When, Not If (or, District 4)

x

The earth
as all sea, just like Ovid imagines it. The ocean
as one gorgeous excuse for drowning. I feel
like the water inside of me.

'Performance After the End of the World', Talin Tahajian

x

Tallulah Covel, District 4

"You looked good today, Lulu," the facilities manager - which is a fancy way of saying 'appointed Capitol guy from the tourism bureau who owns all of our asses and knows it' - calls after me as I hurry down the hallway, shucking off sodden pieces of my costume as I go.

"Fuck off, Tenor," I reply, pausing to detach the last of my tentacles from my suit and toss it at the whitewashed wall of the fluorescent-lit tunnel leading away from the performance chamber. While the pieces of the costume swirl and float quite menacingly behind me as I swim, once it hits the ground, it seems to deflate to a soggy heap. "Cast me as the fucking sea witch again next season, I dare you, asshole."

"With that attitude, I don't know how an audience is going to realistically see you as anything else. Hope you're planning on picking those tentacles up!"

He's really not the worst by any means. Actually puts up with a ton of bullshit from me, partially because I'm good at my job and he doesn't give too much of a fuck what we do so long as visitors don't complain, and partially out of what almost seems like a sort of fatherly affection for 'his mermaids'. Tenor's about half a million years old, hair too white to take dye, skin spotted and wrinkled from sun exposure beyond what can be easily erased in the Capitol without a prohibitively high bill. Used to be a Peacekeeper in Four, and got his foot in the door fast when the Presidency opened the borders to Capitol tourism.

I guess that's how he knew about Halputta Spring, rebranded as Blue Lagoon, though it isn't a lagoon - it's a spring, on top of a twisted nest of miles worth of underwater caverns, dark and clear and ice cold.

Some of the mermaids have contests to see how far down they can go, since most of us can hold our breath for upwards of three minutes. My record is a little north of four, and Epaulette could get past five regularly, before she came up too fast from the caves under the performance area and died of some kind of decompression sickness.

After her, Tenor laid down the law about dicking around in the caves, so I don't anymore. Not exactly how I want to go down, in the dark and cold and silence of the underwater chambers of the aquifers that supply District 4.

I don't really mind working here too much, though I'd mind it a lot less if I ever got a decent role in the daily shows. Dressing as a mermaid to get ogled by Capitol tourists, the only people who can afford the steep fees to get into the resort, isn't all that bad. What I really like, though, is the performance of it.

The first thing Tenor did when he bought the place was carve out an underground amphitheater, putting in a solid wall of glass to hold back the weight of billions of gallons of water, and lit the whole thing up blue, put in oxygen tubes so we can stay under for hours through full underwater ballets. The most popular of them, and the most frequently run, tells the story of a mermaid who wished for human legs, left her home, got her wish, and joined the 'human world'.

There's a sea witch involved.

For two out of four daily performances, I'm the sea witch.

All of my tentacles and most of the costume but the thermal undergarments ripped off and discarded haphazardly, I finish my interaction with my boss by flipping him off and hurry to the dressing room. I've got fifteen minutes to switch from my frightening waterproof stage makeup, intended to make me look about twenty years older and a fuckton creepier, into a soft and pretty look that'll pair with my cosmetic tail for terrestrial work.

My costume is actually a lot easier to get out of than most of the performance tails, since I don't have to unbind my legs once I leave the airlock and can just half-sprint to change, which is a necessary advantage given how much longer my makeup takes to remove. There are a few slightly-better spots to work hostess-position in afternoon shifts, and they go fast if you don't nail them down.

I'm one of the first people in the changing room, lit up harshly by the bulbs of twenty vanities in various states of disarray. Mostly the cast for the evening shows, just now putting on the more elaborate stage makeup. Marissa, the other sea witch, nods when she sees me enter the room.

"Where's the costume, Tally?" she asks, her own costume half-on.

As if in response, one of the avoxes that Tenor keeps on staff comes bustling in with an armful of black tentacles, and I shrug as Marissa sighs. She's about a decade older than me, and if the false sense of superiority helps her feel better about being on even footing, career-wise, with a seventeen year old high school dropout, that's her business.

"Here it is now," I observe brightly, picking up the pile of tentacles, drying them quickly and pinning them up on my costume rack, multitasking as my makeup remover sinks in on my face.

"Good crowd?"

"Tenor's in a good mood, so probably."

"You think the big announcement was keeping our numbers down?" she muses, shellacing a layer of dark grey paint on her cheeks, to give them the illusion of deep hollows called for by the haglike character. "My hosting spot was full for both shifts this morning."

Well, that sucks. We've been doing lackluster business for the last week or so, and the speculation is that most of the Capitol citizenry who normally frequent the resort were keeping close to home for the buildup to the finale. It's been almost like a vacation, fewer people trying to make conversation and asking for drinks. And it's not like I can see the smaller crowds watching the shows - what matters is the show I'm putting on, not necessarily who's watching.

Even when I'm wearing a second skin's worth of hideous facepaint. Even then, every second of it, the pure performance of it, is more exhilarating than anything else in the world.

