one little bird flew high above the rest,
wings stretched outward, soaring close to the trees.
one little bird flew high above the rest,
wings flapping as little as possible, spread as wide as possible.
one little bird flew high above the rest,
wings bloodied and broken, protecting those below.

Wilda Aspen (16)

District Seven

two weeks ago

Wilda swung her axe into the felled tree when her shift was over, looking over the work her group had done that day. She was sweating and tired, and all she really wanted to do now was take a nap, but if she did that, she would sleep until supper. And a wasted day was the last thing she needed.

"Oh, first one done, huh, Aspen?" Aster, the leader of the group, called over to her from where he was standing a distance away. She looked over at him with eyebrows raised in a challenge, and for the shortest of seconds a grin spread across his face, before he shook his head to wipe the slate clean. "As always, I guess. That's why you'll never get a raise."

"Funny. It's almost like you gave me one already," she said back, and the rest of the group rolled their eyes at their behavior. It was always like this between Wilda and Aster: constant fighting, without any animosity ever coming from either end. She pulled the hair tie out of her braid and redid it as she walked over to Aster, letting most of it hang down after braiding a little ways. As long as the long hair was out of her face, she didn't much care what it looked like.

"Watch your tone," he reprimanded once she was next to him. He surveyed what they had done, his eyes roaming over the others as they started to clear up for the next shift to take over. She watched as Bennett pulled out the axe she had lodged in the tree—maybe a dumb idea, but she had wanted to see Aster squirm. "You know, one of these days, I'm really going to follow through and write you up for your behavior, little girl."

She wrinkled up her nose at that nickname, stopping just shy of punching him in the arm for it. She hated it when he talked down to her like that, even though she knew he never meant it. That was exactly why he did it, after all: just to get a rise out of her, and maybe remind her that she wasn't supposed to realize that he thought of her as a little sister. She wasn't little, anyway. She was taller than some of the guys in their group, and nearly as tall as Aster, standing at six feet tall.

"One of these days, I'm going to be graduated from high school and college, and I won't much need a job working under your shitty attitude," she reminded him. If it weren't for her tone, telling him everything he needed to know about how much she would miss her shift group when she was gone, he probably would write her up for her remarks. She was always teetering that line with him, but that was what made it a little bit more fun.

"What are you doing after this, Wilda?" he asked her, slinging an axe carefully over his shoulder and beginning to walk out of the woods as the others started to dissipate.

She shrugged. He didn't ever really ask her about what she was doing after work. Most of their interactions happened out here, in the woods. "I guess I was going to hang out with my friends. Why?" she asked.

"I heard you were real friendly with Leila Ogden," he said, his voice lowered. There was genuine concern in there somewhere, but it was pretty deeply masked. "That's not something you need to be doing."

Her heart stopped in her chest for just a moment. It wasn't that she was ashamed that she liked women, but she had never told anyone before. Hell, she hadn't even really spent that much time with Leila before, so was it really just that obvious?

She had lived close to the Victors' Village since she was born, walking past it on the way to school or to town, and now on the way to work. The big gated community had always intimidated her, and the people inside of it even more so. Before two years ago, there had only been two victors, both from the 90th Games. She was so young when they won that she couldn't remember a time before them, but now four victors inhabited those houses. She walked past Leila when they were both on their way to town a lot. Recently, that had started turning into conversations.

She eventually knew she had to say something. Aster was watching her, waiting for some kind of denial, maybe, so she just said, "Listen, Aster, you can control what I do during work, but what I do outside is none of your business."

"Wilda—"

"What's your problem with Leila Ogden, anyway?" she asked, her voice raising in volume a little bit. What right did he have to say there was some issue spending time with her? He was being a controlling dick if he really thought he could tell her no like she was a child. "She and the other victors are just my neighbors."

"Wilda, will you listen to me?" he said, voice quiet and calm. "She's—"

"No." Wilda shook her head. "No."

She turned around, marching away from Aster. For a moment it seemed like he was going to try catching up to her, but she walked between the people of the next shift arriving so he'd have a harder time of it. When she glanced back, he'd given up.

Out of the woods, the world of District Seven became clear again, away from whatever Aster was talking about. Maybe she was being defensive, but she didn't want anyone knowing about Leila. The two just talked on the way to town, that was all. That was all people needed to see. They didn't need to see how her heart beat faster in her chest when she saw her jogging over to catch up with Wilda. They didn't need to see what Wilda really thought of her.

