"My sister got a ten in her evaluation." My Mom spoke softly as she cut up the cow that hung from a hook, the blood making its way to the floor. My small body was huddled on a chair in the corner as I stared up at her. They had begun to teach the Hunger Games in school, the greatness of what it was.

"How?" My high voice spoke. A ten was something only careers got, and careers were trained, Moms sister wasn't.

"She gutted a Dummy out for the game makers. Hummed the entire time is what she told Henrietta."

Mom spoke so quietly about it, as if it pained her, why would it pain her? They talked about Henrietta and her greatness in school, how she beat everyone by taming a wild colt in her arena, and trampling everyone to a pulp. She was the less scarred of our Victors, seeing as all she had to do is close her eyes while the horse buried her competitors down. All she heard was the cannons going off as she opened her eyes for the next one. The Capital with some sick fascination took the horse and had it trained for the carriages to be presented in the parade. Henrietta apparently couldn't watch the parade anymore because of it.

My chubby hands grasped the chair and I looked to Mom with admiration and confusion as she stripped the black flesh that was tinted softly with brown from the animal. The sound of ripping caused by the hide separating from the tight parts of fat holding together the muscle was a lullaby to both of our ears. Quickly I squirmed in my seat, the blanket Mom had carried me in wrapped tightly around me, securing my movements. Mom sighed as she saw me do this, she moved the knife to one hand and picked me up with the other, swinging me onto her hip, blood leaving fingerprints on the dark blanket made from sheep hide.

"If she got a ten, how come she didn't get to be ah Victor?" I sucked on my thumb and I felt a slight metallic taste hit my tongue. My cheeks were flushed and I snuggled into Mom's neck, reveling her warmth she emitted in this cold room.

The sigh she let out warmed my cheeks, and her breath smelled of plants she chewed in the morning on the way to work. "Sometimes it doesn't matter what kind of score you get, it depends on how fate works for you in the games. She got mauled by a career, once you get caught by one there's no getting away from a career." She set her knife down and petted my hair, blood sticking slightly into my blonde hair. "But she died with something keeping her sane, and I'm happy." A soft smile was on Mom's face when she told me this. I felt like she was okay telling me this, telling me how her sister had died.

I never knew she cried behind closed doors.

I yawned with a small smile in the morning. Mom was gently touching my face with a smile, waking me up from dreams filled with cows and horses. My small hands numbly reached up to my eyes, pulling the crustys from my eyes. It was soft hands that woke me, and it was soft hands that took care of me. I was pulled from the bed dressed in an old shirt that smelled like my Dad and his sweat. There was the sounds of mooing as Mom pulled the shirt off and dragged me into the front room to the metal tub near the door. I was deposited quickly in the rusting metal, my bare bottom rubbing harshly against the metal. I made a small whining noise in my throat, Mom shushed me by kissing my forehead and smoothing my hair.

A splash of cold water caused me to whimper, the water cascading off my hair, over my brows and splitting through the ridge caused by my spine rippling from my skin as I hunched over. Mom was brushing my hair with a comb hazardly made of polished animal teeth my Dad had made for Mom when he wanted to marry her. The brush went smoothly through my hair at the ends, but took a bit of tugging at the top of my head and the middle. I was rubbed raw by her fingernails. My hair was being braided loosely behind me, Mom running her hands through it with small hums of the songs we learned in school.

"Misty, Misty fields,

Crowning of the foals,

Harping of the crows,

Till spring time comes,

With the hardships of our hands."

Mom left me to go grab clothes for me. They were hand me downs from the houses nearby children that had grown up before me. We were the poorer part of the district, that was true. Not as poor as the establishments down in the southern part of the district. The ones that had all the inbred animals, pigs who walked funny, and cows who were unseeing to those who herded them.

Mom pulled me out of the tub with a small yawn, pulling an old boys blue shirt over my frame, then having me step into pants. I tiredly leaned into her shoulder, my eyes closing tiredly against her frame. She picked me up and carried me with my cheek slung on her shoulder. A hand supported my butt while my legs wrapped limply around the curves she supported me on halfway. The door opened with a creak and I murmured and groaned from the change of temperature, the darkness of morning allowing my eyes to rest easily. Mom pulled a blanket that I distantly recalled was a red fabric that she used to wear as a teenager around her head to keep herself warm. It was fairly big, but not big enough to cover my bare feet.

