Odysseus Pennyworth, 18, Capitol resident, the day of the Reapings
Odysseus is, quite frankly, nervous as hell. He sits in his bed, a large thing, king size, with a mahogany bedframe accented with gold, down pillows, and blankets of exotic fur, fluffy and comforting, rarer than gold not from District One. He can't lose this too.
Odysseus stands up and begins to pace around his room. If one were to assume based on the luxuriousness of the bed Odysseus slept was an indicator of his family's wealth and status among the Capitol, you would be wrong on one part. The room around which Odysseus paces has an airy feeling, only bolstered by the lack furniture around the room, save for his clandestine and beloved wooden writing desk, which doubles as a piano if Odysseus were to flip over the wooden cover over the keys. On its top, the wooden piece houses all of Odysseus's pictures, some still in frames of prized metal, others frameless and lying face-up. Odysseus has already sold their frames for needed money in the black market, along with most of the other pieces of lavish furniture, which used to be unceremoniously hunched up by the golden-painted walls of the room so Odysseus would have his pacing space. Now nothing but the aforementioned items sit in the room, revealing the now peeling golden paint.
Odysseus's livelihood depends on today, whether there will be a stock of tributes worth betting on or not, and whether people will still trust the Games after the flop of last year.
"Dissy, Dissy!" His twelve-year-old sister Penelope knocks on the door.
"Yes, Penelope," Odysseus calls back.
Penelope walks through the door. She is wearing a pretty white dress with golden lace around the edges and pink patterned roses undulating around her bodice. Her upper body is covered in lighter lace, and the fabric is connected by a golden clip. Father has apparently decided to advertise her this year.
Before Odysseus has a chance to voice his anger over his father's selling out of his own daughter, now joining his other two, Penelope says, "Odysseus, it's time for us to go out there. And you should really freshen up," Penelope says as Odysseus starts to walk out of the door. "It wouldn't do for people to see you like that."
With that, Penelope skips away, her blonde pigtails giving a flash before the door slams shut, and he hears her heels clopping down the long staircase connecting the third floor, the family's living quarters, to the second floor observatory and bar, before they are drowned out by the chitter chatter of those who have arrived in the domed Pennyworth Betting Center early to watch the Reapings, though not as much as a normal year.
Odysseus's anger does a flip in his stomach and turns into nerves. He shakes, looks up at the ceiling, and down at his clothes. He is still wearing the fashionable golden tuxedo from the annual banquet last night, the silky pajamas he once owned long gone. The annual banquet before Reaping Day was where he and his family raise enthusiasm for the event and told everyone this year the betting fee would be discounted. This was a gamble on his father's part, its purpose to get more people to place bets on the tributes.
The last year, there had been an above average number of bets placed on the tributes, due to the strong crop of outliers and careers alike, and the ad slots President Nero had booked for the designated "Official Hunger Games Betting Center". It had been very promising, it had, up until the bloodbath of the 156th Hunger Games, set in the ruined city of Atlantis, and completely underwater. The tributes were all given oxygen tanks, though there was a malfunction, and when water was let into the launch tubes, they took it in. Twenty-two of the tributes promptly drowned in their tubes, while the District Four tributes swam out of them to the surface and hit the forcefield. All of the tributes died within a minute of the Games. The Betting Center lost all of its money, and the economy of Games fell into a temporary depression. Odysseus heard that every single Gamemaker died when the studio collapsed, though he thought it fishy.
Odysseus walks over to his dark closet. It houses only a few garments, and though all of the lightbulbs on the third floor, where only Odysseus, his sisters Penelope, Calypsia, and Andromeda, and his parents roam have been blown months ago, the glint of a gem catches his eye, and he knows this is the outfit Mother laid out for him in his sleep.
He pulls the jacket, undershirt and tie, and pants out of the closet. On closer inspection, the gems seem to be fake, for of course his mother, batty as she is, would never splurge on the diamonds needed to line this snazzy white getup. All of their fortune is going towards maintaining the majestic first two floors of the center, and their meager provisions are dropping fast.
Odysseus walks through the now barren highest floor of the building to the master shower, the only working one, past his mother, asleep in her bed. Of all of the family members, she is the only one not to regularly leave the living quarters. When she does, it is to smuggle bottles of sherry from the second floor bar to drink the nights away, always monologuing her remorse to the closest ear of her leaving her then home of District One, and how she wants to go to the home she had before Odysseus's father whisked her away from her simple life as a seamstress, just for her looks. Knitting is her only other vice besides drinking. Father claims that he really does love Mother, but if he did, he would let her go. She is too high maintenance anyway.
Odysseus walks into the bathroom and takes a quick shower before combing his golden blonde hair in a rush and spritzing some of his mother's perfume into his armpits, the only form of cologne available.
