#rosegardeninwinter

Author:@rosegardeninwinter

Prompt:Happy spring, Everlarkers! I’m celebrating yet another birthday (seriously, one every single year?) on April 22, and I’d love to read something about Katniss, Peeta, and wildflowers. If that doesn’t spark joy, perhaps getting caught in a spring shower complete with a kiss in the rain. Happy writing! <3 [submitted by @hutchhitched] 

Rating:G

Author’s Note: I went with the wildflowers! Happy Birthday!!!
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The lot between the Mellark and Everdeen properties was bought years ago for development, but for whatever reason, a house never went up, and the green field, bordered on each side by small Queen Annes and in the back by forest, became so overrun with wildflowers that no one had the heart to change it.

Four years old

Baby Prim is being loud, and her older sister cannot take it any more. She sets down her crayons, and leaves her writing practice behind, K - A - T - N - I - S - S neatly spelled out on the guide lines.

“Mommy!” she calls, hand already on the door handle, “I have to go outside or my head will ‘splode!”

Hearing no protest from the nursery, Katniss swings the screen door open and hops down the back steps into the meadow.

Spring is in full bloom, and Katniss, delicate even for a preschooler, steps into weeds and wildflowers up to her knees. At once, a cluster of buttercups catches her eye, and she scampers over to pluck a few, giving them an appreciatively dramatic sniff. Deciding she should pick Mommy a bunch of flowers like Daddy does, she tramps further into the field in search of more.

She finds some white flowers here, some blue ones there, and adds them to the bouquet in her tiny fist, but her present for Mommy is not quite right. It needs something more. She stands on her tiptoes to survey the area, and squeals in delight at the sight of the most gorgeous pink flowers she’s ever seen, growing in the garden of the house opposite. She runs over to them, her double braids bouncing against her gingham romper, and kneels in the dirt, touching the pink petals tenderly.

“Those are my Mommy’s flowers!” comes a voice, and Katniss startles as a boy carrying a juice box pokes his head around the side of the house. “Mommy!“

Katniss is frozen in fear in the flower bed as a tall woman appears, looking down at the tulip thief in surprise.

“Hello,” she says. “Where did you come from, sweetheart?”

Katniss silently points to her house. The woman smiles, and cards her hand through the curly hair of the boy beside her, who hasn’t let go of her apron. “It’s okay,” she says to him. “Do you like our flowers?”

“For my Mommy,” Katniss explains softly.

“Would you like me to show you how to pick one?”

“Yes, please.”

“Let me get my scissors,” says the boy’s mommy. “Peeta, will you stay here and ask our new friend what her name is?”

Peeta nods and holds out his juice box to Katniss, who, having earned his mother’s trust, has earned his too.

“Oh,” his mother laughs, “You’re so sweet to share, Peeta, but I’ll get her her own juice box. Do you like apple or cherry?”

“Cherry!” Katniss cries, hardly believing her luck.

The boy plops himself down next to her. “Hi,” he says around his straw. “I like cherry best too.”

“Hi,” Katniss says. “I’m Katniss. You didn’t ask. But that’s okay. I’ll tell you.”

“I’m Peeta,” says the boy.

“Can you spell it?“ Katniss says, feeling very proud of her own ability to spell her name.

“P - E - E - T - A,” the boy recites, grinning happily, then takes a long slurp of his juice.

“That was good,” Katniss praises. “Want to hear mine now? It’s got seven letters.”

He does, so she spells it, and he gives her a round of applause. His mother returns with the juice and the scissors, and Katniss watches with interest as she clips three (three!) whole tulips, and wraps them with a ribbon.

“Now,” says Peeta’s mom, “It isn’t polite to take things from people without asking. So, if you want flowers from our garden, you must ask. Can you do that?”

Katniss promises she can.

Peeta and his mother walk her back across the field to her own house. His mom carries the flowers, so Katniss holds her juice box in one hand, and her new friend’s hand in the other, and chatters nonstop about baby Prim, and about learning to write her name, and giggling with Peeta about how the cherry juice is making their tongues red all the way home.

Fourteenyears old

The light in Katniss’s window clicks on and off: SOS. Peeta grabs his jacket and slips quietly downstairs. He’s got a heavy tread, but luckily, his parents are heavy sleepers.

The air is cool with the scents of late August, and the meadow is shabbier as summer leaves the neighborhood behind. Katniss hurries across the lot to him, lit by the porch light from her parents’ house. In her hands, she carries a grocery store rose, twirling it nervously.

“Hey,” he says, as they meet in the middle of the field. “What’s up?”

