Friend, of course, being a very loose term.
    The door to the house opened, and the third and final Marrow entered, bag slung lazily over his shoulder as he tracked snow into the kitchen. Jupiter watched him carefully as he stepped around the counter to where she was making breakfast.
    He dumped a pile of letters in front of her, each sealed with wax and addressed formally. Jupiter only looked down at them dismissively before turning away.
    Mars looked personally offended by the ignorance. "You're ignoring the Academy's letters," her brother told her.
    He was both older and much larger than Jupiter was, looking down at her like a disappointed parent. If anything, he looked more like their father, hair pinned to his scalp with wide, dark eyes and that intense look their paternal figure had often worn when he was concentrating. 
    Except Mars lacked the warmth their father had held, and when Jupiter looked at him, she saw only a shell of the man she had loved so dearly.
    She did not think she looked like her father, all sharp features and a square jaw often set in a frown. It didn't help that Jupiter had her mother's eyes, a startling hazel that looked golden in the right lights and leapt from her face like a blinking cat. Maybe gold and red were her colours, maybe she was in denial. Probably. 
    "Why do you care?" Jupiter spoke up, brashly.
    Mars tilted his head. "It's disrespectful," he said, simply.
    "I don't work for them," she said with a dramatic shrug.
    Anger flashed across her brother's face, a look she knew and feared well. "You're alive because of them," he insisted, putting a hand down on the counter.
    Jupiter bit her tongue, eyes gleaming at the words as her food sizzled atop the stove, filling the house with the smell of eggs, garlic and mushrooms. "They can't hear you," she settled on, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
    Mars took a step forward, Jupiter moving with him as her lower back pressed against the counter. She hid her sharp inhale, not wanting to give her brother more satisfaction than he already got.
    For once, Cassia had good timing.
    "Jupe, be nice to your brother," she called, finally turning and looking at them.
    Mars exchanged a glance with his sister as he backed away. Her eyes followed him, before drifting to her mother's tired mirrors. "Yes, Ma," she murmured.
    Cassia frowned but said nothing else as she lifelessly turned back to the screen. Jupiter dared to meet her brother's eyes as she moved around him and plated up her food, her thin fingers trembling as she did so.
    "I made breakfast," she murmured as she brushed past Mars.
    She heard him scoff but didn't turn around as she carried her plate back to her room and locked the door behind her.
    Jupiter slowly made her way through the food, ignoring the rising light filtering into her room. District 2 was a bleak place, nestled in the Rocky Mountains which were colder now more than ever, winter pecking at her cheeks whenever she stepped outside. It was a wildly industrial city, with some homes scattered on the outskirts.
    She would have liked to live there, or maybe in District 11 with the orchards, or District 7 with their forests and the shadows filtering through the leaves. Even District 4, with the lapping of the waves and the moisture in the air, blue reflecting in her eyes as she lay far away from everything.