Fryderyk ZieliƄski- District Eight male
It was like the last note of a song. You were sad because it was over, but you wouldn't have given up listening to it for the pain it left. It was like hearing that last note for the first time and knowing the song would only ever be that way once. You could hear it again and again, but it would never again be as sweet as the first time, when it was new. And as you're hearing it, you feel a growing sense of melancholy with each note, because each note brings you closer to the end. When you hear that rising crescendo, you know it's the end, far before the last note fades in the air. That was what it was like to fall out of love with Cerise.

The ivory keys were cool under my fingers as they came to rest. The last note lingering in the air was similarly cold. I'd just composed the song I was playing, and composition was nothing if not the transference of emotions from thoughts to notes. I listened to the faint vibration in the air until there was nothing.

The knock on the door was a welcome disruption. Francis and Mari let themselves in. They'd come to do that as it became more difficult for me to rise quickly.

"where's Cerise?" Mari asked.

"She's not here," I said. Isn't that true? I thought. She wasn't with me like she had been.

"Everything okay?" Mari asked.

"I want to break up with her." It rolled from my mouth with the ease of a scale. It was painful to say, but it wasn't difficult. Emotions flowed in and out of me like wind in a door.

"Oh," Francis said simply. He sat down on the other side of the piano bench and looked at the far wall of the room. He didn't try to say some simple truism that wouldn't mean anything. I started to play another song. It was mournful but not maudlin. If music filled the air, words didn't have to.

Romance. What a multifaceted word. "Romantic" was probably the word that applied more to me than any other word. Not erotic romance, though I did fall in love easily. Just not just erotic romance. I was romantic in the classical sense of the word. Mercurial. Passionate. Emotional and not ashamed of it. Emotions are the color for our souls. Without them life would be grayscale. Yes, I was certainly romantic.

It seemed to seep into all my relationships as well. It was a marvel the four of us were still fast friends. I knew Francis had feelings for Cerise. It was kind of him to keep them so hidden, though someone as attuned to emotion as I was could tell. It would be difficult at first if he pursued her once we were apart, but I hoped they would be happy. I knew that Cerise had also considered Francis before I made advances. And funny enough, I'd had moments that had the shadow of something more with Francis. And Mari... Mari had enough love for everyone. She was loyal when a partner desired it, but it was all the same to her whether she had Francis, Francis and me, or maybe even both of us and Cerise as well. It was utterly certain that there was no shortage of romance between the four of us.

So many possibilities. When I looked out into the future, it was infinite. Dozens of students here with me. An old flame I'd left behind when the boarding school accepted me. But no matter what, music. I would write for whoever I ended up with, or I would write for myself if I was alone. Friends and romances came and went, but I would always have my music.


Cerise Dupin- District Eight female

Louis Clay's novel lay on the paper before me. The heroine, Antonia Cather, was musing about her attentions being divided between the covert printing press she hid from her village and her romantic interest, the nobleman Gilles Dauphin. Antonia cared for Gilles, but she had only one life and wanted to use it to its fullest. Gilles was kind and sensitive, but life for him was something to be listened to and enjoyed. It wasn't something to be seized and used and squeezed of every drop. He was content to visit with his wealthy friends and live gently. Contentment was not what Antonia wanted. She loved Gilles, but though it pained her to admit, he held her back.

The writing wasn't terrible. The characters were defined and were starting to grow and chance. But I didn't like the writing. Why? Because Antonia Cather sounded a lot like me. Gilles Dauphin sounded a lot like Fryderyk. And as much as Louis Clay was trying to be original, I couldn't keep my life out of my novel. My stories were supposed to incite change and drive people to action. They weren't supposed to be daydreams about how my life could turn out if I could just write myself a happy ending and make it so.

"Hey," Francis called through the window. "You busy?"

"No, come on in," I called. I got up and ran to let him and Mari in.

"We just came from Fryderyk's," Mari said.

"Oh, that's nice. How is he?" I asked.

"Pretty good. He wasn't coughing or anything," Francis said.

"That's good," I said. Of course someone with his temperament would be prone to respiratory ailments. It was right out of the kind of book he pored over- the delicate Byronic hero felled by chronic consumption. But it wasn't consumption. That we could cure. Cystic Fibrosis we were still working on.

Francis and Mari seemed troubled about something. I would have asked, but I was preoccupied with Fryderyk. He was a good person. Maybe I wasn't in love with him anymore, but I still loved him. I didn't want to hurt him. I knew it would hurt when I broke up with him. Things had been distant between us and I suspected I wasn't the only one thinking it over, but he would still get hit harder than I would. I had to find a good time and a gentle way to do it.

We had a lot of good times, I thought as I went over them. We felt things hard and we loved hard. We talked about futures together and how we'd still think the other was attractive when we were old and gray. He talked about a well-kept house and having dinner ready for me every night. I talked about doing great things all my life and always knowing I would come home to a man who loved me and would keep me grounded. None of that would ever come to be. Perhaps one or both of us would find someone else, but it would not be what we would have had. Better, maybe, but not the same.

I had loved Fryderyk and I would always care for him. But unlike him, romance didn't define me. Fryderyk was content to be but I needed to act. We lived in a gilded cage. It was better than what most of Panem had, but I would not live in a cage. I could not be content until we owned our lives. Not until the government was not a golden city on a hill but present in every town and owned by each countryman. So I wielded my pen. It was a pen that wrote the Capitol into existence and it would be a pen that destroyed them. Guns they could take. Freedom they could take. But they would never stop my words.


Fryderyk: Polish descent. He has fair skin, long brown hair, and dark brown eyes. He is 5'6" and underweight

Cerise: French descent. She has fair skin, brown hair that she wears in a short low ponytail, and large dark brown eyes. She is short (5'1"), not particularly pretty, and hates dresses and skirts with a passion.