It takes me a while to get the flames to start flickering. Once they start, I stand up, wipe my dirty hands on my nightdress, and march off to the kitchen in my slippers.
"Mother, is the cocoa ready?" I scan around the kitchen looking for something to eat. My mother comes out of another room, untying her apron and wiping her brow. We've had a good run today. One of the cows had lost the ability to produce milk so we had meat for dinner, along with the green beans and wild mushrooms my sister Crystalline and I collected. We were saving those for a more special occasion, but I loved every bite of dinner. We're lucky; no everybody can go to bed with their stomachs full.
My mother smiles; her glassy turquoise eyes seem to appear a bit younger, although they do bring out the wrinkles of hardship lined on her sweet face. Although she is still young, her glossy dark brown hair has some gray intruders that never comes out no matter how hard pulled and yanked.
"Are you still hungry, dear? We have leftovers. I was saving them for tomorrow, but if you're hungry, help yourself. Tonight is a special night, isn't it? The finest we've had in a rather long time." She takes the small pot from the old stove and pours a waterfall of hot, steamy cocoa into my mug with the broken handle. I take sip after sip of the thin, bitter liquid and feel its warmth inside me. I am not going to be hungry tonight. We had a good supper. I am full, and I am content. Really.
Sometimes, though, we go to bed hungry. It is the worst drag of the night and the terror comes haunting your dreams, terror that you'll starve tomorrow and the next day and to death. But so far all these years we've always been able to find something else the next day, and then it's okay. But that doesn't mean that danger still doesn't lurk in a dark corner waiting to pounce on you when you least expect it. We could always sign up for tesserae, but my mother would never allow it. Extras means extra names in the reaping, and there's no one any of us wants to have anything to do with that.
My four sisters (Rosaline, Aveline, Caroline, and Hannelle); oh, I cannot even begin to describe the longing and aching in me. Four sisters I have lost to the reaping and what came after it-Crystalline is my last and closest sister, and I am not planning to lose her. Nor is she planning to lose me. I have lost so much already in my sixteen-almost seventeen years of living. I don't even let myself think about all my loss unless it's the day of the Reaping.
Then the tears come pouring like rain in autumn.
But for now I quietly drain my cocoa. When I am finished, I slip the mug into the sink and waddle back into the living room. It's not much, but it's got a few worn couches and rugs and a bookshelf and some pictures of family from my mother's side, and a fireplace, and a small TV resting on a cardboard box. I take a seat next to Crystalline, who is knitting furiously away at the trouble in her life. My mother sits across from us, hands folded and legs crossed.
We sit in silence, in prayer. Maybe I am foolish, but I think if I may just pray enough and show enough kindness and be so good, maybe the reaping in June will spare my family.
My mother has a thought, dreamy look on her face, before she breaks the silence. "Your birthday is coming up, Coraline."
Oh, right. My birthday. My seventeenth birthday. At least only two more to go, and then I'm free. Crystalline is turning nineteen in the loveliness of March, so she will be too old to be reaped. She is safe. I turn seventeen next week in cold, bitter January. But age is only a number. No one wins the Games, so we all have to stick together.
At least me and my family.
When my mother gets no reply from either of us, she tries again. "I have a story to tell. A story of my reaping. Of the day I almost died."
We both lift our heads and stare at her intently. My mother had briefly mentioned her reapings over the years, but she never told us she had almost had her life taken.
My voice rang out, breaking the new silence. "Tell us, please. The story, if you please."
"How did you escape if you were reaped? Were you reaped?" Crystalline suddenly breaks out of her trance, her breathing returning to normal. I scowled nastily at her and immediately regretted it when her face fell into an apologetic state.
Mother nods at us grimly. "I remember it all as if it were yesterday. I was thirteen years old, having just barely escaped my first reaping a year ago. During my first reaping, the Escort had clumsily picked up too many names and was dropping them one by one back into the reaping ball. It would have been funny if the mood was not so tense. Finally she was down to picking between two names and she decided to drop the left one and read the right one. I was twelve, so I was up front, and I could see the little name printed on the little slip of paper. It said my name. Marigold Genesis. The Escort read the picked name and a moment later the little girl standing next to me climbed onto the stage with great difficulty. Henny Gossamer. I can still see her face when I close my eyes, her carroty braids blowing in the wind, the truly scared look in her gold-rimmed blue eyes, her little chest puffed out determined."
She swallows and has to take a gulp of cocoa before continuing. "As you can imagine, she didn't make it too far. The Games were especially brutal that year, and Henny Gossamer was the only twelve year old in the arena. I escaped my first year with guilt but also a great amount of relief. I thought that my troubles were over, but in fact they had just begun. I had no escape in my second reaping; the Escort picked up the little slip of paper and read out the name Marigold Genesis."
She pauses for support. I am racking my brains wondering how she escaped the arena a second time. Surely anybody couldn't be that lucky...could they?
I will write another chapter for this. This is a little bit of the past of my tribute Coraline Emberly for a SYOT. I decided Coraline was an interesting character and she was my first SYOT tribute, so I decided to write bits and pieces of her past. If you want to read her games check out Lost in the Darkness by Sparrowcries, a great author with a spectacular imagination. I appreciate ALL FEEDBACK!