District Eleven
Harvesting.
If there was one thing that Bean Calloway knew how to do it was harvesting a variety of plants and vegetables around the district. He knew that he wasn't the best picker around, but he relished in the fact that he knew basically what to do with many plants, rather than have a plethora of knowledge on a few.
He wanted to pass some this knowledge onto his son, so he was currently teaching him about picking good coffee beans. And if Bean was perfectly honest, he was also going to teach his son how to sneak some of the beans into his pockets or boots or anywhere else they could be hidden. Coffee was a sort of luxury item that was limited in the district thanks to the Capitol wanting as much of it as possible.
And Bean could see why, not only did it act as a mild stimulant, it also tasted good with some kind of sweetener. And if you were really lucky, you could add some kind of cream to it as well. And if worst came to worst, they could always sell the beans at a discount price.
There were other things that you could do with coffee beans as well, but Bean personally wanted to sell them so that his family could afford something good for themselves.
He didn't let those thoughts flood his mind as he went through the steps of harvesting the beans with his son, Trail Calloway, explaining the instructions from choosing which of the cherries to pick to how to rotate the drying beans. He was just finishing up on how to hopefully smuggle some of the dried beans for themselves when he concluded.
"And that's how you harvest coffee beans with a twist. Any questions?"
Bean then looked at his son, who had a look of utter confusion on his face.
"Could you repeat that?" Trail asked. "I kind of got lost there."
"Sure," the father told him. "What part did you get lost at? Rotation? How to effectively dry them? How to separate the meat from the bean?"
"All of it." Trail answered with a deadpan look. All Bean could do was sigh, as he had expected this to happen. Many people would have maybe laughed a little while others would give Trail a look of something that spelt: Are you fucking serious? They would have then discovered that Trail was not fooling around, and that he genuinely meant it. From there, reactions would vary. Bean knew which reaction he was going to take with his son.
"All right," he lightly groaned, thinking of the journey back to the harvesting fields. "Let's go back after a quick break. Hand me my canteen please."
"Why would I have your canteen?" Trail asked with confusion.
"Because I told you to-" Bean paused with realization. "You forgot it didn't you." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. One that Trail didn't deny.
"I knew I forgot something." He said as he lightly kicked the dirt.
"Well at least tell me you remembered your own, it's the middle of the afternoon and my throat feels like it could spit out cotton."
"First off," Trail said as he groped around his body. "If you could do that, that would be so freaking cool. Second of all..." Trail then stopped searching himself. "I don't have it."
The two males looked at each other in silence. One of them had mild anger on his facial features while another had mild anxiety on his. However, Bean knew that his son was also feeling a second feeling that he had within himself. Disappointment. "Should I say it or do you want to say it?"
"You can say it." Bean replied with a lazy wave of his hand as the two of them moved towards the unharvested coffee bean fields again.
"Okay." Trail half way moaned as he followed behind. "Fuck." He spat out with bitterness and displeasure.
Bean knew that Trail had attention problems. It had been present since Trail was young and it wasn't just a one time thing. It was persistent, it hindering, and most of all, it affected more than Trail in school. It affected him at home, work, and friendship as well.
Trail would forget when he needed to meet his friends, he'd forget his obligations at home, and he wasn't good at following instructions at work. He kept on losing things, which was a pain in the ass as it was hard enough to afford sending a kid into school in the first place, but somehow, Bean and his wife managed.
Trail eventually quit school though, and it wasn't just through his teachers that he decided to quit, but Bean and his wife themselves thought that Trail wouldn't be able to advance any further than where he was. At least, not without some significant improvements in his concentration and memory. Trail himself said that he'd be better off doing working the fields with his family. And while the parents wanted him to be something more than a simple farm hand, they respected his choice.
Trail had a hard time working out in the fields, not because he had an annoying habit of forgetting instructions, but because the fields were tracker hives, Trail would easily get distracted by the people talking, the mocking jacks singing, birds flying over head, and anything else you could think of.
He was, at times, more of a hindrance than an assist, and Trail seemed to know that as well. Though Bean had never said it outright, he wondered if Trail had discovered it by his own actions, or from some way he had acted. Either way, there were times where Trail would seem down in the dumps and wouldn't want to do anything and just hole himself up in the house.
Trail told him that he felt, useless. That he felt as if he couldn't do anything right, that he was just a failure because he couldn't concentrate on the right things and that he couldn't remember important things. He thought that those were the reason that people didn't like him.