Three days out from the announcement that the 90th Games will be the last, and will include all volunteers, including two from the Capitol - which is lit, I guess - it seems the vacation is over.

Once my makeup has almost entirely melted off, I finish the job, rub my face raw with a rough towel, apply an equally thick layer of moisturizer to protect my skin, and stand beneath the drying station to get the water out of my waist-length hair. Which looks great underwater, but soaking wet, on dry land, is more likely to snap my neck with the weight of it than anything.

As I'm doing so, other members of my cast start filtering in, equally sodden, the lines of the compressive performance tails still etched in their bare legs, the chatter in the room growing louder with every passing second. Once my hair is dry, falling in a straight, black curtain to my hips, I flip it over my shoulder and hurry to reclaim my vanity, dabbing some glitter, mascara, and a few swipes of shimmer over the high points of my face.

All there's left to do is wiggle out of my thermal undergear and into my seashell top and cosmetic tail, which doesn't even really restrict my legs, just conceals them and forces me to hobble a little.

"I got section C!" I announce, hustling over to the holo-tablet by the door and gesturing in my code to ensure that my hours are getting logged. It's two in the afternoon; I'll be here until ten this evening, and as athletic as the last two years swimming and conditioning for hours a day has made me, I'm already tired.

"Fuck you," Nari complains, looking up from her dressing table.

Section C is the best - no families, since it's open alcohol service, in a region with a population of friendly manatees and a manmade white sand beach. It attracts guests looking, more often than not, for peace and quiet and occasionally a lot of drinks. A few lonely older guys, but that's honestly a relief from the monotony of a long shift.

Since I've been working at the resort, I've lost whatever minimal sense of fear or limits regarding other people I used to have. I'm a fucking mermaid. My abs cast shadows. I can hold my breath twice as long as most distance runners could hope to, can bend myself into pretzels - I'm born for this sort of stuff, to be seen and admired and adored.

"Change faster next time if you want the spot so bad," I shoot back at Nari, making sure to flip the glossy blue fin of my tail on my way out, just for her.

Then I awkwardly waddle the rest of the way out, blessedly out of sight fairly quickly as the door swings shut behind me.

An attendant avox, reading the assignment I've punched in on her tablet, ushers me through the catacombs beneath the resort to a tube that will bring me up to the surface in my assigned sector. I try not to look at her too closely as she helps me get the entirety of my tail inside of the platform; Tenor's use of avoxes kind of freaks me out, honestly, but I know they make cheap labor or whatever.

Still really uncomfortable to see the set of their jaws and know there's not a tongue under there, you know? Not a good feeling.

The plate brings me spiraling up to the surface, and the first rays of the afternoon sun on the sweltering day are actually a temporary relief from the chilly bleach-scented moisture of the tunnels. Like Marissa warned me, all of the positions are already occupied. I'm set up on a rocky outcropping on the shore, and eight tourists in my field of view will be my responsibility for the next few hours.

What follows is putting on as much of a show as I do dancing and twirling underwater.

"Good afternoon!" I announce, feeling my voice turn as sweet and bell-like as I can make it, ringing over my vowels with practiced care and letting my tone lilt invitingly towards the end.

People who actually know me find this the most disturbing part of my work. The easiest way to mess with my parents, when I do run into them, which isn't often since I've been rooming with other girls from work since I fucked off and dropped out of school two years ago, is to use my mermaid voice. It absolutely freaks them out.

It's not that I don't have a nice voice, but what sounds 'pleasant and inviting' to Capitol tourists comes off a little peculiar to people who are used to me helpfully dropping profanities to punctuate every other sentence.

"My name is Mermaid Tallulah, but you can call me Lulu, or Tally, or Tal, or… well, we'll have plenty of time to make friends!" I say, making a sound that could only be described as a giggle, which would be much to my chagrin if I had any sense of shame.

It's not so much that I had to get rid of the shame, and more that it was never there. I've always been good at this. A consummate actress, if not especially notable in most of the ways that matter in District 4, never much for mucking around in fish guts or committing to the kind of math shit you have to know to get a navigational job or do any kind of managerial work. I just like to be seen. As anything, really.

"Now, can I get anyone's drink orders?" I suggest, glancing around to verify that a few tourists look interested.

After tying my hair up, which takes a while, in a single, fluid motion, I roll off the rocks and into the vibrantly blue water, keeping my face above water to avoid wrecking my hair and makeup. What follows is absolutely the easiest part of work, swimming around in my tail, teasing a couple of elderly people here, a nervous-looking young man there, about their drink orders and the weather and the news and whatever else they seem to want to talk about. Playing the friendly mermaid, the sort of person they want to believe populates District 4, where we're all so gorgeously tan and ebulliently overjoyed to wake up every morning and go to some fishery job in a sleepy little coastal town and feed the country.

In reality, it's all based on acting, like most things.

I really think there's not much to learn from something like 'school' other than what you can get out of your interactions with people. That's how you learn to be something more than yourself, which inevitably means something other than yourself. Not a bad thing. Just a totally neutral thing.

