4. The fog surrounding a victor
With Leo Vollard, three victors were now born, and Panem was then waiting for the fourth one.
Information about District 4's first victor is not easy to come by. Nowadays, most Capitolites do not even remember so well that year of the Hunger Games, as quite some time has passed from the amphitheater days. But some things about these specific Games, we do know.
For example, we know that a female tribute won for the first time.
Stream Ravine. Fifteen at the time of her victory.
Apparently, Stream had been reaped like most of all tributes so far. Her odds of victory before the Games, as they were guessed and published on newspapers by journalists of The Capitol Time, were not even that high, marking her as an unlikely winner among that year's tributes batch. Also, she did not seem to be much appreciated in Capitol City – not because she came off as unpleasant or anything, more because of the comparison with her fellow contestants.
They had Seeler, Stream's district partner, much more handsome and charming than Stream herself. They had Button from 8, very good looking according to that time's newspapers, a stand-out among most outliers. Even District 1's girl, Adora Evelynne, who was a favorite for the win, also thanks to being Leo Vollard's protegée, and she had gathered many more supporters in the Capitol than the poor little girl from the fishing district – unfortunately, Adora did die right after the Games had begun, during the annual bloodbath.
But back to Stream. Because the Second Rebellion caused so many casualties among the district and Capitol citizens, very few remain who remember her for her appearance. Annie Cresta, the only remaining victor from District 4, had won her Games five years after Stream was deceased, and unfortunately never met her as a fellow victor, thus being unable to provide with more information than what we already had in our hands. Moreover, right after she won, Stream had used her money from the win to undergo so many operations for plastic surgeries and body liftings that she was no longer comparable to the little girl who, sixty-six years before Cresta, had fought in the arena.
If we roll the clips from the Fourth annual Hunger Games, however, we can find out something more.
They start with the reapings, and when District 4's is shown on the screen the camera is panning in on a young and petite lady with strawberry blonde hair gasping for air and breathing erratically on the reaping's stage, which is a pretty common reaction for a young female tribute being reaped, opposed to Seeler's, who is acting much more stoic. When the camera's focus shifts to her face, her ocean blue eyes and many freckles can be seen by the viewer – but anyways, not something that peculiar for a District 4's citizen. Stream seems to have made a very unremarkable appearance on Capitol TV, and most citizens simply and quickly forget about her during the days before the start of the Games, favoring others in her place – Adora, Button, Seeler, literally anyone else is much more memorable than her. There isn't even any footage on the time the tributes spent in the zoo, in their cages. After the reapings have reached District 1's end, immediately starts another clip portraying the actual Games, held in the usual Capitol amphitheater.
Again, nothing special, tributes shaking in fear, others much more concentrated on the weapons and supplies that lay in the middle of the amphitheater and a countdown from thirty ticking its way to the zero. When the gong sounds, surprisingly, all tributes run inwards towards the center of the arena, no exceptions. And that's when we see Stream snapping.
We see her running towards a knife, bending down to grab it, then lifting her gaze up once again. She then notices the boy from 2 making a dash in her direction from the most southern pedestal, with a sword in his hand. She seems to hyperventilate, her face turns red, at first, but then she starts screaming and charging towards him. She is incredibly fast, looks like a madwoman who has just lost her common sense, even unsettling to watchers back home. That is what the boy from 2 must have thought too, because we see him slowing his running pace as Stream runs faster and faster. He seems undecided about what to do, he stops in the race, still undecided about what to do. He doesn't have time to decide, because Stream has already reached him and plunged her knife into his throat. The boy from 2 falls to the ground, but Stream doesn't run away. In fact, she has never stopped screaming, too. She drops down on his convulsing body, lifts the arm holding the knife and brings it down time and time again. Nineteen, to be exact.
What is also noteworthy to us is that, while Stream is repeatedly stabbing the boy from 2, no other tribute seems to have the desire to attack her – anyone is keeping away from her, engaging battles with other competitors rather than with her. That proves to be the best thing to do, which the boy from 5 learns the hard way. After having fought with the girl from 7 over a loaf of bread, losing it to her in the process, he turns to Stream, probably seeing an easy kill. But as he takes one step closer to her, Stream hears it and turns her eyes to the boy from 5 with a somewhat 'devilish' look in them. The boy from 5 gets scared and tries to back off, but his fate is sealed, because Stream has already gotten up from the ground and started chasing him. The chase ends with a knife buried in the boy from 5's skull.