They were false however, because while they were annoying traits, it wasn't as if everyone hated him. He wasn't hated by his family, and he wasn't hated by his friends either.
Sure he'd stare up into the sky when he should have been paying attention to his lessons, or he forgot that he was supposed to meet up with people, but that didn't mean that people hated him. There was also the fact that Trail could focus on a seemingly unimportant task and not be swayed away from it unless someone intervened.
Bean and his wife eventually got worried for their son as his mood seemed to get lower and lower, until they finally took him to the medics to see what was wrong with him. Trail was given two diagnoses and some medications to help him. And with that, they saw improvements with their son.
Even after Trail received his diagnoses at the age of thirteen and some medication to help combat his illnesses, he still didn't want to go back to school and decided to continue his work in the fields. And though his memory was better, Bean learned how to help in his own way.
He'd speak slower to his son and repeat instructions, show him how to do things and the like. Bean thought of his son as having a different way of learning rather than a disability.
Things weren't perfect, but not many things were.
But when the quarter quell came and announced it's twist, things went full circle and it became a cloudburst for the family.
Bean, looking at the TV, was worried for his son, because he knew that the arena was a dangerous place. One where you couldn't let your guard down. And unfortunately, Trail did that very easily.
"She's missing."
"Again?" Peara Boykin asked as he received news that, yet again, her daughter had mysteriously vanished. It wasn't all that surprising, but at the same time, it was, but most of all, it was irritating. How many times would she and her family have to search for Soya before she learned to not wander off unexpectedly? It not only put her into a cloud burst, but it could potentially put everyone else into a cloud burst as well thanks to the peacekeepers keeping a watchful eye on everyone.
If the peacekeepers thought that Soya was trying to escape from work, or just trying to take an unauthorized break, then the consequences could be severe. Though Soya should have known that by now, as she had been punished by them before, and the results weren't pretty.
Peara shook her head, knowing that she had to do something before the peacekeepers did one of the things they did best and told her friend to go back to picking the carrots before she carefully looked around for any signs of her eldest daughter.
She saw some people standing and walking about, but it was hard to spot her daughter among everyone else. She had brown skin and black hair, like the majority of District Eleven, but her hair was straight, so that was something that she could use to her advantage. Though the only people that stood out in the tracker hive were the cottons. Peara cursed as she pretended to work, all the while, continuing her search.
She wondered why Soya would want to do something like that. Why would she wander away from work or whatever she wanted to get away from. Sure the work was hard and you got tired and the such, but that didn't explain why you'd just walk away from your duties and expect to get away with it.
After scanning the area, Peara grew increasingly frustrated as she couldn't spot her troublesome daughter. She was worried, and she was angry. So she stood straight up and scanned the fields again. Again, nothing stood out to her besides the cottons and the peacekeepers with their guns and body armor.
That was when she heard the screaming. It came from behind her, so she looked behind her, expecting the worst. And what she saw, she expected. In the distance, she saw some peacekeepers struggling with someone before they dragged her towards her location.
As the bodies came closer and closer, Peara could see that the peacekeepers were dragging her daughter towards her. Peara cursed again, waiting for the peacekeepers to come and tell her to collect her daughter after they whip her.
The group of peacekeepers got close to her before they came to a halt.
Soya was being held by two peacekeepers, one on each of her arms, and it looked like they had already hit her across the face a few times. Soya, however continued to struggle, which seemed to only provoke the peacekeepers that were holding her.
"This has gone on long enough!" The lead peacekeeper, a man who only appeared to be in his mid twenties, harshly informed her as he uncoiled his whip. "You're going to teach your retarded daughter some fucking discipline!"
"I will." Peara replied, knowing that she'd have to give Soya a real long talk at home followed by a punishment.
"Good." The peacekeeper said before she shoved his whip into her hands as the two other peacekeepers dragged Soya to a scarecrow post and tied her onto it. Peara, meanwhile, knew that this was a cloud burst if there ever was one, and she knew exactly what they expected her to do. "Teach her some."
The two peacekeepers who had dragged Soya, kids that looked like they hadn't yet reached twenty, each grabbed the back of her shirt collar and yanked in opposite directions. The sound of fabric being torn filled Peara's ears as she saw her daughter's exposed back. Covered in scars from previous whippings, some of which weren't even healed yet, Peara was expected to add to it.
Looking at the unhealed scars, the ones that were crusted with a mixture of coagulated and jellied blood. Her back was discoloured and had long and narrow hills decorating her back. She didn't want to do it. She didn't want to whip her own daughter.
