten than be remembered for being brutal.❞
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⠀⠀⠀⠀ Had Bellamy not volunteered, he wouldn't be sent o...
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( ミ☆ ) TWO church of demeter
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⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀He really does love avoiding the Reaping. But no one can truly avoid the Reaping so much as postpone getting ready for it. Attendance is mandatory, and if you aren't in Central Court before two, then you may as well vanish off the face of the Earth and be nowhere at all. Punishment is, in the end, afflicted on even the slightest of offenders—imprisonment for the worst. And if it's the latter, and you just so happen to be of eligible age, then you best prepare to hear your name get Reaped the following year by total "chance."
⠀⠀⠀⠀No one is ever late. You could be spitting up blood and still want to get to the Reaping early, because you're probably better off dropping dead in Central Court than you are at suffering the Games.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Thus, even before twelve o'clock, Bellamy and Cortessa return behind the Wall of District Nine with spoils of their hunt. An hour ago now, as Cortessa was filling the pockets of her pea-coat with blueberries and dreaming up the thought of pie, Bellamy managed to snag a skinny little rabbit from his snares upstream. It isn't as plump as the last one, and it makes for a sad pelt, but at least they aren't empty handed, and at least they can call it theirs.
⠀⠀⠀⠀They haven't spoken about the wolf. Even as Cortessa beat a tree to death with a stick and Bellamy flung his knives at crows fleeing from the treetops, they warded off any and all thoughts about the wolf and the Reaping and eventually slipped into a dull silence. And though it was Cortessa beating the tree—practically sword-fighting it—it was Bellamy who felt the most frustrated. He only threw two knives into the sky but struck a bullseye into three crows, killing two with one knife before guiltily watching them collide and fall.
⠀⠀⠀⠀"You're almost too good," Cortessa had told him then; her first of few words.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Bellamy, whom was on his way to retrieving his knives, could only muster a shrug. "Wasn't worth it," he had said, "No one likes crow on Reaping Day."
