Salalai Ashaisse, 17, District 10 female

I've found that the plains are the most peaceful place to be myself. No one to judge me, or Adahy, or Galilahi. We can all just relax, free to come out without fear of people giving us confused or frightened stares. I hate socializing or interacting with people at all, because the other two people inside my soul always seem to come out at the worst time.

Adahy, who would normally be very helpful to me in survival situations considering his knife skills, always seems to emerge whenever we're in a social setting. He hates people almost as much as I do, and he makes sure to let everyone know of the fact. I'm amazed at the foul names he comes up with. Thanks to him I can't enter three different black markets around District 10.

Still, he's helped me sometimes. He was the one who defended me when the owner of the butcher's stand tried to maime me for stealing a ham. Even though he was just armed with a shard of glass we found, he managed to scare the butcher off and we all ate well for two weeks.

At first, I was bitter about essentially being a street urchin. I had escaped the confines of abuse and this is all that was waiting for me?

"It's better this way," Galilahi reminds me in my moment of doubt. "You can be yourself, and no one hits you anymore."

"I got hit once," I recall, trying not to think of the moment where a stolen loaf of bread earned me a hit to the back of the head with tongs. But I got away, and the only "abuse" that worries me now is the emotional abuse that ensues if I anger Adahy. I'm no exception to his misanthropic hate. But I don't really go off of the 'sticks and stones' turn of phrase, because being someone who's been through plenty of both, physical abuse and emotional abuse is in no way comparable.

"We should head home," Adahy tells us. I do as he says I rise from the cushy pile of grass I had settled on, my bare feet warming underneath the blades. I haven't been able to steal a pair of shoes yet, so the bottom of my feet are pretty much red and raw from the friction of the rough unpaved dirt roads.

'Home', for us, is a dilapidated supply shed that's been long abandoned by the sheep farmers that used to live on this little overgrown strip of land, nestled by trees. A camper is parked outside to make it seem as if someone lives here, which is why Adahy said it would be the perfect place to hide from them.

I don't call them by name. I've never seen the point of assigning human names to such foul existences. Giving them a name would have been humanizing them. They were not human. No human would make me suffer my entire life the way they did.

"Don't ponder too much," Adahy tells me, his tone making my voice sound annoyed. "You'll cry so much that we won't be able to do anything the rest of the night."

"We'd get so much done if I was the host of this body," Galilahi adds. Adahy bursts into laughter.

"All we'd get done is getting laid. You aren't good for anything else, you nymphomaniac." My stomach drops even though the insult was directed at Galilahi, not me.

"I am not!"

Their arguing went back and forth for a while. I just close my eyes as the beef broth slowly boils on my barely-warmed hot plate. This really is what freedom is. Although most people would not consider it ideal, it's ideal for me.

I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, and I'm awake before I know it. Part of me wishes I could escape my life in the form of dreams but I never sleep long enough. I usually don't stay in the shed for more than five hours at a time because the fear of them kicking in my shed door and abducting me again is too much to handle. At least if I'm outside, I can run and maybe hide inside the orphanage.

"As if they'd want a seventeen-year-old girl!" Galilahi mocks. I sigh.

"I know that. That's why we're on the streets in the first place." I remind her. Galilahi just laughs at me.

"Maybe if you were beautiful like me, we could get married. We could finally be loved and accepted."

Galilahi's constant reminders to me that we're all unloved always hurts me, especially since I have no understanding of what it's like to be loved. All my life, I have been hated, hated to the point where I'm hurt over and over again. Surely the universe would let me experience it at least once. At least to make Galilahi shut up.

She made today difficult, especially considering Adahy was the one getting on my nerves the day before. I never really seem to be in control anymore. Galilahi made sure to scare away half a dozen boys by spouting lewd comments that would make anyone want to stick a bar of soap into her mouth.

The day got better as it ended, because the kind fabric store owner gave me a raccoon shawl and an oven-roasted squirrel.

"My daughter is special-needs too. I understand what you're going through." Her tone is understanding and kind but of course, not good enough for Adahy.

"You don't know anything about me, lady! You toss scraps my way to try and make yourself feel like a better person, but you gladly let me go back to the slums!" The woman is frightened by the sudden drop in octave in my voice and scurries back into her shop before slamming the door. Adahy has normally allowed me to handle accepting charity, since it keeps us alive, but clearly he had a different idea today.

"Looks like we'll have to find another nice person to give us food." I tell myself. Sometimes I wish I was just myself again, but at the same time, I only became Adahy and Galilahi in addition to Salalai after I escaped that horrible place. For now, I'll just have to deal with it.

Ryker Haynes, 17, District 10 male

Most people would not consider a pig to be a pet, considering they're such loud and messy animals, but our pigpen is one of my favorite places to go after a day of hard labor. Sure, I get smothered in mud and hay, and the pigs often mistake me for one of their own and include me in their wrestling matches, but these are living beings, too. Although the rest of Panem considers these animals their food source, they're my friends. I'm a seventeen-year-old guy but I've had my fair share of tears over these animals being sent to their slaughter to feed everyone else.

