I fold and place my dancing dress in the box it came in and close it. Running my hand across the brown paper, I carefully slide it under my bed where my mother wouldn't find it. I go dancing with Peeta every other day and I find myself  looking forward to it more and more each time. 

I know I can't dance, not well at least. Peeta promises that I am getting better, but it is only because he leads me, pushing me in different directions and pulling me across the floor. It's odd, how much I genuinely enjoy being around people when normally, I would want nothing more than to just lay out in the woods all day. 

Gale hasn't come around. He's being ridiculous. A little hissy fit from both of us and now he doesn't want to see me. He's my best friend and I'm really finding myself missing him. Trading boasts of who is a better shot and who can produce the highest quality coals for trade. He's acting like a terrible grump, which I know he is, but still. All this over me spending time in the village. 

Standing up, I pull on my Hestian dress, sighing. The stiff black fabric is even more stifling than before.  I tie my  tunic shut and pick up the Mockingjay broach from my dresser. Sighing, I pin it into the knot of my tunic. The glitter of the jewel eye shines in the light of the window and I smile a little. Maybe, maybe it is more. But whose business is it but mine? Certainly not Gale's"

Prim runs up the stairs and I look over at her. She smiles at me and I give her a quizzical look. "Prince Charming is here." I look at her.

"I'm sorry, who?" I ask She smiles and looks at the pin on my dress. 

"The boy who you keep sneaking out for," She says. I look at her horrified and walk past her down the stairs. Peeta is chatting with my mother at the bottom and I stop, my hands clutched at my side. He turns to me and nonchalantly waves. 

"Katniss, there you are," Mother says. "This nice young man is the son of a friend of mine, the baker in the village."

"Yes Mother, I know," I say. "I'm acquainted with him." I walk past them. "Let's talk outside." Peeta says something to my mother before following me out. "What the hell are you doing here?" 

"Well, I thought I'd see where you live, seeing as I've showed you around where I live," He says and I feel my hands clench into fists.

"This is a complete invasion of my privacy," I say. "Not to mention recklessly stupid. What if you had gone to the wrong house? Some of the Hestians are very territorial." Peeta smirks and tilts his head. 

"What? You worried a certain brute that lives in the Forest of Broken Trees would get a hold of me?" He asks and I look up at him. 

"The laws and the Peacekeepers, they aren't out here," I say. "He can and will kill you, Peeta. He's pissed that I stopped being the obedient little shadow that listened and did exactly as he said, and he blames you!"  I turn away and shake my head. "You are so incredibly stupid." I shake my head and look at him."How the hell did you even find me, Peeta?" He walks around me and I cross my arms.

"It wasn't hard," he says. "You may think you leave no tracks, stepping light as a der, but the moss and fertile ground beneath you remembers you being there. It really wasn't all that hard. I could teach you sometime." He continues to walk around me and stops in front of me. "So, since I made it here with all limbs attached and not a hair singed by the attack dog you hang around with, you mind showing me around?" 

"Do you understand the danger you face, being from one of the most hated Demet families in the village?" I ask. "Knowing that just a mile beyond the thicket that I use as my land marker, there is someone who would kill you on sight.because he blames you for me not loving him/" He shrugs.

"Would you let him?" He asks. "Do you want me to stop bothering you every night to go out dancing and to stop pushing you towards that stage?" I playfully hit him and he chuckles. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Besides, you're just as scary as Gale, so I'll take my chances." I sigh and flick my finger at the coal bucket. 

"Fine, but you carry the cargo, and we aren't checking traps today," I say. "I'm not getting involved in something. You two have some kind of beef between each other that I really don't want to be involved in." I start walking down the hill, hearing the rattle of the pail as he picks it up. I walk down trail and search along the little pine grove on my land. I stop at the edge of the trees and start pulling off broken branches. Peeta walks up and touches the tree's trunk. 

"You take good care of them," He says. 

"I tear of their branches and burn them to nothing," I say matter of factly.

"You take the dead, the sick, so the trees can thrive," He says. "You're not destroying anything. You're keeping them healthy."

