A/N: Ah, District Seven! I think I picked the right pair here, and they should be a thrill to write and develop. Enjoy! :D
Trigger Warning: Sexism and profanity
Could dress up, to get love
But guess what?
I'm never gonna be that girl
Who's living in a Barbie world
Could wake up, in make up, and play dumb
Pretending that I need a boy
Who's gonna treat me like a toy
Ivy Cross, 16
Resident of District 7
Lumberjack and Student at Fyr High
I hang back on the threshold of the living room, trying to hide behind the sheet of dirty blonde hair that obscures my face when I tip my head forward. I bite my lip indignantly, but tonight is an important night for my father. No matter how much I want to curse his name and rip out his hair and tug on his beard until I tear it to shreds and his chin is bleeding...no matter how much I want to run and find solace in chatting with Olly...no matter what I want, I cannot have it. I have to stand here, in my too revealing pastel pink dress like a good girl. I have to stand here, respectful and silent "like a girl should be". I have to stand here, wreathed by shadows, about to step into the candlelight and knock off the socks of Harlow Teuscher.
I inspect my nails, squinting, and then I bite off a bit of the longest one. I gnaw feverishly after that, until all the white part is bitten away, and then some, and a dull, throbbing ache spreads through the tip of my finger and under the nail. I toy with a shard of nail between my two front teeth, hewing it away until it nearly dissolves in my mouth. I bring my hand up again to bite the next nail clean off, but none of my nails have anything left to bite. Nervous, I tear off a corner of skin on one of my fingers. My finger starts bleeding, and I suck on it to stop the bleeding.
"Ivy, daughter dearest, will you join us in the dining room?"
There's my cue, the sickly sweet fakeness of my father's voice making me want to cringe. But I hold my head high. Just get things over with, Ivy. It's just dinner. It's just dinner. I hold my hands behind my back, and I feel the small trickle of blood from my finger. A bit of blood pools in my cupped palms. I fight the instinct to wipe the blood off on my dress. It's a pale pastel pink. If I wipe red blood all over the sides of it, I will shame my family and myself. Even though I hate this and would do quite a lot of things to get out of this, I won't make it seem like I'm having my period or something, because that's what these creeps will think. That's just gross and down right disrespectful to myself. And this was my mother's dress. I will not ruin things that belonged to her.
I slip into my chair, in between two of my brothers, Pine and Evan. Pine is just like my father, masculine to an excessive point. At least Evan tries to be human sometimes when we're alone, but when he's around my father and Pine and my other brother, Nico, he's an ass like the rest of them. Pine ignores me, and Evan gives me a cursory look to make sure nothing's out of place.
Harlow Teuscher sits across from me, and I somehow manage to draw a smile from the deepest depths of hell and implant it on my face.
Strategically placed is how everyone is. On Harlow's one side is his younger sister Marla. She's my age. She flirts shamelessly and dirtily with my brother Pine, three years older than, and neither my father nor Mr. and Mrs. Teuscher bat an eye. There is a trade going on, after all, if you haven't realized it. Marla Teuscher for Ivy Cross. Two well built, pretty, "obedient" girls ready to take up the opposite family name and bear lots of children. To Marla, this is her life, everything she could ever want. Pine is tall and handsome and well built like all of us in the Cross family, and while we aren't the richest family, we live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and Pine seems to be an honest, hardworking man. They'll be having children in six months I believe. And Harlow looks at me with hungry eyes. I am supposed to be his. Harlow isn't the worst man in Panem, but just like most of my brothers, my father, and Mr. and Mrs. Teuscher, and even Marla, they are sexist. We live in a pretty little white town where women are worth less than men and everyone lives in harmony as we produce lumber for the Capitol. What a motherfucking sham everyone's life is here, and all these dumb asses think the life they live is true and honest.
My mother stuck out like a sore thumb in this place. Married off to my father at age 17, she resisted marriage and children. She and my father clashed. They never, ever got along. But since things are perfect here in Nuesville, District Seven, it's tacit that divorce is not allowed. Everyone is always a happy, perfect family unit, and relationships always work out, don't they? My mother was a feminist and my father was a sexist, and things were hell between them.
My mother died when I was seven, and afterwards I never felt so alone.
