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Everyone in Seven had a guardian tree, or so the legend went. 

Trees and humans had a special relationship in the dewy, forested atmosphere of Seven.

Treech’s mother used to tell him stories of how the first people of District Seven grew from seeds sprinkled by Mother Nature herself. They eventually evolved into walking and talking human beings, but they never forgot their figurative and literal roots. 

As a result, humans were entwined with the nature that created them, forever dependent on the natural world. To thank the earth for their humble roots, they began to bury seeds that eventually grew into Seven’s vast forests, cultivated by the humans that first planted them.

Over time, they grew attached to the trees they planted, and so the concept of guardian trees was born. As an acknowledgment for their service, humans were granted a tender bond with the very trees that they grew.

It was customary for a family to plant a seed when they welcomed a child into the world. The baby and seed would grow up together, their souls woven together in a stunning ascension of nature itself. And when a human died, their respective tree stopped growing in melancholic solidarity.  

Treech was explained this time and time again by both family members and schoolteachers. And every time he heard it, he wrinkled his nose in distaste. 

He’d always been frustrated by such a notion. How could a tree, something so stoic and undynamic, be considered living? More confusing still, how was he himself tied to something made out of bark and twigs? 

As a result, he avoided his tree for the most part, suspicious and uncomfortable at the idea of sharing a soul with the wooded, leafed being. 

Treech first met Lamina when his tree was just over seven feet high. 

Trees seemed to grow faster than children in those early years which made it hard for him to feel any sort of familiarity with his towering counterpart. If there was a tree tied to his soul, shouldn’t it grow at the same pace he did? It baffled him, even as a six-year-old. 

Her family had moved into the house behind his, one unoccupied ever since a widow drew her last breath in its walls during the Rebellion. On the day they arrived, Treech watched as a tired man with dusty brown hair stared up at his new home, a little girl on his hip and two adolescent boys at his side. 

Treech listened to the other neighbors whisper about how the family had lost the mother to poor health earlier that month. Her ghost was what had seemed to send the family packing, her whispers in their walls a cruel reminder that she no longer walked with the living.

His mother had encouraged him to befriend the new neighbors, excited at the prospect of her son having a friend or three. Alden and Elmore, ages twelve and ten respectively, were stocky and brusque, but five-year-old Lamina was just one year younger than him and much less intimidating.

Burdened down with the responsibility of pleasing his mother, Treech shuffled apprehensively over to his new neighbor. 

She was sitting on the crumbling steps of her new home, tracing one stubby finger along a patch of moss sprouting out between the cracks of concrete. She squinted up at him as if frustrated that his shadow was blocking out the sun.

He attempted to introduce himself by giving her a bouquet of purple flowers, ones he had carelessly picked from a nearby bush and tied up into a ratty bundle with an old piece of twine. 

His gallant gesture was frowned upon, however, as she suddenly burst into tears and began wailing about how he had killed the flowers by uprooting them. Her confusing accusation and cold reception of him were enough to send fat tears spilling from the corners of his eyes, too. 

They were both crying when Treech’s father finally ran out to separate them. After informing Lamina that picking flowers didn't kill them and reassuring his own son that their new neighbor hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, he sent them on their way. 

Their tears dried, the two children spent the remainder of the day hanging outside of their respective houses, an invisible barrier of animosity festering between the two as they stuck their tongues out at one another. 

Treech and Lamina’s rocky introduction to one another did not resolve itself as the Boschs began to settle into their new home. The two children continued to loathe one another from a distance, flinging curtains shut and slamming doors when they caught sight of each other from across the way. 

No matter how many times his mother urged him to make friends with Lamina, Treech was adamant that they would never be cordial. He would make friends one of these days, he’d promised her, but it would not be Lamina. It was funny that both of those things ended up becoming lies.

Besides, he had a toddling little brother at home who giggled and grinned every time he entered a room, what more company could he need?

They walked to school separately despite living in the same tight pocket of homes. Lamina marched in between her brothers the first year that they lived in Treech’s neighborhood. She’d pull excitedly on Alden’s hand while Treech hung back and trailed the trio fifty feet behind, turning down the brother’s offers to walk together out of spite for the older boy’s sister. 

The next year, when Alden left school for work, Lamina lagged behind Elmore on the walk to school, as if nervous to get in the way of her foul-mannered brother. Elmore always had something to scowl about, it seemed, and more often than not it was directed at his sister. 

By the time she was eight, and Treech nine, her brothers were both off in the lumberyard, leaving her companionless.

Lamina and Treech walked on opposite sides of the dirt road that led to the schoolhouse, separated by their mutual repugnance towards one another. 

Even though they avoided leaving at the same time, they always arrived at the schoolyard within seconds of each other. Treech’s disinterest in academics caused him to depart for the schoolhouse as late as possible. Lamina, on the other hand, loved school and left early only to arrive tardy after getting distracted by trees and insects on the walk over.  

She got moved up to Treech’s class that year, seemingly too bright for her own age group. He didn’t hide his groan when his teacher introduced the grinning girl to the class, causing Lamina’s smile to dampen as she not so subtly stuck her tongue out at him.

His teacher must have misinterpreted his groan as something positive, for Lamina was suddenly sitting in the chair directly next to him. They cast each other withering glares as the schoolteacher redirected the class’s attention to the chalkboard. 

Treech detested school to begin with but sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Lamina only soured his academic experience further. Where he preferred to stare out the window and daydream to pass the school day, she held onto every word of the teacher with bated breath, eager for more knowledge. Her excited breathing and constant questions made it hard for him to daze off into space. 

He grumbled every time she shot up her hand to answer a question and her elbow soon began clocking him in the head on its way up towards the ceiling. 

Treech’s attitudes towards her were soon shared by the rest of the class who grew tired of her answering every question with renowned gusto. They rolled their eyes in unison every time she chirped out an answer to a question nobody cared to answer except for her. Whereas he attempted to pass the school day undetected, Lamina seemed unable to be subtle about her presence. 

Their teacher must have had something out for Treech, for he and Lamina were paired up together for a class activity that involved them taking a tour of Seven’s Sentry Forest to learn about one another’s guardian trees. 

Magical trees and Lamina were two things Treech could do without. They were sent out into the woods with shabby pieces of paper, a book of tree species, and an order to cooperate. 

“So this is your tree?” Lamina looked up at the spruce tree he had reluctantly brought her to.

“Yes,” he huffed suspiciously, his shoulders instinctively tensing up as he waited for her to laugh or scoff. 

“It’s nice,” she finally said with an apprehensive nod, crossing her arms as she stared up at it with thoughtful eyes.

“You don’t mean that,” he scoffed, suspicious by her lukewarm compliment. 

His tree was anything but nice to the naked eye. It was scraggly, its bark rough and its pine needles sparse. It was shorter than most spruces at that age, just as he was. Even his younger brother Aase’s dogwood tree, which was no more than five feet high and located near their mother’s flowering tree, looked healthier and more fulfilled than his own.

If there was any shed of truth to the legends of Seven (which there wasn’t), why was Treech’s tree so unattractively uninspiring? What did that say about his nine-year-old self’s character? Nothing good, apparently. 

His nostrils flared as he waited for the mean comments to fly. He didn’t like the folklore, but it was still his tree whether he liked it or not. 

“I think all trees are nice,” Lamina quickly objected, her eyes darting over his face before locking in on the spruce once again. “Even yours.” She said the last part with pointed malice.  

Treech rolled his eyes, for that was an obvious enough statement. He’d watched Lamina dance around the grove of trees in their neighborhood when they weren’t in school, completely and utterly delighted just at being in the presence of nature. He swore he’d witnessed her talk to one even, whispering a secret of sorts into the knot of one of the trunks. 

It made him scoff as he himself lugged his father’s ax around the house in his free time, counting down the days until the lumberyards called for him. He didn’t know when it would be, but he wanted to be ready for it. Besides, trees were revenue, not friends like how Lamina pictured them to be.

“It’s an Engelmann spruce, right?” Lamina was already scrawling out sentences on her paper with surprisingly elegant penmanship most eight-year-olds did not possess. 

“Sitka spruce,” he corrected, biting back several insults that rested at the tip of his tongue. She glared at him, as if angry that he had corrected her. Or maybe it was out of resentment for him being right. 

He tapped his foot as she slowly sketched out his tree, eager to get away from his tree and rid himself of Lamina’s presence. At least next to him in the schoolhouse she focused on the chalkboard in front of her, not Treech. 

His face flushed with embarrassment every time her eyes skimmed his tree, feeling suddenly like he himself was under her microscopic gaze. She took her time, spending what felt like ages drawing the spruce, her tongue poking out the right side of her mouth in concentration. Finally, she let out a satisfied sigh and leaned back to admire her work.

He peered impatiently over her shoulder, “Let me see?” He made a grab for the paper. 

She twirled away from him with a tsk, holding it high over her head and out of reach of his mercenary fingertips. “No. Let's go see my tree now.” 

Without waiting for a response, she was suddenly trudging westward. Grumpy and irritated, Treech hurried after her.

To his surprise, she stopped in front of a tall, yellow poplar tree after a lengthy ten-minute walk. “This is mine,” she said proudly, flinging her arms around its growing trunk in some tender sort of hug. “It’s a quaking aspen.”

He studied it apprehensively, baffled that someone who cared so much about trees had such a common species as her guardian tree. Quaking aspens belonged to the poplar family, and poplars were one of the most prominent tree species in all of Seven.

Lamina was the most absurd person Treech had ever met, it would’ve been fitting for her to have a peculiar, unidentifiable tree to match her unusual personality. Instead, her soul was supposedly tied to one of Seven’s most common deciduous trees. 

“Well?” Her voice brought him out of his perplexed stupor. 

“Well, what?” 

“What do you think?” She asked impatiently, hands on her hips. 

He rolled his eyes but still cast them back up at the tree. Her aspen did have the impressive height that his spruce lacked, and he stewed silently with resentment at that. The late October month had turned its leaves a stunning golden color, which filtered the sunlight in a pleasant way. 