Mom had quickly fed the chickens just by spraying the feed around, for she had more important things to do besides feeding chickens. Her specialty was the care and butchering of cows. But one of the things that caused her to quiver in excitement was the breeding. See, she didn't normally have bulls come in, occasionally they would take a few cows and pull a bull in to breed, but the Capital had given us in District 10 a thing called frozen insemination. I didn't know what it meant, all I know is that it brought some really different calves from the heifers that were not the same looking as the calves came out to be. It only happened once a month, and it was this month that she insisted that we get up early and get going to the beef section of the District.

We we're walking with a hop in Mom's step. Her throat humming the spring time song under her breath. I opened my eyes when a warm breath had erupted the cold air of the morning, and when we had suddenly stopped. Dad was looking at me with a grin on his face, his hand petted my rapidly drying hair, his hand smoothing down the frizz that came from my nervous habit at school last year to pick out my own air in small strands. I was adjusted to where my face rested against Moms collar bone as she smirked up at Dad.

"You want to take my mare to ride over?" Dad lazily pointed to the field by our house that housed the horses that the residents rode in our area. I lazily looked for his greyed bay mare with a bald face and four white socks, but I couldn't find her. Mom didn't even bother to look as she continued to walk. "She's already saddled!" He yelled over to her, and soon she stopped, looked at him up and down like I saw most nineteen year olds do, and she nodded. She waited patiently as Dad jogged behind our house and brought forth the old mare with stray grey hairs running all through her neck and flank. Her head carried higher than most older horses, but still, she was old, and it showed in the lowered head she carried.

Mom set me in front of the saddle horn, and climbed up quickly, her faded green skirt fanning out behind the mares rump.

"Yive, I thinks about time you retire Fiona out to the pasture, push a few bays out of her don't ya think?"

Dad shook his head as he let out a chuckle, the light wisps of air billowing from his mouth. It was the only piece of light in the morning that I caught. "Nah, how about when our little daughter is old enough to break them for my ol' bones?" He cheekily grinned at me as he tickled my sides, allowing for my laughter to join along with his.

Mom swatted his hand playfully. "I've got to go breed some cows cowboy, saddle a colt later and show off for me when we herd them an hour after sunrise?" Mom grinned down at Dad who was nodding quickly, eager to please Mom at her work. He was already running off, Whooping at the other men's houses to get ready. A few of the men were languidly smoking a pipe on their porches with a bridle hanging off the chair they sat on, woven by their father's fathers.

Mom held onto my waist whenever Fiona took her head a little too low for her liking. Mom was riding Fiona with practiced ease. Her heels down, and one hand placed at my waist while the other was holding the reins in my lap limply. The fields passed us, my eyes drooping, and finally, falling to a rest, where my body slumped forward and a chuckling filled my ears and a hand grabbed my waist even tighter; securing me on Fiona.

I felt a swaying motion, my blonde hair was stringy in my face, and damp against my warm cheeks. The warm presence of my mother made me happy, and I snuggled into her back further. She merely had one hand pressed against my bottom as a reassurance for herself, while her other hand was waving at some cattle to go into the corral to get inseminated. The stomping of horse and cattle's hooves resonated through my ears, along with the whooping of the herders was heard with their excited laughs and jeering's at the woman who were redirecting heifers.

"You ought to go home and be a housewife Gaby! This work is too hard on your goat roping body!"

Mom snorted and waved a hand at one of the herders, laughing at his grinning face.

"Why don't you go up to the hall to the mayors daughter and play goat roper with her huh? Teach her the ways of roping her prize goats?" No one answered her and she laughed. "Go back to your housewife Tevon."

I heard Dad's loud guffaw as he trotted around with Fiona. Her head up high and her mouth moving around in her bit less mouth, the hackamore straining around her lower facial region. "That's right men! My wife is still working while your goat ropers are sitting around asking what a filly is, Hah!"

