#smol prim

Prim is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It’s a bit big on her…

~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Ch 2 

Entirely serious question (that I shall proceed to approach in a ridiculous manner): HOW IS PRIM **SMALLER ** THAN KATNISS WAS AT THE SAME AGE???

At the time of Katniss’s first reaping, she was coming off about three months of severe malnutrition/starvation - almost dying from it! - followed by maybe a couple of months of rebuilding her diet on a small scale (dandelions, tessera bread, the occasional rabbit - I’m assuming she wasn’t bringing home feasts before her first reaping). And we know she’s smol at 16, so she would’ve been a littlepin at 12! (Peeta should’ve put her in his pocket that day in the rain and brought her home to sleep in a matchbox by his bed and eat smuggled crumbs of bread!)

Now along comes Prim, who’s been drinking goat’s milk and eating goat’s cheese (and the real bakery bread that she trades for it!) for the past two years, not to mention eating strawberries and fish and greens and everything else Katniss has been bringing home for roughly five years… But at 12, not only can Prim “[not] tip the scale at seventy pounds soaking wet,” but she’s smaller than recently starved Katniss at that age??? (And Prim’s birthday is at the end of May, so it’s not like Katniss had extra months on her at her own first reaping.)

I mean…#actualpicture of Prim, or…?? 

“I sometimes wonder if Dad found me out in the woods on one of his foraging ventures,” she says softly. “Maybe in a mossy little hollow where truffles should be, and brought me home as a plaything for Katniss.” 

(Gratuituous Strawberry Time reference there, sorry! Couldn’t resist!)