There seemed to be ribbons hanging off some of the branches, fluttering gently in the fall breeze as some form of decoration. Trust Lamina to dress up her tree like a prized doll. That realization nearly made him groan with frustration.

“Is that a blanket?” He pointed confusedly at a green quilt flung haphazardly over one of the lower branches.

She nodded firmly. “I sleep out here sometimes.”

He nearly laughed in surprise, bewildered at the notion of anyone choosing to spend the night in the damp woods. “Why?” He’d take his four walls and thin mattress he shared with his brother over the woods any day.

Lamina turned a pale pink at the question as her brow furrowed. “I don’t want anything to happen to my tree.”

“People aren’t allowed to chop down trees in Sentry Forest,” he protested, challenging her logic. It was true. Peacekeepers assigned to Seven were warned upon arrival that guardian trees were off-limits when it came to lumber production. What else could Lamina be sheltering her tree from, unwanted squirrels and birds?

“I worry about it sometimes,” she murmured, twisting the hem of her dress up in her hands. “I want to keep it safe.”

Treech stared up at her, his puzzlement only growing. Weren’t the trees the ones that were supposed to be protecting the people and not vice versa? Lamina seemed to be twisting the legend on its head.

“The trees don’t owe us anything,” she huffed in disbelief when he attempted to voice that to her. “They grow, just as we do. They’re in danger, just as we are.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” he objected, feeling silly he was even defending the foolish legend. 

“It’s supposed to be a symbiotic relationship, Treech.”

Treech’s hand twitched to scratch his neck in confusion, for what on earth did “symbiotic” mean? She must have only just learned the word and wanted to flaunt it off as a means of showcasing her brains, not that she needed to anyway. Either way, he didn’t like her tone and so he scowled in response. 

“Symbiotic means both sides benefit from the relationship,” Lamina said slowly, sensing his confusion. 

“I know what it means,” he snapped out a lie, ducking his head so she would not see his flushed face. He sat down hard on the shaded ground so that he could quickly sketch out the aspen and run back to the classroom he had spent most of his school-aged years scorning. 

He pondered her words as he sloppily drew the aspen’s thin trunk. How could a tree and a person benefit one another? What was he getting out of this so-called symbiotic relationship? Perhaps if his tree produced fruit there would be some merit to it, but his spruce gave him nothing and so in return it received his disdain.

Perhaps a better question was: why did someone as smart as Lamina believe the silly folklore? He left the woods feeling more baffled and uncomfortable than ever. 

When they made it back to the schoolhouse and showed the teacher their assignment, Lamina elbowed Treech angrily in the side when he revealed his hastily drawn stick of a tree. It made sense, for her spruce drawing was absolutely beautiful and startlingly accurate. Still, he responded by yanking on one of her ginger braids which caused her to kick him in the back of the knees.

They were kept after school for an hour, their punishment being a lecture about common decency and friendship. 

They met nearby Treech’s tree again when he was eleven, she was ten, and death loomed heavy in the air. He was practically suffocated by it as he ventured out to the Sentry Forest again, this time to cut down his dead father’s tree.

Death did nothing more than stunt a tree’s growth according to the stories, but Treech hated those fables. Whether he believed in the folklore of Seven’s trees or not, all he knew was that his father’s black walnut tree was still standing while its counterpart was buried below some rubble, undoubtedly dead. 

Markets were naturally illegal in the Districts as the Capitol wanted to control the flow of goods to district citizens. Tipped off by a new batch of Peacekeepers with a passionate dedication to upholding Panem’s governing laws, the ruling city was ruthless in its handling of Seven’s underground black market and the bombs killed sixty people that day.

Treech’s mother was in shambles at home, utterly inconsolable as she wept for her dead husband while a confused six-year-old tugged at her sleeve. She didn’t even notice her oldest son drag an ax out of the closet and slip through the backdoor. 

Holding the ax that was far too heavy for his wiry eleven-year-old body, he dragged it upwards and began to take a swing. 

“Don’t,” a mawkish voice from behind him warned, followed by a hiccup. 

The surprise of another person witnessing his actions sent Treech whirling around and staggering backward into the tree. He raised his ax in the direction of the voice only to find Lamina staring back at him, clutching a balled-up handkerchief in her hand. 

She seemed to have a knack for popping up in times he least wanted to deal with her. Right when his family would be sitting down to dinner, she’d appear at their doorstep with a gift for his mother. When he’d be walking down the end of their street to fetch a fresh pail of water for the house, she’d suddenly materialize with her own dented bucket and need for water. Every time Treech would retreat to the edges of the schoolyard in a moment of antisocial frustration, the tree he’d lean against would already be housing Lamina. 

“Go away,” he snapped, quickly recovering from the shock as he heaved the ax back up over his shoulder. Lamina was very much the last person he wanted to see at that moment.

Their resentment towards each other only expanded into early adolescence rather than fizzling out. Whereas their animosity as young children was petty and vapid, it was beginning to evolve into real skepticism toward one another. Their outlooks and worldviews could not be more different, it didn’t take a genius to point that out, and it shoved them further apart.

“Don’t,” Lamina repeated, ignoring his order as she took a tentative step forward. “Please.”

“What are you doing here?” He croaked, his numbness bubbling into anger as she gazed at him with mournful eyes. 

“I’m always out here,” she said plainly, not even trying to hide a loud sniffle. She looked worse for wear, her normally pale face scrubbed raw from all her tears. Her red braids, the ones he yanked on when she was rude to him in school, were ratty and lopsided. “Don’t cut his tree down.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He huffed, frustration forming a lump in his throat as he squinted at her. Why must she be here with him in this moment of vulnerability? He always favored solitude over companionship but never before had he felt so desperate to be completely and utterly alone, shoving anyone with a living pulse away from him.

Instead of answering his question, she stuck out her trembling bottom lip. “It’s not fair.”

Lamina’s father had also perished in the bombing, leaving behind his two sons and sniveling daughter with no caregivers. It seemed that half of their neighborhood had lost someone in the siege, leaving their lane mournful and spiteful. 

“Everyone dies eventually,” Treech muttered, glaring up at his father’s tree. It was one of life’s simplest lessons: nothing was permanent. Even trees, which seemed so immortally stoic, would eventually die. 

He knew that, he’d always known that, so why was it such a painful shock to learn that his father would not be coming home with the potatoes and new boots for Treech as he’d promised?

It was the wrong thing to say (not that he was interested in providing her much comfort) and she immediately burst into tears. “But why did it have to be now ?” She sniffed, driving her bent wrist into one eye socket in an attempt to stem the tears. “It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Treech responded simply, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the ax. He had always known that to be true but he hadn’t expected that truth to throb so much.

“You don’t even know how to use that.” She pointed at the tool like it was a foreign enemy. 

“I do too,” he objected, fighting to tighten his clutch of the handle as it drooped low in his grip. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Practicing.” Lamina repeated unsurely, a dumbstruck look on her face. 

He squirmed under her shocked gaze. “My mom’s going to ask me to start working, I think.”

“But you’re only eleven,” she responded dumbly. 

Treech glared at her. For someone with such a big brain, it was a thick-headed question to ask. “I have a family to feed, Lamina. Dad’s not here anymore to-“ his voice caught suddenly, all sound blocked by a thick lump swelling up in his throat. 

As he fought away tears, he managed to see through bleary eyes Lamina’s shocked face, her mouth forming a tiny o. For once she seemed at a loss for words, no frustratingly insightful comment spilling from her mouth. 

“It’s okay to cry,” she finally mumbled, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. 

“What?” He inhaled sharply, mentally cursing the dampness of his tear ducts.

“It’s okay to-“

He cut her off with a frustrated wave of his hand. “I heard you, but why would you say that?”

“There are tears in your eyes that you’re fighting away.” Lamina’s own eyes swam with damp emotion as she stared holes into his forehead. “Why? What happened was a sad thing, it’s all right to cry.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he hissed, cringing away from her. He had learned from an early age that crying was ineffective, all it did was make him and the world pity himself. The last time he’d let tears fall, he was six and Lamina was yelling at him for picking flowers. 

Why would he want to be more like Lamina, anyway?

“You look like you’re ready to burst,” she responded mournfully, her concerned eyebrows meeting in the middle. “It feels better to let it out, I promise.”

If Treech was ready to burst with anything, it was with annoyance towards the girl in front of him. 

Didn’t most people feel like they were going to burst anyway? He saw that stewing rage in the hoards of lumberjacks that dragged themselves to the lumberyards every morning just to be shoved around by Peacekeepers. It would be his fate soon, too.

And then there was Lamina, who let every feeling of joy, terror, devastation, and confusion be displayed to the world across her face. He wondered how she didn’t keel over with exhaustion from wearing her heart on her sleeve all the time. 

Who was she to tell him how to act?

“What do you know?” He finally muttered, letting the ax fall from his grip as he shouldered past her. He quietly answered his own question: Lamina seemed to know everything about everything. 

She was also apparently persuasive, for Haru Mori’s tree remained standing that day, perpetually stuck with thirty-nine rings in its trunk. 

“Do I have to go?” Treech groaned to his mother, the growing muscles in his arms cramping up painfully. It was silly of him to ask, for he already knew the answer to his question. 

She put down the linens she’d been folding and shot him a warning glance. “Treech, of course you do! It’s Aase’s big night.”

He wasn’t sure if his brother reciting a poem with the rest of his class warranted the title “big night.” But Aase loved school, and he loved his big brother. And so Treech would be there. 

It had been a hard day at work. He’d bumped into a palate of smaller branches, sending the perfectly chopped logs rolling off of the truck back onto the ground below. The Peacekeepers had wasted no time in rushing over to berate him for the probable mistake. 

Maybe if they hadn’t kept the water station under such tight surveillance, Treech’s knees wouldn’t have buckled underneath him as his vision swam with dark spots. Yet they’d unleashed a plethora of insults onto the thirteen-year-old, far more concerned with the efficiency of their supply chain than the wellbeing of a district kid.