No one worth being is the same person they were when they exited the fucking womb, after all. 'Tallulah' is the name I picked to stand out after my parents chose one that everyone has, with the express intention of making me fit in. 'Moira'. Two Moiras from District 4 have died in the Hunger Games since the Mockingjay Rebellion ended. It'd be a cursed name if it wasn't just so fucking common.

There's nothing common about me. I'm not just from the coast, and I'm not just from inland, even if my parents are determined to never actually strive for anything in life - I will. I always have.

A few of the tourists are interested in talking about the Games, which figures. I've been kind of waiting for that over the last few days, though I guess, like Marissa said, most of the in-the-loop Capitolites actually wanted to be home to see the fireworks in person.

"You must have trained," one middle-aged woman with eerily shiny rose-gold hair insists as I pick up a maitai from a collection of rocks, ferried up by avox bartenders below-deck, and swim it over to her, which never fails to drive first-timers wild. "I can't even imagine the kind of strength it takes, this kind of thing…"

"Come try the water if you like!" I recommend brightly. "We all train in high school, but this is more my dream. Every day is paradise here."

"Oh, but wouldn't that be something! A mermaid in the Games, I can't imagine!"

"Well, I can't say I don't miss it sometimes," I admit, feeling myself slip a little bit, out of my usual work headspace, which works best when cleared away of baggage from the past. "But this is just as fun."

Surely.

She sincerely giggles, taking the drink and waffling a bit about how she can't get her hair wet, but the water looks so lovely.

It's mostly the truth, what I'm saying. We do train, some more seriously, some less seriously, the same way kids in other districts have phys ed and field days. I was kind of a late bloomer growth-wise, not to mention always more interested in cracking jokes and making a delightful fool of myself than actually getting into the weapons-handling thing with any kind of seriousness, so I don't miss it too much.

More the idea of it than anything. If there were a way to cut the line somehow, if I could have willed myself into the kind of person who gets to volunteer without putting my head down, shutting up, and working my way up to bench two-hundred or whatever, I'd have done it in a flash.

But the thing is, it's a miserable and boring process, even if the payoff, the Games, is a captivating kind of fantasy for me. Like I said, the performance is ultimately what matters. And if I can paint myself into a fucking sea witch every day to be gawked at for hours, surely I could do whatever the Capitol wants.

...not to mention, now, more as a side effect of work than anything, I have the necessary muscle.

I guess I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about it, with the announcement and all.

Other guests weigh in, one of whom claims that they're some kind of tech on the Gamemaking staff, though it's hard to tell through their mouthful of silver fangs.

As the sun begins to sink lower, a few of the guests meander back to villas in sight of the water until only one remains, a man in his thirties who's been intermittently napping and reading something on a holo-pad, polite but mostly cursory in accepting no fewer than five pina coladas.

Flipping out of the water now that I no longer have a full sector to wait on, I let my hair tumble down and assume a sitting position on a conveniently located rock that gives me a good vantage point on my last guest.

He's pretty normal looking, after the rest of them. Kind of familiar, now that I'm not being distracted by so many other competing demands on my attention, tapping in drink orders on the flesh-colored keypad attached to my tail. I squint at him, waiting to understand where I know him from. Some kind of announcer? Celebrity?

"Usually mermaids aren't so stare-y," he observes abruptly, his voice coming out far more acidic now that he's not asking for a drink.

I very nearly fall off the rock, startled, having assumed - stupidly, I guess - that he was napping behind the sunglasses.

Was he watching the whole time?

"Gazing longingly is a very mermaid-y thing to do," I suggest, struggling out of my mild surprise, trying to pull my tone back to its semi-musical all-fake quality.

"Oh, the makeup's not fooling anyone," he sighs. "You're, what, seventeen? Redirect that longing somewhere useful. Perhaps bringing me another drink."

I frown.

"Another pina colada, Mr…"

"Jeez, do I need to be doing more youth outreach?" he complains, taking off his sunglasses and abruptly becoming much more familiar as I register his disconcertingly blue eyes. "I guess I'm already doing dead fucking zero, so probably."

This is Neveah Laurence, our only victor.

For a second, I hope I haven't offended him.

Then I recollect myself, remember that, of the two of us, I'm the one who's a goddamned mermaid.

"The pina colada is on the way, Mr. Laurence," I say cheerfully. "Sunglasses threw me off."

I tap the code in, and a few seconds later, the drink materializes in a slot in the rock beside me. With a touch of melodrama, I take the delicate glass and roll down, landing easily on the sand without spilling a drop.

He ignores my excuse, but nods appreciatively as he receives the drink.

"You wanna hear some bullshit, Tally, or Lulu, or whatever?"

"Always," I say, accidentally slipping into a voice that sounds much more like one I might conceivably use without a tail on.

Neveah laughs, as though he knows as well as I do that I've tipped my hand, my hand being 'genuine interest in his likely involvement in the Games'.