When I was getting accustomed to my body and I was an insecure preteen, my father lashed me with his sexist ideals. My mother's lingering words of "you are valued" and "everyone is equal" clashed with his new, furious "you are lesser" and "women bow before men". I was lost. I had no idea who I was, who I was supposed to be. My dead mother's ideals and my father's mantras latched onto either side of me and tore me apart. It took Olivia Gramson to put me back together. Olly met me several years after Mom died. I'd never really talked to her. She was an outcast, really, just like I had become. Olly had Down syndrome, and she was a glaring imperfection in the perfection of Nuesville. She found me the one day and started talking to me. Yes, she was different, but she was a person. She was charismatic and funny and personable, and despite the disadvantages life gave her at the get go (Down syndrome, coming from a poor family, being biracial in a snow white town) she was happy with who she was. She taught me to love myself, and I still haven't repaid her for that.
"Ivy?" Harlow asks, and I realize I've drifted off into the realm of reminiscing and pensiveness. I perk up and plaster the smile back on. Harlow looks at me with a quirked brow. He is rather handsome, I must admit, but everything I stand would be violated by even entertaining the possibility of going along with my father's plan to marry me to this boy. I decide to reply. Food will be out soon. Soon this whole ordeal will be finished.
"Are you worried for the Reaping tomorrow, my dear?" he inquires with a semi-genuine scowl of interest.
"Well, the Reaping always does scare girls like me," I lie through my teeth.
I am not scared of the Reaping, Harlow Teuscher. Maybe my name will get whisked out of the glass Reaping ball tomorrow, and I'll be out of this hell and into another. I'd rather be anywhere else but here, marrying you. Maybe it would be better if I were Reaped tomorrow.
"Ah, girls do have such soft nerves," Harlow says with a glint in his eyes. It takes all I have within me not to spring to my feet and scream at him. I work in the lumberyard every day until noon, unbeknownst to everyone excepting my family and some of my co workers who realize who I am. My father realized I had enough muscle to lift a hatchet when I was 10 and set me to work to make him some extra cash. Now I have unusual muscles for a "simple lady" and I can wield a hatchet like nobody's business. I could cleave open Harlow Teuscher's skull and watch his brains drip out.
"Soft nerves indeed," I reply with a soft lilt to my voice.
Anywhere else but here.
Welcome to your life
There's no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find You acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
It's my own desire
It's my own remorse
Help me to decide
Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
Baron Arbor, 16
Resident of District 7
Lumberjack, Student at Kalul High, and Member of the Coven
When I was a little boy, Grandma Circe would spin tall tales while she crocheted and brewed elixirs out of forest leaves and fungi. I would sit on a little oaken stool, creaky, the legs uneven, on the dirt floor of her small shack. The dirt was sometimes cold, and it was covered with furry moss in places, almost like living green carpet. I would wiggle my toes in a section of moss, feel it squelch between my toes, as Grandma's crocheting needles clacked and her mortar and pestle ground rose petals into a mushy, bloody mash. She would tell me of faeries and goblins and princesses and knights and dragons and witches. She always called the witches sorcerers and sorceresses, and I would ask her why she called them that. She would bark at me and tell me that was what they were called, that that was their proper name. Later on I would find out why she got angry at me whenever I asked her that question. That was the only time Grandma Circe ever got angry at me. She'll be angry with me today as well, but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters much now.
I asked her one day, as she pulverized waxy white-yellow mushrooms to a starchy powder, where my parents were. She conjured a great epic about a knight who met a princess, and they saved the entire District from ruin after fire breathing dragons threatened to burn down our lumberyards. Then, after they had me, my mother was called away to the land of the gods to help them fight off an invasion of demons, and my father was transported to a perpetually black and white realm where he kept peace and order as a police leader. Grandma Circe said they met up on weekends to see each other, and they plotted to return to the universe that contained Panem once all the demons were out of heaven and peace was restored in the black and white world. I was five years old. I believed her. I told everyone at school that my mommy and daddy were heroes, that they'd saved universes. Many believed me. Hax Lewin didn't. He was eight years old, and he'd failed out of preschool three years in a row just because he wouldn't show up for more than half of his classes. But he showed up the day I told everyone Grandma Circe's tale, and he just scowled, his ugly grin coming to life, his fat, chubby cheeks growing ruddy as he and two of his friends walked over.