Their words still stung and his body continued to ache. He wanted nothing more than to fall against his hard mattress and never get back up.

But Aase wanted him there.

He’d ignore the shit day he had, brush off the drumming pain in his arms, and avoid thinking about the Peacekeepers’ harsh words. And he’d smile in the audience from beside his mother, like a good son and an even better brother.

He’d do it, but Treech didn’t like the idea of being back at the schoolhouse and seeing his old companions, the ones who still sat behind desks. 

He didn’t need to be reminded of what his reality once was and how it differed from theirs. There were no people he really wanted to reconnect with there, probably because he didn’t make any friends to begin with in the schoolhouse. Nor did he favor seeing Lamina receive accolade after accolade for her stellar schoolwork. 

It didn’t really make sense to him, this annual showcase the schoolhouse put on for students and their families. What was the point of it all? School held little to no purpose in Seven except to pass the time for children until the lumberyards eventually called them away from their desks. There was no college or university to work towards, no job prospects other than menial physical labor or store merchant if one was lucky. 

It was something that made him wary of Lamina. What was she planning to do with all that schooling of hers? It seemed fruitless to him, pouring yourself into your studies just to reach a dead end. Maybe he’d know the answer to that if he was still sitting next to her in the schooling environment rather than roughing it outside in the lumberyards every day.

The lumberyards weren’t a place many people sought out, rather they found themselves there thanks to the inevitability of District Seven employment. Seven had trees, trees were wood, the Capitol benefited from wood. As their guardian trees stayed safeguarded in the Sentry Forest, Seven’s lumberjacks hacked away at the less worthy trees to supply the Capitol with furniture sets and kindling for their ornate fireplaces.

Treech didn’t like his workplace, but it beat the stuffy rooms of the schoolhouse any day. Even though the lumberyards were anything but quiet, he found himself content with the fact that he didn’t have to listen to Lamina blabber on about their assigned school texts. 

He’d swore he’d never return to school. But there he was an hour later, sitting glumly at the schoolhouse where the tired yet cheerful faculty celebrated academic excellence that would take the kids nowhere. 

The parents seemed to share Treech’s sentiment, crossing their arms with impatience as they craned their necks in search of their equally weary children. 

He found Aase immediately and waved, causing his little brother to beam. And then, instinctively and unwillingly, he searched the group of older kids for Lamina, ready to scowl or stick his tongue out at her when they made eye contact. Strangely enough, he could not find her in the crowd.

The schoolhouse showcase was a well-kept secret amongst the citizens of Seven, for Peacekeepers tended to frown upon anything planned without their overbearing guidance. The Capitol may have been the enemy of district folk, but civil society seemed to be the bane of Peacekeepers’ existence.

Aase was up on stage singing a song with the rest of the schoolchildren under age seven. While the kids around him were glassy-eyed and glazed over, Treech’s brother was full of life and concentration as he sang his heart out to an old District Seven folksong. Lamina would likely compliment Aase afterward for his proud performance once she materialized from whatever corner she’d been hiding in.

Treech nodded along encouragingly at his brother, ignoring the off-key voices that rose out of the collective singing. He was distracted though, looking around expectantly for Lamina. His foot started tapping nervously when he didn’t catch sight of her rusty red hair. Why would she, an avid lover of school, be missing something as big as tonight? 

Back when Treech was still in the classroom with her, Lamina treated the school showcase like it was her birthday. She probably loved it more than her birthday, too. Yet she was nowhere to be seen that night. 

Even when they read her name accompanied by some meaningless academic achievement award, she did not come up to claim the handwritten certificate. Without meaning to, Treech turned around to gaze at the door, expecting her to come charging through it. 

She should have been marching up to the teacher, pant legs stained green from sitting in the grass and a self-assured smile on her face, to claim her worthless prize. If Lamina was anything, it was proud. Modesty was not a natural instinct for her, nor should it be for someone so brilliant.

He found that the ceremony felt rather incomplete without Lamina trotting around, chest puffed up in pride. At the very least, it used to be entertaining watching her strut around foolishly.

As soon as the showcase was over and Aase had been hugged and congratulated, Treech set off to solve the mystery that was the missing Lamina. 

Swerving through the thongs of people for a familiar face, he finally snagged Fidan, a boy that had been a previous classmate of his, by the elbow. “Where’s Lamina?” He asked immediately, not even bothering to greet the boy who for years had sat in front of him in the schoolhouse.

Fidan raised an eyebrow, unimpressed with their lackluster reunion. “Oh, look, it’s Treech.”

Treech huffed impatiently, rolling his eyes as he reminded himself that cordiality tended to get a person further than bluntness. Still, he was on a mission. “Hi Fidan. Do you know where she is?” 

The other boy dropped his prickly attitude and raised an eyebrow. “Didn't you hear?” 

“Hear what?” Treech didn’t have time for the other boy’s avoidance. 

“One of her brothers was shot today.”

Well that wasn’t the answer he had been anticipating. His jaw dropped so low that he feared he had dislocated it. “What?”

“Yeah, it happened not far from the Sentry Forest.”

“Which one was it?” He gasped out, thinking of Alden or Elmore splayed out face down in the dirt. 

“The older one, Alden. He’d been planning to fight back against the Peacekeepers and so they shot him.” Fidan squinted at him. “Shouldn’t you know this? Aren’t you neighbors or friends or something?”

No, they were not friends. Neither Treech nor Lamina did the whole friends thing, not when he relished in solitude while she drove peers away with her eccentric personality. And even if they did seek out companions, they wouldn’t choose each other.

“Neighbors,” he corrected quietly as the weight of what had happened finally started to settle in his chest. “Well, is Alden all right?”

The other boy squinted at him. “He’s dead.”

Treech felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Alden, the nicest of the Bosch siblings, the one who taught him how to whittle animal figurines out of old pieces of wood, was dead. The one who mediated between his brother and sister in their typical nasty fights, the one who swung Aase up into his arms whenever he saw him, was dead.

Treech was down a neighbor and the Boschs were down yet another family member. Alden was dead and Lamina was missing. Lamina was missing because Alden was dead.

His mind was reeling even after Fidan mumbled something incoherent under his breath and slipped away. 

He stayed silent as his cheerful mother and brother swept him into yet another hug, the love he felt from their embrace combated only by the uncanny feeling of death in the air. He was too dumbfounded to even protest when his mother suggested that they take the long route home through the Sentry Forest.

Treech trailed behind his family silently, wondering how to best break the news that their neighbor was dead. 

Hadn’t he just seen Alden alive and well the day before in the lumberyards, wrapping a bandage around a younger worker’s arm and wiping her tears away? It was a gesture Treech had taken note of, for he’d seen Alden pull the same move on his own sister time and time again. 

What would this mean for Lamina and Elmore, now that their de facto head of household was gone? Would they have to move to a smaller house on the very outskirts of Seven, a place where people lived in complete and utter squalor? Their current neighborhood was already rundown and decaying, but Treech knew that others had it worse.  

A better question yet, what would Lamina do without her kinder brother taking care of her? How would she and Elmore be able to peacefully coexist without a neutral force keeping them placid?

Was this worry he was feeling for Lamina? He blinked in stupored surprise. That was new. To be fair, she didn’t have many people left in her life to fuss over her. 

They were suddenly standing before the very tree Treech had been avoiding for the past two years, belonging to another person too beloved to be gone.

He averted his gaze when his brother hugged their father’s tree. He tried and failed to tune out his mother’s voice as she greeted the walnut tree as though it really was her dead husband. 

When Aase and his mother turned to him expectantly, he briefly pondered what Lamina would do if she was the one being asked to pay homage to her dead father’s tree. It was a silly hypothetical to even entertain, for Lamina wouldn’t need to be asked to do that. 

She’d toss her arms around its trunk the way Aase did. She’d converse with it earnestly in the same manner Treech’s mother had. She’d sing to it, she’d pay tribute to it with pinecones and pebbles, she’d love it unconditionally the way children were supposed to love their parents. 

All Treech saw when he stared at his dead father’s walnut tree was the reminder that his family had been abandoned. 

And so he brushed off their requests with a huff, stomping away from the grove that housed his and his father’s trees. 

Treech let instinct lead him and his family toward home, still feeling frustratedly weighed down by the unexpected theme of death that day. Their neighborhood had been collecting a startling number of casualties over the years; he wondered fleetingly who the next dead body would be.

“That tree is pretty.” Aase’s words made him dig his heels into the packed dirt of the road. He spun around in time to see his brother pointing at none other than Lamina’s tree, its ribbons waving gently in the breeze.

Treech gawked down at his brother before finally letting his sheepish gaze find the tree. “That one?” Of course it was Lamina’s, for things in his life always seemed to revolve around Lamina for frustrating reasons unknown.

Aase nodded eagerly. I like its leaves. And ribbons. It’s pretty.”

Treech stared up at Lamina’s tree. Decorations aside, it was just a quaking aspen. It was just a tree. 

One whose trunk resembled Lamina’s posture perfectly, from her sloping back up to the slight hunch in her shoulders. Though the sun was setting, it was clear that its leaves were turning a rusty red color in the October elements, not all that different from Lamina’s own hair color. 

The leaves and branches were wilted slightly, too, as if the tree itself was feeling the untimely loss of Alden.

But trees didn’t feel the way humans did, nor did they have a spiritual connection to people. Guardian trees were still a lot of nonsense, even if the pretty aspen did bear some sort of resemblance to Lamina.

Treech ducked his head, snatching Aase’s hand and tugging him forward. “Nah, Aase, you should see the sweetgums on the edge of the forest.”

He found his mother and looped an arm around her waist, leading his family back home. But not before casting one last glance at the mournful aspen.

Treech’s tree suddenly had a growth spurt during the next year. It began to climb toward the sky at a startling rate, its needles fanning out in a healthy manner.

