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31_days2013-02-06 08:08 pm
seta-suzume.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2013-02-06 08:08 pm
[Feb. 6] [The Hunger Games] Decoupage
Title: Decoupage
Day/Theme: Feb. 6, 2013 "Where I live, everyone is sleeping."
Series: The Hunger Games trilogy
Character/Pairing: Annie & Song (OC District 4 victor)
Rating: PG
Author's comment: Annie is 16 or so here. Song is about 35 (she won the 51st Games).
Song used the largest bedroom in her house, but most of it she had given over to her official talent: decoupage. She had a table to work at, a little toolbox to hold her supplies, and boxes and folders of clippings to work from (boxes and boxes and boxes, Annie took them all in- she had just been collecting and collecting since she came home, hadn't she?). Annie waited in the bedroom, hands clasped before her, while Song went off to bring back another chair for her to sit in.
Song was married to Theo, but when they lived together, it was in Theo's house. Song lived with the family she had been born into when she lived here. She had a big family, like Finnick. A living family, like Finnick (like Tyde and Shad and Theo). What had Song done (or managed not to do) that had saved them?
"Grr," Song stumbled through the doorway and around Annie, the chair in her arms largely blocking her view of what was directly ahead of her. "Phew!" she set it down. "There you go."
"Thank you." Annie sat down stiffly on the edge of the seat.
"You've never done this before?" the other victor confirmed.
"No."
"Let's do something easy then. Of course, it's up to you how complicated it gets. It's a matter of taste. You make your thing look however you like. Whatever theme you like." Annie wondered if Song had repeated those same words to herself all alone. If they were words that someone else had said to her once. Was it also before her Games, or only after, that Song had enjoyed decoupage?
Song opened a dresser drawer and took out a small wooden box. "It can be a jewelry box," she said. "Or a tackle box, as long as you don't take it out and get it wet, but if you have lots of hooks and lures it's not like you won't leave some of them inside- it's just like jewelry, you don't wear every piece you own all at once."
Annie nodded solemnly.
"Now you need the things that will go on it and the glue to stick them on. Since you're not used to using the art blades, you should probably stick to scissors." She took a pair out of a tray of tools in another drawer, "If there's something really hard to cut, I'll help you."
Along with the scissors (a second, smaller pair joining the first), Song plucked out a craft knife, a bottle of a special sort of glue, an undersized rolling pin, some sponges, a few paint brushes, and some paint rags. She methodically placed all these tools on the table in a row. Annie imagined her doing the exact same thing with the equipment at Games training, though she had never been there at the same time as Song. It showed who had taught her. Odysseus did the same thing. Tyde did the same thing. Mags did the same time, but without that exact degree of precision (probably out of age, not lack of trying though).
"This is the part where it's up to you," Song said. "You can make it any way you want."
"I don't know where to start," Annie admitted, "You have so many pictures."
"How about flowers? If you don't know what you'd like to do, flowers or fish are always nice. There are so many types, so many colors- something for every mood or situation, probably." Song tapped her barefoot against the floor. "What's your favorite flower, Annie?"
Annie looked up into Song's slim, dark eyes. She would've noticed before, wouldn't she? It was the first time she had heard Song say her name. "…Jasmine. …Daisies."
"Okay." Song moved away to flip through her folders. She picked out a few and came back, finally taking her own chair. "Cut out whatever you like," she instructed.
Annie opened the nearest folder. There were several whole magazines left inside, along with a sheaf of sheets torn out of magazines or cut from gardening advertisements or old books. The magazines came from the Capitol. The photographs in them were glossy and as colorful as life itself. It was almost hard to look at some of the most vibrant ones- orchids and hibiscus and other exotic, tropical blooms. Annie liked the old-fashioned drawn ones better. She found a drawing of a tiny girl with wings sniffing a pink-tinged jasmine blossom as big as her face and set to carefully cutting around the girl's dragonfly-like wings.
"I got a lot of the old ones from Mags," Song remarked. "Apparently her father liked collecting books way back before the rebellion."
It was funny. Looking through the pictures and listening to the gentle sound of Song's scissors snipping away on her own page, Annie could've almost forgotten where she was. What she had been through. That anyone else was even there with her. It was a world where her family weren't gone (dead) - they were only gone (away, or sleeping). She thought she understood why Song liked this, but was unable to convey the thought. "I wish I could draw like this," she said instead.
