The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games Prologue-The Seam
" Start from the beginning, and go until the end, lest any remembrance be lost."
I wish I had the chance to forget.
North America, that's what it used to be called, before something changed.
Ashes of a civilization, what they found, what they built upon. It came from dust, an empire crafted on top of rubble and scorched land. In order to make, or break a nation, some innocent need to burn.
Panem is the name they gave it. The meaning comes from before, and before then, now the meaning is simply what we live. A city of gold, that shines like a diamond, the Capitol, that stands in the mountains, and the branches, thirteen Districts born from the city, spread thin throughout the nation.
Each carries its piece of the country, an asset produced and distributed to the others and to the Capitol, the life blood, the keystone that holds the foundation together, keeping them from within and without.
But the vision of Panem befell the Districts as puppets on strings, bound, walking in a circle, the contour of an inert center, and sought to break the ties and serve one another freely over the Capitol. The attempt was abortive, however, crushed by the Capitol's forces, tangled in their own knots, and 13, asphyxiated and severed completely, and fell back in line of the Nexus.
The Capitol sought stability in their hold, their trust, assurance that the nation would never crumble into rebellion again. An agreement was penned, the Treaty of Treasons. In penance for their betrayal, the fire they started, each District, once a year, would offer up two of their own, one male, and one female, between the ages of 12 and 18, who would be taken to the Capitol, and thrown into an arena. There they would compete in a competition of skill, survival, in a fight to the death, and a lone victor, a sole survivor of the twenty-four, bathed in riches, would bring great honor to their District, the others serving as recompense for the treason, the bringing of the Dark Days. This competition, this offering, this penance, was henceforth, and forever known as The Hunger Games.
Decades and decades past, scores of years of stability, of allegiance, of deprivation. The bread, the provisions dissipate as the Capitol grows farther. It's the game they play, the greater the breath from them, the greater the hunger, to show, without their reach, we fade through neglect. We are 12, the furthest Outlier, the flame and warmth of the nation, the Seam of Panem.
12 lies in the mountains, far from those of the Capitol, in a region that used to be named "Appalachia." Rich in minerals, the District's populace is miners, extracting coal to be burned by the others, to provide them a warming flare. But, in contrast of the weight it carries, it is cold, freezes from lack of aid and supplies, even of the coal from our own mines.
We were born into 12, my mother raised in the Western section, the richer part of the shack nation, a medic to the sick and dying, but who fell for my father, a coal miner from Eastern 12, the most cold and hungry of Panem, filled with mine workers and their families, struggling to make end's meet, the seam of the nation's boundaries, and, taking his hand, brought her life to the poor region of 12, they call it The Seam.
A few years in they had me, and four years later they had my sister. They named her Primrose, after the most beautiful flower. We grew up on what little we could get, from my father's mining, and my mother's odd nurse work for the starving and freezing.
Our lives were hard, as are all lives in the Seam, but we had it better than others. He could hunt.
When I was seven he took me into the woods, they lie on the outside of 12, protected by only a wired electric fence, which only flows one hour a day, a luxury for 12. He took me to a clearing where he caught the game he sold, a large meadow, abundant with berries, wood, and wildlife. He carved out his own bow from the timber in the meadow, and fashioned the arrow heads from rocks. He taught me to shoot, how to hunt, and gather. He taught me to identify plants, ones edible, and poisonous. We picked plants on every trip, good ways to fend off starvation, easier and more common than game, ones he could always find were Katniss, seemed to grow in every part of the forest. He foraged them for years, and for them he named me, we'd pick bundles of Katniss that'd feed both of us, and my mother and Prim, we were never hungry. He'd always joke, saying, "If you can find yourself, you'll never lose hope," with his chuckle that I still remember. I remember his voice, vividly, he could sing, better than anyone I'd ever heard. In the meadow he would sing to me, and when I'd gathered the nerve, I would sing with him. He loved music, and he taught me about the songbirds in the meadow, that would emulate songs they heard with chirps, called Mockingjays. During the Dark Days, the Capitol used their laboratories to create genetically altered songbirds known as Jabberjays, able to repeat entire sentences spoken around them, which they would use to spy on the enemy Districts, and relay their messages, but the Districts caught on, and used the birds to send out false plans and statements, so the Capitol furiously let the Jabberjays go. Along the way, the Jabberjays mated with the Mockingbirds, and created a new breed, now capable of repeating songs, and tunes, known as Mockingjays. My father told me that the Capitol considers Mockingjays an emblem of failure, symbols of deceit, and rebellion, but he only saw them as symbols of beauty, freedom, and sometimes, hope. When he would sing, the Mockingjays would fall silent, his voice too great to mimic, and after a few years of practice, they did the same for me, it made sense, I learned from him. We would take trips to the meadow, we would sing, we would hunt, we would gather berries and plants, and we would be together, we'd be alone, away from the cold, the starving of the Seam, from the Peace Keepers, enforcing the Capitol's rule, we'd be free, to talk, to sing, to be ourselves, to be safe, to hope, and that was the best part of it all, and we sang about that, too.
When it happened everyone knew it, news of mining disasters came more quickly to 12 than did Capitol messages. The schools and stores let out, and everyone gathered around to hear the names of the casualties. They read off the names one by one, and when they got to "E," we heard his name, Everdeen. I was eleven at the time, and Prim was only seven, but neither of us cried as much as my mother, taking hours to uphold herself. The compensation for a lost mine worker to the family is a month's rations, and after that point the family is responsible for their own income, but by the end of the month my mother still couldn't work, she couldn't eat, or sleep, and she could hardly speak, she was like a mannequin, frozen in place, while our lives went on around her. Weeks went by, and she couldn't bring herself to find a job. We were always hungry, we went days at a time without food, whatever little we had, I tried to give to Prim. Sometimes we'd go as much as a week without anything, and I thought, many times, that we'd die, and I knew, for the first time, what hunger really is.
After a time, of watching my sister starve, and my mother whither to nothing, I took charge of things, figured out a plan to feed my family. I took my father's bow, and the arrows he'd made, and I went outside the perimeter and into the meadow, alone, and used the things he taught me, about archery and about gathering, and I provided my mom and sister with what I caught, which kept us alive as much as it could. Eventually, my mother got better, and she began taking patients into our home, and helping them for whatever money she could get. She finally expressed her sympathy towards us, and apologized for the weeks of hardship she caused us, but I didn't forgive her.
Eventually, I gathered the courage to trade at The Hob, the black market that buys items that Peace Keepers may find suspicious. I traded most of my game there, mainly items I know barters and Peace Keeper regulars are fond of. With what I brought in I got food and money for my family, we didn't live as well as we had, but we got by as best we could, and I know it's because of him. Despite that, I couldn't provide my family as well as my father could, couldn't make the kind of life for us he made for me and Prim, and for her sake I wish I could, and some days I resent myself for the fact that I can't.
Year after year I've gone back to the meadow, not just to hunt, but sometimes to get away, from the death and drear of the Seam, to enjoy the forest and nature, to remember the times I spent with him, to sing his songs, to hope for something better, to hope, and sometimes forget where we live, how we live, and what we deal with day to day. But, at the end of the day, nothing can take us out of the lives we live, nothing can take away our hunger, the pain of our scars, the tasks we toil with each day, nothing can take us from the them, the cruel, oppressive, omnipresent people we serve, answer to, the taxes they put on us, the strife and tolerance they demand, and the ever-present threat of the Games, every day, nothing can take us out of the Seam.