In congruence with that growth, things seemed to be falling into place for Treech. He was growing taller finally, his muscles no longer throbbed from the harshness of manual labor, he was making an effort to talk to people his age, and he was bringing in more money for his family thanks to his good behavior under the Peacekeepers’ supervision. Not to mention he began taking notice of the attractive teenage boys and girls in his work unit, proving that his strange heart did work properly after all.

Things were looking up. He still wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t unhappy per se. 

But as his life improved, the girl in the house behind him’s life only seemed to worsen.

All of Lamina’s vivacious energy seemed to wilt after her brother’s passing as she reverted back into a smaller form of herself. Her eye sockets became gaunt, her movements sluggish, her sentences short when they used to be rambling. It was peculiarly troubling for Treech, watching her trudge down their road when she used to prance. 

They had always been opposite, Treech and Lamina. Where he was concise and frugal with his words, Lamina let hers spill from her lips like a fountain. Treech hurried through life, eager to get to the end of it, while she took her time, enjoying each moment to the fullest extent. Treech was cynical, Lamina idealistic. 

The year that he was fourteen, and she thirteen, their luck seemed to shoot in opposite directions, too. 

Instead of people rallying behind her when Alden passed, Lamina seemed to be pushed even further to the edges of society. Alden had been a secret revolutionary and it scared the rest of Seven that his siblings could be of a similar mindset. No one except for Treech’s family paid the Bosch home a visit to express their condolences. 

The other fourteen-year-olds that Treech worked with in the lumberyards loathed Lamina, more so for her personality than her dead brother. They despised her tidy fingernails, willowy limbs, and relatively clean clothes. Every time she passed their work unit on her walk home from school, he heard his companions mutter insults under their breath as they ignored her mournful expression. Dead brother or not, Lamina was still an enemy among the working kids of Seven. 

Treech had been finding it hard to hate her as of recent, at least not with the fervor he usually had. 

He didn’t know where this blockade to his usual animosity had materialized from. At first he thought it was pity but he loathed pity and would never bestow it upon someone else. He didn’t pity her, not even for everything that she’d lost over the years. 

So he found himself defending her every time her name was brought up in a spiteful tone by the other workers his age. 

Lamina wasn’t fully free from working altogether, but she’d managed to avoid the manual labor in the lumberyards. 

Treech had heard the merciless verbal fights between her and Elmore through the open window of their house. There seemed to be plenty of disagreements between her and her remaining brother as of recent, which caused him to let up on his usual teasing and snideness towards Lamina. 

The sudden death of Alden the year prior seemed to have driven a wedge between the two remaining members of the Bosch family. With no other breadwinners left, the responsibility of supporting the household rested on Elmore’s shoulders. He desperately tried to share that burden with thirteen-year-old Lamina. 

Treech knew that it wasn’t a ludicrous ask from Elmore but it was unlucky that most of the jobs in Seven were incompatible with Lamina’s set of morals. Asking her to kill the very thing that she loved above all else so that the Capitol would have an ample lumber supply was not an easy ask.

A dark part of his mind wondered briefly how she would go about being in the Hunger Games, what with her morals. If she couldn’t kill trees, how would she ever kill people should her luck further sour? 

It was an awful thought, one that he physically had to shake out of his mind whenever it popped up. Besides, that would never happen. Paper was made of wood and wood came from trees and the trees loved Lamina. 

In the disagreements between the Bosch siblings that he, well, eavesdropped on, he heard the desperation in her voice as she begged to stay in school. He detected stubbornness when she revealed to her brother that she wouldn’t cut down the trees. There was passion in her words when she fought back against Elmore’s demands. 

Elmore didn’t seem to understand his sister, nor did he try to. The insults he tossed at his sister made Treech wince every time. Not that either Bosch brother deserved to die, but it was a shame that Alden had to be the one to go while the ever-scowling Elmore lived on. 

The siblings finally came to an agreement: Lamina would be able to stay in school as a part-time student if she gave up the rest of her free time to a job in the lumberyards. Even though people hated her for her brains, they managed to see some value in her mind. And so she became an assistant to the manager of Treech’s lumberyard unit. 

While Treech himself hacked away at tree trunks and lugged them onto carts, Lamina scurried around with a clipboard and kept track of all the numbers.

It was a good fit for her, he couldn’t help but observe. She could preserve her morals while using that brain of hers and get paid for it all. It seemed to keep her happy, he noticed. Or maybe not unhappy, sort of like him.

Despite all the hardship Lamina had faced that year, she continued to visit her tree loyally, checking in on it when no one checked in on her. 

Treech watched her care for that quaking aspen in a way that no one seemed to care for her. He saw her dote on it, wrap ribbons in its branches and place pine cones at its roots as though she were paying tribute. It was a lucky tree, unlike Treech’s. 

But because of Lamina, he began to pay more attention to the spruce supposedly rooted to his own lifeline.

In tuning into the fights between the sister and brother, Treech learned many things about the world and about himself from Lamina. For starters, his connection to his tree was undeniably stronger than he’d previously thought. By shedding his former prejudices, he was able to tune into his tree’s own experiences. 

He learned he could feel the rain before he knew it was precipitating, his scalp prickling with cold phantom droplets before he even looked out the window to see the deluge. He felt the breeze in his tree’s area of the woods even when he was far away in the lumberyard where the air was still. He had to bite back a laugh when he felt tiny feet run up his back, no doubt indicating that a squirrel was in his tree. 

Lamina opened his eyes and his senses to the world, not that he would ever admit that fact to her. Because, regardless of her useful insights, she was still the same stubborn girl that had grown up loathing. But at least now he was able to see that her words held merit, her worldview less loony than previously thought. 

She unintentionally caught him one day visiting his tree. She must have been coming home late from school when he’d run into her, right in front of that spruce tree. 

“What are you doing here?” They both squawked in unison, rubbing their shoulders from where they collided with one another.

Treech recovered first, shoving the rock he’d found on the creek bed the week prior deep into his pocket. He’d planned to leave it at the roots of his tree in the same manner he saw Lamina doing with her own tree. He didn’t know what it would do, but a tree being gifted a nice rock had to bring about some good, right?

It sounded silly even as he said it in his mind.

“This is my neck of the woods,” he pointed out, fighting a blush as the rock practically burned a hole in his pocket. “But if I remember correctly, your area is about ten minutes west of here.”

“You’d be right.” Lamina’s cheeks tinged pink too, perhaps also embarrassed at being caught in a place she didn’t typically grace with her presence. It was the most life he’d seen in her face in a long time. 

That notion nibbled at the edges of Treech’s brain, feeling strangely content that he had caused that fact. “So what are you doing out here, then?” 

She looked sheepish, as if she was attempting to formulate a lie. She seemed to decide against that option as she held up a green ribbon. “I was going to put this on your father’s tree,” she admitted meekly, fingering the ribbon gently. “Since it’s been three years since-“ she clenched her jaw, going quiet as she frowned down at the ground. 

Treech’s mouth fell open in surprise, for he knew exactly which anniversary she was referring to. It had been three years to the day that their fathers perished. And here he’d been going to visit his own tree, his father’s not even a thought in his mind despite it living mere steps away from his own spruce. 

He was selfish like that. Selfish and still jaded that his father had departed the world without a proper goodbye, without one last hug, without leaving a set of wisdom that would help Treech take on his responsibility within the family.

That spite had caused him to steer clear of his father’s phantom tree, still wordlessly livid at his dead dad. So angry that he didn’t even take the time to realize that it was the anniversary of the death.

Suddenly Treech’s mother’s teary breakdown at the breakfast table made sense. All the pats on the shoulder he received at work that day had a hidden meaning to them. Even Aase, so happy and full of life, appeared to droop that day.

It had been three years since death knocked out the Mori family breadwinner and shoved Treech further into his inevitable depression. And he hadn’t even known it.

Lamina was already backing up, her eyes shifty as she stumbled backward over roots and sticks. “I’ll be going now-“

And there she was, the girl who was perhaps the only other person who must know what he was feeling. But at the same time maybe not, for Treech and Lamina always seemed to feel opposite things. 

Still, she was here and she cared enough to be paying her respects. Maybe solitude wasn’t always the answer. 

“Wait!” Treech’s command caused her to halt her escape. They stared at each other for a moment before Treech finally let out a huff, allowing his guard to fall ever so slightly. “Do your ribbon thing.”

Her eyes were wide. “Really?”

He grumbled to himself before choosing his words carefully. “Yeah, it would be…nice of you.” 

He meant it too, no matter how reluctant he’d been to share that fact. Lamina watched over trees like they were her friends; she took care of them. Didn’t his father deserve that kind of love and care that Treech himself could not provide?

Lamina's eyes lit up, her face no longer looking so gaunt from her brother’s untimely death. “I remember his favorite color was green,” she supplied, trotting up to the tree. “Would you like to do the honors?”

He could feel how red his cheeks were by that point. “No, you’re much better at this than I am.”

His words caused her to drop the ribbon in surprise. “Alright, then.”

On tiptoes, she reached to a low-hanging branch and tied it into a loose bow. He watched her work, brows knit in concentration as she fiddled with the string. 

When she finally stepped back to admire her work, he was surprised when she turned to him for approval. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded dumbly and her mouth twitched slightly in response. “I don’t suppose you want to say something?”

Treech couldn’t see himself but somehow knew his face was an unsavory shade of maroon. “No,” he choked out, shrinking away from the offer. “But you can, if you’d like.” 

He trusted her to give a good eulogy, for Lamina had always liked his father. She liked his mother and brother, too, just not Treech himself.

The twitch in her mouth turned into a full-on grin, complete with shining eyes. She focused her attention back on the tree. “Dear Haru, we miss you dreadfully. It’s been hard without you and my dad around, but we’re doing well. We lost Alden last year which was tough, but those of us remaining are alive and well. Aase has grown into a beautiful little boy with such a big heart, you’d love the person he’s becoming. Your wife is finally starting to smile again, which is truly wonderful because we all know how gorgeous her smile is.”

