Chapter Twelve.
District Ten.
Shual Armenteros, 18 years old;
District Ten Male.
It was a miserable morning. A cloud that spanned the usually blue, vacant sky loomed above Ten with an eerie sense of foreboding. Yesterday it had been boiling to the point where Shual had found it difficult getting back from the centre on horseback, clothes clinging to his skin, sodden with sweat. Tomorrow, Shual knew just to tease them all it'd be sweltering once more, when life returned to normal for Shual and the rest of them, where work became the forefront of his life and everything else background noise.
But today… Shual hated to sit idly by as the minutes trickled down into hours that slowly counted by on the mental clock he kept in his head. He was outside the barn where they kept some of their animals, sat on a stump from a freshly cut tree they'd used for kindling the other day. There was an electricity in the air, something sad yet mystifying, the grey blanket above ready to pour and pour harshly.
"We have to walk in this?" Gawain, Shual's best friend, seven years his senior, said as he gestured to the dark sky. "Can we not use a horse? It'll be quicker."
"No," Shual said, dismissing the idea, yet quietly wishing it could be otherwise. "If we leave in about thirty minutes, we'll make it in time. There's not much else we can do but wait."
"It's boring."
"Yes."
"So let's do something," Gawain complained.
"Like?" Shual waited for him to say something but his best friend just shrugged his shoulders and waved in the air, shooing the thought away. "Besides, you aren't even eligible today."
"Shouldn't you be, like, quaking in fear or something? Hugging a cow for comfort? That's what I'd be doing right about now. I can't believe I went through six years of this hell."
"You're a hero," Shual's voice was deadpan, staring at his friend and then the clouds as they began to open and thick, cool droplets of water fell to the ground below. "I don't really think about it, I suppose. It is what it is."
"What an oddly cold way of looking at the possibility of dying."
Shual shook his head calmly. "You just said it yourself. Possibility. Why bother wasting my time on something just because it's only possible? I'd prefer to focus on the inevitability that tomorrow we have a whole day of work ahead and nothing is ready." He looked at the large expanse of open grass around them, trees in the distance, farmland belonging to his family and a few others that lived on the very outskirts of Ten. With so much going on in Shual's life, and so many people that shirked their responsibilities, something like a Reaping day genuinely felt like nothing more than a silly distraction. The only reason he gave it any thought was because it meant he couldn't be kept busy with work, and that his best friend wouldn't shut up about it.
And Jemima. Don't forget Jemima.
He thought of the poor little girl as the light pitter patter of footsteps broke the hammering of the relentless rain. "Shual, it's cold out here. Hi, Gawain."
"How you doing, Jemima?"
Shual's younger sister – thirteen years old – smiled at Gawain and then once again returned to look at Shual. "Mum and dad say you should come in, the both of you. For once they're in agreement."
"That's a first," Shual said seriously. At the look on Jemima's face, eyes wide open, a clear tremble in her lip, Shual's heart warmed just a little, the tightness in his face easing enough for him to stand up from the tree stump and pat it kindly. "Come on, sit. If there's one thing Gawain is good for, it's a distraction."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Jemima chuckled and did as her elder brother asked. She swung her legs back and forth, head tilted backwards as she opened her mouth to let the raindrops wash her face. "I actually kind of like it out here."
"Why?" Shual asked. He himself was the exact same – sun, rain, snow, hail, it didn't matter so long as it didn't get in the way of being productive. "You said it yourself, it's cold."
"It just feels real, you know. Against my skin. It's easier to focus on the rain than on what's coming up in a few hours."
Once again, Shual's stomach twisted. He genuinely didn't care about the prospect of himself being reaped and that wasn't because he didn't think it was impossible, or that he wasn't scared, or that killing children was a hobby of his; no it was simply because the chances were so low that with a mind like Shual's that worked on actualities and cold, harsh fact, being reaped just didn't line up.
He was so focused on tomorrow's long list of things that needed doing, it just did not matter.
But Jemima was here, sat in front of him, obviously scared of what might happen, and Shual was too. Because her odds were even lower, yet the fear in his heart was palpable. What if she is chosen … she can't … she doesn't …
"Shual?"
His sister's voice snapped him out of the dark possibilities that swarmed his mind. Don't think that. It's practically impossible that she will be chosen. "Sorry. I just … sometimes get caught up in my head."
"We've noticed," Gawain laughed, smiling at Jemima who chuckled back. "It's alright bud to be nervous."
"I'm not, though," Shual said. "At least, I don't think I am."
Jemima wrapped him in a hug, her arms tight around his waist as Shual closed the gap, placing a hand on the top of her drenched hair. He felt the sibling love between the two of them and embraced it comfortingly, allowing for one moment a break in his otherwise clean-cut disposition, where the world wasn't so black and white and things didn't always need to be analysed and looked at in a way where everything was a distraction from Shual's work.
Jemima could be called a distraction, but she wasn't. She's my sister.
Gawain, for all his noise, wasn't a distraction either, not really. He's my best friend.
A thick drop of rain splashed against the back of his head and trickled down his spine, running a shiver down his back that made Jemima laugh as she watched her brother twist uncomfortably. "It's your last year, Shual. Your last year."
Shual grimaced at the thought. For a moment, tomorrow's work did not matter, it lingered on the peripheral. For all his complaining that no one really did enough work, Shual knew he preferred to do it himself anyway because he always did a better job. But today wasn't like that. Today, Shual was just one of thousands put in the exact same position, and if he was chosen, it wasn't like he actually knew what he was doing.
