I am blazing through the chapters today! It's partly because I have a lot of free time and partly because the first few chapters are so short. Expect things to slow right down when we hit the Eleventh Games.
Brock Eska, District 11
"Just like autumn leaves, we're in for change." -
TV on the Radio, Province
The woman finds him sleeping in a hedge. He'd dug a decent hole for himself in the base of the hedge so the peacekeepers were less likely to find him and move him on while he was sleeping. He didn't like being found.
"Mr Eska?" The woman says, her Capitol accent butchering his name.
"What do you want?" He asks, not bothering to open his eyes.
"I know what I don't want." The woman says. "I don't want the victor of the Fifth Hunger Games dying on the street because he didn't know the new rules regarding Hunger Games victors."
He groans. "What new rules?"
"Every victor is entitled to a prize. They will be given a house in Victor's Village and enough riches to last a lifetime."
He opens his eyes, studies the bottle of stolen moonshine in his hand. "Am I dreaming?"
He doesn't believe anything good can happen to him. Not after losing his entire family, one by one, during the war. Not after being homeless for five years. Not after being reaped for the Hunger Games, winning the whole damn thing and then being dumped back in his district like nothing had even happened. As if being forced into a death match had been just a minor inconvenience.
To be honest, by his standards, it had been.
"Didn't you watch the Tenth Hunger Games?" The woman trills. "You victors are so cool! You must hate the girl who won, though. If she hadn't won, you'd have Reaper as a neighbour."
Does she really think I can afford a TV? I can barely earn enough to eat.
The woman leads him to a nearby car, chatting excitedly.
"My name's Ceres. I'll be District 11's escort next year! That means I get to help you look after your tributes. I also get to pick the names at the reaping. I'm not supposed to tell you this but there was a bit of an incident last games. The mayors can't do it anymore."
He ignores her. The sooner he's alone in his new house, the better.
The car stops in a neat and orderly square surrounded by twelve fine-looking houses. Ceres gets out of the car and prances over to the nearest house, her purple hair shining in the sunlight. She waves him over.
"This one's yours." She says, unlocking the front door.
Wordlessly, he follows her inside, ignoring her coos over how delightful and quaint everything is. In all his twenty-four years alive, he's never seen anything like it. The walls are clean and solid. The furniture is pristine. There's an upstairs! He shuffles over to a nearby table, enjoying the feel of the carpet under his threadbare shoes, and reaches for the fruit bowl in the centre. He's still not quite sure the fruit belongs to him but he's going to eat it anyway.
He's still eating as Ceres leaves on some "ever so urgent business". He struggles to wrap his mind around the fact that he has a house, and a fancy one at that. For now, he's just going to focus on his bowl of fruit. Ravenous, he lets the juice drip down his chin and coat his hands.
Only once the fruit bowl is reduced to a cairn of cores and peel left to rot in the centre of the table does he begin to wonder what he's going to do with all his money. What do people with money do with their money?
Alcohol... He realises, dully. They buy a lot of alcohol...
Brock is a bit of a last-minute victor to me. I came up with his name last-minute when I realised that District 11 needs at least one victor in the first ten years and I came up with this chapter last-minute when I realised that my first draft was a little too backstory-centric. Luckily for me, I realised it would be pretty interesting to see how the first nine victors would react to suddenly being showered with gifts after the Tenth Hunger Games and Brock seemed to be a pretty good fit for that moment. All of them will have to adjust a lot to living in luxury but Brock will probably have to make the biggest leap.