"Your momma and daddy ain't no heroes," Hax spit in my face.
"Yes they are!" I said shrilly.
"No they ain't. Your momma was a whore who spent a night with a Peacekeeper and she left you, you piece of ugleeeeeee trash!" he howled. "And your poppa is Head Peacekeeper Grimm himself! Yawhee!"
Of course I didn't believe him. Grandma Circe was always right. She never lied. Grandma Circe was a truthful, loving, caring woman. I was her beloved grandson, she my beloved grandmother. Grandma Circe could never lie to me.
People lie all the time.
Hax kept pestering me as I grew up. It was never bullying exactly, just a couple of thrown punches here, a couple of foul words there, nothing that ever really bothered me. By the time I was in third grade I was his size. I'm not particularly big, but Hax was pretty small for a man. He just seemed massive when we were in preschool. Third grade, and Hax backed off, but by then the seed of doubt was alive and wriggling for real inside of me. I was growing up, and I kept thinking Mom and Dad can't really be superheroes, can they? But I would always circle back around and think that Grandma Circe would never lie to me.
When I was 12, and we were heading to a Coven meeting by the cover of midnight, the pregnant full moon shining overhead, I finally mustered up the courage to ask he the truth about the matter. I'd started working in the lumbermills, and had become interested in girls. I was charismatic and a flirt and was haplessly in love with several girls simultaneously. I was also losing my naivete. I was truly realizing what the Games were after my first Reaping, and I started seeing the injustices around the District. So I asked Grandma Circe to tell me the truth. I knew they weren't superheroes.
"Your mother had a one night stand with your father. She died giving birth to you, and your father wouldn't take you," she told me in a quiet whisper of a voice. The moonlight shone on her mess of silvery curls, standing out starkly against her maroon cloak. There was silence between us. The only things I heard was wind whistling through the trees, the crunch of leaves beneath our boots, and the glass potion bottles on the inside of Grandma Circe's cloak clinking together.
"Is my father still alive?" I asked Grandma Circe.
"Yes." That was all she said. Then we were in the clearing, with firelight painting the area orange and gold. Our worries melted from our minds as the chatter of the sorcerers and sorceresses around us melded with the shuffling of tarot cards and the crackle of the fire. I found Rowan with some of the other younger Coven members playing with some hypnotic pendulums, and Grandma Circe joined the other Elder Leaders where they were consulting some oracle bones near the fire. I didn't think about my parents again for a while as life became lovely. I was working at the lumberyard on the weekends, and at school on the weekdays I got decent grades and flirted with girls and spent time with my best friend, Rowan Blackwell, the daughter of our town's Mayor. And once a month the Coven met in the musty, aging woods of Seven outside of our decently sized town, Ainslee. Once a month, at every full moon, we congregated in the clearing and practiced magics and brewed potions and read tarot cards and crystal balls and everything else the Elders, including Grandma Circe, taught us. Sorcery was officially banned in Seven; there had been some serious outbreaks of another Coven somewhere in the deep north of the District, where they rioted and used powders and poisons to murder Peacekeepers and the town's Capitol Liaison. After that, "witchcraft" as the ignorant Capitols called it was outlawed, and anyone found practicing it would be sentenced to death with a semblance of a trial that would ultimately find the sorcerer or sorceress guilty. That leads us to the current day.
Rowan and I sat in her bedroom. We had our homework splayed out about on her bed, pencils and papers and folders and binders in a colorful, jumbled mess on top of the bed. The covers were silken, lovely, imported from One. The Blackwells were rich, as they practically ruled the larger town, at least for Seven, of Ainslee. With nine children and lots of money to spare, their house was spacious and grandoise, the furnishings over exaggerated and costly. Rowan's room was as big as the entirety of mine and Grandma Circe's shack on the fringe of Ainslee. I didn't care, however. We made enough money, Grandma selling medical potions and I working at the lumberyard, to stay alive and get a couple of luxuries, like nice clothing and candies. I never really felt jealous of Rowan, just excited whenever I got to go over her house and experience the beauty of grandeur of it. Rowan was never overly prideful of her home either, unlike some of her siblings and her parents. She was down to Earth, and that was why I appreciated having her as my best friend.
