A/N:
Oh my gosh! You clicked it!
Hello readers!
So, some more info you should know: This fanfiction is sort of a spin-off prequel to the Hunger Games series, taking place in the same world with many of the original characters (that I do not own!) but most of the characters in this are my own OCs. Suzanne Collins did not give much information about previous Games or tributes, so I took some liberties here, so nothing in this story is necessarily true to the books.
Hope you like it and please review! ^_^
~1~
I was only four years old when I faced death for the first time. It was a Saturday and other young children and I were busy keeping the forest trail clear of fallen branches. Men and women worked with axes and saws all around us.
It was all because the lumber workers had overlooked the nest of tracker-jackers, high in the pine. When the tree came down, they all saw the nest spit open, but it was too late. The golden wasps engulfed the workers, unforgiving and deadly. Several lives were lost that day, but somehow, a little girl with more stings than she could count, outlived even the strongest axeman.
No one could say how it happened. It must have been luck that after several days on the deathbed with stingers poking out every which-way on my soft baby skin, after all the swelling subsided and the hallucinations vanished, I developed an immunity.
Later I would be moving logs when honey bees, who sometimes live in the trees we chop down, would stab me with their stingers, and I wouldn't even flinch.
This immunity was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. It make me fearless. Stings usually brought only pain and sickness to people, but to me it opened a window. I took a liking to honey bees, and often followed them back to their hives and watched them for hours. One day, I cut a branch that held a medium-sided hive and carried it all the way home and hung it up in a tree in my back yard. Needless to say, my sister, Iris, who was nearly 11 years my senior and taking care of me at the time, was not happy about it. She was happy about the honey, though. And the money from the precious sweet helped us eat through the winter.
At first, the bees and the hornets and the wasps that lived in our thickly wooded district were annoyed by my presence and tried to sting me, but eventually they stopped stinging me entirely.
However, common sense kept me away from tracker-jackers; they were a danger to everyone in the vicinity if disturbed. But when I was thirteen or so, there was another incident, similar to the one when I was four. We had been better trained since, and no one died this time, but I discovered that the genetically enhanced wasps didn't effect me. The didn't even bother with me-just zoomed right buy.
"Fern," Iris would say. "You are the luckiest girl in District Seven." But then she would always add, playfully poking me in the stomach, "That still doesn't mean you can bring your bees into the house, missy." To which I would always laugh.
Lucky indeed.
~.~
It's Reaping Day, and I don't feel very lucky.
I look at myself in the mirror, my friend May stands beside me, so nervous her skin has a green hue to it. The color doesn't go well with her dress.
"Fern," she says for the thousandth time, voice trembling. "I don't want it to be me."
I look at her, standing in my sister's bathroom in a silky dark green summer dress, her auburn hair all curled for the occasion. Then I muster a sympathetic look for the thousandth time and reply, "You won't. There are thousands of people who could be chosen over you."
She gives me a watery smile. "You're so nice, Fern."
"You are too," I say. May was always a little faint of heart. I tended to be the guts in our friendship. I look back at my reflection. I've left my hair down, and the wispy brown strands brush my bare shoulders. The dress belongs to Iris, and it's made from peach colored cotton. It's probably the most girly thing I've worn since I was little. Working as a lumberer, I preferred thick pants and shirts that never stay very clean. Iris hasn't worked since my niece, Mimsey, was born, so she has time for dresses.
"No, no, that's not what I meant," May looks like she's about to cry. Her voice shakes. "Fern, you're really kind. You're the nicest person I've met and I'm so glad you're my friend."
"Okay, May."
She's grabbed my arm and I gently pull away. May always gets weird like this on Reaping Day. Like it's the last time she'll ever get to see me. Like everyone she loves is going to die if she doesn't cling to them tightly enough.
"You look very pretty," May says quietly, and withdraws.
I promise May I'll meet her in the square when 10'o'clock arrives. She leaves and I join my sister and her family for breakfast. Well...my family.
I can't remember my parents, my father who fell victim to a mill fire, my mother to childbirth. Iris has been taking care of me for as long as I can remember, and her husband, Clave, became a sort of father stand-in for me. And Mimsey...I loved Mimsey. Only five years old and already talks up a storm to anyone who will listen. She makes up stories, she sings, she lies and jokes. And she loves my bees. She named every single one she saw for an entire day, sitting in our back yard with wrapped attention. The honey bees buzzed around her curiously and she was unafraid.
What a strange little child.
"Just like her aunt Fern!" Iris had said on more than one occasion. "Lets hope she has some of your luck too, eh?"
Today, the kitchen is clean, and the table is scrubbed. Hot acorn-flour pancakes steam on a plate in the center.