"I'm not mentoring District Four this year," he says, taking a long drink.

"Who is?" I ask quickly. "I mean, where will you be?"

He quirks up an eyebrow.

"Look, I'm paid to give a fuck about you, so I give a fuck," I say, deciding in a split second that marginally-sincere-Talullah is probably going to get me a better tip from this particular man than mermaid-Tallulah. "But I do have vested interest in Four, y'know?"

"If I told you it was anyone in particular, would you volunteer?" he asks curiously.

"...well, not just for that," I say with a laugh. "I dunno if I'm ever going to catch back up with training, and I'm not desperate to make a fool of myself when I've got such a decent gig going on here."

"Trust me, you couldn't make more of an idiot of yourself than our last few volunteers," he sighs. "And I'm in Three, as I'm sure you're desperate to know. There was a lottery to determine our placements, ostensibly, but I'm fairly certain someone in the Capitol is just trying to punish me for something."

"Huh," I say.

"Just about my response," he observes, setting his head back on his chair with a long and near-supernaturally exasperated noise. "God, the whole thing is so fucking exhausting. Anyway, you want to know what mentor could be waiting for you behind door number one? I heard you talking to shiny-pink-hair over there."

"I wasn't going to…" I begin to say.

"I volunteered myself," he interrupts. "Obviously. In no position to judge. I'm just making an observation. Seemed like you were interested."

"...maybe," I say, more hesitant about the word than I have been about anything in a long time.

"Anyway," he says brusquely. "You know who they gave my job to? Saxaul Eslami. Motherfucker."

Not just any motherfucker, really. There're a lot of victors who clearly never gave what they'd do next a second thought. He sometimes seems like the only one who's really had a plan and stuck to it - utter chaos, a scandal every two weeks, like clockwork, though gone a little quieter lately. Also one of the only ones who's stayed famous, like 'even my bland-ass parents talk about him over the breakfast table' famous.

Neveah must be able to see that I'm interested, because he sits up slightly, propping himself on an elbow, transparently making an effort not to slur his words. Even so many drinks in, there's an unmistakable glint of something inscrutable in his vividly blue eyes.

"We don't have a girl lined up yet, y'know."

x

Moises García, District 4

"Anything worth knowing?" my mom asks, leaning casually against the counter near the fridge, not looking up from her newspaper.

It's her way of saying a lot of things - in this case, I assume, 'good morning', 'how are you', 'what are your plans for the day' - but she doesn't expect a response unless I'm certain she'll care about the answer. A lot of our communication is about reading between the lines, not speaking up unless strictly necessary. Listening before you speak.

The problem when two people are listening and neither is speaking is that there's never a lot of purchase for anyone to connect.

I do have news, though, from the previous evening, when I came home late from an evening run and missed dinner, as I usually do. The housekeeper continues, dutifully, to lay out meals for two. Most nights, the food ends up stone cold in the trash.

"Neveah's tapped a female volunteer," I say. "Someone from outside of the Center."

"That makes sense. Little enough talent within it," she says stiffly, closing her paper, folding it neatly, setting it beside her. I have her interest, now, though.

She doesn't need to ask, just to tilt her head slightly.

Go on.

"Tallulah Covel," I say, searching her dark eyes for recognition, satisfied that none is immediately forthcoming and I'll need to offer more detail. "A dropout. Recruited from Blue Lagoon. I understand she's a…"

I pause before I actually say it, waiting to see if I won't have to.

"One of the mermaids," I finally say.

My mom sighs.

"Isn't that just like Neveah. The man loves his mermaids. Nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

"Be smart today," she tells me, which, when she says it, means 'have a good day' and 'best of luck' and 'I love you'. It doesn't have to mean 'unconditionally' to be true.

For now, I deserve it.

I nod shortly, find the packed lunch prepared by Mrs. Clarke, who must be off dealing with my grandparents, since she hasn't come by to see us off this morning. My grandfather managed to come down with a cold, somehow, despite the fact that he and my grandmother haven't left the house in about half a decade.

Mom blames Mrs. Clarke. She may be replaced soon, but doesn't know it yet.

The Sunday morning light is grey and muted by thick cloud cover outside, threatening a drizzle of rain. A pair of umbrellas wait by the door - I consider them, but the walk isn't too long and I weigh the inconvenience against the potential benefit. It's not as though there are thunderheads crowding the horizon. Just a haze of grey fog, more or less.

I offer the empty living room a half-bow, just in case, and leave the umbrellas behind.

My walk to the Center is damp but uneventful. We live about as close as anyone in the district does; that's by design. My grandfather built the house in this particular location when my mother's eldest brother was born, intending to see him volunteer or die trying. He managed to do both by the time he was eighteen. Then, it was personal - it was my mother's turn.

The quarter quell robbed her of her year to volunteer, and the perfidy of the rebels in Four, from Victor's Village to the dregs of the coast, plunged the district into darkness, buried it in rubble, allowed us to be left to rot. I'm not certain who my father was, but I gather he was one of our liberators from Two, in the rare moments that my mom mentions him. Or at least, a little less than eighteen years ago, after the first of the revived Games was won and Finish Ardell of District 1 was crowned, I was born.