"Why can't we all just be vegetarian?" I ask Wilbur, one of my favorite pets. He just snorts in response but as always I pretend he's said something astounding.

"You're right Wilbur, we are all animals being sent to the slaughterhouse in a way." Although I pity these animals for their eventual fates, it's not that far off from what us kids are sentenced to. At least we don't get eaten, I guess.

After closing the wooden door to the pigpen I jog to the barn at the corner of our farm, where the cows reside. I spot a familiar head of blonde hair tending to a mother cow.

"Zane, having fun with your hot date there?" I jest, striding into the pens. Zane rolls his eyes at me.

"Lots of fun. I'm going to take her to dinner and a moo-vie later."

There's a long silence as I comprehend that Zane really just said that to me. He bursts into laughter and I try with all my power to avoid doing the same.

"I'm just not going to talk to you for like, three days, dude," I tell him as my stifling laughter betrays my words.

By the time Zane finishes up cleaning the chicken coops, the sun is dipping below the horizon in colorful stripes and I'm waving my best friend goodbye. Our goodbyes are always over-the-top despite the fact that he always comes back in the morning. There's never a lack of tasks for him to do.

Mom has a meagre but filling dinner of beef stew prepared. Part of me feels leery about eating a meal that may have been my friend but I always pretend it's a stranger cow from a different farm, as if that makes it better somehow.

My siblings Tyler and Emilia are more energetic than usual tonight.

"Come on, big bro, are you a chicken or not?!" Tyler calling me chicken is usually the insult that leads to many, many wrestling matches. He's twelve-years-old and getting stronger every day but will probably never beat me. However, since tomorrow is the Reaping, Tyler's first Reaping, I allow him to overpower me to give him some confidence.

"I probably won't be able to beat anyone at wrestling in the Games," Tyler says as he climbs off of me. "They're all probably way stronger than you, big bro."

"Wow, hurtful," I mutter at him. "But you're way stronger than most kids your age."

"I'm not," Tyler whispers, hanging his head. "You even always do my work on the farm for me."

"Not always," I remind him. "Just sometimes."

Tyler's nerves are justified. Although his name is only written on one slip in the entire bowl, five twelve-year-olds were Reaped last year. Maybe that means there will be none this year?

"Well, in any case, I got your back, little brother," I assure him. "If you're Reaped, I got you." Tyler smiles at me.

"You too, big bro!"

My eyes bulge. "No, no no, Tyler. You're way too young. Do not volunteer for me if I'm picked. Pinky promise?"

Tyler sighs deeply and holds up his pinky finger. Emilia, unaware of the nature of the conversation, holds her tiny pinky up as well.

…

The next day, the sun beat down on us a little more brightly than usual. I walk over to the chicken coops to see if Arrie and Chicka have laid any fresh eggs. I poke my head into the coop to see a glittering pile of rocks underneath Chicka. They didn't look like eggs at all. They looked like diamonds.

"They're for you!" Chicka tells me. Since when could chickens talk? Still, I'm pretty psyched about the fact that I'm probably going to be filthy rich after selling these.

And they say the only path to being rich is winning the damn Games.

As I pluck each blue diamond from Chicka's pile, storing them in my leather backpack, a faint noise becomes apparent. At first it sounded like it was far away but it gets louder and louder as I try to ignore it. I thought it was just indistinct shouting, but it sounds like…

"Ryker! Ryker!"

…

"Ryker! Wake up!"

That voice is all too familiar. I'm no longer harvesting shiny diamonds from my chicken, sadly. I'm in my bed and Dad is hovering over me, shouting in my face.

"Get up! You forgot to clean the manure from the stables! Do you want us to get infested with flies?"

I glance out my window, and all I see is pitch black. It has to be the middle of the night.

"Sorry, Dad, " I mutter, my tone as alert as possible. Dad always seems to mistake grogginess with having an attitude. I would at least be able to understand that someone who has been awake for a total of fifteen seconds wouldn't be the most polite person in the world.

After I finish, I'm not even in a worse mood. Living here, you do what you have to do, and I don't complain, because I thrive in doing hard work. I'm much happier here than I would ever be at the slaughterhouse. Not even the Gamemakers are responsible for so much death.

I hope you liked Salalai and Ryker! They were definitely another interesting pair, we have a lot of interesting kiddos these Games it seems :D I'm sorry for the late update but work caught up to me a little haha. Next chapter is the District 11 male then the last Reaping POV will be a brother-sister pair from 12! Next chapter shouldn't take so long (hopefully)

Thanks for reading and remember to review! Thank you so much to everyone who has been, it means the world!

-Aemma