(A/N): Hello again! Here's a little treat for you this Easter weekend: a new one-shot, this time featuring Ororo Munroe, written as always by the talented InDeepDarkWood. This is an even younger Ororo than we've already seen, and features Ororo at time before she was living with her group of misfit kids, in a happier time in her life. ;)

A special thanks to sailorraven34 for their review; we're glad you're continuing to love these stories and characters!

Bread and Beards

Ororo Munroe of District Eleven

Written by InDeepDarkWood

"Love your family. Spend time, be kind & serve one another. Make no room for regrets. Tomorrow is not promised & today is short." - Unknown

"Life wasn't always so hard, O."

Ororo thought that her mother was the most beautiful person in all the district, willowy and strong and kind. She sat on the table top, her legs swinging back and forth slowly, keeping in time with the broad strokes her mother made as she kneaded the dough against the counter. The dough slapped against the rough surface, and Ororo's heel clicked the underside of the table. She liked watching Mama bake when she returned from school. Mama liked to hear stories of what she was learning; sometimes she'd give the little girl stories of her own.

"Abuya wants to know why I don't have to go to the orchards, Mama," she elaborated now, ignoring the words that had been spoken previously, because she didn't think life was so hard, with Mama baking and Pa coming home and swinging her around like a helicarrier, no matter how long his mining shift had been. He would kiss her white hair and smile beneath the grizzled beard that scratched against her cheek and make her giggle.

"Abuya shouldn't be in the orchards anyway," N'Dare replied, the dough slamming down with greater force. "That's a dangerous place, O; you promise me you stay away from them."

"I promise."

"That cousin of yours is gonna get caught up with the Sentinels one day; you better not either. Promise?"

"I promise," she said again, hopping off the table as N'Dare rounded the dough out and gestured her over with a floury finger. Picking up the fork on the counter, Ororo lifted her arms out, her mother hooking her elbows and hauling her up to adult height.

"You make the design for father today," N'Dare offered, the little girl's face scrunching up in thought for a few moments, resting against her mother, before both eyes brightened and she began to scrape a design with the fork, creating the air pockets like her mother had taught and forming them into a crude tree-shape. Once she was satisfied with her creation, she beamed as N'Dare set her down, sticking the fork into her mouth to suck off the raw dough that had clung to its sides.

"You are not supposed to do that, child," the elder admonished in soft whistles, snatching the fork away from Ororo, her own eyes twinkling as she licked the metal. "That is my job!" Clapping her hands over her mouth, Ororo giggled at her mother's antics, leaping away to avoid an exaggerated toe tap that threatened to land on her bottom. "Out you go and play, O," she continued, switching back to the legal tongue. "Don't go too far, though!" she added as the girl raced off, still laughing.

Ororo burst out of the house, the door swinging behind her on its hinges, and took an immediate handbrake turn, away from the dirty road that led to the settlement, and raced off into the rough grass and sand that made up most of the vegetation of District Eleven. There were very small hills in the district, but if you knew where to look, you could find good vantage points. Ororo ran through the shrubs, the hardy grasses scratching and scraping her lower legs, but she was used to it and barely noticed the sharp little stabs. The grasses grew more sparse the further from the settlement she got, replaced instead by deeper sand and drier air.

Everything was sandy when she got past a certain point behind her house.

Ororo kicked off her shoes, hiding them underneath a cactus, and continued on, her feet floundering in the sand and sinking low as the world began to tilt slightly and the girl began to climb the sand dune. It was in no way large and mighty like the mountains her teacher would teach of, but it was a mammoth task nonetheless to reach the top, and she was hot and sweaty and out of breath when she finally made it to the summit. Flopping down against the sand, the grains of sand rolled under her clothes and into her hair. She took a breath, tasting the grit on the very light wind, and then sat up.

The sand dune let her see for miles and miles and miles around, but most of it was desert and little settlements like where she lived. There were only two things that always caught her interest, no matter what: the large, twisting, hulking mass of a building that was a Sentinel outpost, with the acres and hectares of orchard that sprawled around and around like a maze, a sea of green in the yellow and red of Eleven. That and the dead lands to the opposite side, with the little ant-like people and machinery scurrying around it. If she listened closely, she could hear them yelling, hear the machines rumbling as they descended into the darkness of the mines.

