Gwyneth Calder, 16
District 8

Ever since she was a kid, Winnie needed to know how to function without much help from others. It wasn't that she had an unsupportive or unloving family. Quite the opposite, actually. With two present parents and three siblings at least ten years older than her, life in the Calder household ranged from overbearing to downright suffocating. Always the youngest in the house, Winnie was always made out to be the helpless baby who couldn't do anything for herself.

But Gwyneth Calder was not helpless. Sure, she got misty when she saw stray cats with their ribs sticking out rifling through garbage bins. And yeah, her six year old niece, Camile tugged at her heartstrings in such a way that made her wonder if she would be able to handle ever having kids of her own. And okay, who didn't cry at the end of books where the love interest turned out to be the wrong choice for the heroine?

She could go on.

She couldn't help that she was sensitive. And even though she knew that other people's perceptions of her didn't matter, it was still hard for her to be herself when she knew that she would just be looked down on.

Winnie liked to sit in the patched up old armchair in her living room while she worked on her embroidery. Her mother, Vita, was relatively well-known around the District for being able to turn drab clothes into something special by embroidering her own designs onto them, and ever since Winnie was old enough to hold a needle without poking herself, she started to learn to do the same. It was a good thing she was, too. Her mother was already in her mid-fifties and probably only had another couple of years before she started to lose her nimble fingers and keen eyes.

"Hi, honey," Vita said. Winnie looked up from embroidering autumn leaves onto a red skirt before her mother continued. "We need you to watch Camile tonight. Your brother and Vera are going out."

"I had plans with Eliza," Winnie protested. "Can't you and Dad-"

"Nope. Your dad is working late and I have to go over some designs with Mayor Gutterman."

"Okay." Winnie sighed. "I'll just wish Eliza a happy birthday at school on Monday."

"I'm sorry you can't see your friend, sweetie, but family comes first. You know that."

"I know. I'm sorry."

A couple of hours and a few autumn leaves stitched later, Winnie's brother and sister-in-law stopped by with their six-year-old daughter, Camile, in tow. Bas was almost 20 years older than Winnie, and sometimes it hit her how strange it was that she was closer in age with her niece than she was with her brother. She didn't really care, though, since being young and fun meant that she was Camile's favorite. Well, young and fun to six-year-olds. Winnie realized pretty quickly that little kids were much more inclined to sew ducklings marching across the hem of a skirt than kids her own age.

As soon as the four adults were out of the house, Camile ran into Winnie's arms and bounced up and down on her toes. She was so close, Winnie could all but feel the little girl's manic energy, along with a twinge of melancholy. She didn't like saying that her own childhood was bad, or even hard, since so many kids in her District had it so much worse, but she couldn't help but to throw herself a pity party every once in a while. She wasn't able to form strong bonds with her siblings growing up, and since Camile was an only child, Winnie hoped that she could provide her with what she herself didn't have when she was younger.

"What are we gonna do?" the child asked as she bounced up and down on her toes. "Color pictures? Play chase? Feed the cats outside?"

"How about…" Winnie made a big show of deciding what to do, tapping her chin with her index finger and bobbing her head side to side. "How about I tell you a story?"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"Okay," Winnie started. "Okay. Once upon a time there was a girl-"

"A girl?" Camile asked. "What was her name? Was she pretty?"

"What? It doesn't matter."

"Yeah it does!"

"Okay, fine. Her name was Aaliyah, and she was very pretty. Anyway, Aaliyah was a really hard worker. But she had a sister who was very lazy." Camile opened her mouth, but Winnie spoke before she got the chance. "Her sister's name was Gertrude."

"Ew!"

Winnie went on to tell Camile the story that all of the kids in the District were told to indoctrinate them with an industrious mindset before they entered the workforce. "Aaliyah", the beautiful and productive sister, worked day in and day out sewing intricate clothing pieces until her fingers cramped and bled. Meanwhile, the ugly and lazy sister "Gertrude" did nothing but lie around the house and complain.