Rowan and Lindell would be waiting for her at Rowan's house, as they usually were when they wanted to hang out after she got off work, so she picked up her pace to get there sooner. She didn't want to be stuck out here with all of her thoughts.

Rowan's house was just down the street from hers, where he'd been their entire lives. Just a little farther down was Lindell, which was the reason why the three of them had managed to stick together for so long. Ever since they were little, they were the only three their age on the block, so they always played together. And as they got older, their easy access to each other even outside of school kept them from drifting apart.

When she turned the corner and saw the two of them laying on Rowan's front porch, she rolled her eyes and jogged over there. "Hey, assholes," she greeted, watching as Lindell jumped, and then squirmed to turn around and see Wilda standing there. "Why are you lying down?"

"Why aren't you?" Lindell muttered as he pulled himself into a sitting position, his eyes squinting around the block like he was trying to recover his cool-guy ego after dancing like a worm because Wilda snuck up on him.

"Are you high?" she asked, looking between them. They didn't usually bother with getting high, because the only person they knew to sell the weed to them was so hard to get in contact with, but they were acting weird enough that she would believe it. Or Lindell was at least.

"He's not high," Rowan said, pulling himself into a sitting position much smoother than Lindell did. "He's lamenting."

Wilda gave in and walked up the steps, sitting down in front of both of them on the floor of the porch. "Okay, I'll ask. What are you lamenting?"

Lindell shook his head and tossed it to the side, looking dramatically out at the rest of the street with his eyes still squinted. Mrs. Featherforth was kneeling down in her tiny garden, tending to the lilies, and her husband was out on the sidewalk, looking with grouchy old-man eyes at the state of the neighborhood. So rather than looking dramatically cool, it seemed a little like Lindell was just interested in the antics of the two oldest people on the block.

"He's lamenting that Mary Pickett turned him down," Rowan explained to her, eyes just as exhausted as she was but voice full of support for Lindell. "And like a good friend, I'm mourning the loss with him."

Wilda shook her head and turned away from the two of them, although there wasn't much to see besides the Featherforths. Their neighborhood was never all that busy during the day. Everyone there worked constantly, just as much as those in the poorer areas. They were just a little luckier, and had more to show for it all. She hated it when people saw how she lived and assumed that she was a spoiled brat like some of the really rich kids in Seven, not even knowing that she worked her ass off to be a competent lumberjack to put herself through college. It wasn't like her dad, even with his furniture business, could afford what it cost to send her to one of the universities on his own, or the traveling expenses if she was even granted permission to go to one of the districts that had universities.

"Wilda, you almost seem unsympathetic to the cause here," Rowan said, scooting forward and sitting next to her. He leaned over and bumped into her, his eyebrows raised as he prompted her to spill whatever it was that was bothering her.

But the problem there was that she didn't know what it was exactly that was bothering her. She wasn't ready to talk about liking girls yet, but that wasn't all of it. There was something about the way Aster warned her against Leila that made her uncomfortable. That made it almost… make sense. He meant whatever he was going to say. Maybe she should have let him speak his mind, if that wouldn't be letting him win.

"Pardon me if I don't care about your loves lives, boys," she said, loud enough that Lindell could hear it too.

"What's crawled up your ass?" Rowan asked, the concern disappearing to be replaced with irritation.

She looked over at him and shoved him a little bit. "Nothing's 'gotten up my ass,'" she said, mocking his tone of voice. She frowned a little bit. "Why is it that you're upset because a girl won't date you and I have to care, but I'm contemplating shit and I'm a bitch?"

"Maybe because it's possible to contemplate without being a bitch?"

"Fuck you, Row."

She stood up like she was going to head home, ready to storm off in a huff, but then remembered that she left her keys at home that day. That was part of the reason why she had gone to spend time with Rowan and Lindell: she couldn't get back inside the house until her father got home from work whenever. Or until the twins got home, if either of them remembered their keys.

Lindell was no longer playing the part of a forlorn man resigned to die alone. He scooted over to the two of them as well, leaning forward with his elbows rested against his crossed legs. She could tell he hadn't moved closer to help the situation, but rather just to see if it turned into a fight between Rowan and Wilda. Or, an argument, really. Both of them knew that she could take them.

"What are you even 'contemplating'?" Rowan asked, crossing his arms in front of him. His face was scrunched up at her slightly.

"Nothing," she mumbled, shaking her head. She sat down on the steps again and pulled some grass up from the ground, letting it fall between her fingers like sand. "Aster just pissed me off. But it's nothing."

