Mags woke with a start reaching for her stick only to find the soft pillow in her hand, the luxury more disorientating than comforting. Her eyes quickly scanned for a threat, before her brain could fully register the familiarity of the room. But she did relax, with a sigh she looked at the soft morning light. Even after forty four years, she still woke from her games. She had long given up the foolish teenage hope she had harboured that without having to work she could sleep in.
It wasn't particularly early for district four, they had to be up with the fish after all. And Mag's age-mates would still have to work, at 60 you still had a good 10 year left in you, if not more. One morning a seventeen year old Mags had woken up from a nightmare, with an urge to run. And running had helped, she did not know why, maybe it was endorphins, maybe it was a return to something normal after a long break, maybe it was being outside, or seeing the fishers start their day and knowing that life continued on, that nothing had really changed in four, although it sure had for her. Whatever it was Mags promised to keep doing it. And she did.
Mags went for her morning run. Or at least fast walk, she was finally starting to feel old, in her body if not in her mind. Still she was determined not to let it deteriorate any more than nature commanded.
A few weeks ago Mags had been cleaning up instead of running. She had been helping clean up instead of training volunteers. The whole community had been pitching in to clean up after the Tsunami. District four unfortunately had a lot of High water events, from Super high tide floods, to Hurricanes and Tsunamis. There was often little to no warning, but everyone knew what to do when it happened, and everyone did what they could to clean up and help each other out afterwards, so the clean up didn't take too long.
The clean up had finished so she was back to running. One part of Mag's walk/run that she really appreciated was watching the shallow-fishing families. Fishing families were sometimes single parents, sometimes a family that wanted to be together rather than have someone off on a fishing boat never to be part of the family, sometimes just young families or ones that couldn't get jobs. First a parent would carry a baby or toddler on their back in a special net made just for that while they stood in the shallows tossing nets, then once a toddler could swim a parent would teach them either to throw a net or use a trident or spear, and watch over them from their own spot out in the deeper shallows as the kids tried their hand at scarring fish in a foot of water. Then as their skill and patience improved they would venture out into deeper more profitable waters, joining their parents in catching their food.
She liked to watch the kids learn and grow and love. Victors should never love, she knows. Though she envies them that, she does not envy them. She knows that they rely on the ocean to provide, to live, that some days they will be hungry, that any day could be the day they begin to starve, that any year could be the year their children are reaped and die. Mags has found a way to envy their love, without wanting that package, but while finding joy in it.
There was joy in watching children grow and learn to fish. There was joy and a kind of peace in watching life spin its cycle from one generation to the next to carry on through all else like the sun rising again or the flow of the tide rising high and low, always repeating.
She still held some of her hope that there would be a second rebellion and a better world for these people, where they would not have to worry about their possible future starvation. Although she was now patient realising it needed to happen at the right time with the right help to work.
There was a boy in the shallows who looked about five, who caught her eye, though she couldn't quite pinpoint why. It wasn't his skill with the small wooden trident he carried, his skill was about average for a boy his age. Wielding a trident like that may become a skill, but for kids this age it wasn't so much about learning that as it was about giving them a distraction, something to keep them occupied and entertained while their parents fished nearby.
Later in the week she passed by the same spot in the middle of the day and saw him still there, trying to spear things with his trident. She felt a pang of sadness at that, with parents no where in sight, and his skill somewhat lacking, she assumed he was another young boy taking it on his own initiative to skip school to try and feed his family. Though he was much younger than most that did so, it was not unusual. It was one of the things keeping shallow fishing families out of jobs and shallow fishing for generations.
It was a few weeks later when she first saw him without his shirt on, (a state he would almost constantly live in later.) he had caught a fish, an impressive bit of luck for a kid that age with a trident, and had tied it up in his shirt. A month later Mags noticed that he had fish more days than not. She began wondering just how much practice he was getting, how much school he was skipping to get it. And thinking about him as a potential tribute, his trident skills would be useful once fully developed, but his determination and will to practice would be much more so.