District Twelve's Maddie Peters' POV:
"Maddie you can be such a pain in the butt at times" sighs Kelly as she nudges me out of the way, my class has been drafted in to help move a fallen tree branch from the school yard and no matter how hard I try they won't let me anywhere near it.
"Oy" I protest quietly, "I want to help"
"There's nothing you can help with" Yake tells me as he saws at the base of the branch.
"Yeah Maddie can you please just get out of the way you're not helping" Hanna says "Just go sit out of the way and relax" she smiles kindly and I admit defeat. Shuffling over to the other side of the yard I sit under another tree. I look up at the overgrown branches and wonder if they'll have to cut off some of its branches too, so they don't fall off like the other trees.
"You'll survive Mr Tree" I say as I tap the tree with my left hand.
The tree doesn't respond.
I watch my classmates for a while as they laugh as they work, feeling totally useless I stand up and without a word the teacher who ordered us all to stay behind lets me leave the school yard.
As I walk down to my house in the Seam I spot Clarissa sat outside her house poking the ground with a stick, she looks bored.
"Maddie" she cries as she jumps up from her porch and throws the stick on the ground "Thought your class was on tree duty today".
"I left" I say "they wouldn't let me help, because well you know." Using my left arm I grab at my useless, broken, right one and lift it up before dropping it. I feel it slap to my side, but as usual my arm feels nothing.
Clarissa sighs "You need to stop doing that" she says "it obviously upsets you, even after all these years."
"Nah just when it stops me having fun"
"Maddie tree duty is not fun" Clarrisa informs me "It's boring and hard, look lets go to the meadow instead."
"Sure" I say as I follow her to the meadow that separates the far end of the seam with the world outside our small District. We perch on a tree stump near the fence and Clarissa looks into the forest before us.
"What's out there?" she asks me.
"Wolves" I reply darkly, it was a wolf who ravished my right arm, rendering it useless. It happened when I was five in this very field, I was playing making a fairy house with some sticks and grass when it snuck up on me and attacked me. Luckily a peacekeeper was patrolling the field when it happened and he shot the beast dead. I think he thought I was dead too as he left me lying there bleeding as he went to study the fence the wolf had snuck through, he commented on how it really needed to be repaired and walked away.
It was hours later my Dad found me and carried me home, I thought I was going to die but I didn't.
They did fix the fence though, the tattered remains of the silent fence Katniss Everdeen herself used to sneak through to hunt in the woods with Gale were torn away and a new fully functional electric fence was put in its place. Me and Clarisse come here often, me to reflect on losing my arm, her to...
"Why do you like it here?" I ask her "It's always your decision to come?"
"Because beyond there is freedom" she replies "Beyond there is the food that Katniss hunted, the escape route to District Thirteen, everything I ever dreamed off is out there."
"District Thirteen is gone for good" I remind her "Katniss and her sister are dead and there are wolves out there."
"There are peacekeepers in here" she replies "Ones who leave five year olds bleeding on the grass."
"I'm going home" I say standing up "I don't want to be here anymore."
"Oh please don't go" Clarissa sighs "I was so bored till you showed up"
"Well I'm not much for good company today am I?"
"Please!" she begs "Please don't leave me here alone."
I sit back down
"What's really wrong Clarissa?" I ask sitting back down.
"I'm just scared" she says
"About what, the reaping?"
"Not just that, just what comes after."
"We all go home, all except those who don't of course"
"I mean when I turn Eighteen, then I have to work in the mines or find something else. Then I have to live my life in this District and have kids with some other miner. Then they'll have to suffer the reapings till they turn eighteen then they'll have kids and they'll have to suffer the reapings. What's the point?!"
"Life" I reply "take it from the girl who almost died in this very field. Life is the reason."
District Twelve's Velorum Erwin's POV:
"Velorum" cries my Grandmother weakly "please come here"
I groan and drop the knife I'm using in the kitchen, I was making her carrot soup like she asked for before, what more did she want.
"Yes Grandmother" I say sticking my head around the bedroom door where she lies on the old four-poster bed, one of the few pieces of furniture we still own.
"Velorum I'm so cold" she cries "I'm shivering" I reach up to feel her forehead, it's warm, she'd probably got another flu. The third time in as many months, I added some more wood to the fire place in the other room just before I'd started chopping and I was already sweating.
I look around the room for another blanket and can find only one. It's lying on my sleeping mat and I'm not willing to give up my only piece of bedding just yet.
"Wait a minute grandma" I say "the heat from the fire will reach you soon, and I'm making soup."
She moans in response and I wander back to the kitchen, the water on the stove has started to boil so I throw in the old pork bones I'd stolen from the butcher. Yummy.
"Velorium" Grandmother cries again "I'm so hungry"
"Soon Grandma" I cry in response.
I'm finishing the single carrot the greengrocer had given me out of pity and adding it to the pot when she cries for me a third time, she's still cold so I slump back into our room and throw my blanket over her.
Soon she'll be dead my evil brain informs me then you'll be free. I shake my head to throw the thoughts from my brain, if she died I'd literally have nobody left, then where would I be, in my two roomed shack with its wood burning stove, single chair and single bed. Alone.