In answer, Katniss thrusts out the rose, but not like a gift. Like she’s submitting something into evidence for a court case. She rolls the oversized sleeves of Peeta’s stolen wrestling sweater up her arms and says, “Gale asked me out.”

Well, that lands like a punch to the gut. Peeta gulps and tries to keep teenage jealousy at bay as he asks, “And you said yes?”

“I said I didn’t know.” She points to the flower. “He gave me that. He asked if he could kiss me. I said no to that, and said I needed to think about it. He’s really nice, but …” She shrugs. “I don’t know if I should date someone two years older than me. He’s in high school. He’s probably kissed lots of girls before me. What do you think?”

Peeta clears his throat. “I think you should do what you want,” he says.

“That’s not helpful,” she says. “I just don’t know …”

“If he was our age would you date him then?”

Katniss considers this, not for very long. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why’s that?”

She awkwardly fiddles with the end of her braid. “I don’t know … I guess … it would be weird, kissing him, and stuff. I don’t really know him … not like I know, like … you.”

“It would be kinda weird to kiss me too,” Peeta laughs, trying so hard to be casual he feels his stomach ache.

Katniss doesn’t say anything. She plucks a petal from the rose and lets it fall to the ground. “I don’t … I don’t think it would be that weird to kiss you,” she whispers.

They look at each other with wide eyes at that. Katniss gulps and tugs her sweatshirt collar up over her mouth in embarrassment. Peeta feels lightheaded, but he gets the words out, “Yeah. I don’t think so either, actually.”

Katniss blinks, gives a funny little giggle, and lurches up on her tiptoes to kiss him. It’s a very quick kiss, and very sloppy, but Peeta feels like every dashing black-and-white movie star his Granny Elise ever made him watch as he wraps his arms hesitantly around his best friend’s waist.

“Do you um … do you wanna date … me?”

Katniss bites her lip and nods, and then buries her face against his pajama shirt, and shakes with teenage happiness until Peeta finally shoos her inside with a dilapidated dandelion to replace the long forgotten rose.

Twenty-four years old

“What are you doing?” Katniss says, one hand on her impressive baby bump and the other covering her eyes as her husband steers her from their car and up onto the sidewalk.

“Just a couple more feet. Watch your step. Okay. And, now.”

Katniss opens her eyes. They’re standing in the lot between their parents’ houses: the lot where a hundred childhood games were played, where they had their first kiss, and where Peeta proposed to her with a pearl ring in a verdant patch of daises. Her heart drops as she sees the big SOLD sign staked into the dirt. It was only a matter of time before someone came along and bought all those memories.

She turns to Peeta with teary eyes and a frown. “Why are we here?”

Her husband smiles and kisses her forehead. “You don’t get it, do you?” he teases. “Baby brain. It’s ours, sweetheart. I bought it. We’re going to build our home here.”

Katniss gapes at him, shock and joy rendering her speechless. At last she manages to sputter out, “But we’re so close to our parents!”

Peeta laughs loudly. “Hey,” he says, “if you don’t want it …”

“No, no!“ Katniss says. “I want it. I want it.”

“It just seemed right,” he says. “That we should have it. It’s felt like ours since …”

“Since I tried to steal your Mom’s tulips,” Katniss laughs, nudging her husband. “Kismet.”

He kisses her, and then scoops her up in a bridal carry, proudly bearing her over the nonexistent threshold of their as yet imaginary home, the flowers beneath their feet swaying in the breeze like the prettiest entry mat in the world.

Author:@rosegardeninwinter​

Prompt:Everlark + cherry blossoms [submitted by @daydreamsandcaffeine​]

Rating:G

Author’s Note: I hope you don’t mind that I cribbed vanlife!lark for this prompt! Any mistakes of the Washington topography are mine.
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Katniss stirs from her warm-breakfast-and-miles-of-highway induced slumber to green trees and mist. She yawns and stretches her feet down into the floorboard of the front of the van. She knows she could have gone to the actual bed in the back of their van, but then who else’s snoring body would keep Peeta company? No one’s. And she couldn’t do that to him.

“Welcome back,” Peeta laughs from the driver’s side. “How was your nap?”

“Long, apparently,” Katniss laughs. “Where are we?”

“Snoqualmie Pass,” is the reply, and a consultation of Google Maps reveals that they’re driving through the mountains into the rainy forest climate of Western Washington, where they plan to spend the spring camping, hiking, and getting new inspiration both for Peeta’s stunning watercolors (which keep them afloat financially) and Katniss’s music (which will keep them afloat financially, once she releases her album. At least she hopes so).