In District 7 we are luckier than most. The forest grows all around us, supplying ample amount of wild edibles when staple food is scarce. I know hundreds of plants that can keep my family alive, even in winter. And then there's the small amount of honey my bees let me have, which can buy more than enough of anything here. Hunting is, of course, forbidden, but some do anyway, scrounging up what little game is not scared away by our constant mill noises. I know starvation happens. Everyone knows what hunger feels like. It's just luck.
"Fern! We get honey today!" Mimsey says happily, dipping a slice of pancake into the stuff. She's gotten some of it in her sandy curls. Sandy like her father's, not like my sister's and mine.
I give Iris a quizzical look. We usually sell all the honey to the rich town folk. Eating it ourselves is rare. Iris just shrugs a little and says, "It's Reaping Day."
Like I needed to be reminded of the Hunger Games. I may hide it well, but I was terrified. Terrified of what would happen to my family if I was chosen, with all my knowledge of the plants and the bees going with me. And worse, all I could think about was little Mimsey, one day, faced with the same threat every twelve to eighteen-year-old faced yearly. Of going into an arena and never coming back.
Clave sits next to me. He doesn't say anything, just takes one of my hands in his warm, calloused ones and gives it a squeeze. It's all I need.
~.~
I walk to the square where a massive crowd has formed. Worried family members stand around roped-off sections where their children are clustered. Before I leave to find May, I get down to Mimsey level and look her in her eyes. The girl's been holding my hand for the past half-hour and has not let go.
"Hey, don't worry," I say, but I can see in her face my words are meaningless to her. All I can do is smile reassuringly and gently poke her in the stomach. "See you soon, honeybee." And I leave her with her parents and the anxiety etched into her features.
I walk to the roped off section for seventeen-year-olds, set near the front of the stage erected in the square by the Capitol people. I find May, and we stand with all the other seventeen-year-old girls of District 7. I'm below average-size wise-for my age. Most of these girls are taller than me, but if I stand on tip-toe I can see a good chunk of the stage between the heads of the eighteen-year-olds in the area in the front. Near a podium stands our District Mayor, Eugenia Gates. Her short, sand-colored hair pinned up, she is dressed in a plain gray suit, contrasting sharply with the brightly colored man who stands next to her: Merlin Meyers, the District 7 escort. Straight from the Capitol, he wears a suit that looks like the cosmos. Pink, red, and orange galaxies like ones I've seen in textbooks at school shimmer every time he moves. He's bald, but his eyebrows are enormous, dyed electric blue and so fluffy he must tease them a hundred times a day. I wonder if Capitol people feel as out of place as they look in the districts.
Behind them sits our handful of past Hunger Games victors, one elderly woman and five men, the youngest is 30 or so. You're no longer eligible for the Games by the time you're nineteen, so it's been a while since we've had a victor.
There's a hush that takes over the crowd as our mayor nods to a Capitol camera crew and wearily takes the podium. There's the customary intro to the Games Gates gives every year. It's almost like I know it by heart, so I don't really pay attention. I look at May who is barely holding it together. She's got a bunch of little sisters-two of them somewhere in the crowd of teenagers along with us, waiting with bated breath. No one is talking, the faces of the girls around me are stony. Only two more years of this for us seventeen-year-olds, thank goodness.
When Gates finishes her mandatory recap of the Games, she steps back and Merlin Meyers jumps forward eagerly.
"Heeeeeello my fine friendly friends of District Seven! It's Merlin here-Did'cha miss me?" He leans his ear towards the crowd, as if waiting for a "Of course we did, Merlin!" But no one says a word. His Capitol intonations sound brash and foreign here. Nevertheless, he continues, unaffected by our silence. "I know you're all just dying to know which of you are lucky enough to go to the Capitol, hmmmm?" He leans towards the crowd again, which remains quiet.
"Die in a hole." A girl near me looks darkly up at the stage. I don't really know her but I recognize her face from last year. It was broadcasted across all of Panem. Last year her little brother was a District 7 tribute. He was only twelve years old and one of the first to die in the bloodbath that usually opened the Games. Capitol camera crews always come back to film the grieving families. It's quite awful, really. The last thing anyone wants after losing a loved one is to have the people who are responsible for it stick a microphone in your face and ask how you feel about it.
It made me hate everything about the Capitol.
I look back to the stage, and my stomach plummets. Merlin is moving towards the two giant glass bowls at the front of the stage and I know it's time for the drawing.
"Soooo, who shall go first this year?" Merlin asks the crowd enthusiastically. His eyebrows bounce a little on his forehead.
Why does he even try? I think to myself. Every year Merlin tries and fails to engage a clearly disapproving audience. Best thing for him to do is to just read the names and leave. Instead, he's got a district full of people silently wishing for his demise with every exaggerated word that leaves his mouth.
"Girls, then!" Merlin's voice booms over the crowd and then he is digging into the bowl of girls names and pulling out a slip. The slip with the name of the tribute on it. The name.
And my world ends as I hear that name echo off the buildings and around the people of District 7.
Because it's mine.