Time passed.
Now, humor me for a moment here.
Let me share a story with you, right here and now.
I know what you're thinking, as you skim quickly over these words. 'This is the story of 23 very unfortunate children, and the story of a single even more unfortunate young man or woman.
This is not true.
That story has been told many times, seventy-three times on this very morning, to be exact. If you're not thinking that then you're probably thinking of a different tale: such as that this morning that the same tale was about to be repeated, only this time with a twist ending, of not one but two unfortunate young people. You might be thinking that this is the tale, or something like it, of two unfortunate young people who would blaze through this world like none would ever anticipate but us—us who have read and know this story well, of the girl on fire and the boy with the bread.
This is not either of those stories. It's not even a story of a tale years in the future, or even the past. Yes, this is a similar story with different characters, but it's not about them. This isn't the story about how they fought and died, or how one survived at only the greatest cost. This story isn't about them. They are merely pieces, pieces you may care about more than this story is really about, but pieces all the same.
They are not the story being told.
This is the story of a hummingbird.
Hummingbirds live only to be two years old. Strange isn't it? Such small, quick, beautiful creatures with same amount of heartbeats to spend as a human being—and yet they spend those two-billion furious heats of their heart so quickly, flying at speed hard to catch, backwards, forwards, upside-down even. Yet, because of this, their hearts beat so quickly we couldn't even hear them if we somehow managed to place our ears to their tiny chests. Because of this, they're so easily killed by the cold and are more susceptible to heart failures and complications more than any other creature on earth.
Hummingbirds only live to be two at most, and even then I'm only going to tell you the story of a precious few minutes for this particular bird.
This bird had spent all morning zipping about fields, forwards and backwards, in between flowers, faster and faster and faster with absolutely no care in the world. It didn't know that somewhere dozens of children were preparing themselves all across the country, slipping into nice shirts and dresses, shaking away their fear—or anticipation. The hummingbird, as most things, simply lived on.
The hummingbird flitted alongside the inactive electric fence of a quieted District 12, and, on a whim, vanished through the links and dove for a set of fake flowers a busy widowed wife had set up outside her window, to perhaps lighten the gray house. The bird flitted around, confused at the dull scents, and in it's dull confusion the widow stopped beside her door on her way out to deliver morning bread for those who had bought them for this haunting day to watch the rare sight of beauty and color against the torn apart poverty of the district.
How lovely the oranges and yellows of the bird's feathers looked, she thought, against the gold and red fire of the flowers.
In her momentary pause, the widow forgot a parcel of bread on the counter.
That bread would later have to be retrieved by the panicked young lady—making her late in delivering her last parcel to the Mayor's house himself. She rushed, but ultimately missed the disgruntled and worn older man, who had to leave the house without breakfast in order to make his meeting with the peacekeepers on time. All throughout the meeting, the Mayor would shift uncomfortable, hungry from having skipped dinner the night before in reaping preparations, before he rushed through his closing speech in order to quickly grab a bite to eat from a store a few blocks from the reaping building before it all began.
Inside the store, a boy stopped in his journey to the back to restock the window case to help the mayor ready a quick cup of stew. Because of this, a woman passing by frantically searching for a certain object through the store windows did not see that this particular shop had what she was looking for, and kept going. Distracted and upset, she ran into a delivery boy on the route to the peacekeeping station. The boy stopped to help her pick up her parcels, in which she had dropped in their collision, and was consequently late in delivering a quick notice to the Reaping committee that the train carrying the capitol representatives—and Effie Trinket herself—was a half an hour behind schedule.
The committee, having no idea of the delay, set up a whole hour early.
The wind picked up. The clouds passed by. The names swirled around in a glass bowl. Jostled. Displaced. Different.
And because of this—because of a boy late in delivering his message, because of a woman unable to find her stock, because of a mayor who skipped breakfast to delay a boy, because of a woman who paused to watch a mix of colors so surreal in this world, and because of the delicate sensibilities of a hummingbird—a name was plucked from the disturbed names in the bowl by a delicate, excited hand, and—
"Primrose Everdeen."
And because of this, a truly unfortunate young girl that simmered of heat and fire volunteered for her younger sister. Because of this, a boy with the bread played an angle and saved both their lives. Because of this, a girl was buried in flowers, and because of this—there was a rebellion, an uprising, like no one had seen thus far.
Because of this, the Hunger Games were no more.
But.
Somewhere along the line, in between the swirling worlds and codes of time and space, somewhere in the vast amount of different times, of different endings, of different stories and different possibilities—there was a place where that very morning, a chill swept through the meadow, just before dawn.
The delicate heart of the hummingbird, is so very weak to the cold.
Wings fluttered, a bird landed, and a heart slowed and never restarted.
A billion heartbeats short.
A girl simmering of heat and fire never volunteered for her younger sister. A boy with the bread stayed at home, and watched his dream pass by through the windows. A girl died, but was never buried in flowers. An surge of hope never passed through this world, and an uprising never began.
The Hunger Games were, and continued to be.
And time passed—all because of the delicate sensibilities of a simple, delicate, precious, hummingbird.
I thiiiiink I might give this whole SYOT thing a shot. I'm feeling inspired. ;)
SYOT application can be found on my profile. Please submit all applications only via PM. Only well developed/thought out characters will be submitted, otherwise they'll probably end up a whole lot different than you imagined them.
Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor,
*salutes*
-Daze