My name is Rose Hathaway, I'm nineteen years old. My best Friend is Vasilisa Dragomir.
We've been through everything together – well er- almost everything.
There's one thing I've kept from her and everyone else that only one person in my life at the moment knows, my mother.
Now I know what you're thinking "but you've never really had a good relationship" well, there's a reason for that.
When I was younger I didn't live in court or even in a regular dhampir commune.
Ah, it was kind of a dhampir commune but it had a sort of "governor" I guess he could be calledand "this governor "hewas a complete psycho. But I'll get to that later. This "governor" thought that everyone that was below him he could control. He would kill people who stole or even spoke out of line. Sometimes if he was feeling generous enough he wouldn't have you killed, he would cut out your tongue so you couldn't speak and make you a slave.
death seems like the better option to me.
He made up a game but it wasn't just any game, he was playing with human lives.
The games were called the hunger games; it's a fitting name people often died of starvation here. We were used as basically slaves, forced to farm and manufacture things for the main part of the commune. If we stole, like I said the punishment is severe. We didn't have a lot of food, sickness was rampant. You were lucky if you got to live, to see the day you got a grey hair.
They put your name in a big ball and pull a boy and a girl from each section of the commune, we called those "districts." There were 12 of them. So that would be 24 contestants each year. They called this "Reaping." Every year on the same day they do this, this day is called "Reaping Day." Reaping Day is dreaded by every on in the districts.
To make matters worse the people they reaped into the games were children.
A child between the ages of 12 and 18, It was a required thing you had to have your name in at least one time. But there is a thing called tesserae, you could apply for it and in return you would get a meager year's supply of oil and grain for one person.
The catch is that they put your name in more times for reaping.
For each person in your house hold that's 4 more tickets into the reaping ball.
I'm rambling now, The Hunger Games threw 24 kids between the ages of 12 and 18 years old into a duel to the death, that was broadcast throughout the districts live.
He liked to play with life, he knew what he held over our heads and each year he found more and more ways to make the games harder- it was his way of spitting on us.
Only the strong survive the weak are weeded out.
One year everyone starved to death. The next they froze, the year before that the game makers got bored and started picking off people.
The games went on until there was only one child left. That child was crowned victor of the hunger games, and given special housing and enough money a month to house and feed them for the rest of their lives.
Everyone else had to keep on living like nothing had happened. The Family's of the tributes that had perished in the arena, never got to see the bodies of their children again. The adults prayed that next year it wasn't one of their kids. The children prayed for the same thing.
It was inevitable though every year, a new 24 kids, 23 deaths, 1 winner.
Every year he got what he wanted.
Every year more families were grieving.
Every year more people feared for their children and themselves.
You're probably asking yourself what I have to do with all of this well, what if I told you I had more family than I let on.
I did. In case you think I'm a liar, well you can either:
A: Go to hell
Or
B: Trust me
That day when I hurt my hand and Dimitri was cleaning them. When he told me all about his family and his father, I told him I never knew my Father. I also told him I didn't have any siblings or extended family but my mother.
I lied.
I've always felt bad for lying to him but it was an act of self preservation. Sometimes the memories are so bad I wake up and don't know where I am or what day it is. I think I'm back in that slum starving to death.
But I did have a family:
My father was Ibrahim Mazur. He was always kind, gentle, rough, sarcastic and rude if he needed to be. He had a voice that even the birds would stop to listen to him sing. He also had two brothers, my uncle Cahill and my uncle Pavel.
Uncle Cahill is my cousins Emel and Asil's father. Yes I did have cousin's, you have cousins too. Why are you so shocked? Jeez get over yourself you're not The Queen. I wouldn't think you would want to be either that stuck up old bit-
Anyway, on with my family history
Uncle Pavel is my Cousin Gale's father. Emel and I are the same age. Asil and Gale are both 2 years older than us. My father and both my uncle's were miners for district twelve where I lived.
One day when I was nine, there was an accident in the mines. Something had gone wrong with one of the lamps and the whole shaft blew.
I never heard my father sing again.
You're probably wondering about my Mother.
She had a sister, my aunt Olivia, she was the sweetest women anyone would ever want to meet. My cousin Adria is her daughter. Adria is a year younger than Emel and I. but she's the same age as my sister and younger brother.
Before you go into a coma or start sucking your thumb and make me take you to the Looney bin.
You should probably get over the fact that I have more family than just my mother. God
My mother and Father met when they were 15 at St. Andrinicus's academy in Turkey. Yeah I though St. Vladimir's was bad, this place had to have been 20x worse.
Well, they met there and eventually had a marriage ceremony, which was just exchanging of vows, a kiss, giving each other rings, and toasting bread. Moroi often got married to dhampirs here, that thankfully wasn't in the psycho's handbook.
The ceremonies weren't much but they meant the world to the people tying the knot. It was the one happy moment they could savor before something bad would inevitably happen.
A year later my brother Alec was born. Alec had my mother's glorious red hair and my father's grey eyes. He's 2 years older than I am which means him; Gale and Asil are the same age as well.
Two years later I was born as you know I have my father's dark dark brown hair which almost looks black, and his grey eyes.
I remember waiting outside with my Brother, uncles and my cousins when Ryssa and Ryan were born. I was Two years old, but I remember.
I remember walking in to see them with Alec's hand in mine. The looks of pure love across my mother's sweat worn face and my father's blissful one as they looked at them. I remember being lifted onto the bed that we all shared at night and looking into the worn bassinet at my sleeping younger siblings.
Ryssa had my mother's hair and her eyes.
Ryan shared my hair color and my mother's eyes.
I remember feeling an unbearable need to protect them, at two years old that's a strange feeling. The only things I had wanted to protect before was my sock monkey. But that was from Alec and Gales destructive games.
I remember my father sing the song that I had memorized for as long as I remember.
Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your eyes
And when they open, the sun will rise
He sung this lullaby to me when I had nightmares about the things I saw in the windows at night.
Here it's safe, and here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet–
–and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.
He sung this lullaby to the mocking jay's to mimic back to him
Deep in the meadow, hidden far away
a cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray
forget your woes and let your troubles lay
And when again it's morning, they'll wash away
He sang this lullaby to my mother while she gave birth to us.
Here it's safe, and here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet–
– and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.
He sang this lullaby to Ryssa when she fell and scraped her knee.
Here is the place where I love you.
We sang this lullaby at his funeral.