District One

Glimmer

No one ever expected anything great of me. I was just the pretty girl, destined to marry the rich man and produce beautiful, rich children. But I never wanted any of that.

I didn't want Ellsworth, the most eligible bachelor in town, and I didn't want any little golden-haired children left for my tending. I was always fighting for my right to be independent. My sister Shimmer had married off three years before I volunteered for the games, at a mere nineteen years old.

She was the pride and joy of my mother's eyes. And I was to be her next jewel, next daughter to parade around town, showing off the shiny rock resting on my finger.

As I form of defiance I had been training for years, as more of a hobby than anything, though no one ever bothered to teach me. Nothing was to come of it, as it was just to spite my mother and Shimmer.

I was a lost cause, never going to the games. So they thought.

But when Ellsworth led me to the clock tower at sunset and dropped down on one knee I knew. Knew that I would rather die than be trapped in a life I didn't want. A life of endless days and never ending responsibilities for things I had never asked for.

It was one thing to care for something you wanted. But to have it forced upon you was a completely different subject, in uncharted territory.

At that point the reaping was a halting one week away, but my mind was made up. So when they asked for volunteers, I rushed to it without a moment's hesitation. Many were horrified, but I was impassive throughout the whole ordeal, keeping my gaze locked on my mother.

She glared, tears glistening, un-fallen, in her sharp green eyes. She never came to visit me. Shimmer did, but more out of pity than anything else, for my father had died when I was an infant and she felt that it was only proper to have some family there.

Ellsworth came after her, though no words her spoken, and a deep curtain of sorrow shrouded the air surrounding him. I could feel nothing but a dark form of weightlessness, propelling me away from the one thing I feared most.

After all, I had no intention of winning. Coming home and producing even richer, more beautiful babies.

That was out of the question. I was to lose, and to lose quickly.

When they took the ring, with the poisonous spike in it, I was more relieved than anything. I had never known it was in there, though I suspect Ellsworth did. Probably another silly form of protection he had been trying to force of me for years. Pepper spray, switch blades, etc.

I dropped it into the peacekeepers hand and let it go without a second glance. The weight was gone.

In the games themselves, I woke to the sound of a serrated blade being dragged across a suspended tree branch, from high above. Knowing what she was doing, I stayed still.

Though I did my best to subtly rouse the others from sleep, Peeta first, the rest not far behind. The only one who woke fully was Peeta, and he was on his feet before the nest skimmed the leaf-covered ground.

The others didn't take long, scrambling and running for their lives. But I lay still as the swarm overpowered me, pretending to be too far in sleep to escape.

Though I couldn't help the screams that ripped from my raw throat, still burning from the flames the previous night. It hurt like nothing I had ever felt. When my vision began to shift and fade I willed myself to death, thinking of an old lullaby my sister had sung to me as a toddler.

I died with her face flashing before my eyelids. Not Ellsworth, the man I was supposed to be in love with. Not my mother, who had caused all this to begin with. Not my father, who I was deprived of knowing.

My sister. Who accepted an unwanted fate more willingly that I could've dreamed of. In my mind, walking into something she didn't want was braver than leaving it all behind for a death match.

The pride and joy of our family on all aspects.