Prologue
Reaping Day is hell for Timber Rice, in a way that it isn't for most others. Not worse, exactly. But, without a doubt, his is a uniquely unfavorable situation.
Rice does not need to fear that his name will be called; he hasn't worried about that outside of his nightmares for five years. With no family to speak of, the escort can't call any name that would affect him personally. But that isn't the problem. He won't know the kids whose names are called. His worry is that they'll expect to learn something useful from him.
Rice has a spot on the stage, which he earned nearly six years ago by cutting the throat of an eighteen-year-old girl from District Two. The price he paid was dear. On days like today, his hands still feel slick with blood. The victor doesn't look down at them. Part of him knows that they're spotless, as they always are, but another part imagines them stained, crimson to the elbows in gore.
The young victor rubs at his arms as he climbs the steps leading up to the stage, trying to rid himself of that feeling. The blue-skinned escort, a heavyset man with a name lost to time and apathy years ago, bears a luminescent grin as Rice comes up to join him.
"Feeling a chill, Timber?" he chuckles. Rice stops rubbing.
"Of course not. It's the middle of May," he replies tersely, shoving his hands into his pockets so he won't have to think about them. Big Blue keeps smiling, as if the two of them are sharing a private joke. Rice thinks incessantly about peeling the skin off of his blood-soaked arms.
The adolescent population of District Seven has just begun to gather in the center of the square, arranging themselves into rows. Rice sees a handful of faces in the crowd that he recognizes, but no one he can put a name to. In the years since his victory, he's grown more distant from the place he used to call home. Now that he's begun a new life, his homeland looks just as foreign to him as the Capitol once did.
Better get rid of that blood. Boil it off. Peel it off. Get it off. Get it off. Get it—
"Timber? Timber?" The escort's irritating voice throws him off, untangling him from his graphic thoughts.
"What is it?"
"You just don't seem quite right today." Big Blue's smile wavers, and he moves a hand toward Rice's shoulder. The victor gulps in a breath, dark eyes fraught with alarm. "Is something the matter?"
Exhaling with a hiss, Rice jerks out of the way before the escort can touch his arm. "D-dammit!" he barks, "Don't do that!"
Realization seizes the escort's cobalt features. "Oh! I'm terribly sorry, I forgot—"
In that moment, Rice doesn't care if it was the most well-intentioned accident ever to occur. Something inside of him snaps.
"Forget again," the young victor snarls, "and I'll do to you what I did to Shantelle Mason six years ago. I'll cut you up like the overgrown blueberry you are and find out if your blood's the same color. Do you understand me?"
The victor watches the escort's face pale to the color of the sky, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Rice makes a wide circle around him on his way to the back of the stage. He removes a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe down his seat.
This is the price of survival. This is the price of survival. Rice repeats the words to himself, stirring them around in his mind until he is calm. But his mantra can't comfort him forever, and neither can his routines.
Rice has settled his debts. But on Reaping Day, it's the district's turn to pay up.
AN: Luetis will be a partial SYOT with six POVs, and I hope to begin writing the reapings sometime this summer, if I receive enough tribute submissions in the next few weeks. If you want to enter a character, please copy the tribute form below and fill in your tribute's information, and send it all to me in a PM. Please don't submit tributes in reviews. You can submit as many tributes as you want, but remember, I need younger tributes and bloodbaths, too!
Important: I'll only be accepting one volunteer from an outer district; If you want this one, please PM me before submitting so I can give you the all-clear.
Luetis POVs: Arden Borynski (Female, 2), Brina Whaley (Female, 4), Caph Schuyler (Female, 6), Ptolemy Barrington (Male, 7), Chintz Merier (Male, 8), and Tybalt Egan (Male, 9). One of these tributes will most likely be the victor.
There is a full list of available spots on my profile. SUBMIT LIKE THE WIND!
Tribute Form
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