She knew that lead peacekeeper of the trio saw her hesitation when he talked again. "Satisfy my whip's blood lust or we'll satisfy the crow's appetite!"
Peara then flung her hand back, and then flung it forward, the whip striked Soya's back and created a new valley among her back. One that was already overflowing with red water.
Peara started to cry, feeling guilty that she was doing such a horrible act to her daughter, but knowing that she was saving her from a worse fate wasn't making it any easier. She could also hear Soya cry, but no more than what she previously had been.
She wondered how many more times she'd have to strike her daughter with the weapon in her hands, but she knew that it was going to be in the double digits. More than twenty. She felt like vomiting.
She couldn't protect her forever.
Peara knew that sooner or later, she was going to have to let Soya go and she wouldn't be able to help her survive the harsh district that they called home. But as a mother, Peara wanted her daughter to be safe and to not kill herself by doing something stupid. But that was too much to ask for, in a place like District Eleven, anything could get you killed.
Working too hard, not working hard enough, the lack of food, the lack of money, the heat, the peacekeepers, and more. Hell, she had seen someone die by overexertion because the peacekeepers had been verbally abusing them, forcing them to do something that they knew they shouldn't have otherwise done.
People did things that they shouldn't do, but Peara cared more for her family's well being, so she put more effort into making sure that they didn't make mistakes that could end them. Easier said than done when one of your daughter's is Soya Boykin. A girl that seems to lose her sense of identity and wander off to places unknown because she says that she's compulsed to.
Peara could understand why you'd want to leave the fields when something bad is happening, or when you're tired and in pain, but normal people didn't just get up and walk away in District Eleven. No. They do that and they risk getting punished by the peacekeepers.
But it was like a switch went off in Soya's brain and made her not in control of her actions. But what really worried Peara and her husband was that she lost sense of who she was while under the influence of the wandering.
And it just didn't affect her at work either, it affected her in the house and around her friends as well. Nobody was safe Soya's disappearance. Hell, Peara had had her husband make sure that the windows were permanently locked and made sure Soya stayed in her room at night. The rest of the family despised that move since it made the house even more roasting, especially in the summer, but it helped make Soya safe. Most of the time.
Stress and worry were everyday occurrences for her and her husband because of Soya. They could never relax, it made it hard to sleep, it made it hard to work, and most of all, they had wondered what would happen to Soya if she moved out of the home.
For two years they lived in worry before they finally took her to the medics to see what was wrong with her, the medics gave her a diagnoses at age fourteen and told her what might have caused it. She and her husband then did everything they could to reduce the risk, but in District Eleven, it wasn't easy. Especially for them, since they were used to living with it.
Still, they tried to help their daughter. They didn't want her to end up dead on their watch. And even if she wasn't on their watch, they didn't want her to end up dead pre-maturely.
Looking at the screen in front of them, they knew that there was nothing they could do to keep her safe. Peara hated that feeling.
District Twelve
Clemency Burnout was scared.
It wasn't the first time that she felt that way, and she knew that it wasn't going to be the last time she felt such a sensation, it was only the most recent. And with this encounter, Clemency knew how to kind of keep her composure and hopefully make sure that things didn't escalate too far.
Her mind was racing and she felt her breathing and heart rate get quick, but she didn't let it overwhelm her. She wanted to remain as calm as possible and resolve the situation as quickly and calmly as possible without there being any kinds of casualties.
The man in the room with her and her son however, was the complete opposite. He was acting frantic and only seemed to be feeding the fire of conflict within the household. But of course, she knew that he probably didn't expect a ten year old to be holding a knife to him and so casually shout and threaten him.
"P- Put the knife down, b- Boy." The man muttered with fear dripping out of his mouth. He held his hands up for meager protection, but the only reason Ryan wasn't charging at him was because Clemency was between the two males.
"You think you can just waltz into here and take my mom away!" Ryan shouted with unreserved rage as he continued to point the knife towards the man. "You think you can just come into our lives and replace my dad! Fucking asshole! Answer me!"
"Ryan," Clemency said in a coolly manner, making sure that Ryan didn't get any closer to the guest. "No one's going to replace your dad. Nobody can replace Colton."
"Then why the fuck is he here?" Ryan harshly asked, glaring at the man with fire in his eyes as he jabbed the knife in his direction. "He wants to take you away!"
"He's just a friend." Clemency replied evenly.
"That's what they all say!" Her son countered.
"We just see each other sometimes and-"
"See each other? See each other!"
"Not like that, Ryan."