"Aster's a prick," Lindell added from behind her.

She turned around on the steps to face them again, feeling bad for snapping over something that they couldn't control. But she didn't really care that Mary Pickett didn't think that Lindell was date-worthy—he had been trying to date her for years to no avail, and his continued pressing just made Wilda feel for Mary.

"Well, he is," Lindell said defensively, taking her looking at him to mean that she wanted him to take that back.

"No, I know that," she said, shaking her head. Of course Aster was a prick, but a prick that she admittedly cared about a whole hell of a lot. "No, he just… said something weird to me."

"What?" Rowan asked, interested now. He leaned forward slightly, like she had juicy gossip for him and not just a weird, mysterious thing that she couldn't even explain in full without telling the two of them that she had fallen for a victor.

"Just that… I shouldn't be talking to Leila," she said. "I don't know, like there's something wrong with her. Or something dangerous about her."

Rowan shrugged. "Maybe it's just because she's killed people," he suggested, although that wasn't helpful at all. All the victors had killed people, but he didn't say to look out for sweet Briar Hale when she walked past the Village, didn't say to ignore Jack Rhinsley when she saw him picking up his kid from the school. And anyway, she didn't like that explanation simply because it reminded her that Leila and Remi Hoult had killed people—something she would prefer not to think about, even if she had seen it happen just two years before.

"I don't think that's it," she told him.

"You know, I hear the Capitol wants her mentoring this year," Lindell said. "And I don't think Briar or Jack are going to challenge it."

She looked at him as she tried to connect those dots, but they didn't make any sense. "Why would they want that? And why wouldn't Jack do anything about it?"

Jack Rhinsley had mentored every single year since he and his district parter won, even last year after Remi Hoult and Leila were brought home. It didn't make sense for him to suddenly make the eighteen-year-old take over the job for him, even with his kid turning six this year. She had heard a couple times before that he didn't want to leave his son to go off to the Games and watch another batch of kids die, but he cared deeply for the two he brought home. It was plain for anyone in the district to see. He would never force Leila to start mentoring so soon, and it would be strange for the Capitol to ask that of him, unless he'd done something stupid.

"I hear it's because Leila's pretty," Lindell said, but it didn't sound so much like gossip now. They all knew what it meant when a victor was brought back to the Capitol's limelight because they were pretty, and it was nothing to cheerfully shoot the shit about. "I think Jack's not saying anything because they're not letting him. They want Leila."

The cogs started turning in her mind and she cocked her head to the side. "Maybe that's what Aster's bothered about."

"Why would he be upset about you being friends with her just because the Capitol may want to use her?" Rowan asked.

But that wasn't why Aster hadn't wanted Wilda around Leila. He hadn't wanted her to be flirting with her, or getting her heart invested in her, in case the rumors were true. In case she ended up being on the arms of Capitolite men in the news, in case she was entangled in the Capitol's business.

She was eighteen now. It made sense.

"Oh." She hopped up from the stairs as she saw Willow over at her doorstep down the street. "My sister's home. You guys can come over if you want now that I can actually get inside."

"That's okay," Rowan said, waving her off. "I was just about to kick you and Lindell out anyway."

"Hey!" Lindell said, but he backed off when Rowan stood up and towered over him playfully. The smallest of all three of them, Lindell was always the brunt of their jokes and punches, but after sixteen long years of life, he had gotten used to his bigger friends—at least ever since Wilda started getting taller than him when she was little.

She remembered the time that someone had been picking on him for being so small when they were younger, so she went over to the person and punched them. Which then got her in deep shit, but on top of that, everyone started to focus their attention on boyish Wilda, gigantic Wilda. That had certainly taught her to stick up for herself, which helped a lot now that she was in the male-dominated lumberjacking world.

She patted Lindell's head and gently punched Rowan's arm as goodbye, and then went over to her house. Willow hadn't locked the door behind her yet, so Wilda slipped in and hung her little sister's keys up on the rack, shutting their front door behind them.

"You're home right on time," Willow said as she saw Wilda come in.

"I forgot my keys. I was just waiting until you or Grover came home. Where is he, by the way?" she asked.

She was pretty sure Willow went over to a friend's house last night, but she wasn't sure. Her days of being able to keep perfect track of the twins was over, which was really hard for her. Even though she was only a year older than them, she had to be a lot older mentally to be able to take care of them while their father was off doing business, and their mother was busy in a grave out in the cemetery. Whenever they asked their father about things, they often didn't run them by Wilda, knowing she was a lot stricter about what they did than their father was. So Grover could be doing something responsible, like working, or he could be partying with his friends and making mistakes—not that it would make a difference to anyone but her.

