A/N: Here's an early Christmas gift, a second update in only one weekend! Here we have District Eight! Enjoy, everyone!

Side Note: Baron from the previous chapter is descended from some of the "witches" involved in the Salem witch trials. Some of his Coven's skills, like the potions, are actually real and can be used to heal as sort of medicines, while others, like the tarot cards, are just a fake part of their rituals. Their Coven is almost like a magic lover's club. Think Dumbeldore's Army in HP. xD

No trigger warnings! Hooray! XD

You would not believe your eyes

If ten million fireflies

Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they fill the open air

And leave teardrops everywhere

You'd think me rude but I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe that planet earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

Gaia Imani, 15

Resident of District 8

Factory Worker and Student at Gwinnett High

"Bobbin!" I call softly. "Bobbbb-iiiiin!" I hear my little brother's high pitched giggles, and I roll my eyes. His overalls and gray work shirt are folded in my arms. It's time to head to the factory. Bobbin is only seven years old; he only started working a couple of weeks ago, and he doesn't quite get it yet. He has a calm, practiced hand and a tendency to keep things neat, just like me. That's why they're paying him two cents more per hour, just like they do with me. And while he might be unnaturally good with a needle and thread for a seven year old, he is still seven years old. He is happy and energetic and naive and wonderfully oblivious, floating in a state of perpetual bliss. Heck, he even manages to forget that his father is dead somehow.

"Bobbin, come on, we're really going to be late for work. We can play hide and seek when we get home," I coo. Bobbin sighs and pops up from his hiding place underneath his small, worn cot. It lays next to mine in our small, cramped bedroom. The next room over is the kitchen/living room/bathroom/every other room, and the room after that is the minimally larger bedroom where my mother's cushy bed and my little two year old sister Satin's crib is found. Our apartment is small and dull, but all four of us find ways to dream past its dingy plaster walls. Mom has her writing, Bobbin his fantastical imagination, and Satin her extreme youth. And I have my notebook and colored pencils and flora books, rented over and over from the library.

I help Bobbin into his ratty gray shirts and stained overalls. Things don't get washed much around here. There isn't much point, my best friend Cotton told me one day when I complained about my own overalls being crusty and oily. She said things will get dirty again, so what was the use? I like things clean and neat, however. Everyone in my family, except my father when he was still around, is like that.

Bobbin and I stroll out into the center room. Mom has two steaming bowls of porridge waiting for us, sitting on the small mahogany table in the center of the room. There's also a big, beat up brown leather couch and an old TV by the window, and on the other side of the room is the stove and the tiny fridge and a couple of cabinets which cling to the wall, out of place really. I help Bobbin into his chair, and I sit down in my own. We spoon the porridge into our mouths. Bobbin eats his eagerly. It's Saturday, and mom has added a dash of sugar to our porridge.

"Happy half birthday, Gaia," she says with a wry smile. I grin wide back. Sugar is a rare commodity. My mom has had the same small bag of sugar in our cabinets since before I was born. When she uses some of it, it's a special day. After we finish our breakfasts and clean up, I hug her tight. She's always so thin and bony, but we all are like that, aren't we? Even Bobbin and Satin are sharp and angular and stick figure like.

"Can you pick up Satin from the Weave's after work? I have to stay at the school late today, we're having a big staff meeting." My mother works at my high school, Gwinnett High. She's an English teacher, and has taught us the importance of the written and spoken word, as well as the value of creativity. When my father worked, too, we had enough to afford commodities like sugar regularly. Since the factory accident, a few sprinkles of sugar on special days are the only special things in my life. Well, a few sprinkles of sugar and a book of colorful flora.

I grab my notebook and my colored pencils and slide them into my work bag, which holds my needles and threads and my ID badge. It's small, more of a clutch than a bag, really. Bobbin has his own, too. I hold onto his hand tight as we walk down the many flights of stairs until we reach the ground floor. The apartment owner, a slow older woman named Mrs. Thodsen, unlocks the front door for us. She always keeps it locked so the bandits and homeless people can't come in. She's not paranoid or crazy. Murders and theft are commonplace in Eight. There are so many desperate people out on the streets. My family is lucky we're not like them. If my mom didn't have such a well paying job to keep us all fed adequately and gave us decent housing, we'd be out on the streets just like so many others.