"I'm bored, how about you?" Rowan speaks up after we've been puzzling over an aggravating geometry proof on our geometry homework for several minutes. I nod in agreement. I really do hate math. Sometimes I find myself doodling runes or writing out recipes for potions in class these days instead of doing the classwork and paying attention to the teacher's lesson. Rowan has been acting the same.
Rowan pulls open the drawer of her dresser, and pulls out of bundle of socks. Inside is a pack of tarot cards. Immediately I freeze. We shouldn't be playing with things like the tarot cards out in the open. Rowan is about to pull out the first card when there is a sharp knock on the door. Rowan quickly throws the tarot cards under the bed as I pull open the door to reveal our visitor.
Mayor Blackwell is checking in on us. He steps into the room and inspects it, making sure that we're not fooling around. He sees our geometry homework spread out on the floor in front of us, pencils in hand, and he turns to leave when he spots something out of the corner of his eyes. We both freeze up as he strolls over to Rowan's dresser and pulls out a second pack of tarot cards that had fallen out of the sock bundle.
"R-rowan?!" Mayor Blackwell stutters incredulously. "Are these...these yours? Are you par-part of the Coven?!"
Rowan and I are frozen. There is nothing we can do. Maybe they'll go easy on Rowan. She is Mayor Blackwell's daughter, after all. Maybe they'll just flog her nice and easy, maybe one lash or two and then she never has to do anything with the Coven ever again.
"Rowan, you know the new law they passed in Ashburgh. Every suspect of witchcraft is to be hanged. Rowan..."
"They're mine, sir. I'm using some of my powers to make her hide them here," I pipe up suddenly. Mayor Blackwell looks equal parts relieved and frustrated. He pulls out a high tech Capitol phone from his pocket, and calls someone.
"Peacekeeper Grimm? Yes, I have a boy by the name of Baron Arbor. He's a suspect of witchcraft. Yes, I'll hold him in until you get here."
And just like that, I am sentenced to death. Rowan starts to cry but I quiet her. I have a plan, a risky plan. I am strong, able with an axe, good with potions and medicines and edible plants. I have just the plan to survive this. And when I win, I'll have enough money to buy Grandma Circe enough potion supplies to last her a lifetime. And when I win, maybe I'll finally find the right girl and my insatiable hunger for love will be fulfilled. And when I win, I'll be revered, and I'll show everyone what a sorcerer really is like, and they we're not all crazy savages who murder Peacekeepers.
And when I win, I'll show them all.
A/N: Today we had Ivy and Baron, created by Mystical Pine Forest and xxbookwormmockingjayxx. Thanks you two for this truly special pair, it was a great pleasure to write them, and I can't wait to explore them further later on in the story.
Sorry that Baron's was decently longer than Ivy's, but I felt like to explore Baron's character and explain his backstory I needed to make his a little longer. I contemplated adding more to Ivy's but I felt like that would tamper with the effect and flow of her POV, so I left it as is. I'm pretty sure this was our longest intro chapter yet. :D
So far, the option of 12 goodbyes and 12 trains on the poll is winning by 3 votes, and that was what I was going to do probably anyway, so that's going to be my plan of action after we get all of these introductions over with.
So, I would like to tell you about 2 SYOTs by reviewers who were inspired by this story to start their own SYOTs like it. Neither of their tributes have yet to show up in this story but they will soon.
First off, we have Royal Blood: the 110th Hunger Games by maiakenna. Maia is a great friend of mine and she's been planning out this story for a while, so I have faith that she'll do well with this story.
Second off, we have Brutality: 34th Hunger Games by IlluminatingSpirit. Spirit is also a faithful reader and I'm getting to know her. Just like Maia she's nice and capable, and I have faith that she'll do well with her story.
If neither of these stories finish you can blame me for recommending them xD but nevermind that. I have tributes in both so this may or may not be a selfish act of "go submit so I can see my tributes!" or it may be Tracee trying to be friendly (hint, it's a combination of both.) But go submit! Panem needs you to create more cannon fodder for them!
Who did you like better, Ivy or Baron? Overall thoughts on this pair? Predicted placements? Thoughts on the writing?
Until Next Time,
Tracee