For the last two hours I've been getting a full body wax and so many oils and crèmes rubbed into my body I begin to wonder if my skin just will be flaking off in a minute or two. I'm lying on a small bed-like thing in a room deep under the city, just waiting for my stylist to come. I try imagining how he or she will look like, because of what I've seen so far, Havanna is just as normal as any of us from 4. Here I've seen people with blue, purple and orange skin, I've seen them wear spandex clothes, fur, leather, and I don't know what the hell that was one of the girls in the crowd had on… I just hope my stylist won't be all too crazy looking.

After a while a woman comes in; she has long, white hair but she doesn't seem to be older than twenty-five so I guess it's been died, but other than that she actually looks rather normal.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Ember, and I'm your stylist."

"Hi."

"So I guess you're wondering what I'm going to make you wear tonight at the tribute parade?" As I begin to answer she continues:

"Well, of course you are, so just let's get the dress out." I sigh out loudly, relieved at the word dress, as it means I won't be wearing fish nets today. I watch her as she takes out a slim dress that glistens in the light. It seems to consists of scales, like a fish, and when these scales hit the light, they sparkle. I would guess that the dress is blue, but I'm not all that sure, since every time I try to watch one specific scale it will find the light and begin to shimmer. We try it on me and find that it fits perfectly, it really shows of how thin I am, but it also gives me some curves. I'm quite fond of the dress, even though it is filled to the brim with scales just like a fish.

With that I'm supposed to wear some huge stiletto shoes, but when she sees how horrible I'm at walking in them, she gives me a pair of flat shoes instead and I feel a whole lot safer on my feet instantly. Ember puts up my hair and does my make-up, and soon I don't look like myself anymore. I look, in lack of other terms, dangerous, and how she managed to do that with this dress I'll never know.

We go out to the hall where our chariots are, and as I see Typher next to our chariot, stroking our two black horses across their manes, and I instantly start walking towards him. He is wearing a suit, covered in the same scales as me, and I know we'll look at least somewhat good together. As I get next to him I say:

"Hi."

"Hi, I see you too are looking like a fish."

I giggle and respond: "Yeah, but it sure beats those fishnets the kids wore last year; that just looked wrong."

He laughs: "Oh yeah, poor kids."

The music starts around us and we quickly walk around our chariot and step up. Ember walks up to us and tell us not to smile, we are supposed to look dangerous, intimidate the others. I begin to wonder how they figured out this strategy, because Typher really doesn't look dangerous even if he tries to, not with that teddy bear aura of his, but I go along with it instead of opposing it.

In front of us a door opens and the horses pulling District 1 start walking towards it, then 2 and 3. When our horses starts walking I instinctively grab Typher's hand, as I almost fall over right from the beginning, but when I've regained my balance and begin to loosen my grip he takes a harder grasp and whisper to me:

"Just hold on, you might fall over again." And then he fires a small smile at me before concentrating on looking dangerous. I decide to hold on, because he might be right; I could lose my balance again, and it wouldn't really be surprising actually to tell the truth.

I too start to concentrate on looking as dangerous as I can, which usually wouldn't scare anybody, but with this make-up I look ferocious.

I'm rather proud of myself for not losing my balance again when our horses stop after our ten minutes long trip down the lane before stopping under the president's seat. He stands up, goes to the microphone in front of him and welcomes us to the Capitol and hopes we will have some rewarding days here. We're then pulled away by the horses and as soon as they stop in the hall again I jump off our chariot. Although I quite like horses, I won't be riding one of these things again. Not that I'm likely to live long enough to be given the opportunity anyway.


When we're all back at our suite at level 4 of this building - same as our district to make it simple - we all sit down near the TV-screen to look at the tribute parade rerun to watch. I sit down next to Typher and he takes my hand again and squeezes it lightly, but he doesn't let go, and I don't bother to let it go either.

On the screen the show host, Hewitt Kales, appears and starts talking about how exiting this year is going to be, that there is an exciting mixture of tributes, as if to say there hasn't been any other year then? Then the doors open and I get to see how all the other tributes did, as well as myself. I'm finding myself looking just as ferocious as I thought I did, but what surprises me is that Typher looks even meaner than me, and how he pulled that off I do not know.

When the broadcasting ends Havanna shouts out how good we did, and that we just must get a lot of sponsors because of this, but I think they won't decide just yet, at least not till our scores been decided and broadcasted. When Havanna finally stops going on and on about our performance she sends us straight to bed, telling us we need to be ready for our first training session tomorrow.