Everything since then has been personal to her, particularly matters of my upbringing and education. So I appreciate the distance she puts between us, knowing that she cares deeply but tries to protect me from just how much of our family's hope depends on me.

Starting in lukewarm pinpricks, the rain has begun in earnest by the time I make my way to the main room of the Center, one of the newest buildings in the district, hastily erected post-Rebellion, in which the original cavernous structure was razed after it was appropriated as a rebel hospital. A shame. My mom has stories of her time in that building, the larger-than-life victors we used to have, all dead, ground into dust like the Center and the memories.

Already, a few other people are milling about. Mostly kids from the coast who probably don't have anywhere else to go on a rainy morning like this and took a bus in, or else made the several-mile run themselves. Several instructors, though there aren't really enough of us present to take instruction.

Almost-senior-for-all-intents-and-purposes instructor Skiff Grandin is doing pull-ups on a bar as Moira Mizushima, a first-year-out, watches adoringly.

I heave a sigh, let my face go blank rather than react to anything going on around me, avoid even taking too much of it in, and head to the break room to put my lunch away.

There's a girl I don't recognize, which is new, and it actually takes a moment to figure out what or who I'm looking at as she digs around in the fridge, apparently looking for something. Her hair, extremely long, dark, and worn loose, falling into her eyes, both makes it obvious that I don't know her and difficult to see her face to confirm the suspicion.

After a moment's consideration, I cough to interrupt her and she jerks back by a few inches, locking eyes with me, holding a lunch bag.

"Can I help you?" I ask, after another pause.

"Dunno," she says. "Is this Skiff's lunch, d'you think?"

I blink.

"He usually has a plastic bag," I say. "Check for an unlabeled white one."

She nods appreciatively, returning the paper bag, marked with an illegible name, to the door of the communal fridge, back to shuffling through the lunches of everyone who's arrived thus far.

"Fucker asked if I was lost. Like I didn't go to fucking school with him four years ago, piece of shit. Who does he think he is?" she grumbles. "Figure I can get away with it if I just do it once. And I bet he packs a good lunch. Fucker."

"Are you hungry?" I ask.

"Yeah, I'm not used to… usually my work feeds us," she sighs, wrinkling her nose and flipping her impractically long hair back over her shoulder. "Hence the revenge-breakfast."

The pieces, already connected, fit together perfectly.

Tallulah Covel, the mermaid, the person who'll be volunteering with me. One first impression to make to make this work, to make everything the way it's supposed to be, whether or not Neveah's introducing a wild card to mess things up, as my mom seems to think.

Based on the immediacy with which she's taken to workplace theft, I don't think my mom was totally incorrect in her assessment, but I banish that thought immediately. Listen, don't make assumptions until you've listened.

"Split my lunch with me, then, I can head home and get more once we're on midway break," I offer, summoning up a smile.

"Huh," she says musingly, closing the fridge door, flouncing over - that's really the best word to describe the way she walks. "Whatcha got?"

"Picky," I say lightly, making sure I don't let my smile drop, so she knows I'm not actually being a dick, just messing with her - I figure that's her style, again, based on first impressions, but that seems like a pretty safe gamble.

"Shut up," she complains, but she smiles too, even more so when I take a pair of sandwiches, a container of soup, and a parcel of cut fruit from my bag. "Fuck!"

I offer her a sandwich.

"I didn't have breakfast either," I say, as an invitation to eat, pulling out a chair for her first, then for myself at the dingy breakroom table.

Usually not a great bet to hang around too long in the kitchen in the mornings when my mom doesn't have work. Most weekends I go without. It occurs to me that this is a solution to a vague problem I've been ignoring for a while that may well have been affecting my performance negatively.

"Guess you gotta eat all this stuff to be so big," she observes, accepting the seat and tearing open the sandwich with surprising enthusiasm.

"Basically," I agree, relaxing my smile to get started on the soup.

"Thanks, uh -" she trails off, making a face at me, prompting my name.

"Moises," I say. "Moises García."

"Ooh," she laughs, almost choking on a mouthful of sandwich. "I've heard about you. Doesn't seem like half of it's true, though, huh?"

"Probably best to assume that everything you've heard is true," I reply with a shrug.

"Sure, so, then, not only are you an irredeemable elitist piece of shit, a kiss-ass, a likely-sadistic sociopath who may or may not be a serial killer, and in an incestuous relationship with your mom, you're a buff dude who's down to share lunch with someone he's never met."

"You pick things up fast," I say, actually laughing aloud. "Wow. How long have you been here, twenty minutes?"

"More like fifteen. I'm good at getting people to talk," she says, smiling through the sandwich. "Dunno if I told you, but I'm Tallulah. Most people use one nickname or another, but it's your call."

"Tallulah," I echo, memorizing the feel of the syllables in my mouth, but otherwise back to smiling. "Well, nice to meet you. Planning on sticking around?"