Mrs. Thodsen holds open the door, shielding her eyes from the blinding light of the mid morning sun. The scrappy cobbled street the apartment complex sits on is coated with trash and emaciated beggars. Most don't even beg for anything, because they've been out here long enough to know the laws that govern Eight. Those that do not have enough are willing to share but do not have enough to share. Those who have enough are never willing to share despite their surplus. We have barely anything extra, and as selfish as it is, I can't give my dashes of sugar to these people lying on the streets. My heart breaks whenever I see them, but trying to help them all would just make me one of them. Everyone whose lived in Eight has seen it happen to someone before. You give and no one gives back, and you're left with nothing, and no one's better off for your troubles.

I pull Bobbin along. He quiets down and is respectful and smart, not staring at the homeless like most kids his age do, inquisitive and wide eyed and pointing, asking Why are they sleeping on the sewer grate? Bobbin keeps his head down and squeezes his work clutch tight in his hands until his little nimble fingers are turning white from the pressure. I squeeze his other hand, the one I hold, reassuringly. He just squeezes back weakly, tiredly. How early they rob children of their innocence in Eight. How early they try and rip our childhoods away.

The factory comes into sight soon enough. It's a sore thumb in the vast, tightly packed residential part of Eight's main city, Tweed. It's an industrial beast towering over the tiny residential insects that crowd around its paws. It belches black smoke and its roar is the sound of a thousand stitching needles and a million mechanical looms. Thousands of us mill around its intestines, producing every single Peacekeeper uniform that is found in the entirety of Panem. Step after step, we get closer to the giant behemoth. Bobbin was scared the first time he came here, and he's still hesitant. I was the same way when I started.

We walk through the front doors. By now we've joined a thin stream of workers heading in. Most head towards the main parts of the factory, where they unload the bolts of cloth from other parts of the District that are needed to make the uniforms. In the main areas they also control the machines that craft the uniforms and supervise and fix the machines when they break down. They also do quality control to check that there is no errors, and then there's some that package the uniforms and take them out to the loading docks, where they're put on shipping trucks. Bobbin and I work in a small wing of the factory. The receptionist, Cady, doesn't even look up as we walk past. The sign above her desk proclaims "WELCOME TO THE REFURBISHING WING."

We enter the large room where we work. Long wooden tables painted white fill the room. Half of the others are already here. It's mostly younger kids between ages six and eighteen, although there's several people in their twenties all the way up to Alice, who is around seventy or something like that. In the next fifteen minutes the other spots fill up. Bobbin and I sit next to each other; the third seat at our table is occupied by a girl a couple of years old than me named Jersa. Our supervisor, a forty something year old man named Bruce Allard enters the room. He makes all of us eighteen or younger call him Mr. Allard. He's a rather pompous man with nothing to back up his ridiculous pride and delusions of superiority.

"We have a shipment back from Six. We've got you standard rips and tears, some bullet holes, a knife wound, some burn marks. Our more experienced workers will be working on cleaning up the burns. Rest of you, you're on stitching duty," Mr. Allard instructs.

He plops down several uniforms on our table. I select one, Bobbin a second one, Jersa a third. I find the first rip on this uniform, and pull out my white thread and start deftly fixing the tear, sewing it together almost like sewing up a wound. Bobbin and Jersa do the same. Our seams are nearly invisible, small and hidden. No one will notice the tiny imperfections of the Peacekeeper uniforms once we're done with them and they're sent back to Six.

The first half of the day passes in a blur, and lunch break is being called before I know it. I become so easily absorbed in my work, stitching away dutifully. I'm one of the better "refurbish-ers". Yeah, that's our wacky official title.

We all march into the cafeteria, and grab our plastic trays. We get cold mashed potatoes and rubbery pork in some sort of sweet and sour sauce, crunchy something or other crumbled over the top. It's not very delicious, but relatively its a delicacy compared to the porridge we have every morning, sugar or no sugar. Bobbin is chattering with another very young girl around his age who has a cute face and dirty blonde hair in adorable pigtails. I pull out my notebook and colored pencils from my work clutch, and I begin thumbing through the pages.

Every flower, every vine, every tree, every bush, every fruit ever found in the Games fills this notebook, and then some, as I sketch every plant I can find in the old botanical books of days gone past. My obsession and hobby began when I was four. It's the first Games I can remember, the 10th Hunger Games. There was blood and horrors aplenty that year, but all I saw were the bright blue oceans and the tan sands. But what grabbed my attention the most were the tall, elegant trees, the poisonous duskfruit, the pastel flowers, the hardy dune grasses, the waxy water cup flowers, the fungi, the roots, and everything else. Later on in my life, when they replayed those Games to show the power of the Capitol and the horror of the Games, and to showcase the infamous Headmistress, Serephina Manchas, I learned other things. I saw how so many tributes, so many so young, survived off of the various plants in the arena, exploiting them for survival purposes. I became enamored, and I've been addicted to botany ever since. In a perfect world, I would live in Eleven, tending to a garden of my own at home while every day I would care for apple trees in an orchard or the watermelons in a watermelon patch. I would grow rows of pastel flowers in front of my home, and I'd fill the backyard (because they actually have backyards in Eleven) with saplings and bushes galore. In a perfect world, I would be happy, and not sewing mindlessly day in and day out.