Raw emotion pricked at Treech’s tear ducts as he listened to Lamina converse earnestly with his father’s tree. The way she spoke about his family and knew about their lives was frustratingly wonderful. 

“Your older son’s become less of an arse, too,” she continued, sending him a wink through tired eyes when he snapped to attention. “I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. He’s still his same old self, but he’s changing. He’s growing.” 

What was happening? Where was this kindness coming from? Sure Lamina had always been considerate, just not to him. A lump rose to his throat and he swallowed heavily.

She wasn’t done with her good words, though. “He’s doing a good job of taking care of your family in your absence, you’d be proud of him” she informed the black walnut tree’s trunk. “Linden and Aase are happy and healthy and it’s all because of him.”

Fighting off the lump and the tears became too much as Treech finally relented and released a wet sob that echoed through the forest. For once he wasn’t interested in hiding his tears from anyone, or maybe he was just too tired to fight them off the way he always did. He felt strangely safe and comfortable in the presence of his neighbor and his father’s memory.

He was crying openly and silently at that point, fat teardrops rolling down his cheeks and tickling his jawline as they fell.  

Just as Lamina had told him three years ago in that very spot in the woods, he was letting his tears out before he burst. And just as she’d promised back then, it felt good to do so. 

A hand drifted to his shoulder, so light that he almost thought it belonged to the ghost of his father. But as he looked up through damp eyes, he saw that it was Lamina, looking as earnest and gentle as ever.

The tentative brush turned into a full-blown shoulder squeeze when he didn’t shake her off. If anything, he leaned into the contact.

Lamina quietly finished her speech. “We won’t forget you, Haru. Not now, not ever. We miss you.” 

Treech sniffled in affirmation, really truly taking in the black walnut tree for the first time in years. Two low branches jutted out towards them as if they were arms reaching forward for an embrace. It took a lot for him to not lurch forward into the wooden arms. He let up on his hatred of the guardian tree legend, but he wasn’t going to be hugging them anytime soon. Who was he, Lamina?

“I’m glad you didn’t cut his tree down,” Lamina said as they stared up at the walnut tree. 

“I’m glad I listened to you,” he admitted when the tears finally stopped falling, leaving him feeling surprisingly resolute. 

Her smile was positively blinding. 

There was a new look in Lamina’s eyes when he suggested that they go to her father’s tree next, one he hadn’t seen before? Respect, maybe? Not quite, it was a little different than that. 

Treech was beginning to realize that his spruce was becoming a meeting place of sorts during his teenage years. 

Snakes slithered across its roots in the summer months, rabbits burrowed against the trunk in the winter, birds perched on its branches during all seasons, rain or snow.

Shedding his distrust for his tree worked wonders, and suddenly it was a place animals wanted to go, mushrooms wanted to grow around, birds wanted to nest in.

It was becoming a place for human interaction, too. He took his first ever date to his tree when he was fifteen and they had a picnic under it.

“This is your tree?” Patia raised an eyebrow, utterly uninterested in what stood above her. 

Neither of them had been interested in the date in the first place, but their mothers, friends who greeted each other on the streets whenever they crossed paths, had encouraged it to happen. 

Because of that, Treech was taking Patia Kadam out with no intention of trying to woo her. And judging by her eyes that always seemed to be rolling at whatever he said, she didn’t want to be wooed.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that his mother nudged him in the direction of her friend’s daughter. Two of his older cousins, one on each side of the family, had gotten married that year, leaving the romantics in his extended family ravenous for more marital unions.

Both Treech and his mother knew that marriage would not be on his radar for another five, even ten, years, if at all. But he detected hints in her words every time she pointed out a pretty girl his age or said the phrase “Well, when you’re married…”

And even though it wasn’t always girls that caught his teenage curiosity, he knew he would inevitably be pushed towards one because it meant a chance his mother would have grandchildren.

Treech was treating this unpleasant outing as a compromise of sorts. He’d been fighting against his mother’s pestering of him to make friends since he could speak. He hated disappointing her, and so the olive branch that was the date with the friend’s daughter was extended. 

He willed himself to have the open mind he knew he was incapable of having as he peered apprehensively at Patia. 

“Yes,” he responded to her question finally, suddenly feeling rather shy. His timidity didn't come from her stellar company, for he was rather adverse to her and her complaining voice in the lumberyards, but rather from the skeptical tone that she used as she gazed up at the tree overhead. 

They’d already had a rather uninspiring conversation as they walked along the riverbank. He was candidly sardonic in everything he said, deciding it would be best to be himself so that she could decide on her own to reject the idea of a second date. And in turn, she’d responded with dull, uninterested affirmations every time Treech said something. 

Puzzled, he found that he was yearning for a little conflict, a dissonance that went beyond her prickly personality and his utter indifference. He wanted disagreement, not for its tension but rather for the challenge that it posed to his own strict worldviews. Patia had plenty to complain about and disagree about, but it was menial things that he forgot in an instant. 

“You know, I’m surprised you agreed to this date.” Patia squinted up towards the sky, putting air quotes around the word date. 

“Our mothers wanted it to happen,” Treech responded feebly, for it truly had been at his mother’s urging that he ventured across town to Patia’s door to pick her up. His mother had been so excited, who was Treech to quash her joy? He would do anything she asked, even if it meant bringing the brashest girl in his work unit out on a picnic. 

“Our mothers don’t control us.” Patia rolled her eyes as if frustrated with his dutifulness. 

Maybe hers didn’t, but Treech would drop anything if his mother asked him to. It was the way his father had treated her and it was what she deserved.

She was the only reason he was on the date with Patia in the first place. He could have been doing a million better things, such as spending time with Aase while his brother read him a book he didn’t understand. Or lying alone on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Even bickering with the girl who lived across the road from him would be a step up from this disaster of a date.

He was hit with the funny realization that perhaps Lamina would be better company than this judgmental girl and all her eye rolls. Even if she would chastise him for treating his tree as a coat rack, at least Lamina would be engaged and rooted in the conversation. 

He gazed up at the branch above his head, now housing the hat passed down to him upon his father’s death and the jacket he was finally growing into. 

“I never really thought you cared much about romantic things anyway.” Patia blew her bangs out her eyes before muttering something under her breath.

“What was that last part?” Heat flared up in Treech’s cheeks at the candor in her observation. 

“Except for Lamina,” she finished loudly and pointedly.

His jaw dropped at the accusation, had Patia somehow read his thoughts? How did she know that he had been thinking about his neighbor, even going as far to wish that he was in her company? 

He instinctively glanced up at his spruce tree, wondering if it had somehow whispered Lamina’s name into Patia’s ear. Or worse still, maybe his tree was a traitor and it had told Lamina’s quaking aspen. Could trees talk to one another? He’d have to ask Lamina about tha- 

Treech’s cheeks grew hotter and he ducked his head, feeling all-around embarrassed. He attempted to fight back against the accusation with a careless laugh. “Lamina?  What makes you say that?” 

He’d rather have Patia calling him out for gawking at their handsome work unit shift lead than hear her point out his undeniable growing interest in his neighbor. 

Patia gave him a disbelieving look before shrugging her shoulders. “You’re always defending her when people say all those things about her.” 

“Well, that’s because-” he began to stutter before trailing off, unsure of how to actually answer the accusation when it was the truth. 

He knew how easy it was to judge someone by their privilege, he did it all the time, but his coworkers were inherently wrong about Lamina. They called her pretentious when, really, she just had a quick mind and clever thoughts she was eager to share. They wrote off her intense connection to the natural world as loopiness, ignoring the fact that she was perhaps the most enlightened person in all of District Seven. They saw a delicate exterior that protected a hollow core whereas Lamina was tough as nails, her tears an indicator of her passion rather than her weakness. 

“You aren’t very good at defending yourself,” Patia commented, no doubt taking his silence as an admittance of defeat.

“I’m just not in the mood to defend myself from stupid accusations,” he snapped, embarrassment turning to frustration at her frankness. He wondered how bad it would be if he up and left the date right then and there. His mother would be sad, probably, so that option was quashed.

But he didn’t want to sit here and be told things about himself. Lamina was the only person who was allowed to make observations about Treech, mostly for the fact that she did it unprompted and without fear.   

“Touchy,” Patia muttered under her breath. 

Temperamental was a better way to describe his mood swings, but then who was she to make these sweeping conclusions? Why did she care, then, if he spoke out against people who were trying to make a mockery of Lamina? It seemed as though Patia wanted conflict for the sake of conflict. 

“Well, speak of the devil,” Patia’s knowing voice caused his bowed head to tilt upwards. “Now that’s a silly coincidence if I’ve ever seen one.” Puzzled, he looked in the direction her gaze was oriented and managed to make out a familiar head of hair heading towards them. 

Lamina truly was unmistakable as she wove through the trees like it was second nature, not even relying on sight to guide her towards Treech’s tree as she kept her head bowed. Red hair was uncommon in Seven and was a sign of her sheer uniqueness. He could pinpoint her in a crowd of people already but her hair certainly didn’t hurt. 

He couldn’t help but smile, feeling hopeful at the thought of being saved, before quickly catching his bottom lip between his teeth so that Patia would not notice the gesture. 

It had become a welcomed occurrence that year, running into Lamina in the woods. Since their breakthrough on the third anniversary of their fathers’ deaths, he had found himself more eager to visit his tree and run into her in the process, if the stars aligned correctly. 

“Maybe they’re right, maybe she is a wood nymph. I bet her tree friends told her we were here.” Although Patia said it like an insult, Treech found the idea of Lamina being a creature of nature rather fitting. It was what she was to her core, really. 

Lamina finally raised her chin away from her chest and looked up, a tentative smile on her face. “I saw your hat hanging on a branch and thought-” she paused, mouth hanging open in surprise. “Hi, Patia.”

“Lamina.” Patia nodded, her eyes dancing back and forth between Treech and Lamina. There was a knowing look in her expression, one that made him squirm nervously.