"Yeah, me too," Song agreed.
"What are you cutting out?"
"Something I thought would go well with jasmine. Swallows," she showed Annie the page of flying birds with little forked tails she was carving out of a cloudy sky. "You don't have to use them if you don't want to though."
"Yes," Annie answered to a question she hadn't exactly been asked. Song was taking the birds away from those portents of a storm. They were being freed so that they could go someplace better. …to be able to change fate…anyone's fate… It was like a dream. "Are there any pieces of paper that are just colors?"
"I have tissue paper. It's textured. You can rip it up and lay pieces over each other. It looks like clouds, or water."
"I'm going to make the sky. A sky that's all blue."
"I can see that you're getting into this." Annie's posture had relaxed considerably from when she first came into Song's home. She was good at cutting around each little tip of the drawing she had picked.
"…I feel like I can make my dreams, even though I can't draw. My good dreams. Only good dreams."
Song nodded. She knew how important that was (but some of her decoupage, especially soon after her Games, was made of nightmares too- the blades, the blood, the boy- the wheat she dreamt he dreamed of).
"Has Finnick come to make these things too?"
"No. I think it never occurred to me to ask him." Honestly, it had been Mags's idea that she ask Annie over to make decoupage with her. Ever since her Games, Song had found she had few impulses to reach out to other people of her own free will. It took someone like Theo who was willing to take the first few difficult steps of forcing her to pay attention to them for Song to become close to anyone new. Even before her Games, she hadn't seen herself as much of a 'people person.' And in the Hunger Games, that had its advantages. Afterward, the advantages bestowed by it were more questionable. The less people she loved, the less people she could hurt, but it might also be nice to interact with people who didn't have an idea of the old Song that could be ruined by the ways she'd been changed.
"He would like it, I think."
Song didn't know whether or not Annie was aware of whose idea their interacting had been. Maybe it didn't matter either way since she didn't regret the choice.
"He always knows what things are most beautiful."
"You…you can bring him over sometime when he's around," Song offered with an inevitable bit of reticence. Theo always said Finnick was nice, but she didn't know him very well. It was always a struggle. This was part of the reason she wasn't a very good mentor. "You're probably right that he would like it though. We all like lucid dreaming."
Day/Theme: Feb. 6, 2013 "Where I live, everyone is sleeping."
Series: The Hunger Games trilogy
Character/Pairing: Annie & Song (OC District 4 victor)
Rating: PG
Author's comment: Annie is 16 or so here. Song is about 35 (she won the 51st Games).
Song used the largest bedroom in her house, but most of it she had given over to her official talent: decoupage. She had a table to work at, a little toolbox to hold her supplies, and boxes and folders of clippings to work from (boxes and boxes and boxes, Annie took them all in- she had just been collecting and collecting since she came home, hadn't she?). Annie waited in the bedroom, hands clasped before her, while Song went off to bring back another chair for her to sit in.
Song was married to Theo, but when they lived together, it was in Theo's house. Song lived with the family she had been born into when she lived here. She had a big family, like Finnick. A living family, like Finnick (like Tyde and Shad and Theo). What had Song done (or managed not to do) that had saved them?
"Grr," Song stumbled through the doorway and around Annie, the chair in her arms largely blocking her view of what was directly ahead of her. "Phew!" she set it down. "There you go."
"Thank you." Annie sat down stiffly on the edge of the seat.
"You've never done this before?" the other victor confirmed.
"No."
"Let's do something easy then. Of course, it's up to you how complicated it gets. It's a matter of taste. You make your thing look however you like. Whatever theme you like." Annie wondered if Song had repeated those same words to herself all alone. If they were words that someone else had said to her once. Was it also before her Games, or only after, that Song had enjoyed decoupage?
Song opened a dresser drawer and took out a small wooden box. "It can be a jewelry box," she said. "Or a tackle box, as long as you don't take it out and get it wet, but if you have lots of hooks and lures it's not like you won't leave some of them inside- it's just like jewelry, you don't wear every piece you own all at once."
Annie nodded solemnly.
"Now you need the things that will go on it and the glue to stick them on. Since you're not used to using the art blades, you should probably stick to scissors." She took a pair out of a tray of tools in another drawer, "If there's something really hard to cut, I'll help you."
