I was going to be late.

I always thought I was going to be late whenever this day came around. I would spend too much time out in the fields with the stupid cows, dreading when the awful hour would come around and I would have to stand out in the square with a bunch of other scrawny girls just like me as we hoped that our name wasn't called. It was going to be my third year experiencing this, but I could already feel that butterfly sensation flutter in my stomach with the recognition of the usual tension of the day.

My name was on six slips of paper. Each year I had registered my name then added one more for tessarae. My family, especially my elder brothers, had insisted that I not do it, but they had no more right to tell me what to do than the old bird that sat beside our doorstep each morning. They had entered for tessarae, so why couldn't I? I was just as responsible, just as capable as they were. I knew for a fact that I was smarter than them. It wasn't saying much, but I thought I could handle myself. It wasn't like I was going to get chosen anyway. I had the firmest belief that the selections were somehow rigged. For the past six years a thirteen-year-old girl had been chosen from our district. There was definitely no way I was getting chosen. I finally took one last look at all the cows lazily chomping on the grass before them and found myself wishing I could be one of them. I could relax and eat all day and never have to work, but there was always the inevitable slaughter at the end. I didn't know if I wanted to risk bliss for death, but weren't we all doomed to the same end anyway? My chances of reaching that end only went up today. Being a cow seemed more attractive now than it had just a week ago. They were lucky. They didn't know when they were going to die, or even what death was. It was never an ominous thought in the back of their mind. Those lucky jerks.