In a perfect world, everything would be perfect. But things are never perfect. Things never even come close.

I'm so fancy

You already know

I'm in the fast lane

From L.A. to Tokyo

I'm so fancy

Can't you taste this gold

Remember my name, 'bout to blow

I said baby, I do this, I thought that, you knew this

Can't stand no haters and honest, the truth is

Calico D'Amboise, 14

Resident of District 8

Student at Clasp Prep

Holly, Lacey, and Sharron crowd around me as I lift the brass latch that keeps their small enclosure closed. I push open the waist height wooden gate. My boots squelch in the mud, and I try to ignore the fact that my nice boots are getting dirty. I shouldn't have worn my Vera Gunnar boots today. I remember last time I wore Vera Gunnar boots into the Angora goat pen. They were in the trash the next day and my parents had a conniption. But it would be worse to take them off and go barefoot, especially now that dad's sick and mom is more critical than ever. Whenever I get fed up with her and I'm about to explode, I come out here. And, anyway, it's feeding time. Holly, Lacey, and Sharron see the fat silvery bucket I can barely in my hands, nearly overflowing with their daily meal of tan colored pellets made of grain and other plants, along with nutrients to keep them healthy. I grunt in exertion as I tip the heavy bucket into the trough. I've done this every day since I got the goats two years ago and it's still a struggle. My body isn't good at building muscle mass.

As the goats crane their necks over the edge of the trough and then start to chow down hungrily, I stroke their soft hair. It's getting long, and soon it will be time to shear it off. Angora goat hair makes a prized type of fabric called mohair that's been all the rage in the Capitol as of late. My goats' fur sells for big bucks at the market, as if my family needs the money. With my Grandma Tammi the Mayor of our outskirts town called Button, and my mother and father working part time supervising the factory that everyone in our small town works at, we're the richest family in Button. Button's a suburb of sorts of the main city, Gwinnett. It's a ten minute drive to Gwinnett, and my cousins live in the richer, nicer areas of Gwinnett. My school, Angelika Clasp's Preperatory School for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, commonly referred to as Clasp Prep, is in the rich area of Gwinnett, near the houses of my cousins.

I travel back inside, into the kitchen. Our maid Garlinda is chopping cloves of garlic for our dinner, some sort of rich beef soup that she makes every other Wednesday. I ignore her as I set down the bucket in the stainless steel sink and turn on the faucet. The water pours into the bucket and fills it to the brim. My face is hot from being outside in the sweltering heat of midsummer Eight, and I dunk my dark brown hands into the bucket and slather water all over my face to cool it down before I haul the bucket out of the sink. I almost fall down doing so, and Garlinda speaks up.

"Mr. Calico, would you like me to carry that bucket for you to the goat pen?" she inquires meekly.

"I am alright, Garlinda, getting back to your chopping," I snap. She looks at me with wide open eyes, and I shudder. Why does she look at me like that? I know she's judging me. Just because I'm weak and I can't run that well and I'm not the most handsome boy in Button doesn't mean she has to stare at me like that! I storm outside, almost spilling the bucket again in my haste. The goats have polished off most of their meal. I fill up the other trough in the muddy enclosure with the water, and Sharron wanders over and laps up a good helping of the water, and after Lacey and Holly finish the crumbs inside the food trough they join her at the water one. I calm down, looking at these goats. These goats don't think about me like everyone else does. They don't judge my smidge of plumpness around the waist or my thin arms or my dark brown skin and sort of long hair that make many kids mistake me for a girl. When they see who they're talking too, however, they quickly right themselves. I am Calico D'Amboise, after all. I am the grandson of Mayor Tammi D'Amboise of Button. I lead the popular clique at Clasp Prep in my grade despite the fact that everyone judges me with their eyes and ears constantly. My mother just says I'm insecure and that I need to grow up, that everyone is flawed. It isn't "insecurities". It's others being too judgmental about me! No one understands why I get so frustrated about that.

I make my way inside soon enough. It's been about an hour since school's finished. I just have some math homework, but Yuko can do that for me when she and the others come over tonight, she's always a good sport in those areas. My popular group is coming over soon. I walk back into the kitchen to find Garlinda cutting carrots now. I stride over to the granite island where she is chopping and snap to get her attention.