Along with the scissors (a second, smaller pair joining the first), Song plucked out a craft knife, a bottle of a special sort of glue, an undersized rolling pin, some sponges, a few paint brushes, and some paint rags. She methodically placed all these tools on the table in a row. Annie imagined her doing the exact same thing with the equipment at Games training, though she had never been there at the same time as Song. It showed who had taught her. Odysseus did the same thing. Tyde did the same thing. Mags did the same time, but without that exact degree of precision (probably out of age, not lack of trying though).
"This is the part where it's up to you," Song said. "You can make it any way you want."
"I don't know where to start," Annie admitted, "You have so many pictures."
"How about flowers? If you don't know what you'd like to do, flowers or fish are always nice. There are so many types, so many colors- something for every mood or situation, probably." Song tapped her barefoot against the floor. "What's your favorite flower, Annie?"
Annie looked up into Song's slim, dark eyes. She would've noticed before, wouldn't she? It was the first time she had heard Song say her name. "…Jasmine. …Daisies."
"Okay." Song moved away to flip through her folders. She picked out a few and came back, finally taking her own chair. "Cut out whatever you like," she instructed.
Annie opened the nearest folder. There were several whole magazines left inside, along with a sheaf of sheets torn out of magazines or cut from gardening advertisements or old books. The magazines came from the Capitol. The photographs in them were glossy and as colorful as life itself. It was almost hard to look at some of the most vibrant ones- orchids and hibiscus and other exotic, tropical blooms. Annie liked the old-fashioned drawn ones better. She found a drawing of a tiny girl with wings sniffing a pink-tinged jasmine blossom as big as her face and set to carefully cutting around the girl's dragonfly-like wings.
"I got a lot of the old ones from Mags," Song remarked. "Apparently her father liked collecting books way back before the rebellion."
It was funny. Looking through the pictures and listening to the gentle sound of Song's scissors snipping away on her own page, Annie could've almost forgotten where she was. What she had been through. That anyone else was even there with her. It was a world where her family weren't gone (dead) - they were only gone (away, or sleeping). She thought she understood why Song liked this, but was unable to convey the thought. "I wish I could draw like this," she said instead.
"Yeah, me too," Song agreed.
"What are you cutting out?"
"Something I thought would go well with jasmine. Swallows," she showed Annie the page of flying birds with little forked tails she was carving out of a cloudy sky. "You don't have to use them if you don't want to though."
"Yes," Annie answered to a question she hadn't exactly been asked. Song was taking the birds away from those portents of a storm. They were being freed so that they could go someplace better. …to be able to change fate…anyone's fate… It was like a dream. "Are there any pieces of paper that are just colors?"
"I have tissue paper. It's textured. You can rip it up and lay pieces over each other. It looks like clouds, or water."
"I'm going to make the sky. A sky that's all blue."
"I can see that you're getting into this." Annie's posture had relaxed considerably from when she first came into Song's home. She was good at cutting around each little tip of the drawing she had picked.
"…I feel like I can make my dreams, even though I can't draw. My good dreams. Only good dreams."
Song nodded. She knew how important that was (but some of her decoupage, especially soon after her Games, was made of nightmares too- the blades, the blood, the boy- the wheat she dreamt he dreamed of).
"Has Finnick come to make these things too?"
"No. I think it never occurred to me to ask him." Honestly, it had been Mags's idea that she ask Annie over to make decoupage with her. Ever since her Games, Song had found she had few impulses to reach out to other people of her own free will. It took someone like Theo who was willing to take the first few difficult steps of forcing her to pay attention to them for Song to become close to anyone new. Even before her Games, she hadn't seen herself as much of a 'people person.' And in the Hunger Games, that had its advantages. Afterward, the advantages bestowed by it were more questionable. The less people she loved, the less people she could hurt, but it might also be nice to interact with people who didn't have an idea of the old Song that could be ruined by the ways she'd been changed.
"He would like it, I think."
Song didn't know whether or not Annie was aware of whose idea their interacting had been. Maybe it didn't matter either way since she didn't regret the choice.
"He always knows what things are most beautiful."
"You…you can bring him over sometime when he's around," Song offered with an inevitable bit of reticence. Theo always said Finnick was nice, but she didn't know him very well. It was always a struggle. This was part of the reason she wasn't a very good mentor. "You're probably right that he would like it though. We all like lucid dreaming."