"I think he's at work. I don't know." Willow shrugged and started to head toward her room. Wilda's chest felt hot with frustration for a moment, and she wanted to yell at her for not saying anything about her whereabouts. For letting Wilda wonder all the time anymore. But yelling was pointless and only started arguments, so she let her sister go and went off to her own room.

She wished everything was simpler. She was tired of being the brunt of all of the universe's jokes. She was tired of having a dead mother and a father who was loving but constantly working, she was tired of raising two siblings who were at the age where they loved her but were no longer grateful for the sacrifices she made, she was tired of working with all the guys on her shift, and she was tired of finally finding someone she clicked with, only to have the fucking Capitol take her away.

On the reaping day, she got her wish when Nightfall Rizelle called out her name in front of a crowd of thousands and thousands of District Seven citizens. They looked out at the crowd and waited for one Wilda Aspen to turn herself over to a much, much simpler life: a life where the one goal, the one priority, the one important thing was to kill and not be killed in return.

She wanted to shout for the entire crowd to fuck off for being luckier, for their children being luckier, their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews. Every single one of them.

The boy already onstage looked so collected it pissed her off. So collected she took it as a guiding mark for herself. Be that confident. Be that okay with it. She had always been good at controlling her emotions for her siblings, so why not for the whole of Panem?

As she got to the steps, she felt her feet moving forward before she realized she was falling, and only at the last second was she able to put her hands out to keep her head from smacking into the stairs. Wouldn't that have been something? For them to lose a tribute in the reaping?

Her heart was stuck in her throat as she stood up, looking down to see scraped knees. But she couldn't let her stupid, clumsy, gangly legs bruise her pride. Or her sponsor chances.

Leila was in her seat behind Nightfall as Wilda walked onto the stage. Her forehead was creased in a frown, her lips pursed tightly. It was unbecoming. It was anger and sadness that reminded Wilda of a Leila she'd seen on television, not the one that she knew walking to town with her. It was a Leila she had always pushed to the side and intentionally forgotten about, so the moment she turned away from her to face the rest of the crowd, she felt relief for getting away from that person.

"How do you feel, Wilda Aspen?" Nightfall asked once the appropriate amount of time waiting for no volunteers to arrive had passed. Wilda's eyes were scanning the crowd for her siblings, for her father in the back with the rest of those above or below reaping age.

"Well, not so good, since I nearly landed on my ass," she said into the microphone, a small smile on her face. It took all of her energy to fabricate it, but it was worth it for the smile she saw on Nightfall's. That meant she was doing well. That meant she was already pushing herself ahead.

She was so used to adapting quickly, to tossing aside what she felt, that it was almost painful how natural this was.

"I'm very glad you only have a couple of scraped knees to show for it, dearie," Nightfall said with a warbly laugh that shook the golden curls that framed their face. Their elongated canines showed when they spoke, but even more so when their mouth was open to laugh. "My, you are a tall girl, though, aren't you?"

Nightfall was a few inches shorter than Wilda, if she had to guess. She dwarfed the escort like she dwarfed both of the other girl victors on the stage, like she dwarfed many of the people who had teased her when she was younger for being so tall. Now, her size was an advantage. It would almost be satisfying if it weren't such a cruel twist of fate.

The other reaped tribute turned toward her as the reaping came to a close, and they shook hands. He was much shorter than her, having to look up to meet her eyes. She couldn't much look into his, though, with the sunglasses covering them. She realized he was covered in scrapes, on his pale cheeks and one on his Adam's apple. What a pair they were. One having arrived to the reaping beaten up and the other falling on the way to the stage.

Welcome to the Fourth Quarter Quell, she thought bitterly as the Peacekeepers herded her into the Justice Building. Enjoy the mess.

i'm gay so i shouldn't be asked to math. basically NOW we're at halfway point (i think idfk sdjfklsdjf) but i thought we were the other day bc i wasn't thinking of d13 but on top of that even if d13 WASN'T in there, it still wouldn't have been halfway bc halfway with only 12 districts is after BOTH d6 tributes. basically i'm dumb gay it's ok

chapter question: would you be able to keep it together if you were reaped? if you could, would it be to the extent that sin is, or to the extent that wilda is, where she's even able to make a joke?