"So what, you want to replace me with some bastard child and replace dad with this cocksucking piece of shit?"
"No. No of course not." Clemency told her son, wondering what could make him think that she'd want to replace him and Colton with that man. "He doesn't even want that anyway."
"Well..." The man said uneasily, something that Clemency instantly knew was a mistake. It was too late to avoid it, and she wished that he had just kept his thought to himself. Clemency reacted at the same time Ryan did.
"What?" Ryan screamed as Clemency held Ryan back as he swung the knife wildly past her. "I knew it! I fucking knew it! You want to take her away!"
"Ryan-" Clemency started, but didn't get to continue as Ryan swiftly backed away from her. Clemency got ready to intercept Ryan, thinking that he was going to try and rush past her, but to her surprise, he didn't. All Ryan did was back up and hold the knife out.
"And you!" He shouted at her. "You want to abandon me for this guy! You want another child that's not me! You want to forget about me and dad you bitch!"
"That's not true!" Clemency told Ryan, thinking of how she never wanted a relationship with that guy in the first place.
"Well then great! You can be with that guy and get different kid!" Ryan raged before he placed the sharp end of the blade to his throat. "At the cost of my life!"
Clemency was shocked by what Ryan was doing. No. Not shocked, just surprised, and worried. Extremely worried, as Ryan had threatened suicide before. Not only that, but he had a habit of hurting himself as well, so she had no doubt in her mind that Ryan might, just might, actually slit his own throat.
"Ryan no!" Clemency shouted, losing all the calmness she had.
"If you choose him, I'll kill myself! So choose! It's either him or me! Him! Or me! Choose which one of us matters more to you!"
She of course, choose Ryan.
It was an easy decision, really. She never wanted to go out with that man in the first place, and there was no way that she was ever going to try and replace Colton Burnout, no matter what her friends said to her.
Her friends said that she deserved to have someone that made her happy in her life. That she needed someone that hadn't been a black out like Colton. People often wondered why out of everyone in the district, she choose him. Why after all the years of being alone with Ryan that she choose to remain with single. They said that with her looks that she could get lots of men at her heels.
They didn't understand. They didn't understand how she felt for her late husband.
And then there was Ryan. If there was anything that made the men retreat from her, it was Ryan, a seemingly out of control and violent child that had intense mood swings that changed at the drop of a hat. Sometimes it was so fluid that he could have three different mood swings in the course of a minute. He was unpredictable.
So only the barvest of men tried to seduce her. She turned them all down anyway. She didn't want them hurt, nor did she want Ryan hurt. But as much as she did to try and prevent Ryan from harm, harm always seemed to find him anyway.
Ryan would hurt himself by many methods. Cutting himself was the most common, but Ryan also liked to burn himself, punch and kick things, headbutt things, stabbing himself with needle like objects, biting himself, and other means. And because of his threats of suicide, she always worried that he'd carry it out. That the one time that she didn't believe him...
And even if he didn't try to kill himself, there were other ways that he could die. Ryan couldn't contain his anger very well, which resulted in many fights through the district. There was also high drug use and recklessness on his part. Which is why every time Ryan ran away from home she'd expect to find him laying out in an alley somewhere, dead because of a fight or drug overdose.
But if there was anything that kept the men away more than just Ryan being an unstable, alcohol consuming, drug using, violent person, and why Clemency couldn't abandon Ryan besides the fact that he needed help and he was her son, it was Ryan's greatest fear. Abandonment. If there was anything that triggered Ryan, it was the mere thought that someone would abandon him. And not just her, but others as well.
What little friends Ryan managed to make, he'd want to make sure that they didn't leave him, and would go to lengths beyond reasonable to try and keep them around. The mere thought of abandonment sent him over the edge.
There was also the fact that one second you could be the greatest thing ever, and the next second, you're the worst thing ever. You'd never know when Ryan's thought of you changed.
When Ryan was ten, she finally decided to take him to the medics. They diagnosed him with two mental health labels and gave him medication to help combat the symptoms.
At age thirteen she took him in again when he started to shout to himself and gained more intense paranoia. He was given another diagnoses and more medication. At age fourteen he was given his final diagnoses.
She often wondered if it was because of Colton's suicide when Ryan was only six.
She also often wondered if there was something more that she could have done. For both Colton and Ryan. There were things wrong with both of them, but she held onto them, because she loved them. It was a harsh life, and not just because it was District Twelve.