"We'll see," she says. "Dunno if you've heard, but Neveah brought me in as a volunteer. Figure a lot can happen in a year, but might as well come out with it, be direct and shit."

"Recruited for your lunch-stealing skills?" I suggest.

She snorts.

"Neveah's got standards, I think. If it was lunch-thievery that got me in, I'd like to imagine I'd be better at it."

I crack open the container of sliced fruit, long pieces of golden mango and star-shaped cross-sections of carambola. It's a shame that Mrs. Clarke will probably be out soon. If there's anything I can say about her, it's that she makes good lunches.

"Fruit?" I offer Tallulah, and she whistles approvingly, taking hold of a mango section and popping it into her mouth.

"Heard some other rumors," she adds, watching me carefully for my response.

"I'm not a cannibal," I say, very seriously, which makes her laugh.

"Shit, shouldn't have taken your sandwich!" she laughs, feigning horror. "Nah, I hear you're all set up to volunteer yourself. Have been for a long time."

"A lot can happen in a year," I reply, pulling back her words from earlier - people like it when you do that.

"Guess we're gonna find out just how much, huh?" she says, leaning back in her chair, propping up her feet on a different seat as she finishes the sandwich and takes another strip of mango.

With Skiff-typical timing, the door swings open to reveal our instructor, arms crossed and looking very displeased, though not quite as much as he might have been had we been eating his lunch rather than mine.

"Moises, man, the fuck," he says, frowning at me in particular, mostly ignoring Tallulah. "Warmup started five minutes ago. Off your ass."

I try to make a habit of treating Skiff respectfully - he doesn't have much influence over whether or not I make it to the Games, and I won't spare him another second's thought once I'm on the train, but his involvement in the Center means he has some control over how pleasant or unpleasant my everyday life is. So I stand up and half-bow, and usher Tallulah to do the same.

She doesn't budge.

Before the door closes behind him, still well within earshot, she announces, "you know, you and me, we could totally kill that guy, right?"

"...beg your pardon?" I say.

"It's pretty funny how the instructors they have in here pushing people around are just ex-trainee failures," she says, adding some volume as well as venom to the last half of the sentence.

"Be careful," I caution her with a sigh.

"How come I gotta be careful?"

"They're not weak, and they are… angry. There's a lot of repressed anger floating around here. It's a consequence of ego and failure," I say.

One of many reasons I'm so careful not to fail.

"I'm not fucking weak either," she says, balling up the paper wrapper from the sandwich. "Let's go work out or whatever, it's my first day and I know fuckall about how things have changed since I dropped out of school."

"You dropped out?" I ask, feigning surprise, rewrapping the second sandwich, sealing the containers of soup and fruit.

"Best choice I ever made," she says with a roguish grin. "But that's not saying much. C'mon, show me how a real trainee does it, I only got a year to catch up."

A lot can happen in a year.

By fourteen or so, the number of casuals involved in training starts to drop off. Most schools in Four have gyms, but a lot of the work-week attendance in the Center is driven by either casual interest or morbid curiosity. Not at all like the situation in One and Two.

Or like the way it used to be.

Neveah's not around a lot, but I've had to talk to him a few times, in the process of nailing down my position as volunteer, getting official confirmation, that kind of thing. He's as much a departure from the old kind of District 4 tribute as our dimly-lit Center is from the dignified, professional space that existed here before the Rebellion.

I've seen his Games, after all. Everyone has. He's not exactly shy about sharing them with recruits, though I've noticed that he doesn't really watch himself, tends to zone out and look past the holo-screen, which is… interesting, because you wouldn't assume he's the kind of guy who could be upset by anything. Gratingly, obnoxiously superior at all times, always smiling like he has some kind of secret, which…

Victors are entitled to that, no matter how they win. I know that, but I don't have to like it, and I don't have to like him, but I do have to keep in his good graces enough to preserve my position, so the dance continues.

Tallulah follows me out to the gym, where Skiff and Moira are leading a ragtag group of about thirty trainees - no one under sixteen permitted in on weekends, which are supposed to be intensive training sessions - in a set of warmup stretches.

"Is this normal?" she whispers as we approach. "Like, is this the kind of training you guys always do?"

"In a word, yes," I reply, observing as I do that it's getting easier to match her tone and language choices.

"Eh, well, guess you can never have too much flexibility training," she sighs, and I show her where to find the mats and the disinfectant wipes, and we get to business, the same way I would any day, but pivotally different in so many ways.

I've been wondering for a while who my partner might be. There are a few solid performers in the sixteen-plus group, from whom the volunteer would have inevitably been selected had whatever business got Tallulah in here not happened. Most of the decent inlander girls wouldn't be caught dead actually going into the arena, though, leaving only a few viable options - Araceli, who's in my year, but from the coast, still angry about pretty much everything, though she shows up to the Center even as she curses it, Neveah, and a long list of instructors under her breath whenever she gets the chance, or maybe Ursula, from the year below me, who has enthusiasm to spare but comes off a lot younger than sixteen.

