Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
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As they grew they roamed, further and further. All the land was theirs, and they knew it like the back of their hands. He was a deft shot with a slingshot to scare off the coyotes and wild dogs.
He was dragged to his first reaping at twelve, kicking and screaming and snarling, and the folk around time whispered 'maybe it wouldn't be such a shame.'
They took their first jobs when he was thirteen, not 'required' but 'recommended' (if you know what's good for you, right?), tending to the beasts in the fields until they were at the required weight for processing.
And still they ranged in their free time, away from the people who expected this from them and that from them, out to the places where no one could judge them or tell them what to do.
They roamed out to the wall that surrounded the District, towering above their heads, unmanned but topped with a live electric wire that hummed softly.
"There has to be a way through," they would whisper to each other sometimes.
"There has to be a way past."
Not because they wanted to rebel you see. Not because they wanted to betray the Capitol like all the threatening advertisements said.
Just because they wanted away from all the people and noise and light.
Like their parents before them sometimes they didn't return home, sleeping in the trees while the coyotes prowled beneath them.
"They get through," they'd tell themselves.
"There must be a way through."
They tried following the coyotes, but they could run faster, and snarled and snapped at them if they got too close. They theorised that there must be a hole in – or under, probably under - the wall somewhere, or a section of it crumbling away – it was over ninety years old and mostly unmanned and unmaintained after all.
But they never found anything.
She was taken to her first Reaping by a neighbouring family, quiet and calm and meek, everything he hadn't been.
When they asked her how she could possibly be so calm, she just said 'it's not my time.'
And she was right.