“Hi, Treech.”

As Treech worked up the courage to tilt his face up towards Lamina, he backed out at the last minute, suddenly feeling incredibly embarrassed at being caught on a date by her. He settled on staring at her left ear, noticing the way her hair frizzed around it gently. “Hi.”

He could see her struggling to not ask what they were doing together in front of Treech’s tree, a place he hardly let other people see.

Instead, Lamina downplayed her surprise by covering it up with a demure smile. “Finding one person out in the Sentry Forest is luck enough, but two? It’s a miracle.”

“A miracle,” Patia echoed, looking to Treech with a raised eyebrow as if to say: get a load of this, right?

He clenched his jaw. 

Lamina’s smile wavered slightly and he could see her fighting to keep it steady. “This looks like a good spread you’ve got.” She gestured down at their crinkled picnic blanket, an old quilt from the Mori house that was moments away from being turned into something more functional.

Treech eagerly took her words as an excuse to stare at the food in front of him. By District Seven standards, it was a special meal. The bread his mother always made with their flour rations was, for once, accompanied by a slab of butter, a chunk of cheese, and a petite jar of jam that had cost his wage for an entire day of work. 

“I’m not one for bread and cheese. Makes me feel like more of a peasant than I actually am.” Patia wrinkled her nose as she cringed away from the food at her knee. 

Treech wilted at her comment, for his mother had encouraged him to splurge for this date meal even though it meant that their monthly rent would be harder to make. He’d thought he’d done a good job with the selection, too. The jam was raspberry flavored; he’d never tasted a raspberry before. It had all felt rather special despite his unenthusiastic attitude towards the date.  

“You haven’t tried Treech’s mother’s sourdough before,” Lamina objected gently, shifting from foot to foot as she stood awkwardly above them. “Best bread I’ve ever had.”

Treech finally looked up at her, still too bashful to meet her eyes but nonetheless grateful for that kindness he was probably undeserving of. 

Patia muttered something probably rude but grabbed a piece of the bread regardless and picked at it with disinterest. 

He honed in to thank Lamina, this time determined to meet her gaze, but her calculating eyes drifted away the second he met them. 

And there they suddenly were: three teenagers with varying levels of familiarity between one another, awkward and hanging around a picnic blanket spread out beneath a growing spruce tree. Treech squirmed unconformably, his lack of knowledge about girls glaringly obvious as he wondered how on earth to break the loaded silence.

He was on the verge of working up the courage to ask Lamina to stay with them when she finally seemed to get her bearings and regain control of her tongue. “I’d best be off and leave you be. I was heading to my own neck of the woods and somehow found myself here accidentally. I swear my mind wanders sometimes.”

Treech frowned, for Lamina certainly did have a curious, wandering mind, but never was she scatterbrained. Everything she did was purposeful; he wondered what the purpose of this outing had been. 

“I’m sure.” Patia’s smile was sickeningly sweet as she rested her chin in one cupped hand. 

Lamina faltered at her comment, her eyebrow twitching slightly. With a quiet goodbye, she hastily turned to go and disappeared so quickly that Treech almost wondered if she’d been there at all. 

She certainly had, for the air still smelled of the soap she washed her hair with and the grass that always stained her clothes.

“Bye!” He helplessly called towards her retreating back. 

“Funny she found her way here somehow,” Patia pointed out the second the head of auburn hair was completely out of sight. 

“Her tree is nearby,” Treech argued weakly, telling a lie they both knew wasn’t true. 

“Sure.” As if knowing that she wouldn’t be getting any more commentary from him on the subject, she redirected her attention and squinted up at his tree once more. “There seem to be a lot of pines out here.”

“Mine is a spruce,” Treech instinctively corrected her. Lamina had also misidentified his tree when she first saw it but at least she knew it was a spruce at all. “A sitka spruce.”

“Hmm.” Patia seemed uninterested in that fact. He was learning that it was hard to keep her engaged about anything for more than a couple of seconds. 

Wishing he had a clock to check the time on, Treech reached hastily for some bread and shoved it into his mouth. At least he had an excuse to not speak when a full mouth was concerned

“I think you can tell a lot by a person’s tree,” Patia commented as he fought to keep a river of red jam from dribbling down his chin.

Treech resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he wiped at his face. “Oh yeah?”

She smiled for what seemed like the first time that day, a self-assured smile that told him her word was law. “Oh, yes, I know all about who a person is by their tree alone. Pines are funny people, willows are mysterious. Alders are boring, fruit trees are pretentious. Flowering trees mean the person is self-absorbed but still nice. ”

“What about quaking aspens?” He couldn’t help but ask. 

“They’re obnoxious,” Patia wrinkled her nose at the mention. “I hate the sound they make.”

Treech resisted the urge to laugh, for that was one way to describe Lamina. She had certainly felt like a nuisance for much of his life, although there were many other descriptors he’d choose for her before “obnoxious.”

“And sitka spruces?” He asked, entertaining her silly theory further.

“Off-putting and weird.” Her lip curled with distaste.

Her words stung a shocking amount, causing him to blink rapidly in surprise. Patia had just confirmed what he had been wondering about himself for years. He never let anyone get close enough to judge him, only his family who were forced to love him no matter what. 

The second he’d let someone creep close and suddenly she was confirming the bundle of anxieties tied to his chest.

The fact that the girl sitting next to him had discovered his true self in a matter of minutes was startling, making him realize perhaps he had not performed well enough to cover it up. And the fact that she had been disgusted by it sent him reeling with shame. 

Patia was already standing up and dusting her clothes off nonchalantly. “Bye, Treech. See you at work tomorrow.”  

He watched her go, black braid bouncing against the spot in between her shoulder blades. 

“What did I do wrong?” Treech muttered to his tree. Its branches quivered slightly in the wind, as if it was shaking its head at him. 

He sat there like a foolish idiot until the sun dropped behind the tree line and suddenly his surroundings were dark. The air reeked of the possibility of rain, just his luck. 

After packing up his supplies with hasty urgency, he trudged out of the forest and towards his neighborhood. But it wasn’t his own house that he had in mind for an end destination. 

Treech found himself walking to the home of the person who always had an answer to everything. It was a convenient enough walk, for she lived in the house directly behind his. 

After a few seconds of knocking on the door, it opened to reveal Lamina with a dripping paintbrush tucked behind her ear. She slackened in recognition when she saw him, although she continued to hold a sort of tenseness in her shoulders. 

With a small huff, she leaned against the doorframe, one hip digging into the wooden paneling. “Do you want Elmore to wake up and wring your neck? He’s never happy when someone disturbs his sleep.”

The thought of Lamina’s brother’s beefy hands around his neck caused his wrist to go limp. He hastily clasped his hands behind his back. “No.”

“Didn’t think so. What are you doing here?”

He was stumped, unsure of what he wanted from the girl in front of him. “I-“

“How’d your date go?” Lamina inspected her nails innocently, picking at a spot of purple paint stuck to one fingernail.

He blushed, embarrassed that she’d managed to deduce that it had been a date (of course she had, she was Lamina) as Patia’s abrupt exit and retreating back came to mind. “I don’t think there will be a second one.”

Her head snapped up quickly, some sort of emotion that Treech couldn’t place suddenly washing over her. “Oh?”

He shook his head sheepishly. “No.” He said it without remorse, but he still stung from the harshness of her departing words.

Lamina seemed to take his embarrassment for disappointment, and her face softened slightly. “Y’know, I’ve always thought Patia was in love with her best friend.”

Treech’s head snapped up in surprise. It wasn’t a far-fetched suggestion, for Patia did always appear glued to Airin Marden’s side at every given opportunity, but it wasn’t Patia’s rejection that was hurting him. “It’s not that-”

“Then what is it?” She pressed quietly.

“Am I weird, Lamina?”

Her mouth fell open at the question, her eyes darting rapidly over his face. “What makes you ask?”

She didn’t say no. Treech wanted to crawl into a hole and decay into a pile of bones. “It’s silly,” he muttered, readjusting his hat and turning to go. “Never mind.”

Her long fingers caught his wrist in a gentle grip. “Treech. What happened?”

Alarm bells were flaring in his brain as she coaxed him back around to face her. His eyes immediately glued themselves to the ground at her feet, squirming with the urge to turn off his vulnerability. 

But then one of her fingers tapped the pulse point on his left wrist, encouraging him to open back up.

“Patia,” he finally mumbled, still fixated on the stone step below his feet. “She called me weird, off-putting.”

After the words tumbled from his mouth, Treech was met with silence. His shoulders hunched at that fact, for he’d fleetingly hoped that she would reject Patia’s claims. 

Defeated but still filled with curiosity, he finally looked up. When he did, he was met with a clenched jaw and sad, soft eyes.

“You know, sitka spruces are one of the most resilient kinds of trees,” Lamina finally said. Treech blanched, shocked she had made the connection between the insult and the conversation he’d been having with Patia earlier.

“They do best in the shade and thrive in cold environments whereas other trees don’t.” Her wide eyes found Treech’s. “They take a while to develop but once they do, they shoot up towards the sky and are one of the most thriving trees in the forest.” 

Treech’s entire body was on fire with embarrassment. He knew that her nose practically lived buried in a book, but how did she know so much about his tree?

“Your tree is a silent force, just like mine,” Lamina mumbled quietly, her brow furrowed slightly as she stared off into the distance. “Quaking aspens and other poplars tend to be undervalued despite their strong wood and uniting force, you know.” 

He wilted slightly at that comment, for it was true. Nobody ever paid mind to Seven’s poplar trees, even the ones that showed the most promise. But Lamina’s fierce strength and passion had been an undeniable, consistent feature of her personality, even back when she was five years old and yelling at him for picking flowers. 

He felt incredibly shy and vulnerable as he peered at her earnest face. Cheeks flushing when they made eye contact, he instead redirected his gaze towards the paintbrush perched behind her ear. He must have caught her right in the middle of an art project, for murky paint water was dripping off of it and staining her collar green.