It was one of the newer mines in Eleven; the older ones were closer to the main square, the main town, where her teacher's mountains were. They tunnelled in and around the mountain; Ororo thought they sounded a lot nicer to work in than her mine. She cupped her hand to her ear, tilting her head towards the mine, while at the same time straining her eyes to make out the ant-people better. Her Pa was there, chipping away the dirt and the dust to find some vibranium in places the Capitol hadn't thought there would be vibranium. He didn't like talking to her about the mines. "Ororo," he would say, "Some places are for sadness and some for happiness. Why bring the sad place home?"

Ororo sighed.

She wished he could be happy in all places, like how she was happy in school and at home.

She watched the ant-people for a while, listening for her father's voice, and when it didn't come, she turned her head back to the Sentinel post. That was closer to her dune than the mine, and the people that walked the perimeter she could see wore white. She could hear them sometimes, when the wind blew a certain way; she could hear them calling to each other, hear their dogs barking, hear their orchard men screaming with the lash.

Thieving children were lashed outside the school sometimes. They cried and cried, and Ororo had cried once too when she saw it, but she had never really understood what was happening until she saw the orchard men return home from a lashing propped up by friends. That frightened her far more than her friends getting whacked once or twice. Her Pa had bundled her into a tight hug when she told him what had happened. "I will never let that happen to you," he'd said. "Not everyone is as lucky as you, though. Mind them."

The sun climbed around the sky as Ororo stayed on her sand dune, flinging herself into a reclined position, her arms and legs moving in and out to create shapes in the sand. When that grew tiresome, the girl sprang up from the dune and sprinted down it as fast as she could, her heart leaping around in her chest as the fear of her leg-and-body speed mismatch grew. Then the ground levelled out, and she got a burst of new speed to return to her shoe-hiding place, tapping them against her feet to get rid of the worst of the sand, and looping back towards her house.

She detoured slightly, where the weedy grasses occasionally bloomed flowers, and picked a few purple ones, skipping back onto the dirt road and approaching from the opposite direction. Far above her head, the familiar whirr of a Capitol plane droned; looking up revealed not one but two approaching behind the plane overhead, flanking one of the large, slow-moving helicarriers. Frowning a little, she continued on, hoping that the transporter would avoid passing right overhead; the slow planes were the loudest and took the longest to move on.

She could already smell the newly cooked bread as she reached the house, inhaling deeply as she slowed to a walk. Seeing the door was still open, her face broke into a wide grin, and she found a new burst of energy, flying through the door, clutching the flowers fiercely. She burst into the kitchen, the smell of bread filling her nostrils, Mama turning quickly away from the position she had been locked in with her husband a second ago. Ororo didn't pay any attention to that, leaping towards the bearded man with an exclamation of joy.

"Pa!" Strong arms wrapped her in an embrace, somehow careful enough to avoid crushing the purple flowers while still managing to swing her around the kitchen. Loud bursts of laughter sounded from the girl until the man set her down with a ruffle of hair, and Ororo turned to her mother. "I picked you these, Mama," she said mid-handover of flowers. N'Dare inhaled the faint smell from the flowers.

"They're beautiful, O," she said, filling a jar with water and setting it in front of the centrepiece of their kitchen wall. The flowers didn't quite fit with the large photograph collage that took up near the entirety of the wall, but N'Dare smiled at it anyway. "Two beautiful things from the two most beautiful people," she continued, Ororo giggling as her Pa kissed the older woman. The drone of the helicarrier became louder as its direction of travel became clear, and the girl took advantage of her parents' distraction to break off a piece of the bread and pop it into her mouth, still warm and soft from the griddle.

"Child, you are not to take bread without asking!" her mother whistled sharply. Ororo tried to smile, but her mouth was too full of bread to do anything but bulge. "You are lucky that we love you as much as we –" N'Dare broke off as a loud rumble and a bang sounded from outside and shook the house.

Ororo looked up, and her parents looked at each other.

The rumble didn't stop, and the droning noise got louder.

"Bomb?" Mama asked, her voice barely heard above the rumbling. Her parents' eyes met, and her Pa shook his head roughly.

"Just move!" he called, yanking Ororo at the elbow and nearly pulling her arm out of her socket as the ground began to shake beneath her. And for two seconds, the world seemed to slow, and she could see the grizzled face of her father twisted in fear, and her mother reaching to grab her other arm, as though it would get her to move quicker, and Ororo wanted to ask what a 'bomb' was and why it was causing their house to shake and why they had to run.

It only slowed for two seconds, though.

On the third second, there was a bright light, and a loud noise, and a scream, and Ororo hit something hard, and something firm landed on top of her, and then everything went black.