"And how do you figure that?" I ask and Peeta smacks the tree once, causing the dead branches from higher up to fall off and tumble to the ground. The breaks on the trunk sprout bright green new growth. "Show-off. You're just using your powers." He smirks and shakes his head.

"Even the best Demet can't revive what is already dead," Peeta says. "We can only enhance the life that is already there or regrow from the beginning." He looks around and chuckles. "You are making a living wood within a dead forest. How do you not see that?" I look around and shake my head. 

"Yeah, well, don't know about that," I say. "But thank you, I suppose." I start picking up the branches and moving them to a bare piece of ground. I kneel down, feeling Peeta watch as open my hand and slide my hand across the gathering of branches, igniting them into a small burning fire.  Peeta chuckles and walks around it. 

"You don't understand, how amazing your gift truly is, do you?"  He asks and I look up at him, holding out my hands to my boring little fire.

"This is it," I say. "This what I do. I burn branches into coals for fires like the one in your father's oven." Peeta sits down next me. 

"Yeah, but, those coals ," He chuckles, shaking his head. "Every stove and fireplace is kept warm from them. People are able to feed themselves and their families on prey that you catch warmed over those fires. Without the fire and the prey you provide, all of what we make, nothing in the village would be what it is. Because don't get me wrong, as Demet, I love vegetables, but a person needs more than cold salad every day to live on."

"Any human, clan or not, can pick up a piece of flint  and start a fire, carve an arrow to hunt," I look down. "I'm nothing special, Peeta." He sighs and looks at the fire. 

"I'm going to convince you otherwise," He says, as though not caring if I am listening or not, just stating it for himself. 

"I'm kind of set in my mindset," I reply softly and he looks at me. 

"I don't care how long it takes," Peeta says. "You are worth something, Katniss Everdeen, and I will make you see that someday." I look at him and playfully hit him. 

"Come on," I say. "Let's put your little trick to work on a few more trees. I want to fill the pail by night fall. " I get up and start dragging the rest of the branches to the fire. 

"It takes that much?" Peeta asks as we walk up to the next tree. I nod. he shrugs and touches the next tree. The branches fall around us and I look at him. 

"Watch it," I say and he chuckles. 

"You don't need to stand so close, Miss Everdeen," Peeta teases. "Or you can stand closer. I really don't mind either way." I pick up one of the branches and flip it over in my hand. I point it at him like a sword. 

"What did I say about hitting on me?" I ask and he chuckles

"That hasn't stopped me yet," He says. "Hasn't stopped me from dancing with you every time you walk up to the Tree Gallows. He steps closer to me. "I don't fear you, Katniss. Respect you, yes. But I don't fear you as you are now, nor do I fear what you would become." I feel my heart clenching in my chest as I look up at him, a tear running down my cheek. I shake my head and throw the stick to the side. 

"Don't look at me like that," I say. "You act like a lovesick little boy when you look at me like that." He shakes his and and laughs.

"I  can't help it if my eyes go a little starry looking at a beautiful girl," He jokes. 

"Even if you never have a snowball's chance in Tartarus?" I hear Gale says and his footsteps behind us as he walks up. I turn around and face him. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" I ask as I turn to face him.

"What am I doing here?" Gale asks, scoffing. "What the hell is he  doing here? I thought you said you weren't talking to him." I chuckle and cross my arms.

"Now why do you care who I allow on my land?" I ask "The Forest is free. I can allow whoever I want on my land. It isn't as though he had to trespass on yours to get here."

"So you really left me, for him?" Gale asks. "The poster child for why we are locked out the village. Because those perfect looking little Demets don't want to see their precious fields burned down if one of us steps wrong!" I glance at Peeta and see his fists clenching. 

"I'll handle this," I say, walking towards Gale. "So I left you? That's how we decided to handle things, Gale. That me, making a deal outside your little fifty-fifty arrangement means that I must have immediately jumped into bed with the baker's son. That, why, he couldn't possibly  just be a nice person who helped me out and I found a friendship with? Because Katniss Everdeen, she's my future wife. She belongs to me."