Unfortunately, the actual Games' footage ends this way, abruptly switching from the bloodbath's clip to the moment when Stream Ravine is declared the victor. The corpse of her last opponent is not to be seen anywhere on the screen. Nothing but a red thick line on the ground that traces a path from where Stream is standing, eyes closed and humming a tune with her voice, to the inside of a tunnel in the amphitheater. According to our sources, the other finalist of that year's Games, that lasted for two whole days, was Button.
This is the last recording that we have of Stream Ravine. We did manage to get our hands on some pictures of her in later years after her victory, but since she had already started to modify her appearance, they're only useful to us if we want to conduct a research on Capitol's industry of plastic surgeries. Therefore, we have to resort to other kinds of witness.
Dedalus Wright had indeed written something on his diary about District 4's new victor – not much, but still something that is related to the first victor from District 4:
DOCUMENT 04:DEDALUS' DIARY_PAGE38
Jul 8th
I'm sorry Aenius. I'm really sorry.
Needed to save you.
Tell you to think longer and harder.
Tell you to know better than to go in these stupid Games.
Had lunch in the Cap with the psycho today, the Presidential buffet.
That psycho killed Aenius.
But I'm not mad at her.
Profoundly sad and tore down, but not mad.
She did what she had to do.
Just wanted more time with my little brother. Tell him I love him.
Talked to Ma yesterday. Said I'm coming home right away. Want to be present at Aenius' burials.
Just one last look at the psycho –
She looked at me first. It's like she's telling me her whole story with her eyes.
The moment she entered the arena.
How she survived without any food.
The way she killed 8.
Sure she is a strange woman, wouldn't wanna be her, right now or ever.
I really don't see the same look in her eyes that I saw in Huck's. I wonder what will happen to her.
[End of DOCUMENT 04]
After winning the Games, Stream went on to use her newly-earned salary as a victor to undergo several face liftings and plastic surgeries that would modify her appearance to an extent where she was practically unrecognizable even to her own family, whom she disowned right after she came back home and moved into her new house in District 4's Victors Village, leaving her relatives to live in the slums of "The Mainland", an internal area of the district from where Stream came from. It has never been discovered the reason why Stream acted in a cold and strict way towards her own "blood", but it is believed that the two parts never really got along with each other, seeing that, from what we have found in the accounting books held in the district's municipality, Stream's only financial income came from "generous district citizens' donations", mainly men between 45 and 60 years of age.
DOCUMENT 05:ACCOUNTANTS_BOOK_N20_P544
[…]
27) Donation made to: Miss. Stream Ravine
By: Sir Gunnar Sham
Amount: 200/two hundred sesterces
Reason for the donation: family favor
28) Donation made to: Miss. Stream Ravine
By: Mr. Avery Ochler
Amount: 100/one hundred sesterces
Reason for the donation: personal favor
[…]
31) Donation made to: Miss. Stream Ravine
By: Honorable Minister Jupiter Vickers
Amount: 500/five hundred sesterces
Reason for the donation: generosity, charity
[…]
[End of DOCUMENT 05]
Whatever rapport Stream had with these "donors", this ambiguous aspect of Stream's life is also thought to be linked to her relationship with sexual performances of any kind. When, many years later, Stream Ravine was sent by President Snow on her first "work appointment", the victor firmly refused to go, and headed straight home to District 4 from Capitol City, where she had been kindly invited to discuss government issues with the President. Two days afterwards, Stream Ravine had been found dead in the sea, her body floating near to the shore next to District 4's Victors Village (very competent in swimming, Stream was presumed to have been murdered rather than having committed suicide, but the crime had never been solved and the case was filed a week after the discovery of Stream's body).
It's also known that Stream was called every year to the Capitol to serve as mentor, at least until other victors from 4 could take her place, occasions during which she would rather visit her own very well paid surgeons than personally take care of her tributes. Stream had been the mentor to the two victors from District 4 that followed her, although both of them confirmed in two separate interviews with CapitolTV that she had not been "much help", rather the opposite. These two victors quickly replaced Stream Ravine in the eyes of the Capitol in terms of popularity, also thanks to their charisma that had surely been more appreciable than Stream's "mad lady" aura that surrounded her, reputation that she had in the Capitol for her whole life.
Stream Ravine is not the most "accessible" victor of all, as her life before and after the Games is still shrouded in mystery to this day, neither do we want to deepen the matter much more – many other victors are still to be introduced in this volume.
However, Stream's personality remain one of great interest to anybody who has never heard her story, even after she has been long gone for many years.