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I startle, unsure of what I was just doing. I’m on a beach with pale, soft sand that stretches for miles. While my only real experience with a beach has been in an arena, I know this is not a place of fear. This is like the beaches they advertise to visit in District Four with tall trees that have tufts of leaves at the top and an endless ocean lapping waves in front of them. This is a place I’m meant to relax, find peace.
I look to my left and right and realize I’m alone. My only surroundings are the sand and the sea, with the tide creeping up the shoreline to lick at my toes. The sun is just starting to eclipse the horizon, lighting the sky with bright hues of pink, purple, and orange. With the sun shining down the planes of my face and a warm breeze cooling my skin, I feel content. Happy. The only things that could make this moment better is having a paintbrush in my hand and Katniss by my side. A sigh escapes my lips. That would make this moment perfect.
But soon, my field of vision gets hazy, the colors of my sunset start blending together in a pool I can’t make out. It’s not until I recognize the feeling of her lithe hands on the sides of my face that I realize I’m in that unknown place between wake and sleep, lying in our bed on a lazy Sunday morning.
I smile as I slowly open my eyes, not expecting to see her face so close to mine. I blink a few times to see her more clearly, my memory of the details of her face aiding me until my vision’s been fully restored. She’s kneeling next to me, her body craning so she can position herself to cradle my head in her hands. My scene of waking has done nothing to break the close attention she is paying to my face, though her gaze doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
I know this Katniss face - one of unwavering concentration and resolve - but I’m having trouble understanding why it’s staring so close to me, directed at me. She’s adopted this look towards me a few times this week: while eating breakfast together in the kitchen, visiting Delly at her garment shop, or playing cards as we drink our evening tea. But each time my eyes find hers, she blinks away the look, focusing back on whatever activity we’re doing. She’s not daydreaming either. She looks like she’s on a mission.
My eyes search her face as she hovers over me, and my left hand slips under her night shirt, my old tee, to rub her lower back to bring her back to me. Nothing. Her hands continue to hold the sides of my face as she stares at me, the spell unbroken. She doesn’t seem like she’s upset or frustrated. I see no evidence of a nightmare she tried to fight off; however, she doesn’t look particularly happy either. Her face is completely doused in determination.
The tips of my fingers dance up and down her spine, tracing her familiar grooves and scars. Katniss doesn’t even flinch. She's possibly so focused on whatever task she’s concerning herself with that she hasn’t even realized I’m awake.
My fingers find their way to the back of her neck, and I pull her head down to me and kiss her. The back of her throat squeaks with surprise. Our lips are chapped, faces unwashed, teeth unbrushed, but I know she doesn’t mind. Personally, I struggle to imagine a better way to wake up.
When I break the kiss, Katniss’s eyes narrow at me, but a small grin threatens to grace her lips.
“Hold still, would you?” Katniss mumbles at me, her grip tightening on my face. Though she feigns annoyance, her thumbs rub my cheeks in a soothing motion that makes my eyes want to lull closed again.
“What are you doing?” I chuckle, voice thick from sleep, searching her face. I see her whispering under her breath, but my morning hearing is still poor, and I can’t make out what she’s saying. Her pointer fingers gently poke along the tops of my cheeks and bridge of my nose, tapping an unfamiliar rhythm on my skin.
“Collecting important information,” she says distantly, her hands gently moving my head from side to side as she continues to observe me with a concentration unknown.
“Is that so?”
“Mhm,” she responds, and soon I find myself observing her in the same way she’s taking me in. Her grey eyes shine in the light streaming in from our window, and stray hairs that slipped from her braid in sleep wrap around her cheeks and chin to frame her face. All I can think at this moment is that even now, after years of being together, she will truly never have any idea the effect she has on me. One that the end of the world couldn’t change. To live under her eye of scrutiny for the rest of my life is more than I could ever hope for.
“Forty-three,” she says abruptly, her voice interrupting my thoughts of her. Huh? She offers a nod as if her work is concluded and begins to crawl backward to get off the bed, but I grab her hand before she can flee.
“What’re you talking about?”
“What do you mean?” She asks innocently, as if the last five minutes hadn’t happened. I try to give her a quizzical look, but any face I could try to hold towards her right now besides pure infatuation couldn’t last long, and an unstoppable smile creeps along my lips.
“Forty-three?” I say, laughing again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t know?” she asks in return, her voice now possessing an air of superiority, and she offers me a smirk.
“No, Katniss, I do not know what the obscure number you just mentioned after staring at me means,” I reply, and when she responds with a braggy “hmph,” I tug on her arm and pull her back down to me to rest against my chest, her triumph short-lived.
“So what is it?” I ask to the top of her head, and Katniss twists herself so her chin is on my chest, her eyes on mine.
“It’s your freckles,” she starts, and I raise an eyebrow to ask her to continue. “You get more freckles in the summer. Right now you have forty-three on your face.”
Another smile creeps up on my face because how could I ever look at her with any other expression but of joy? “That was the important information?” I tease.
“Well, yeah,” she sits up to look at me. “What if you go missing, and they tell me they’ve found you and show me a man with forty-two freckles? That just won’t do. Or what if you go to paint a self-portrait and you miss a few? Your artistry is at stake here!”
At this point, I’m laughing hard. “Ah yes, because my freckles have always been my most identifiable feature. Not the hair or the eyes or the one and a half legs,” I joke, and she shakes her head at me.
Katniss crawls over me to look down at me. “Well besides all of that, I just like knowing things about you. It’s important to me. To pay attention,” she adds. The line sounds vaguely like something I’ve said to her, but before I can think harder about it, she leans down to kiss me.
“You’re starting to sound like me, Everdeen,” I whisper to her, and she smiles back at me.
“Is that such a bad thing?” I shake my head, and she leans down to kiss me again, Then, she offers another. And another.
After, we lay in silence, listening to the birds and breeze outside, with no apparent need or want to make a real start to our day. I feel the same way I did in my dream. Content. Happy. All that’s missing is the same picturesque views.
“Katniss,” I start, breaking the stillness, and she looks up at me. “How many freckles do you think a trip to the beach in District Four would add to my face?”