"I'm not saying that," He says.

"Then what is it, Gale?" I ask and he sighs. 

"I miss you, Catnip," He says and I sigh. 

"You miss control," I say. "I miss my friend. But thanks to you pushing me away, I found out, I don't need you as a friend because there are other people out there who will make better friends than you. I can have more than you."

"You know he's in love with you right," Gale says and I glance at Peeta. He looks like someone just dumped cold water down his back. I look up at the sky, shaking my head.

"Oh for the love of Hestia and  Demeter! "And that matters because?"  

"He obviously wants to get under your skirt," Gale says. and I sigh. "Why else would he be with you. All you have going for you is your looks."

"No, that's really not all she has going for her," Peeta says walking away from the tree. "For you to say that, maybe you should look at what your initial intentions for her were. You what, have known her for five or so years? You're telling me nothing other than the prospect of her being your wife brought you to her. That is awful shallow of you, if you ask me."

"You know, I really wasn't, Flower Boy?" Gale says walking towards him and I step between them. I look at both of them and sigh. 

"You both are acting  like children," I say before looking at Gale. "I'm disappointed in you, but, you know what, thank you for proving something to me for the final time. That you were holding me back and controlling me. So what if he is in love with me. I haven't decided anything about him yet, but I know one thing for sure." 

"What is that?" He asks crossing my arms. 

"We are through!" I say, turning to my fire. "We aren't friends, nor am I just some plain jane, Hestian beauty like you describe me." I will the fire as I stand above it and hear a faint beat begin popping in the flames.

"Katniss, what are you doing?" Peeta asks and I raise my hand, making the flames roar up and amplify the beat. I turn to Gale and start singing the song I remember from the night before.

https://youtu.be/CevxZvSJLk8

I walk between them, directing the words right at Gale, stepping towards him. I feel a snarl on my face as I stomp towards him, my fire following me. He takes a couple steps back and I throw a chunk of burning wood at him, leaving a mark. 

"What the hell!" He asks and I keep stalking towards him, letting a fiery tiger rise from my flames.

"Get out!" I scream. "I'm not yours to control anymore! I meant it. This is my land, and you are not welcome!" 

"You'll come to you senses," Gale says, shaking his head and rubbing the fresh burns on his cheek. "When you realize that all he has to offer you is a life of hiding in the basement, weaving together what little off his stupid crops you don't burn on touch. And I won't be here to cry on."

"I don't need either of you!" I say. "I'm my own person. I will not allow the person I spend my life with define me." I look at Peeta and shake my head. "Either of you." Gale shoots a look at Peeta and stomps off. Peeta looks at me and shakes his head. 

"Katniss I," He sighs and I look at him. 

"That was yours to tell, not his," I say. "I don't fault you. But at least you believe in me. He never did."

"Does that mean?" He asks and I shake my head. 

"I don't know," I say in barely a whisper. "I just, don't know." I look at my fire and pick up my coals, placing them in the bucket. "Can you do something for me please?" 

"What?" Peeta asks, looking like he's holding back tears. I point at the direction that Gale went in and sigh. 

"Make a real border," I say. "Something of branches and thorns. Make sure he never comes back this way again."

"You sure?" Peeta asks and I nod. 

"I can't say for sure how I feel about you, only knowing you for so long," I say. "But this is my safe place. And I never want him to invade it again." Peeta nods, He steps in front of me and holds out his fist. I hear creaking as he opens his fist, a mass of thick green primrose bushes woven together. He slides his hand across the length of our eyesight and I hear as the new wall sprouts up the rest of the way through and I sigh.  "Thank you." Peeta turns to me.

"You okay?" He asks and I shake my head. 

"I don't know," I whisper. "Can you just, go for a while? I'll come see you tonight for the Underground." He nods and walks up to me. He takes my hand, kissing it. He sighs and lets my hand go, walking away. Watching him go, I feel myself crumple to the ground, feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest.

I just lost my best friend over a boy I barely know.