She endured their antics, their despair, their thoughts of cave ins. She endured the two men that meant the most to her, even though they were sever black outs. Endured the false words they said to her, the anger they displayed to her and others, the whispers of the district. She endured them all. Because she loved them. Despite their fatal flaws, she loved them.
She rubbed her back as she watched the screen in front of her, not wanting her son to burn out. She knew that there was a high chance he was going to die, and though she didn't want that to happen, she hoped that he wouldn't burnout first.
"Have you tried going to bed earlier?"
"I have, and it hasn't done a thing."
Fay sighed as she had ran out of ideas to keep her friend awake during the middle of the day. Or at least, every idea that her eight year old brain could rack up.
"Okay." Fay said as she placed a hand to her head. "There has to be something that can keep you awake. What's a couple of Dime Shines got to do to accomplish something like this?"
"Ask an adult?" Ashton suggested, to which Fay waved her hand about in front of her face.
"Adults don't know nothing, they'll just say," she then did a pretty bad imitation of an older woman's voice. "Stay awake Ashton. It can't be that hard to stay awake."
"Well they're bound to know something that we don't." Ashton told her.
"They might know things, but that doesn't mean that they'll take us seriously." Fay responded. "If anything, they'll just think that you're staying up too late doing... Something. I don't know."
"Well there has to be something that we can do to make it stop. I hate it. I'm always tired, which isn't normal, and I'm scared that it'll happen again. What if it never ends?" Fay could see that her friend was getting worried, and placed her hands on her shoulder for support in an attempt to calm her down.
"It will end, trust me, but for now, we just have to find a way to keep you awake."
"Yeah." Ashton said, her fear lowering with each passing second. "Yeah. You're right."
"Of course." Fay said with a smile. "Speaking of which, I've got an idea. It's bound to work."
"What is it?" Ashton asked as Fay took a hold of her hand with one of her's and lead her down the hallway.
"It involves a bucket of ice water." Fay answered. She then looked back to her friend, still smiling. "My mom threatens to do that to me if I don't wake up in the morning. And if she thinks doing it will wake me up in the morning, then it's bound to wake you up if you have a nap attack."
It didn't work.
Nothing worked with her. When she feel asleep, she stayed asleep. Even throwing water on her didn't help very much as the only thing it did was jolt her awake, send her into shock, then she'd fall asleep again. And there was nothing that Fay could do to help her friend.
In all the years that she had known Ashton, she had seen the effects of what sudden sleep attacks did to her. It caused people to think that she was more interested in sleeping than in them, or that she just wasn't interested in what them in general and just wanted to get away from them, using the excuse of sleep to do so.
And even when she didn't fall asleep, she was always tired, like she wanted to go to sleep anyway. Her concentration also suffered as well, and it was a wonder she was still even in school. Fay had helped her get as far as she had gone because she took down notes on what the instructors had given and assisted her with her homework as well. But there were some things that she couldn't help with either.
Ashton had a job of refining the oil for the oil lamps and filling said oil lamps up for the miners in the lamp stamp part of the district when they ran out. They were fully capable of doing it themselves, but after hours of back breaking work in the mines, they would rather get as much sleep as they could and let someone else do it for them for a small fee.
It was one of the only jobs that Ashton felt she was capable of. Refining oil and filling oil lamps. Fay honestly felt sorry for her, but she hated the fact that she felt more like her mother at times and less like a friend.
She couldn't be around for Ashton all the time, and sometimes, it seemed as if she depended on her. Maybe it was because no one else was her friend. Maybe it was because her parents were busy with their lives as well.
But still, as much as she despised feeling like a parent to Ashton, she wouldn't leave her. She knew how Ashton felt about her condition. Hell, she had seen her cry over it, wondering if it would ever stop. And Fay was there to comfort her.
Ashton's family took her to the medics when she was twelve, and that was when she received her diagnoses. She didn't take any meds because of the side effects, and because Ashton didn't want to become depended on the drugs. So it was up to them to try and figure out another way to help her. But they found none. They never did, and that's when Fay just preyed that it would end when they got older.
And with Ashton now in the arena, Fay knew that they found a solution to their problem, because it was more than likely going to go away now that they were older. Just not in the way she'd have liked.
A/N: Well this if finally over. Thank God.
Now for the generic New Year joke: Man, this is the first chapter I've posted all year!
All kidding aside, we're one step closer to the games, hopefully only four or five more chapters. And in the next chapter, we'll be introducing what some of their illnesses are.
So nobody noticed what was odd about the blog pictures for this long, so I guess I'll say the answer: None of them are smiling.