None of them did.
Carys Lavell, 16 years old;
District Ten Female.
"Stupid, fucking, useless piece of-"
"Carys!" Her fist halted in mid-air, two inches from the ripped open cheek of the dummy in front of her, haphazardly erected on a wooden stick. It stood next to another dummy, and another, a long line of the miserable looking things far away enough from her house so her parents couldn't see.
She looked at her younger brother, Hale Lavell, dark brown eyes blown-wide with surprise. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, banging at her ribs, adrenaline firing in every vein. Sweat left her choppy hair clinging to her scalp in angry desperation. This whole idiotic picture screamed angry desperation.
"What?" Her voice came out harsher than she'd intended. She regretted it instantly. "I mean … what?"
"You shouldn't say things like that. Those words are just plain mean."
"It's a fucki- it's a dummy, Hale. It can't hear me."
"No but I can," he shook his head, clearly bothered by Carys' brazen attitude towards her lifeless punching bags. "And I don't like it."
She sighed, swiping away at a strand of hair that got caught in the breeze. It was beginning to rain and quite hard at that but she refused to head back home just yet. Today always reared ugly thoughts in her head, the twisted scabs and cuts on her arms and hands blistering red despite there clearly being no trace of pain, just by the mere mention of what today was. She needed this distraction. Angry desperation it might be, but Carys didn't give a shit what it looked like.
"I apologise, alright? I shouldn't swear."
If it were anyone but Hale, the word apologise, or sorry, or anything along those lines would have had to have been ripped out of her cold, dead throat. But Hale was Hale. She owed him a lot, despite his young years and sunny disposition. Such a contrast to his elder sister yet it didn't stop him from loving her all the same. And she loved him. Deeply.
"I just want you to be alright, okay Carys." He wasn't an idiot, though. The kid was smart. Acing all his classes at school. It was why he didn't work on the farm just yet. Usually, like Carys had done, kids sped through school on a fast-track system to pump them out into real life which meant work, work, work. But not Hale. It only meant Carys had to work twice as hard. "I know what today does to you."
"Today can bite my-" She caught herself this time, watching Hale's eyes narrow, before he started to laugh and clapped her on the back. "I just mean that today doesn't matter. Not really. The Capitol can suck my-"
"Carys!"
Oh for fuck's sake. She decided to keep her mouth shut as Hale took a step back to let her return to beating the living hell out of the dummy. A scab ripped open on her hand but she barely felt it as the rain mixed with the light drops of blood and the tattered mess that oozed out of the dummy's opened fabric. She only hit harder as the rain became relentless in its downpour, drumming the earth harshly. She knew Hale wanted to go back indoors but she just couldn't, I can't face it, it was so much easier to be out here and distract herself from everything.
"Uh-oh."
She heard Hale speak but didn't quite register it at first. The dummy split open as she high-kicked it in the chest. She lacked any sort of technique really. It was a messy display, but Carys didn't care. Her heart continued to pound in her chest and she enjoyed the throbbing headache behind her eyes, skull ringing. It made her feel connected to something and that something was simpler and easier than the mess of everything else behind her.
"Volunteering today, Lavell?"
This time she couldn't fail to pick up on a voice. It wasn't Hale's. It wasn't either of her parents'. And it wasn't any of her friends because no one stuck around Carys long enough for her to make any.
It's because of your haircut, Hale had joked many times.
No. It's because they're all fucking idiots, Carys thought as her eyes honed in on just one of those many fucking idiots that she was thinking of.
"What do you want?" she huffed, turning away from the irritating eyes of Alura. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
"I can be wherever I want. I live round here too. Shouldn't you be rehearsing your speech for today?"
Carys gritted her teeth. Don't hit her. Hit the dummy. Just picture her prissy little face on the fabric, just don't hit her. Hale is here. "Shouldn't you be heading home. It's raining."
Alura shrugged her shoulders as Carys smacked the dummy in the face. "I can be out here if I want to."
"As can I."
"So are you volunteering? Anything to get away from your life, right?"
"What did you fucking say?"
"Your life. Surely you want to get away from it all."
Carys saw red. "You shouldn't say things like that!" Hale stepped forwards before Carys could smack the bitch's mouth. Hale knew her well enough to step between the two of them. "She's not volunteering. You don't know why she does this and quite frankly it's none of your business."
Alura's eyes narrowed. "No one asked you."
"You should step away, Alura. Before I forget there's a dummy here and smack you in the mouth."
Carys didn't know when to quit. Either they were going to fight, or Alura stepped down and walked away. Hell would have to freeze over for Carys to be the one to back off. Hale could get to her because it was Hale, the only person in this world that she truly loved. But people like Alura – they needed a smack in the mouth. The whole goddamn country did.
"When you volunteer, try not to make a fool of yourself. And do something with your hair."
I'm not volunteering… I hate the Games, I don't want to ever be a part of it. I hit these dummies because-
"Oh fuck off Alura!"
Carys thought the words had left her own mouth, but she hadn't actually spoken this time, and Alura's shocked expression meant it could have only come from one person.
Hale.
I've never been so proud.
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Just so people are aware, Carys is the last new addition to this story. Thanks Nate!
Anyway… two more districts to go. Who's readyyyy!
