PART ONE

"PAST AND PRESENT TRIBUTES"

CHAPTER ONE

I feel the cold air has it whips past my body in a fashion like no other, the way the air curls its self around my frame and through the many layers of material that makes up my blanket. It's still chilly as the winter air still lingers around district 12. I shiver coldness; not only because of the weather but also what today will bring. I look across the room to see my two brothers still asleep as they were when I turned off the candle late last night. Only Michael knows the pain, our district is about to go into. A fight to the finish, only one comes out alive. That's what Panem our nation calls entertainment, that's what we as districts call as desperation for power. The power over the nation, to call upon two kids from each district ranging from the ages of 12 to 18, forced to leave their families and fight for their lives in the Hunger Games. Today is the day of the reaping, the day where district 12 gives two families a desperate plea for hope that just maybe their kids to come back to them. Only district 12 has only ever had one winner, Haymitch Abernathy. I shiver again, still only conscious enough to hear my father already banging around in the kitchen starting to make the bread and pastries for the bakery. Mellark Bakery is the only bakery within district 12, my father the baker, who has not only passed on the genes of baking through to his sons, but also to the residents of district 12. The leftover bread from the days before, me and my father would send it to the Hob, the towns' black market, and sell it to the people of the Seam, the kids who are more disadvantaged in every way.

I step out into the hallway dividing the bakery and our home, the wood floor doesn't create much protection from the cold when I take step after step inching my way towards the bakery front where I know I would find my mother leaning towards the window. My mother with her silk brunette hair, leaning close to the window of the bakery; her snake blue eyes watching the Peacekeepers start setting up the area in front of the justice building for the reaping.

"Oh, Peeta your up early, would you like some breakfast?" My father says as he walks past me in the hallway towards our bread case to display our loaves of the day. I shake my head still looking outside the window towards the gloomy day ahead.

"Darling, Mr Deepassoul called earlier saying Aralia will be here in district 12 for the reaping, isn't that odd!" my mother exclaimed as she walked over to my father to help him put the bread away. "Why Peeta, isn't it great Aralia will be here?"

Aralia Deepassoul. District 4. Fishing District. 16.

I remember when I first met her when I was with my father at a bakery expo in District 4, her father as tall as a bear, and as strong as an ox. His hands knead the dough with precision and fierceness that no one else had. His tan skin glowed as he sweats away near the ovens, giving the other bakers sight into the bread that is only famous by his district. That's when I remember seeing her, behind her father, watching ever so closely to his hands and how they take some ingredients and turn it into bread. Her dark brown curly hair was messy as it sat across her shoulders, that's when I noticed it; her eyes, one the colour as green as a forest or like the emerald on my mother's ring; the other as blue as the ocean. Surly I was mistaken, from then on the fascination began, the girl with the two coloured eyes. Every time my father had to go away on business I asked if I could come, just to get another glimpse of her and those fascinating eyes, yet no luck came of it. Until a 3 years ago, on this very day was the first time I saw her, I finally got to see those beautiful and interesting eyes again as she walked up on stage. That's how I noticed her, that's how the whole of Panem noticed her. She was a tribute for District 4 of the 71st Hunger Games.