Art supplies were hard to come by in Seven, but Lamina had befriended an old woman originally from the Capitol who had retired to Seven to live out her remaining years. Before the Rebellion, she had been an artist who traveled through the districts, painting all the diverse, sprawling landscapes outside of the Capitol. 

Treech always turned away with a scowl when he’d seen her around Seven, her Capitol-made long skirt dragging in the mud. He knew enough about the Capitol and its citizens from the surly, older lumberjacks at work to dislike Capitolites as a whole. But Lamina had been curious and kind enough to introduce herself to the fellow pariah. As a result of the friendship, the fourteen-year-old had been given a set of old paints that she seemed to cherish almost as much as her guardian tree. 

Treech’s mother and brother were lucky enough to be recipients of Lamina’s beautiful artwork, as were the younger children on their lane. Aase treasured the squirrel painting she’d given him for his ninth birthday and Treech’s mother tacked up her painting of their family members’ four distinct trees in their kitchen. 

That fact suddenly began to nibble at his brain. Where was his painting? Not that he deserved one, but it would be a nice thing to have.

He wondered briefly what sorts of leaps and bounds he would have to go through to be fortunate enough to receive a Lamina original piece. Maybe if he knicked her some new paints, she’d be so kind as to gift him with something. 

“Did you hear what I said?” He was brought back to reality by Lamina’s pestering question and the tightening of her grip on his wrist.

His pulse quickened under her fingers as his eyes met hers. “No,” he admitted bashfully, his thoughts going suddenly muddy under her intense gaze. Had Lamina always been this warm and compelling to gaze upon?

“I said that you’re not weird, Treech.” She shifted from foot to foot, not releasing him. 

It was a nice thing for her to say, and he softened slightly. 

He must have still appeared baffled for Lamina huffed, as if frustrated she had to explain herself. “You’re sullen and stubborn but you’re also dutiful and steadfast. You’re ridiculous but you’re also perfectly logical. You’re fun when you want to be and mysterious when you don’t. But you are not weird. You’re simply too unique for the common mind to understand.”

He gawked at her, his wrist going limp in her grasp as he was suddenly hit with the realization that it was his nemesis who knew him better than anyone. Moreso, she knew both his faults and his merits. He hadn’t thought she’d be able to see through all the things she didn’t like about him to see that he was in fact more than his shortcomings. 

Was this what it was like feeling seen? 

“You're also quite wonderful, actually.” Lamina’s mouth tugged up slightly. 

He gaped back at her, all that embarrassment and heat from before flushing through his body once more. It was like every part of his body was blushing, from his scalp to his fingertips all the way down to his heels. When had Lamina ever complimented him before? Where was the girl who scoffed at him for his skepticism and disdain? 

“When you’re not being an asshat,” she added quickly, her cheeks turning rosy as she finally dropped his arm. 

Before he could conjure up a coherent response, she closed the door on him, stopping his muddled thoughts from becoming fleshed out. 

And leaving him with a burning sensation across the circumference of his left wrist. 

The skepticism Treech once had for guardian trees was suddenly being redirected toward the burning feeling in his chest. 

Never had he felt so alive, conscious, and confused. What was happening? What was the feeling he was experiencing? 

He just knew it had something to do with Lamina.

Whereas he once groaned about her ever-present presence, he began to look out for and even long for it. Their proximity to one another, a previous nuisance, began to be useful as he waited to walk with her to the lumberyards on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 

She seemed surprised by his actions at first but soon eased into it, choosing to greet him with sweet smiles rather than uninterested frowns. 

It was fun being Lamina’s companion, he was pleased to learn. Her sharp mind produced the most baffling hypotheticals

He couldn’t believe it but the tentative beginnings of a friendship was forming between him and his former enemy. Or something that resembled friendship. 

It wasn’t quite friendship, not truly. He didn’t have many friends but he was smart enough to know that friendship didn’t gnaw at one’s stomach and migrate up to one’s heart. 

Whatever he was feeling, it was startlingly intense. While that something had previously been resentment, he was painfully aware of the fact that it was instead something new. Something new, unknown, and terrifying. 

Despite the foreignness of the feeling, he enjoyed it. The burning of his cheeks and the beating of his pulse every time Lamina looked in his direction helped remind him that he was alive.

It wasn’t until he was sitting on his lunch break at work one day, witnessing a boy give flowers to Lamina, that those newfound feelings really began to make sense.

He and the rest of his work companions oohed teasingly as Hollis, another sixteen-year-old worker, pulled out a bouquet of irises from his satchel and wandered off in search of somebody. The blonde teenager flushed at his coworkers’ teasing and shook his head warningly over his shoulder, garnering even more gleeful reactions.   

Treech and the other teenagers snickered cruelly, eager to see who their coworker was bestowing the beautiful bouquet upon.

What he wasn’t anticipating was for the boy with the flowers to walk right up to Lamina.

He nearly spat out the stale piece of bread as Hollis approached Lamina, causing her to look up from her clipboard. From fifty feet away, he watched her eyes soften as the corners of her mouth turned up in greeting.

He wasn’t aware that the two of them even knew of each other. How did they know one another?

Lamina could speak to whomever she wished, Treech knew and believed that. Not many people jumped on the opportunity to converse with her, however, and probably none of them had ever approached her with flowers in hand.

What were the flowers for?

Treech’s coworkers broke out into hurried whispers, never ones to shy away from gossip, but he tuned out their voices. He craned his neck in the direction of the duo, suddenly wishing that he possessed the keen hearing abilities of the bats that hung around Seven’s forests in the evenings. 

He really truly could not wrap his head around it, how did they know each other? Hollis was about as smart as a hunk of wood, why would Lamina and her brilliant brain want to engage with someone as ordinary as him? 

Maybe they hadn’t spoken at all before, maybe Hollis had been wooed by Lamina’s pretty face and developed a crush on her from her appearance alone. He nearly bit his tongue off at that thought, for there was plenty more to Lamina than her sweet face and shining hair. 

He watched her grin and laugh at something Hollis said, a tinkling noise that sent several heads turning in her direction. And then she squeezed the boy’s arm. 

Crumbs shot down Treech’s throat, sending him hacking and curling up into a ball. One of his coworkers was kind enough to smack him on the back with a harsh hand as he coughed up dry bread. 

Once his fit was over, he looked up to find half the lumberyard’s eyes on him, Peacekeepers and workers alike. And Lamina. 

He practically sprinted out of the lumberyard when a Peacekeeper finally rang the bell indicating that the work day was over. He wove through thongs of people as he searched desperately for his neighbor. Finally, he spotted her outside of the gates, red hair swaying in the breeze as she fiddled with the purple flowers. Waiting for him. 

Not even pausing to relish in the fact that she was hanging around for him, Treech charged in her direction before skidding to a stop in front of her.

“Hi, Treech,” she hummed, not even looking up to greet him. As he let out a ragged breath, she picked up her bag and motioned for them to begin their walk homeward. 

He hustled after her, huffing and puffing as a million convoluted thoughts swirled around inside his head. He willed himself to hold his tongue until his mind stopped racing and he could form a complete sentence.

They walked in silence for a solid ten minutes, Treech casting loaded glances at Lamina, who looked frustratingly serene. 

What was the significance of the bouquet of flowers? Flowers were typically treated as a big deal, weren’t they? They were given to people during celebrations, during mourning, to express love. When his father had been alive, he’d always stop to pick a bouquet of flowers for Treech’s mother when he stumbled across a patch of flora. 

That particular thought sent Treech’s mind spinning. Lamina hadn’t just been asked to marry Hollis, had she? That would quite literally make her a child bride! Wasn’t that illegal, surely the Peacekeepers would stop that from happening? Fifteen-year-olds were not supposed to get betrothed to towheaded blonde lumberjacks. 

He was jumping the gun, he realized, but flowers tended to be romantic. His scowl twitched.

“I thought you didn’t like flowers being picked,” he finally huffed when they were in close proximity to their neighborhood.

Her eyebrows met in a confused frown as she turned to face him. “Excuse me?”

“You said that picking flowers killed them.” Treech scowled at the bouquet nestled against her collarbone.

Her furrowed brow slackened in understanding as she let out a short laugh. “Are you talking about back when we were kids?”

“You were five and I was six,” he said impatiently, willing himself to stay calm as they took the bend in the road that led straight to their line of houses. “And you yelled at me for trying to give you a bouquet because you claimed that picking flowers killed them.”

Lamina’s mouth formed into a small ‘o,’ appearing shocked at his words. “I did previously think that,” she supplied with a nod. “But I didn’t know much back then. Flowers are really a gift from Mother Nature to humans, it’s alright to pick them.”

That sounded like a load of rubbish to Treech. “But you don’t like cutting down trees, what’s the difference between chopping a tree and cutting down a flower?”

She seemed perplexed that he seemed to know her logic. Little did she know that he had spent a year memorizing every silly thing she had ever said about Seven’s flora and fauna.

“I thought you didn’t care about that kind of stuff,” she finally said, one corner of her mouth twitching as though she was on the brink of smiling. 

“But you do.” The words came spilling from his mouth before he could stop them. 

They both halted on the dirt road, right outside of Treech’s next-door neighbor’s house, and turned to look at one another. He knew that he must be bright red and looking crazed. 

“So it’s okay to pick flowers, then?” He shoved his hands into his pockets, head bowed towards the ground as he continued walking towards his own house. 

“It is.” She fell into step beside him. “And giving flowers to someone is a very nice gesture. So, ten years later, thank you for the azaleas.”

He grinned despite her sarcasm. 

“You should get some for your mom, I know her birthday is coming up. Daisies represent familial love, I’d suggest that.” Lamina twirled a strand of hair around her finger. The fact that she knew that sent a pleasant feeling coursing through his veins. Then again, Lamina had the memory of a genius. 

Her birthday was coming up too, come to think of it. 

“What did the ones I gave you represent?” He couldn’t help but ask curiously. “You know, back when it was a crime to cut flowers.”