I move back to the kitchen and throw some wild greens into the pot and throw on the lid to the pot before slopping onto said single chair for a moment.
Ever since Grandma got ill I've had to drop out of school and start selling almost everything we own to provide for us as I care for her in her last few months. We can't make her better I've spoke to so many people and everyone says the same thing, that she's beyond help and all I can do is 'make her comfortable'
But what about me, what about my comfort, my happiness I'm only 14 for Panem's sake and no one gives a crap about me. I rub a tear from my eye and look at the door of our home, I could leave at any moment, just walk out that door and resign myself to starving to death in the wilderness but I couldn't do that. I'm too stubborn to die and so is my Grandma.
"Velorum I'm so cold"
I stand up and pull the lid off the pot, it looks like dirty water and the carrots are still solid but I scoop out a bowl anyway for her, making sure to miss the carrots as I know she'll never be able to chew them.
"Soup Grandma" I say as I scoop it into her mouth slowly, she struggles to swallow it down but when she does I give her another spoon. She doesn't really know what's happening anymore I don't think, the illness had riddled her brain but how ashamed she would be to look at herself like this, so defenceless and sick.
She used to be so healthy and vibrant in her youth, I know because I found an old photograph in a box of stuff I was searching in for some jewellery to sell. She grew up in District Thirteen and was one of the few to escape at the end of the rebellion. I know this from gossip around the District square, Sylvia Kat Erwin, the last baby to be born in Thirteen, smuggled out at the end of the war and left with a woman in the newly re-established Twelve. Which at that point was no more but a prison camp.
Not that it's changed much since then, people like my parents still die needlessly in the mines and no-one can make my Grandma better.
I lose concentration for a moment in my anger at it all and accidently spill some of the soup onto her blanket.
"I'm sorry" I cry "I'm trying so hard" I drop the bowl and the barely flavoured water spills onto the floor. "I'm so sorry Grandma".
"Stand up Solider Erwin" she orders, an old Thirteen term used to great people. She doesn't really order it though, she speaks kindly to me, trying to inspire me I suppose.
I pick up the bowl as the rest of the soup soaks into the dirt floor and stand up. "I'm sorry, I'll get you some more" I say
"No" she snaps "I'm tired now" she rolls over and seems to be asleep in a moment. I turn back to the kitchen.
"Velorum" my shoulders sink, what now?
"I'm too hot; take your blanket off me" she orders, I turn back and grab my blanket taking it through to the main room, I refill the bowl with a bit more of the soup and crunch through the carrots and porky water till I feel like I've at least eaten something. Taking my blanket I find my grubby thin sleeping mat back in the bedroom and lie down. I can hear Grandma snoring again and for a moment I'm really happy, because I know one day probably pretty soon, I'll wake up and I won't have a Grandma anymore. Then I suppose I won't have anything worth living for.
Head Gamemaker Otho White's POV:
Charm Bowers is a useless escort, I can tell this already he's rushing through his speech and keeps looking back towards Quintus for some kind of validation. If I could I'd drag him off that stage right now and replace him. But his parents are powerful so I'll have to give him a couple of years at least.
He finishes his speech and smiles down at the crowd "now whose excited for my very first reaping" he cries, a bad move as some twelve year old in the crowd bellow begins to cry.
He laughs nervously, "I'll do the boys first I think" he moves quickly over to the boys bowl and pulls out a name from the top.
"Velorum Erwin" he calls and after a moment a skinny boy with sad eyes walks slowly from the crowd, he wears a ripped white shirt and grubby black pants, around his arm is wrapped a black band. This is the traditional symbol of mourning in the outer Districts, poor kid has just lost someone close to him and now we're dragging him into the games, excellent. The crowd love a good sob story.
Velorum stands still next to Charm who is excitedly asking for volunteers. His shoulders are shrugged his eyes looking far into the end of the crowd. How tragic.
Charm pulls a slip out of the girls bowl and calls the name "Maddie Peters".
If I thought the boy looked tragic, the girl is even worse. The crowd parts nervously for her and my eyes dart from her bare feet to the way her right arm hangs at her side, it doesn't look functional to me. She begins to cry as she gets to the bottom of the stairs and grabbing onto her shoulder the peacekeeper stood at the bottom shoves her up into Charm's arms.
"Will anyone volunteer for this dear girl" he asks holding her out towards the crowd.
Silence.
Charm wrinkles his nose as he asks the two of them to shake hands. I can tell that wasn't at all what he expected from his first reaping, two young damaged children. Oh well at least his work as an escort will be over quickly and he can go back to his parties.
I watch the two tributes farewells out of the corner of my eye as I begin to compose a note to the president asking her for her opinions on the tributes. The girl has a few visitors, family and a friend who gives her a token. The boy sits alone. He doesn't cry though just keeps on staring forward.
A/N: Thanks to Epicness by Liv for Maddie, I made her a bit more talkative as I already had too many silent tributes, hope you don't mind. Thanks to Vaan Levy for Velorum too, hope you like him.