Such a day only comes once a year, I woke up a lot earlier this morning than I usually would. The sun was really beautiful as its rays came dashing through my window, lighting up the whole room. The light was shining so nicely through the curtains that it gave my light blue wall a beautiful lined pattern. There was no way I could sleep any longer, mainly because I was too excited to actually be able to stand still. It was my birthday and even though I'm usually quite neutral about such days and don't get too enthusiastic about them, today was a little different. It was my fifteenth birthday, which meant that Nathan would have to keep his promise and take me out in the woods surrounding District 12.

I quickly rush to my wardrobe to pick something to wear. It's not too hard of a choice since my mother always gets us some incredibly pretty dresses from Sally. Sally lives in the seam, which is where the more unfortunate people live. They are not quite as well off as we are, and most of them have to put their lives in danger a lot to earn for their living. Most of the men work in the coal mines, which are our districts occupations, but others either try to earn someth ing by doing us little favors or even go poaching outside the district. Just like these people, Sally, while having to care for her 3 children, also makes these really cute dresses. I decide to put on a blue dress that is rather better looking than the others. After I comb my hair, making my brown curls stand out, I get the bracelet Nathan gave me and decide to head downstairs.

As I go down the stairs to meet my parents and little sister, Rosalind, an amazing scent hits me. That's when I realize that I can't just leave with Nathan now, since my mother will be heartbroken if I don't let her say "Happy birthday" to me, and make me eat the special breakfast that she prepares for all of us on our birthdays.

My parents were really just my guardians, as some people call them, menaing that they were my adoptive parents. My real parents left me on their front door on the day of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games, and disappeared. We never really found out who they were but they raised me just as Rosalind, as if I was their own. The stairs lead into our living room, and as I get closer to our kitchen the smell gets better.

"Happy Birthday sweetie!" My mum immediately says, as I go into the kitchen.

"Thanks mom, where's rose, I thought she'd be up by now?"

"She had to leave earlier with your father to pick up a few things for school, come on, why don't you go eat; your pancakes will get cold?"

My mother said the recipe for pancakes has been known a lot before the dark days, but even though the recipe is so old, they are just incredible. Not even the bakers, whose shop is right next to ours, can make anything as good as them. After I finish, I help my mother with cleaning the kitchen a bit and then, seeing I'm quite excited, and in a hurry , my mum tells me to let her finish and that I should go and meet my friends. She was a bit wrong about that though; I wouldn't be with my friends today. I never actually did this before but Nathan and I will be skipping class, in order to go out in the forest. This was something normal for the kids from the seam, therefore Nathan was used to it, but neither I nor my friends had ever done so before.

As I head for the little meadow, next to the victors' village, I kept on thinking about how incredible it would be to go outside the district, I kept wondering how it would be. The capitol has been keeping all of us locked up into our own districts and no one ever went out except for the tributes for the Hunger Games and some other really important people. The capitol had sent out rumors telling us that we would be safe within the boundaries of our districts, and everything outside was full of dangers and beasts and other such things to scare us away. I've believed these rumors myself, although that was only until I met Nathan, who's father would always go hunting in the woods, and had taken him along for the past couple of years. He'd told me a lot about what's on the other side of the fence, and how there was never electricity in the fence. He'd also said how beautiful everything was and what nice it is to fell free from this "cage" as he called it. All of these things added up my curiosity, and I got him to promise me that for my 14th birthday, he would take me out there, in order to see all of these stories come to life.

"Elizabeth!" Nathan said right before having to catch me, in order to not fall down after scaring me so badly. I guess I was quite far away with my thoughts to notice anything happening around me.

"Happy Birthday sweetheart! You should really stop getting so scared, you're going to get a heart attack and die before you've even lived"

"Well I would stop getting scared if you stopped scaring me" I tell him as I try to playfully punch him in the stomach.

"And eat more proteins or else 3 year old could kill you in the arena." He says

"Ha...Ha I'm dying of laughter… as if you would be able to withstand it more than me; you'd probably juststep off the launching scheme and trigger off a mine." I tell him sarcastically. We always have such discussions, just trying to annoy one another, but we never actually take them seriously, just like we didn't now, since Nathan just started laughing and walking towards the fence.