Really, I should be grateful that Neveah managed to get someone in from out of the Center. I've known most of the people here for too long to like them in any meaningful way. Yes, a lot can happen in a year, but a lot more can happen in over a decade of enrollment with the same class, much of it unflattering in one way or another.

I'd like my partner to be someone who likes me.

I mean, ideally I'd like everyone to like me, though that's not a very realistic goal. It's hard to turn it off, the desire to be exactly who anyone I'm talking to wants me to be, but it's important to triage this sort of thing, to prioritize the right people. Nevertheless, it's somewhat conscious, mostly unconscious, at this point - I actually have to be careful not to mimic people's accents back at them, since especially people from the coast can sometimes see that as mockery. Even though it's not, I'm just trying to be…

Something, definitely something.

Tallulah catches on to the rhythm of the class quickly, and while she glances at me fairly frequently to figure out what she's supposed to be doing, she doesn't ask questions. I like that, I think. My mom thinks that people who ask too many questions out themselves as unobservant, that most questions can be answered by paying attention and most mistakes are the product of failures to do so.

She definitely seems observant.

After a half-hour of stretching, weapons instructors have trickled in for the most part - spearwork is still empty, so the typical graduate trainer, there, Sora Peixoto, must be either late or taking a day off.

"What's next?" Tallulah asks, hauling herself up to disinfect her mat and hang it back on the wall as other trainees begin to scatter to the stations around us.

"Well, there are pairs stations and individual stations," I explain, gesturing around the room to indicate the color coding of various signs. "What do you need to learn?"

"Where's the one where we address the psychological consequences of murdering?" she says brightly. "Kinda wanna get that out of the way, you feel me?"

"Maybe you could start with swordwork," I suggest. "Didn't seem to have any problems threatening to kill Skiff, earlier."

"I got bused to a fancy inland school before I dropped out, if you knew him as well as I did, you wouldn't have a problem threatening to kill him either," she says, a bit darkly.

"Never said I had a problem," I laugh. "The question remains: do you want to do it with a sword, a bow, a knife, a blunt weapon…"

We wind up at swordwork after all, which is usually a pretty popular station. The instructor, Itsaso, is actually pretty helpful, though he's generally chilly around me. I think I must have made a misstep, said something a little too sharp about Renata, from the 89th Games, a few years back. I thought nothing of it, he thought everything of it, and now he thinks very little of me.

Which is sort of fair, since it's not like I wasn't speaking my mind. We had a very unfortunate duo for the 89th, and it's worth recognizing that and learning from it, that neither of them approached the Games right, that both of them deserved to die for it, as anyone would, failing so completely.

You joke about the things you fear. Failing, dying like that - killed by a scrawny little rebel from Three, for the love of all that's good! I wouldn't just be buried in an unmarked grave, I have no doubt my mom would have my body burned, scattered out at sea somewhere to feed a plankton bloom - it's worth fearing that sort of outcome.

Fear can and should be motivation. It is. Just quietly so, because it can be exploited as a weakness if one isn't careful.

I'm very careful.

Tallulah picks up a sword, clearly not for her first time, but without any of the comfort that even the least competent trainee should have by seventeen or eighteen years of age.

"Looks good. You're not too out of practice, I guess," I comment, and she smiles, squaring her shoulders and looking far more like she belongs here, like the mild praise has changed something fundamental about the way she inhabits space.

Interesting.

I take the sword I typically use in training by the hilt, adopt the correct stance, and watch as she easily mimics me, slipping into an even more appropriate grip, foot position, posture.

Very interesting.

For a second, I'm consumed by the image of a mirror held up to a second mirror, generating infinite iterations of increasingly incomprehensible reflections. Glass pressed against glass. Nothing new created, but everything conserved.

"You remember any drills?" I ask, after watching her appraisingly for a second.

"Nah, teach me something new," she says.

That shouldn't be such a tall order for either of us, I think. We have a lot to learn from each other. A lot can happen in a year. There's a lot left to understand about myself, before I put myself in a position to kill someone else, to die, no matter how long I've already spent trying to come to terms with it.

Always something new to learn, if one is only willing to listen.

I think all that.

"Great," I say, simply. "Then let's get started."

x

Marina Trevino, The Capitol

It was an odd location to hold a professional meeting of this sort, but she was grateful enough with the simplicity of what seemed to be the situation in District 4 that she would have entertained Neveah's request if it were to meet in a submarine or on top of a moving train.

Some kind of freshwater lagoon resort? She was hardly going to complain, not with two willing, competent-looking, fully-of-age tributes in a file in her hand.

He'd reserved some quadrant of the resort in its entirety for a few hours, and after ordering two drinks that came in coconuts, dismissed the youngish woman in her sparkly mermaid tail with the promise of a large gratuity for her good service.

"Interesting place," Marina commented, feeling somewhat awkward as she sat, straight-backed, on some kind of deck chair in her business-casual dress and tights, the sensible heels of her shoes sinking shallowly into the glittery white sand that comprised the artificial beach overlooking still, clear, impossibly blue depths of water.