She leans her head against the window to admire the view. It’s gorgeous out here. Lush slopes of dark evergreens and valleys rushing with mountain rivers. It reminds her of home, but wilder, and wetter. Katniss gets up and climbs into the back for her guitar and her lyric journal. Best not to keep the muse waiting when she’s got something for you.

“What are you thinking?” her boyfriend asks as she sits back down beside him.

“Thinking about home,” she says, lightly strumming her instrument.

“Homesick kind of thinking?”

“No,” Katniss says. “Just pensive kind of thinking.”

She strums a few more chords. Her father always said she had a gift with songs, that they flowed from her without much thought. That was true, in the first moments of inspiration, but if only Dad knew how much editing she did after the fact.

She glances over at Peeta and smiles softly. Two years ago she and her boyfriend had shocked both their families by deciding they wanted to pack up shop and live on the road. They’d bought a big old van that needed some love, and made it their home on wheels, furnished with as many cozy all-natural things as Cary Everdeen could throw at them and as many high end appliances as Marta Mellark could get them to accept.

In the end, with a field of dandelions affectionately painted on the side, the van has become a little paradise with an ever changing view. Except for one thing: the man beside her. Her best friend. Her first love. She leans over and kisses his dimpled cheek. His lips quirk happily as she starts to sing, but he doesn’t say anything. By the time they’re entering Seattle (to get a taste of the city before they return to the wild, Peeta says, as he pulls them into a parking lot outside Seward Park) she’s come up with a good start. She’s singing the chorus as Peeta turns the car off.

Chasing the horizon

Find out how far the stop signs go

Fast as a jackrabbit

But like a turtle shell I’m carrying my home

“What do you think?” Katniss asks her boyfriend as they gather supplies from their fridge for a picnic.

“What do I always think of your songs?” he says, spinning her around in the small space and kissing her soundly.

“You always think they’re amazing,” Katniss sighs grumpily, chasing his lips when he moves away to cut up some mango.

“No,” he says. “I always think you’re amazing for working so hard on them. I wouldn’t lie to you if I didn’t think it was good.”

Katniss smiles, satisfied.

“Wow,” she says, as they step out into the park. Neatly kept lawns of grass lead down to a bike path, beyond which is the bluest water she’s ever seen, and beyond that, a snow covered mountain rising over the skyline on the opposite bank. “This is so pretty!”

It’s no magnificent waterfall or vista, but it’s a perfect place to have lunch, and a grove of cotton-candy pink cherry trees gives it the perfect touch of romance. The air is cool and fresh, and though the pass was dreary, there’s a surprising amount of sunlight here, so they spread the picnic blanket on dry ground among the fluttering blossoms.

“I think they have a festival here,” Peeta comments as Katniss pops the lid of her sparkling water. “We might’ve just missed it.”

“That’s alright,” she says, leaning back against his chest and sipping her drink. “I like the quiet.”

Peeta tosses a grape in his mouth and then, at her impression of a baby bird, drops one in hers. The light breeze that ripples the water to their right gives them a show when it causes cherry blossom petals to flutter down on them like soft pink snowfall.

“You should sketch this,” Katniss says, gathering a handful of petals and tossing it over their heads. Peeta does a teasing trumpet fanfare of “Here Comes the Bride,” and Katniss takes his hand, kissing his fingers lazily.

“Let’s have these at our wedding. Lots of cherry blossoms.”

It’s a sign of how comfortable they are together that she doesn’t even feel his heart speed as he says. “Oh yeah? You want to get married in the spring?”

“Maybe. Depends on when you propose. I don’t want a long engagement. I’d elope if your Mom would ever forgive us for not letting her design our wedding.”

Peeta shifts slightly behind her. “How about April?”

“For the proposal? And then we get married spring of the next year? That would work.”

“How about today?”

Katniss’s heart, for all its comfort, for all that being with Peeta is like carrying her home with her, like the turtle in her new song, skips a beat. “What?”

“I was going to do this once we got to Mount Rainier but … how about today?” Peeta repeats, and laughs, as he reaches around and sets a diamond ring in her hand.

Katniss can’t speak. She can barely breathe. She just nods numbly and puts the ring on her finger, then holds her own hand to her now racing heart, and turns to face him.

“Well now we have to have cherry blossoms at our wedding,” he says. “It would be too perfect.” She tackles him among the petals, and a passing cyclist gives a congratulatory shout, as Katniss seals their impromptu engagement with a kiss.