Noise is buried beneath rumbling echoes. Her eyelids squeeze tight. Strands of hair float aimlessly in each direction, as if guided by some invisible hand. Here is quiet. Here is calm. Here is peace. Nothing can find her here. She's lost to the world, and the world is lost to her.
Her head lifts. Eyes open. Ears awaken to the sound of dripping water, the torrential downpour of a waterfall as it slides down her face and into the sink below. She blinks twice, and the world comes back into focus. The mirror on the wall is the first thing she finds, her damp reflection staring back at her with beady eyes. Accusing eyes. Tired eyes. Dead eyes.
She can't stand them, and so she looks away. The basin of water is filled to the top. Her makeup makes colorful whirlpools in the silently moving water. It gives her an idea for an arena, but she submerges the thought as soon as it surfaces. She hates the way her mind wanders there, as if pulled by some invisible connection. It was like she was the ocean and the Hunger Games were the moon, the tidal waves of her existence owing their every movement to its omnipresent pull.
No longer, she wants to say. But a drop of water can't simply decide it would give the moon no more thought. There are currents that move her forcefully each way, and she lacks the strength to escape them.
She pulls the stopper and watches as the water empties from the basin. She looks again at the person in the mirror and tries to see that person as someone else. With her wet, tangled hair and sunken eyes, it's hard to see herself as the person she projects as to the rest of the world.
Head Gamemaker, and the best one in a long time, is the first among her titles. It's the one most her own, even if she had been guided there. Her first year had been the year of Enobaria, with her fanged teeth and famed brutality. The siblings from District One followed, and then her golden victor from District Four, Finnick Odair. Haven and Augustus came after, and now Panem waits for her next star to be crowned.
Her arenas are nothing fantastical, and she prefers it that way. She's a director, not a stage-creator. She guides them through storylines of betrayal and love and crafts stories out of something brutal and evil. But she can only pretend for so long. Her stage may be set, but the curtains are painted a deeper and darker red each year.
Heavy is the head, and soon she will wear a crown even heavier than the one that burdens her now. Because she is a Head Gamemaker, yes, but by birthright she's something more.
She's a Snow.
Her reign is coming, and it's coming soon. Each year twenty-three more children are killed, and each year the blood comes spewing forth from her father's lips with his deathly coughs. The blood is overwhelming, it's consuming. It would come for him soon enough.
Soon. Soon, she would wash her hands of all of this. Soon, she hopes. Soon, she prays.
Hi! If you made it all the way to here, thank you so, so much for reading! I hope that you liked it! If there's anything that I can do better and you're kind enough, I love to hear feedback and advice! I'm going to try to write my very own SYOT. I'm new to this website, this story, and this SYOT thing, so if I do anything wrong or weird, let me know and I'll try my best to fix it! If you're like me yesterday and don't know what this is, it's a really cool type of story where you send in a character to me (I have a form I mostly, kind of, copied from somebody else on my profile) and then I write your characters in a Hunger Games story!
That's all that I can think of for now, but I'm sure I missed something, and if I did you can let me know! Thank you again for reading, you're the best! See you soon!
-Avery