After holding his head in his hands for a few minutes, though this does nothing for his fear that by the end of the day the bets will be scarce, Odysseus stands up and looks into the long mirror. He practices the winning smile his father taught him, the look he will use to send the message that everything is okay and fine, and that he has money for days. He looks suave, hopefully, his hair always finding its way perfectly into place. His slightly trim figure is a deep contrast to his rather flabby one of the past, a testament to the hard times his family has fallen on, eating only one or two meals a day, though Odysseus hopes people attribute this to fitness. The golden colored contacts his father used to make him and his siblings wear are gone, people are sure to notice that, but at least Penelope, Calypsia, Andromeda, and his father's eyes all shine hazel. Odysseus's, however, are brown, like Mother's. He and his family are all hoping beyond hope the day will work out. Odysseus does not want to think about what will happen if it doesn't.
As he walks down the pure white stairs, Odysseus sees that thousands of people have already poured into the quickly packed betting center. He can spot his sisters advertising betting, Penelope, looking cute and attracting older women, Andromeda, a year his senior, looking attractive as well, and Calypsia, in her mid-twenties, very provocative, dressed in nothing but undergarments, her very long hair covering her body. The blue dye still resides in her hair, though the top half is reverting back to its old brownish blonde.
This is cruel, what Father is making his sisters do. Odysseus wishes that he were the boss of it all, that he could throw out father and humiliate him by kicking him out of his own house, and ship his mother back to One while he is at it. Alas, that won't be possible for a long while. Father does not plan on relinquishing his hold on the family very soon.
Scanning the crowd for the man, Odysseus finds him, talking to people he recognizes as big donors. He is recognizable by his height, his spindly body stretching a head over most of the crowd, his jet black hair a flash on the blinding white of the betting center walls, the rich men leaning back to avoid his pointed beard.
Above Father is the money board, dedicated to reminding the Capital betters the number of bets each tribute has, along with their information. The money board displays only the tributes' slots and their number of premature bets right now, not their names, ages, or anything else. Odysseus hopes that the number of bets will pile up within the time before the Games begin. All his family needs is a compelling, or at least somewhat interesting pack of district kids.
Just as more betters come piling up the stairs to meet Odysseus, he dodges through them and slides inconspicuously through the crowds of people. At one point, he pauses by the fee-paying area, which Penelope is manning, and catches her eye, giving her an it-will-all-be-okay look, but she is diverted to a rich looking young coupled decked in purple.
Still hunching down as he moves, Odysseus picks up on a conversation between two middle-aged women, both with black and red hair in swirly buns and sleevless, long dresses, one black with red accents, the other the opposite. Both already look tipsy, and completely identical. Twins.
"Honestly, Cordelia," the first one slurs. "Why would you place a bet on the District Twelve Male?"
Odysseus looks up at the money board to see the bet for the Twelve boy, but now there is a countdown in the bottom left corner of the screen, and the host, Catonius Flickerman, is talking. How old must he be now… Seventy? Eighty? More?
"Oh, fate, Bodelia, I don't know…"
The two women erupt into hysterical laughter, the second one, Cordelia apparently, clutches on to the nearest thing to avoid falling over, which happens to be Odysseus.
"Oh, hello, there," Cordelia says. "You're a Pennyworth, aren't you boy?" She seems to be acting seductive, and she is definitely intrigued. "I'd like to make a bet."
Though Odysseus would usually be happy to take a bet from a customer, he knows Father awaits him, and badly does not want to get into a sticky situation with these odd women.
"Cordelia, look," the first one says, nudging the other, though by the time Bodelia has turned around, Odysseus has once more disappeared into the horde of people. He hides behind a morbidly obese pink-skinned woman with an enormous powdered blue wig on the top of her head, and picks up a few sentences before turning around and listening in.
The first one, Bodelia maybe, says, "Oh, Cordelia, just one of your jokes."
"No, I was serious, I really was," she says inbetween giggles. "You know, I heard a rumor that they were hard on cash, lately."
This is what causes Odysseus to freeze.
"You did, did you? Because I heard a rumor like that too."
This is bad. The word cannot be getting out that the Pennyworths, one of the founding families of the Capital, are as poor as district scum.
Odysseus shudders, before pushing the thought out of his mind. 'A Pennyworth always keeps his composure,' his father always says.
He resumes his hopefully cocky-looking walk to his father, finally reaching him as the billionaires clear away, his father with an unreadable expression.
"Son, your late, and you look bad," his father quietly scolds. "I expect more from you."
"Father, they know. They know about the money situation."
Just as Father is about to respond, a song is heard. The Panem Anthem. The lights darken. The money board now shows the Panem Seal. It then goes to the beautiful District One square, and Catonius's voice can be heard on voiceover saying, "And the Reaping are about to start!" Odysseus is too overcome with nerves to think. This is make or break. This will determine his future.
Hey everybody, TheRaichuinRavenclaw here! I'm a new author on this site and I can't wait to be writing stories! It would be great if you would help out by submitting or reviewing, your opinions would really help. The tribute submission form will be up on my profile, as will forms to submit mentors and escorts, a tribute list, and sponsor guidelines. There will be two questions at the end of every chapter, one opinionated and one trivia, that readers can answer for sponsor points. Here they are:
Question 1: What do you think of Odysseus? Do you find him easy to get behind or unlikeable?
Question 2: What alcoholic beverage does Odysseus's mother regularly smuggle from the second-floor bar?
Thank you for reading, hopefully you will come back for more. I will try to update weekly, though I may update more than once a week depending on how I feel.
-Mills