"One of my favorites," Neveah replied. "Peaceful."

He started in on one of the drinks, and she eyed the other curiously, though he hadn't offered it to her. She didn't want to doubt his hospitality, but she also didn't want to assume. Neveah, as a mentor, had not been especially quick to try to get to know her. Most of what she knew about the older mentor suggested that he leaned towards Claudia's camp, had some kind of indecipherable relationship with Two in one way or another, which shouldn't make him all that amenable to liking her very much.

That, and her placement of him in Three, though she truly hadn't meant it as an insult.

Neveah was capable of being an excellent mentor. Panem had seen excellent results from Four, in the first few years of the reinstatement of the Hunger Games. As an absentee mentor, though, his tributes had struggled in more recent years, Renata and Angel being the most immediate legacy of a policy of minimal involvement. Both very dead, neither widely loved or especially remembered.

"I can see why you'd like it here," she said. "It's very private, too."

She'd done some reading on the resort before accompanying him there, just in case. Previously known as Halputta Spring, from a native Four word for the alligators that had inspired some of the mutts from the 89th, since wiped out from this particular area to make it suitable for tourists. Manatees, excitingly enough, still populated the spring, and from the information available on the website, she gathered there was a good chance she might see one.

That was exciting.

"Yeah, Blue Lagoon is the move," Neveah sighed, knocking back one coconut, ignoring the straw, and finishing the drink.

He picked up the second one almost immediately.

So they were both for him, then.

"How about Four's tributes?" she continued. "What's the move there?"

"As though it matters. You're handing them off to Saxaul as soon as you get the chance," Neveah sighed. "They're some of the best volunteers I've put together in years - Moises alone, honestly, but together I think they'll really be something to reckon with - and they won't even be mine."

"Good to hear-"

"I'm not done," he interrupted. "He's going to turn them into communists or some bullshit. If I see Moises in glittery pink eyeliner, I'll have a fucking stroke on the spot, and then you'll have to find someone else to deal with District Three."

The older mentor glared at her, briefly, as though to emphasize the point. So now he was done.

"I suppose we'd have to replace you with Finish, then, and he wouldn't get a break this season after all," Marina sighed. "Is that all? Do you have any sincere concerns?"

"My volunteers -"

"Your volunteers, for now. In a year, they'll be Saxaul's volunteers. In the intervening time, it's your prerogative how to address any training or preparation you believe they ought to receive."

It was almost funny, how defensive the trainee district mentors seemed to get about Saxaul. Similarly, the only time she was aware of Claudia losing her cool, very nearly overplaying her hand… during the 87th Games, when Niagara and Saxaul had been making media forays, trying to turn the conversation around on District 2. When she'd killed Niagara to put an end to that quickly. The two of them together had made a sincere threat, and really, the planning, there, had all been Saxaul.

She knew that. They'd talked about it, in better times.

When she thought about how he must be doing, now, she remembered, painfully, how crushed he still was by how things had worked out all those years ago. How he must be thinking, now, of how similar the setup was with his run for office, his friendship with Cora - which of them would Claudia kill to end his momentum?

Probably neither. In all likelihood, she'd matured past impulsive neck-breaking in the past few years, knew that she couldn't maneuver her way through the scrutiny of killing a victor as intensely popular and widely beloved as Cora or Saxaul. There would be consequences. Claudia wasn't fond of consequences.

"Look, I don't know if you're the one behind this or not, but putting me in Three is about the stupidest move I've ever seen, and I mentored Renata, for fuck's sake," Neveah complained.

"Did you?" she asked, trying to keep the ice out of her tone, knowing it was a stupid thing to make an enemy over, but inexplicably angry on the long-dead young woman's behalf. "I don't remember you having been all that involved."

Neveah laughed ruefully.

"Perhaps not."

"There won't be any room for that this year," Marina warned him. "Every mentor will be called on to do their utmost to help their tributes, regardless of their district of origin. I know you have the ability to do this."

He made a noise that might have been a scoff or might have been a laugh - it was hard to tell precisely which.

"I imagine there are penalties if I don't."

"Of course," she said simply. "You assume correctly."

"Fun."

In another long gulp, he emptied the second drink.

"We can only hope," Marina agreed, still feeling buoyed by the relative moral straightforwardness of this setup, knowing where she stood and what she could to to make things better, if only incrementally, for the children volunteering in Three.

"Not just hope," Neveah sighed. "We can drink, too."

Reluctantly, she found that she quite agreed with him, on this, at least, if not just about anything else.

x

Blogs take a long time. Still working on it, check my profile periodically, it'll be up in a day or two! In the mean time, we're literally 1/4 of the way through, which is very exciting for me! I hope you're enjoying these kids, and that you'll enjoy (in a different, sadder way) what comes next, as the Plan takes shape every time I hammer out another intro.

One thing to be aware of; this is a stage where plot decisions are being made, and your feedback interests me to that end! If you like something or someone (or don't), I hope you'll let me know, because if I don't know, I won't... know. :)