Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. I only own the characters in this story that I create.
When I wake up and throw the covers off of my body, I immediately feel the cold chill of the morning and goose bumps appear on my skin. I want to pull the brown blanketback onto my body and escape into my world of dreams, whether they be nightmares or dreams that make me smile. But in District 13, in all of the districts, maybe even throughout the whole world, nobody ever gets what they want. Never enough to be satisfied.
I sit up, pushing a few brown curls out of my face, and I blink the sleep from my eyes. I smile, a random act of happiness that only I seem to display in my district. Today is Sunday, the day of each week where I get to relax. I'm seventeen, and like everyone else in District 13 who has finished mandatory school, I spend my weekdays and Saturdays in the buildings of my district making guns for the Capitol.
I place my bare feet on the floor of the room I share with my older brother Leo, who is still sleeping. I quietly giggle at how he laughs in his sleep, something he does often. I never know if it's because he's having a good dream, or if it's just something that occurs frequently, and he never knows when it's happening. I smile again as I carefully push a short piece of Leo's own brown curls out of his closed eyes.
I walk down the hall in my house to my mother's room. My feet are cold against the soft wood, and I curl my toes together as I walk to my mother. I find her asleep, snoring, her black, curly hair sprawled across her pillow.
Of all the people I know, my mother is the most important to me. She's been ill ever since my father left my family, all the way to District 1 to start a new life, when I was thirteen and Leo was fifteen. I have a responsibility to protect my mother, to take care of her, to make sure nothing happens to her. Leo, on the other hand, doesn't feel as close to my mother as he did before my father left. It's never been the same between them, my mother and Leo. I've settled on the fact that it's his choice, after four years of wondering. I still love them both, though. Sometimes you have to forget everything and love. It solves problems, at least temporarily. And that's good enough for me, when good enough is the best you can get in this world.
"Hey," I whisper to my mother, and she opens her soft blue eyes tiredly. They're clouded, weak, but she still manages to smile.
"I'm going out, okay?" I say, and she nods. "Do you need anything before I go?" Most days, she is able to get herself out of bed and eat without any supervision, but I have to be around sometimes, in case she faints, which she has before. It gives you fear, watching a person collapse in a second. How everything just turns off and it's up to you to turn it back on. It gives you a weight, a different take on the world, at least for a moment.
"I think I have a fever," she croaks, and I feel her forehead. I sigh as I take my hand away. Hot. At least a 100-degree fever. "Just a minute," I say, and run to get fever reducing pills and a glass of water for my mother.
Compared to others in my District, I'd say my family has a bit of a luxury. Because of my mother's state, my family was granted a decent house in the district, and given medicine for her that Leo and I have to pay back with the money we make, even though it's not much. Leo may not be very close to my mother, but he has a certain type of kindness in him that drives him to help her, at least in an indirect way. That and he cares about me too much to let me take all of the weight on my shoulders. If I know anything, it's that everyone has a heart. It's their decision to use it.
I spill two small, white pills into my palm and fill one of our old glass cups with water from the pail on the wooden table that I fill every night with water from the district's spring. I quietly walk to my mother's room again and set the pills and the water on the small stand next to her bed.
"I'll be back before noon, okay?" I say softly, as if I'm talking to a child. It's a way of speaking I have gotten used to over the years. "I need some air for a bit."
"You're sweet, Chana. Thank you," she coughs, and places the pills on her tongue. "Feel better," I whisper as I walk out. It's not as if I can say anything else. Then, I hear my mother sigh, and whisper, "I don't know how you do it." I smile.
Everyone has something interesting about him or her. It could be that they don't like the certain food that everyone in the District enjoys. It could be that they're afraid of insects, or fire. Me, though: despite the Capitol's cruel reign, the oppression in the districts, the hunger, I find a way to be happy, and it's the thing that my mother is lost on figuring out how I'm able to do it. Through it all, I discover a way to smile. My family sees me as light, pure light, that finds a way to make us still good, still worth something, even though we're broken. I find a way to love, to spread happiness the best I can, in different ways. It's my dying wish.