I wiggled around in the blanket that secured me to my mother, and looked out. Mable, a girl my age was sitting on a crate near the cow pen, watching her own mom; Wanda stick a heifer with a hot poker in the chute to brand it. The guttural sound of a heifer in pain echoed through the misty morning, Mable cringed and echoed a small cry. Wanda clucked at her daughter sitting next to her, her blonde hair stringy and sticking to each other from an early morning wash and the heat from the metal brand. My clothes and body stunk of burnt flesh as Mom shocked a heifer with the slap of her hand. She grunted and the old panels shifted and groaned over her shifting weight. Her belly protruded and Mom paused at her for a moment, with a sigh she took a marker from the confines of her skirt and put a red mark down the angus heifer.

"You've got a pregnant one coming your way!" She yelled then smacked the heifer on her rump to get her moving into the chute. She shoved the red mark into my small hands and looked at me with a firm stare, as if saying. 'lose this and you will pay for it.'

This was an every day life for me, and most in our district. The smell of cow manure and the touch of hide in your hands. Mom wasn't as excited as she would be cause they decided to inseminate a field farther out and brand the youngest heifers first. She was in a plain bad mood right now.

This was an unimportant day, as was every one. But this was an important day, unlike every one that had happened to me.

I was five years old, and he was six.

He was a brown haired boy sucking on a brown thumb on top of a spooky palomino. It had a pink ribbon in the hair by its ears on its neck, the dyed colour a faded ting that was reminiscent to that of blood being scrubbed out of the hands to a faint pink. His dad was an older man with a peppered short beard on his face, a hat placed upon a mop of similar hair that was shared between the father and son. The light coloured horse was prancing in its steps, its hooves flinging mud up at the other riders. His hair was cut similarly to the shape of a bowl, any miracle to a housewife with sons my Mom would say. He was awful calm about being on an unsteady horse. Mom had set me on a newly broken filly one day and Dad had rushed over as if his hidden pile of cigars was on fire.

So all in all. Dad didn't trust me with spooky horses.

"Dalton!" A woman with various clothes that screamed housewife leaned over the fence, a babe on her back and a little girl clutching to her skirts as her breasts brushed against the damp wood. "Get yer damn get your ass back here and dry these slabs of meat you idjit!"

The man sitting next to what I supposed who Dalton was winced, then patted Dalton on the head. "Sherry, he's fine! It's take your kid to work day today. Leave em alone, he's learning shit."

The woman huffed and looked over at the other kids sitting around by the chute. She blew a strong breath of air and a stringy mass of brown hair flew from in front of her face and floated back down into her eye. "Fine, fine! You go turn yur kid into a breeder! Not like we don't need his help on over at the house!" She practically flew off the fence with her hands raised up in the air in anger as she stormed off.

The Dalton kid was blushing up a storm and his Dad put the brown hat over his head to hide his red face. All the men were laughing at the two. The Father was rubbing the back off his neck while he absentmindedly patted the coat of his dappled grey horse.

A yell of happiness happened in front of me from my Mom when they heifers started to come in from the field, and a tray of insemination tools came forth to her greedy hands.

Everyone laughed.

And my eyes connected with a brown haired boys and we shared a smile

Made the song up myself, thought it was awful pretty, just a simple song about District Ten and its little springtime song. Slightly morbid if you think about the lines combined. But meh, anyone who reads it might not catch.

Have a good one today!

Terms:

Goat Roper: is a derogatory term for a woman/man for acting like a rancher/cowboy to attract said person. Usually these are seen wearing ranch gear and the such for said reasons.

Heifer: is a female cow who has never been bred/never had a calf

Hackamore: A bridle around a horse that contains no bit and is usually used for young horses getting used to ride/ and or for horses who have a hot disposition to bits.

Mare: Mature female horse

Stallion: Mature male horse

Filly: Immature female horse

Colt: Immature male horse

Kid: A immature goat

Angus: A type of cow that is known for a black coat. Many cows are based off this breed in the Western U.S and are often bred to other breeds and is the main choice for butchery's/sales. This is a very common cow breed.