Why was she suddenly blushing? “Ah, I’m not sure.”

He huffed with disappointment before his eyes came to rest on the stupid, stupid irises snuggled into the crook of her arm. “Well, then what do those represent?”

She finally swung around to face him. “Why do you care, Treech?” She asked, one hand on her hip. She stared at him with calculating eyes, her expression indicating that she knew something that he didn’t. Which always seemed to be the case.

“No reason,” he scoffed, the embarrassment of being caught curious sending heat straight up his neck and towards his cheekbones.

She squinted at him. She had finally stopped growing and he had continued to inch up in height, causing their eyes to finally rest at the same level. He squirmed under her gaze, wondering briefly if that was what his tree felt like in direct sunlight. 

Finally, she spoke. “They’re from Hollis’s mom. His sister was falling behind in her readings and so I’ve been tutoring her in my free time. She sent Hollis to deliver the flowers as thanks for my help.”

Oh. “Oh-”

She gave him a smile, one full of knowing energy that left him gobsmacked.  “Have a good night, Treech.” 

He watched her go, slipping away around the back side of his house right as he was having an epiphany, as she always did. 

Suddenly the newfound feeling that had been pounding at his chest all year was making sense. It had a name, and it was a terrifying one. 

The night before the Tenth Hunger Games’ Reaping Ceremony, something nagged at Treech’s core as he attempted to fall asleep. 

It was always nerve-wracking on the eve of the Reaping, he doubted many kids his age slept during those wee hours, but this was different. He was having a strange feeling, one that was happening outside of his body, and yet he still felt it in his chest. 

It was different than the aching adoration he felt towards Lamina. No, this was coming from a tree, his tree. 

He had shed enough skepticism about guardian trees over the years to know that something was happening to the sitka spruce out in the forest. 

The restless, sour feeling was building up so much that he couldn’t help but toss and turn in his bed. He eventually ended up kicking Aase next to him, causing his brother to grumble in his sleep and scoot further to his own edge of the bed.

Finally, when it was all too much, Treech let the intrusive feeling win. He wrapped himself up in his blanket and slipped out the bedroom door, careful not to wake his sleeping brother. 

When he got to the edge of the Sentry Forest, he stopped. The area was looking particularly misty in the July night atmosphere. It was all rather eerie. 

And then the voices began.

His eardrums suddenly began to vibrate with the hollow wails and pleas of several sets of voices. Instinctively, he threw his hands over his ears and spun around in search of the cries. When he saw no people around, his blood ran cold. 

The voices were getting louder and more defined. They were all indisputably belonging to kids, people who must have been around his age.

With a start, he realized the sound was coming from the trees. The voices were mournful, frustrated at the fact that they were stuck in the trunk of a tree that no longer grew. But why were they speaking to him now?

He recognized them, too. He made out the voice of Silas, a boy that he’d always considered extremely handsome. He heard Seda, a girl who once worked alongside him in his work unit. He pinpointed Bambi, a twelve-year-old killed in the Sixth Games and the youngest of Seven’s tributes to date. 

All those swirling voices belonged to the tributes of the Hunger Games that didn’t make it back to Seven.

An uncanny feeling prickled at his brain and numbed his senses. The feeling he’d been experiencing back in bed was tenfold now, sending unusual flushes of emotion down his body. 

He was being warned and somehow he knew that another person was, too.

He ignored the instincts that were pulling him east towards his own tree and instead veered west. 

His feet carried him straight to Lamina’s tree, where he found her standing and staring up at her vibrant aspen. Her back was to him, her exposed skin and snowy nightgown practically reflecting the moonlight from above. “Lamina.”

“What are you doing here?” She mumbled, not even turning around to greet him as she wrapped her arms around her torso. Her shaking shoulders indicated that she was cold from the cool summer breeze. 

“I could ask you the same question.” It was a weak response, for when was Lamina not out in the woods? It was an odd hour, though. He tentatively unwound the blanket from around his body and draped it over her quivering shoulders. 

She finally turned around to look at him and he nearly gasped at the sight before him. She looked like a ghost and she looked absolutely stunning.

Lamina had always been lovely, but the moonlight only enhanced her mystical beauty. She was real, true beauty. A kind that most people weren’t worthy of gazing at, himself included. And still, he let his undeserving eyes indulge. 

As much as he wanted to memorize every square inch of her, something caught his eye over her shoulder. As he, quite literally, dragged his gaze away from her soft face, he honed in on her tree as his stomach dropped with fear. “Lamina, what’s wrong with your tree?” 

Her tree’s trunk was chalky and dark, all of its usual health and vitality muted. It sagged in the evening air, as if burdened by some unknown truth. 

Lamina’s lips parted before she finally managed to form an answer. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, furrowing her brow. “It’s never looked like this before.”

“Are you all right?” He reached out for her before he paused, his tentative hand twitching in midair directly above her pearly forehead. Maybe the tree was trying to tell them something

How had he ever been skeptical of guardian trees? They always pointed to what was going to happen to their twin soul. 

It was a premonition, he knew, a hint for the future. And who was he to ignore it, especially when it concerned his-his what? His Lamina? Yes, that was it.

“Do you think-” he began, dread sweeping across his body. The trees always knew best, they knew what would happen first. He had learned that from Lamina herself. 

“I don’t know,” she repeated with a quaver in her voice. She knew what he meant, though, he could tell. The Reaping was mere hours away and Laminas tree looked to be dying. 

Treech’s heart sank as he pieced together the unthinkable. “Lamina.” 

“Alden’s tree looked like this the week before he died.” Her voice was muffled as she gnawed on her lower lip. One shaky finger rose to point in the direction of her dead brother’s tree. “I thought it just meant he was sick but then-“

He had seen many familiar faces swept away by the Reaping Ceremony year after year: neighborhood children, old schoolmates, current coworkers. He had heard their voices that night too. If that wasn’t a sign, then what was? 

He knew all of the past tributes and yet he’d never felt such a gnawing devastation in his stomach at the thought of any of them dying. “Lamina-“

“Maybe I’m going to fail my test next week,” she supplied uncertainly, clutching at the blanket around her shoulders. “Or maybe I’ll be injured at work on Monday. I’m not sure.” He knew it was a foolish suggestion and so did she.

Not her. Anyone but her. Not after everything she and her dwindling family had been through. Not after Treech finally began to understand her and grow fond of her worldview. Not with the instant, striking realization as to what his muddled feelings for her insinuated. “Lamina-”

“I could be getting sick and I don’t even know it.” Her voice was growing frantic now and she let out a choked hiccup. “Calla, you know her from work don’t you? Her older sister caught that flu last year and she’s still bedridden after all these months.” 

She knew exactly what was going to happen tomorrow, and so did he. And neither of them could stop it.

Treech’s nervous eyes drifted down to her nightgown where he noticed that one of the gown’s pockets was missing a pale pink ribbon. A pale pink ribbon that matched the one currently tied to a branch high on his tree. “Lamina.”

“Treech.” She begged him with her tone, pleaded with him with her eyes. 

That ribbon had appeared around the time of his birthday in December. It had been a particularly hard year for the Mori family, what with Aase getting sick and his mother spraining her wrist at work. 

Treech hadn’t received anything for his birthday other than a verbal acknowledgment that he was freshly sixteen. But then the ribbon showed up and he couldn’t help but think that it was some sort of gift for him. 

He’d always known that it was from Lamina, for who else would be running around putting ribbons in trees? She did it for the people she cared about, the ribbon thing. Her dead parents’ trees had matching purple ribbons, Alden’s was green as was Treech’s father’s. Even Treech’s mother and Aase were given faded blue ones. 

He got to join the ribbon club.

She’d been running low on the decorations, he knew. Money was tight in the Bosch family household; he was well aware there weren’t any spare pennies for anything, including ribbons. 

Lamina had ripped a ribbon from the pocket of her nightgown so that Treech would have a birthday present. It was a kindness that nearly made him tear up. 

He stared at the face he had spent a majority of his life avoiding. It was a beautiful face, why had he ever been so averse to it? He was stubborn like that, though, and so was she. 

He had known Lamina for over ten years when it really felt like a century. They had lived many lifetimes together within their decade of companionship. He had, both consciously and unconsciously, learned every aspect of her personal philosophy, memorized every feature of her face down to the freckle on her neck that looked like a butterfly. 

But just knowing it wasn’t enough. And so he kissed her. 

He kissed her because all that frustration he had ever felt towards her was really admiration. 

He kissed her because his muddled feelings toward her finally made sense after months of running his mind around in circles. 

He kissed her with the hope that perhaps she returned his affection. That maybe, just maybe, there was an offhand chance that she loved him despite knowing all his flaws better than anyone. 

He kissed her with the familiarity that had existed between them for the past ten years. He kissed her with the respect that had been bubbling inside of him the past couple of years. He kissed her with the tenderness of affection he had carried for several mind-numbing months.

As all these epiphanies came flooding through his mind, there and gone in a flash, only one really stuck around in his brain. He was sixteen, silly, and startlingly in love for the very first time. 

One hand on her waist and the other tilting her chin up to him, he held on like she was going to slip away in an instant like she tended to do.

And she did. She pulled away suddenly, dancing out of his grip as her back hit her tree’s trunk, her eyes wide. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, shame burning in his cheeks, lowering his arms that felt frustratingly empty no longer wrapped around her. 

He had realized perhaps too late that his entire heart belonged to a puzzling, frustrating girl who had always been mere steps away from him. 

Lamina gazed back at him, eyes soft and dewy but also calculating. She grazed over his face with those curious eyes that always seemed to be analyzing her surroundings. His breath caught in his throat as he shrank back, brutally aware that he had just offered his heart up on a platter. What would she do with it? 

She leaned back in, took him by the waist, and kissed him back. 

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. Treech didn’t think once to go check his own tree as he clutched the girl he once despised.

But guardian trees always knew best. The next day, both their names were drawn from the Reaping bowl.