As shallow as it seems, I want people in my district and beyond to enjoy the light my family claims I have. It's the least I could do, serve as a distraction to the Capitol's rule, to give them something to look to and smile.
Deciding to stay in my sleep clothes because they're clean and don't smell bad, I go into my normal Sunday routine. Take an orange from the fruit basket that Leo collects every week, drink some water myself, slip into my worn out boots, put my grey knitted hat onto my head to keep my ears warm, and most importantly, take two sheets of paper and a pencil from the table, in case I get an idea for a story, or a song. I love songs. Singing them, trading them with the people in my district, performing them to my mother. I rarely get inspirations to write them, though. But when I do, they come in shivers.
The air is crisp, and a light fog is drifting over my head. I reach up and touch my hand to it, watching the mist swirl around my fingers. As I walk, I start to wave my hand in designs through the fog, laughing quietly. A circle. A flower. Then, I do something I've never done before; take three fingers of the hand that is not holding the paper and the orange, my left one, and swipe them through the mist, watching as it leaves a mark in the air for a few seconds before disappearing into the condensation. I stop when I reach the end of town and in front of me is a familiar path into the trees, whose leaves are bright green and weighed down with dew. I run down the short path that my body is able to fit through because of my thin build. My boots sink into the morning mud, slowing me down, but I laugh at the sound it makes.
I enter a clearing, one I've been in many times before. It's open, and it faces the sky, so I can see the small clouds that float in the bluish-grey above me. The clearing is just grass, green grass with bits of brown, dead stalks. The people of my district come here to sleep, to relax, to kiss, to escape. It emits a calm feel, an atmosphere that makes everything less tense. Me, though, I come here to sing.
I run to the center of the clearing, and lay on my back. As I set the pieces of paper and the orange aside, I feel myself sink into the bright green grass, smiling as it tickles my freckled nose and cheeks. I close my eyes, letting myself settle into the ground, make a shape in the grass with my body, and then I open my eyes to the sky.
It gets clearer now, bluer, as the morning progresses, as the crisp air gives way to a warmer, more relaxed kind of air. The clouds are more prominent.
I watch them pass by and make shapes out of them, as I always used to do with my mother. We used to come here before my dad left, before she went ill. We cloudwatched together, our heads touching as we used to lay opposite ways. She would always point out a shape, and then I would. Her, and then me. The cycle never changed, because it didn't have to. I've tried to bring her out here again, trying to convince her that the fresh air would make her feel better. But it only made her light-headed, begging for me to take her back inside, to her bed so she could rest.
Today, I see birds in the clouds, mostly mockingbirds. I like their songs, how they harmonize. How they always have another bird to rely on to sing the next note. Sometimes, I sing with them. It gives me something to do, a reason to make me smile.
"What do you see, Mom?" I ask myself with dry amusement. I only sigh afterwards. Then, I see another shape in the sky. My eyes go wide at it, how the clouds that form it could be so detailed, so intricate. I quickly search the sky for other shapes, other pieces, and slowly, very, very slowly… I form a picture.
Then I get shivers.
A/N: Hi, everybody! So this is the first chapter of my new story called Dark. It centers around the Dark Days, around who and what started them, and what happened during them. I swear, I have been wanting to write this thing for so long that it was starting to cOnSuMe Me. I'm sick today and I stayed home, so I just thought, "why not start?" and I began writing. A few pieces of information about this story you should probably know:
-Chana's (the main character's) name is a Hebrew name. It's pronounced "haw-na", like "saw". The C is silent.
-This story is set about 76 or so years before the events of The Hunger Games, hence non-underground District 13 and mockingbirds instead of mockingjays.
-I'm trying to build Chana and her family a little like Katniss and her family, to kind of imply that the Capitol can do wrong before the Dark Days, too. Maybe not as much, but enough to ruin family bonds.
That's it! I hope you enjoy this chapter and the ones to come. Feel free to tell me your thoughts. Constructive criticism is always appreciated!