"Hey, Garlinda? Make some more soup if you would. Fluff, Cyan, J.T., Yuko, Athena, Magenta, Tyler, Leather, Anna, Miranda, and Greggi are coming over soon. They need to be fed, and the food you feed them's gotta be good."

"So how many people is that, Mr. Calico?" she asks timidly.

"I don't know, what do I look like, a human calculator?! Just make a lot of soup, Garlinda."

She scurries off to the pantry to retrieve more ingredients and I swear I hear her mumble something derogatory about me. Garlinda's been with us forever, but she's one of the most judgmental people I know. I ball my hands into fists when my mom comes in.

"Being insecure again, honey?" she hisses, rolling her eyes as she pulls open the fridge and grabs a bottle of glacier water, imported straight from the northern reaches of Seven. "Get over it. Sure, you do got a lot of things wrong with you."

"No but?" I snap back, and she giggles.

"I see you're fighting back today. Someone call you a fatty again before you had the other cool kids whomp them into the ground?"

"Mom, just leave me alone." I stalk away to the staircase, sprinting as fast as I can up to my room. It's not very fast. I know I shouldn't be so hard on her. My father's been sick for a while and it's been wearing on all of us, especially on Mom. She went to University in the Capitol for medicine after Grandma Tammi became Mayor of Button back when Mom was just a little girl. She's taking care of dad but is struggling to deal with the fact that doctors, along with herself, have diagnosed his disease as terminal. He's been like this for over a year, and he has over a year left to live, he just can't move around much. He just sits in bed most days, watching TV and reading books and drawing things. I pass the door to my room and walk into his instead.

On the screen is the Capitol talk show Tengotter. Asilius Tengotter is a fantastic talk show host. He sends anyone with a cultured set of humor into fits of giggles. My fahter is chuckling about some joke. Lucia Theonis is on screen with Asilius. They always seem to have the newest Victors on the Tengotter show and all the other Capitol programs we pay to get out here in Eight. Dad spots me and shuts off the TV, and I run to his bedside and squeeze him tight. He tries to hug me back, but he's too weak to do so. I just cling to him, and I know he wants to do exactly the same.

"Rough day, Cal?" he asks me, ruffling my hair. His hair, his skin, is the exact same as mine. We look nearly identical, except before my father was bed ridden he had good muscles and could run fast. I inherited his looks but not his athleticism. I wish I'd gotten his athleticism so I could keep up with the other cool kids like J.T. and Tyler who were starting to play basketball and football. When it came to sports, I sucked. The only reason people thought I was so cool was because of the clothes I wore, the money my family had, and the fact that Grandma Tammi was Mayor of Button.

"Can you just turn on Tengotter? I want to laugh until my friends get here." Dad complies, and now Asilius Tengotter is interviewing the spunky, over the top Madame Opiea Notaire, who's dressed in a highlighter orange pencil skirt and matching flowy top. We both go down in giggles before Asilius or Madame Notaire even say a word, and I'm thankful to still have my father around. He's the only person in this world that truly cares for me.

A/N: Today we had Gaia and Calico, courtesy of DamBaudelaires and rubykenn. Thanks for this great pair :)

First off, I am so sorry for going overboard on Gaia's POV. xD I just sat down and started to write, and when I looked at the clock an hour plus had passed and I'd written over 2,000 words for her. I considered trimming it down but decided against it. I feel sort of guilty giving her so much in her opening section when everyone else had about around 1,500, but I do enjoy writing her character. xD

Secondly, yes, super fast update speed, I know. I just had lots of free time this weekend and was like "why not? Let's do it, two chapters in a weekend!" While the intros are fun, I'm getting hyped to get into the Pre-Games. If I were doing normal Reaping scenes I'd be bored by now, but having the varied intro scenes makes it more fun to do. I want to polish off the intros by the end of the month, and I think I should be able to do that rather easily, or at least I hope so. We'll see.

Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing faithfully! I love you all and I cherish all of your thoughts and opinions of the tributes. I always take everything you guys say into consideration, and I really appreciate all the reviews. It just makes me smile to think that I'm less that 50 reviews away from hitting the number of reviews I had for Oceanside, and we're not even done with the intros yet. :D You are all so amazing.

(Does anyone want to bet how many reviews this story will have at the end? Closest guesser gets bragging rights for eternity! xD)

But shenanigans aside. Who did you like better, Gaia or Calico? Overall thoughts on this pair? Predicted placements? Thoughts on the writing?

Until Next Time,

Tracee