Okay, so. This is my second fanfiction! Be nice! I do want feedback, but don't judge me too hard! Just help... Don't be mean.
Anyway! This Hunger Games fanfiction is most likely like NOTHING you have read before. It's... Got quite a different look on things. I won't give too many spoilers. You'll just have to read and see. Speaking of which, this chapter may seem slow because it's an introduction. The real story will start hopefully next chapter... I think it'll be good... I hope...
The lullaby verses are from "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother". It's a sweet lullaby and I may be picking and choosing verses from it. They may have some meaning to the story, so try watching for it. ;)
Okay, enough said! On with the story! Put your hands together for: The Favor Trials!
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own the Hunger Games! I'm not President Snow! What I do own are my OC's and the storyline. Don't you dare steal my idea!
***PLEASE DON'T JUST STOP AT THE END OF THE PROLOGUE. IT'S A PROLOGUE. AN INTRODUCTION. DUH IT'S NOT GOOD. YOU CAN EVEN SKIP IT IF YOU WISH.***
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A little baby cries lightly as a tear falls onto its face. The water droplet is quickly wiped away, replaced by a soft voice quietly shushing it. The tiny child blows a bubble, making little sounds as its eyes examine the world around it. Though the small being doesn't know it, it will never see this place again.
"We don't have much time. Clara will be here soon." A gentle voice says, a voice the newborn does not yet recognize, and never will. The woman holding the child looks up, her wet eyes verifying that she was the one to shed the tear.
"No, it's too soon! I can't lose my baby, she's too young!" The woman cries, shaking her head desperately and holding her child closer. The little baby coos, reaching up tiny hands to grab at the woman's hair. She turns her attention back to her child, focusing on rocking it and sending it to sleep.
"None like a mother can charm away pain; from the sick soul and the world weary brain. Slumber, soft love, ore my heavy lids creep; Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep." The mother sings to her child softly. Tears fight to break free, but she holds them back. Her child need not feel the cold of sadness yet.
A tender hand touches her shoulder. The woman looks up, meeting the eyes of her friend. "Belle, I know it hurts, but you have to let go. There's no fighting it. The closer you let yourself get, the more difficult it will be to give her away." The other woman tells the mother.
Those words are all it takes to break the mother. "No! I can't lose her! They can't take her! Why her? Why me?" She cries, clutching the child close to her. The newborn begins to weep again, the beginnings of a tantrum escaping her mouth. The mother goes back to shushing the child, though she can't find her voice through the tears.
The knock at the door startles both women. The mother immediately pulls her daughter as close to her heart as she can, crying out that she won't lose her daughter as her friend goes to open the door. She creaks the door open an inch, not undoing the lock, and looks out to see who it is.
"Hazelle, it's me! Clara!" A whispered voice calls through the crack. Elizabeth gazes out at the figure in the cloak, watching as she pulls off her hood to reveal graying hair. At the site of her friend, Hazelle closes the door, unlatches the lock, and pulls it open again. Clara rushes in, brushing by Hazelle as the latter woman closes the door quickly behind her.
As soon as Clara is through the door, she hears the cries. Her head whips to the two figures on the rocking chair, one a full-grown woman, the other a small bundle of cloths. Clara approaches the two figures with an adoring face, cooing at the little swaddle of fabric. She glances at Belle, who had stopped crying when she had walked in and is now staring at her with tear-stained eyes. Clara can see the fear in them, the love for her child, the pain of losing her newborn.
"Belle, I have to take her now." Clara begins slowly. This simple sentence brings a fresh wave of tears and pleas to keep her daughter. "Belle, listen! They already dislike your family. If you disobey them now, they WILL kill you, and they WILL make you suffer. Do you want your other daughter to be motherless?" She hisses, forcing sense into the form in front of her, effectively turning weeping into whimpering.
Tentatively, Clara reaches out and takes the little girl into her arms. Belle's grip automatically tightens, but at Clara's glare, she lets go. Clara quickly pulls away before Belle can make a grab for her child, but the woman does nothing except bend over and fall into furious sobs. Clara looks at Belle with a pained face, feeling utterly sorry for the woman. She has no choice. They're forcing her to lose her child.