One day, the girls were kidnapped by an evil witch who told them that she would let them go once they completed a long list of chores. Aaliyah got right to work and did her tasks quickly and thoroughly so that she could escape the witch's house. Gertrude, however, refused to help her sister with the chores and simply cried and begged someone to rescue her.

Once Aaliyah finished the chores, the witch rewarded her with gold and jewels and sent her home to her mother. Gertrude, on the other hand, was kept in the witch's house and forced to sew until her fingers fell off.

Dark.

"So, the moral of the story is that if you work hard and have a positive attitude, good things will come to you," Winnie concluded. "But if you're lazy…"

"An evil witch will make you work until your fingers fall off and you die." Camile nodded wisely.

Sometimes Winnie felt bad telling that story. She knew it was fake, and she knew that hard work was important, but she couldn't help but feel bad for Gertrude sometimes. She knew how it felt to be unmotivated, and she certainly knew that if an evil witch kidnapped her and forced her to do chores, she'd probably need to cry about it for a little while before she did anything.

She tried not to have any big ideas, but it sometimes made her wonder if there was anything else she needed to think harder about.


Aris Pelletier, 14
District 8

The wheels were going to be the hardest part. They always were. Aris had built a fair number of mousetrap cars in his day, but he had never quite gotten the wheels right. He had always used four pieces of corrugated cardboard, and it worked well enough for practice rounds. But it was hard to get them all the exact same size, and cutting out cardboard with scissors or a knife made it hard to get perfectly smooth edges.

But Aris needed this mousetrap car to be perfect. It was March, and all of the snow on the ground had finally melted, leaving behind a smooth canvas for racing, so some of the craftier individuals in the District put together a friendly competition. Everyone was supposed to build a car from a mousetrap and pay a small fee to enter it. Whichever car could travel the furthest won all the entry money.

Winning the money was really important to Aris. Up until recently, Aris had been a part of a group of scavengers that went around the District looking for items that could be resold or tinkered with. He had worked closely with a man in his thirties named Santos who was almost more of a father to Aris than his actual father. But Gunner, a classmate of Aris's, became jealous of the attention he was getting and the bond he formed with Santos and framed him for theft. He was only held by the Peacekeepers for a few days, and with no real evidence against him, he was let go with a warning to never actually break the law. But even though he wasn't found guilty, he was still banned from his old group. With his parents getting older and working menial labor jobs that didn't bring in much, they really relied on Aris and his ingenuity to keep food on the table.

He needed his wheels to be perfect. A lot of really talented people (Santos and Gunner included) were participating in the competition, so there wasn't room for imperfections. Aris knew that he couldn't simply cut out his own wheels this time. He needed to find four circles with smooth edges the exact same size, but three weeks of searching through all of the garbage cans, back alleys, and markets left him with nothing.

He had been outside the District's lines a few times before, but never in broad daylight and never without Santos. There was a huge dump a few miles out with a ton of valuable items, some even from before the Dark Days if you knew where to look. So with less than a week until the competition, Aris waited until the sun fell below the horizon and pulled on his token black sweatshirt, grabbed his backpack, and snuck out of the house.

It didn't take long for Aris to reach the District border. He had heard from Santos that some Districts' fences were electrically charged, but not District 8. The factories used up most of the District's allotment of power, so instead of the fence being electric, it was lined at the top with barbed wire. Over the years, though, some of the scavengers in the District had dug a few tunnels under the fence to get to the other side. With a deep breath, Aris pulled aside the drop cloth covered in sticks and leaves and eased himself into the tunnel, crawling down and popping up on the other side.

The dump was located in a clearing in the woods outside of District 8's eastern border, and based on some faded newspapers and magazines, it had been there for a long time. It was mostly picked over at this point, but with some digging around, Aris had been able to find some great picks. He had been looking for something to use as wheels for about a half hour when he sensed something behind him and stiffened.

"Aris?" a voice asked. "Is that you?"

