Changing Reality

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, Suzanne Collins owns The Hunger Games and any other original names that may pop up. I would LOVE to own Peeta, Finnick, Cinna, and Gale. But I only own the grandchildren and District 0 XD

Part 1: The Reality Games

Prologue

My name is Ielletin Mellark. (It's pronounced Yell-ten, so everyone just calls me Yell since it's so much shorter and easier. I would like to know what my parents were thinking when they named me.) I am the granddaughter of Katniss Everdeen, the Mockingjay, and Peeta Mellark, daughter of their only son. I have my father's and grandfather's light blonde hair, a mixture of my dad's gray eyes and my mom's sea blue ones, making mine a very light sky blue. My father inherited Katniss's hunting skills and Peeta's baking. I got cooking from that, from Peeta and my dad-but I cook anything as opposed to only baking-and I can sing. My parents say I got that from my grandmother, that when she would sing even the birds would stop to listen. I don't know about hunting; I've never tried. But I doubt I got hunting.

I live in District 0, the result of the generations after my grandparents' moving from their districts to an uncharted piece of land that was found in Panem on the other side of the Capitol and forming a new district. It was the perfect post-war "photo-op", actually. People from different districts and even people from the reformed Capitol uniting into one.

Life in District 0 is not at all bad. We don't have a specific specialty like the history books say the districts used to before the rebel war. We all just use our talents from our families' districts to stay alive, and we get supplies from the Capitol which is mostly a stone's throw away. My family is well off since not just one but both of my grandparents were victors in the Hunger Games, and my dad invested his inheritance from them and also got a good paying job. My aunt, my dad's sister, inherited their house in District 12; meanwhile, someone had just found the land that is now District 0 before I was even born and my dad decided to go take a gamble and help start up this new district. It paid off.

My grandparents both died when I was a baby, so I don't remember them, but I see their faces often enough on TV and in books and in pictures my dad has. Katniss didn't have my aunt until she was in her late-30s so she didn't have my dad till both she and Peeta were over 40. (Dad says this was because the Hunger Games caused Katniss to have reservations about having kids because she never wanted them to go through being reaped and becoming tributes. It took forever for Peeta to convince her.) By the time my dad was old enough to have kids, me, they were kind of past the age of even being grandparents. They had both been through so much anyway and my dad says they still had the nightmares and flashbacks even as time went on. They died in their sleep, one right after the other, shortly after I was born.

I don't know much about the Hunger Games except for what they teach us in history class and what's in Katniss's book. That the Hunger Games were brutal and involved unnecessary killing. That one boy and one girl from each district were forced in an arena to fight to the death—24 kids in all—as a reminder of what happens when you rebel. That Katniss and Peeta no longer wanted to be pawns in the government's Games. I have read her book over and over, her book about those that died in both the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games and the Quarter Quell, and those that died in the rebellion. I can't decide who my favorite is. Maybe little Rue, who was only 12 when forced into the Hunger Games. Maybe Prim, Katniss's selfless little sister. No, Cinna. Cinna is by far my favorite. Anyway, I read the book often, to remind myself how great we have it now, with no bloodshed, no Hunger Games, no fighting between the districts and the Capitol.

If it weren't for the killings, the Hunger Games seem like they might have been okay. They sound like they would have been good entertainment if they weren't violent or anything. We have very little entertainment these days. Always working or going to school and reading about the Hunger Games and what my grandparents did. Making new friends because my family's famous and everyone wants to be the Mellark grandchild's friend. Maybe I have great stories about Peeta and Katniss that they told me when I was little. When I say I don't, people look disappointed at first, but heaven forbid they stop being "friends" with someone who has Mellark in their name. I only have one real friend. Her name is Norsla, and we were friends even before she knew who I was, since birth practically.

I am just thinking all of this about the Hunger Games being fun without the killing aspect and my fake friends and Norsla when Norsla herself bursts through my front door, face flushed and hair disheveled.

"Yell," she says breathlessly, excitedly. "They're starting again!"

"What's starting again?" I ask, confused.

"The Hunger Games."