Clara spins on her heel and walks over to the door, where Hazelle still stands, watching the scene before her with distress. "Take care of her." Clara tells the other quickly. With one last glance over her shoulder, Clara opens the door again and walks outside into the cold night, closing the door behind her and the child.
For a moment, Clara stops to examine the bundle in her arms. Little arms reach up and grab for her nose, a little mouth making gurgling sounds. Light wisps of brown hair come from the top of her head, and eyes that will one day be a piercing silver meet hers. Such a shame to send a beautiful girl like this away... But there is no choice.
Clara takes one final breathe before hurrying down the steps and down the street, putting her head down and pulling her hood up in the hopes of going unnoticed.
In her arms, she pulls a little girl closer, protecting her from the night.
Little Evita would never see this place or go by her family name again.
This would all become just a memory...
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I walk through the fields, bouncing with a spring in my step. A wonderful melody fills the orchard, luring all the people harvesting fruit in the trees into a gentle, swaying rhythm. The song sends them to another time, a time of happiness and hope. In my hands is a beautiful silver flute, the object from which the tune originates from. As I sway through the trees, I play a soft little ditty, not something I've learned, but something from my heart.
I do this every day. It's my job. While others work as sorters, irrigators, farmhands, harvesters, and gardeners, I create music. I calm the workers' hearts and take them to another world, a better place, a land with no fear and no pain. Beyond the war and labor, beyond the suffering and destruction. I've always done this. I always will.
I can't really say when I started, or why they chose me to do it. I just always have. When I was a little girl, I always had a love for music. I found an instrument one day, just a simple panpipe. It was in a cabinet inside mayor Orian's house. I had been visiting as I always do (that's another thing that can't be explained; why I visit and he likes me, while everyone else is looked down upon), and I decided to explore. When I found it, I decided to try playing it. Orian and Mimi found me later playing a song "perfectly", in their words.
I've always been favored. I don't know why or how, I just am. It might be because I look nothing like anyone here. They all have dark skin in this place; mine is tanned, yes, but I look like the moon in the night sky compared to them. I'm smaller than all of them, too, in both height and around the middle. Yes, some people are shorter than me, but most of those smaller are also younger. And though everyone here is thin, I put a new meaning to the word "skinny". The biggest difference, though, are my eyes, which are a piercing silver-gray.
It could also be because I don't have a family. Mimi adopted me from birth. She's always taken care of me, even when I had to start taking care of her in her old age. But as far as I know, I have no real family. No mother or father, no siblings, no grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, anyone. At least, no one has claimed me.
Whatever it is, I'm different. And I'm definitely treated that way. People like me, yes, but people act like I don't belong. Take my playing for example. While everyone else is hard at work, I'm walking around making music. I've never done that work in my life. They've never asked me to, and I've never questioned it. And when I do something wrong, I don't get whipped or killed. No, I just get a stern talking to and am grounded for a long time.
There is no explanation for why all of this is the way it is. I only know two things for certain.
My name is Evita Fields.
And my home is district 11.
The song from my flute continues to ring out, wordless and beautiful, but in my head I hear the lyrics. A lullaby, one that I know, yet can't remember from where. Somewhere, I know the song was my mother's, but without any memory of her, I can't be sure. I can't remember the exact words, but then again, I never have. Instead, my mind makes up its own words.
Backward, oh backward, Time in your flight; Make me a child again, just for tonight. Come from the silence so long and so deep; Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep...
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Yeah, I know, not too exciting. So, I need major assistance! What did you think? What went well, what could go better... I can tell you now that next chapter will be VERY different. It won't be a flashback or whatever, so... Obviously. I think this story will turn out well... But I need to know that people actually like it and read it! So tell me what you think! Please! And just letting you know ahead of time: I'm in high school taking crazy-hard classes, so I'll be updating very irregularly and probably not extremely often. I'll try for once a week, but I make no promises!
P.S. I reread this and found a part that may be taken as racist... I promise that it wasn't meant that way. I'm not racist, I swear!
Ta for now!
~*FantasyForger*~