Aris slowly turned around, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. His discomfort was short-lived, however, once he noticed that it was just Topher, a friend of his from the scavenging yard. The two were always particularly close, and Topher left the team as soon as Aris was framed.

"Oh, hey Topher," Aris said, pulling his hood down. "What brings you out here? I'm looking for some last minute parts for my mousetrap car. I can't seem to get the wheels right. But what about you?"

"Are you kidding?" Topher asked, sighing. "Wheels are about the only part of the car I actually have."

"Really? What are you using?"

"I found some old CDs when I was here last week."

"You know," Aris began. "If we combined both of our supplies, we'd have enough for a car. And if we worked together, I bet we could make a really good one. And if we won, we could split the prize money!"

The two got to work over the next several days to make their car as good as it could possibly be. They worked on it for hours on end, tinkering with the tiniest details and only stopping to eat and sleep. When the day came, they went to the District square, holding their car up with pride. But when it came time for the final race, Aris and Topher lost to Gunner by less than three inches.

Aris was devastated. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. He wasn't supposed to lose, and certainly not to Gunner. The good guys didn't lose to the bad guys. But his family had to eat, so while Gunner accepted the prize money, Aris swallowed his pride and walked down the street to the tessera office and filled out his yearly form. Three more entries into the Games in exchange for food for his family.

He thought a lot about those three extra slips four months later when he was called up to the stage at District 8's 100th Reaping ceremony.


Cecelia Raymond, 55
Victor of the 61st Hunger Games: District 8

Cecelia tried her best to pretend that her Games had never happened. When her name was chosen at the Reaping nearly half a century ago, she quickly resigned herself to the thought that she was going to die, and soon. But once she got into the arena, something changed in her. She couldn't stop thinking about her boyfriend, and how he was always there for her when the odds seemed stacked against her. She couldn't let him down.

Cecelia Northcott won her Hunger Games and came out relatively unscathed. She had no permanent injuries and only killed two people, both in self-defense. Although, she supposed every casualty in the Hunger Games could be considered self-defense.

She married her high school boyfriend Tailor quickly, grateful to take his last name and escape her past life, and together they had three children; Twylah was 35 now, Levi was 32, and Paisley 27. Thankfully, they all made it through the Reaping without any of their names ever being called, and Cecelia was grateful for that every day. Not all Victors were as lucky as she was. But Levi had a child of his own, a rosy cheeked two-year-old girl named Josie, and Cecelia couldn't help but to think that someday ten or fifteen years in the future, it might be her name pulled from that sparkling crystal bowl.

Cecelia tried no to have these dark thoughts. After all, who would want to? She tried to distract herself. She took up knitting, and her favorite things to make were tiny hats for the babies in District 8's community home. She tried to make them cheerful, bright yellows, pinks, and blues with ear flaps and pom-poms on the tops. She knew in her heart that a fun purple hat would never be enough to magically make a child's circumstances better. But she would be disgusted with herself if she didn't at least try.

So she knitted. Sometimes she baked cookies. She dropped coins into the cups of the beggars on the street. Baby hats. Pastries. Spare change. She tried to be a good person.

Being a good person was always harder when the Games rolled around and she had to mentor. There was no way to be a good person while either preparing a child for slaughter or preparing them to become a murderer. She could tell that this year would be another hard one.

Gwyneth, the tribute that she would be mentoring, walked up to the stage first, and Cecelia's heart broke for her. Sobs wracked her small body, and she didn't even try to look like she was holding herself together. It was easy to pick out her friends from the crowd, because they were all crying with her. Aris was tragic as well, just 14 years old and no larger than his District partner. He was wearing a black hoodie that nearly swallowed him, the hood pulled up to cover almost all of his face.

Maybe they'd like a hat.


Thanks to Mykindleisawesome for Gwyneth and Gh0stRaiden for Aris! I genuinely didn't realize how much time had passed between this chapter and the last one, but college do be a thing.

1. Who did you like better, Gwyneth or Aris?

2. What did you like about them?

3. What didn't you like about them?

4. Thoughts on Cecelia?

5. Any predictions?