Mornings are often filled with birdsong and excited yips from dogs as they wish for a scrap of food, or the excited steps of hooves from all of the large stock coming in for their hay. I was only eight years old when I first remembered watching the games. I had remembered many other things before that, peace keepers chasing me and Dalton away from the chicken coops, housewives screaming at their dried jerky being taken by us. But I never could recall a time when I had watched the games.

I recalled the sullen faces of two brown haired teenagers upon the stage in the square. A prim and proper man as he called himself was flouncing and prancing about on the stage in a blue coat that shimmered as he twisted every which way. His lilac hair allowed for streams of sun to flow through with a frightening likeness to the glowing of the cave worms that the school teachers told us about. The two teenagers were unlike each other. The girl flicked her eyes with a slowness of a snake, her body lithe and long. The boy was heavy built with muscles for throwing and bucking hay in the summer time. Several people who were above reaping age, and filled with elder age had become keen and betting on this year's reaping's with a strange and unsettling confidence and view.

I had begun to pay attention during the entrance ceremony. The small projector that was given to every household was playing on the wall into the shelves filled with tools that mom used to help brand and calve. The film played on the tools in a distorted image. My eyes untrained to the way they fluttered and moved against the tools my parents placed them on. It was sort of like a game, trying to remember and place the faces that were distorted by the many planes and angles they were being projected on. I was alone as school was let out for as long as the games lasted, the teachers halting their lesson plans to watch the death and destruction at their own comfort without the worry of children asking anything about it.

Upon this day I watched twenty-four children get picked for these 'games', Mom was out of the house a lot with Dad that day. Something about helping the neighbors mare with her foal she had been struggling with since the early rise of the sun. They were gone for most of the day while the Capital speculated on the hard-faced tributes this year. A girl cried with startling tears as she walked onto the stage… then the train with her shock-faced boy who had his arm numb around her shoulders as she hunched and shuddered.

District one had proud faced tributes, who had all personally volunteered for their positions, faces smug for being the first to shout, I volunteer!

I grew bored until District Ten was brought fourth, the slippery looking girl scoured the crowd of relieved girls, and the boy who had only relaxed in shock when his face when his name was called, then he kept a stone faced look. A Caesar Flickerman commented that from the previous year's tributes from District Ten were sickly looking children who were killed in the cornucopia bloodbath as they were greedy for food and weapons in a desert setting. He was eager to see the two calm looking competitors interact with the Capital and how they would react with the flighty nervous ones or that of a Career.

The only thing I found strange while watching for me in the crowds of people watching the reaping was this Caesar Flickermans commentary. Who named themselves flicker man? That was like calling my Mom Chickenwoman or my Dad Horseman. It was strange.

Besides, I just wanted to see myself on this projection.

When I was still listening on speculation of the order of death of tributes by their first appearance, Mom came in from the fields checking on the newborn calves she saw the projection that I still had trouble watching. She came in and didn't dare look where the projection flashed on. She was silent for a long while as she messed around in the kitchen, starting dinner that smelled of fried meat slathered in crushed bread to make a crunchy outside. I walked up to the skirts of Mom, tugging at them as she looked down at me with glassy eyes.

"Yes dear?" her voice spoke of kindness as she took a small slice of a carrot and popped it in my mouth. Her hand petted my dirty blonde hair with a fondness as she caressed it. I made sure to chew and swallow my carrot safety before I asked my question

"How far did your sister get in the games?"

Mom froze up, her body staying in the position for a minute before Dad came in from work huffing and wiping sweat off his brow. When he saw Mom looking like that he hurriedly whispered for her to get into the chair by the table as he kissed her cheek as he always did and then he took over the dinner. Mom ushered herself to the table and sat down with a heavy thump and I followed her by crawling into her lap. She was motionless for a while until the Capital began replaying small snippets of previous games of other districts who appeared the same as they did when reaped, but then showing they're clip of death, and only a few of success.

A girl with red hair appeared stone faced and she sat up straight and stared at it as her lip trembled.

"My sister, there." She pointed at the screen, the shelves made it hard for me to recognize her, but her features were strong, yet supple in a womanly way. With the quick flash of her reaping, her death was shown as she fought against a career who lost his weapon midway in the fight as she had stolen it and was gutting him open, his intestines falling out like when we were gutting out cows.

Her face was stern and controlled until the career pinned her down and stole the knife, his hand holding his intestines as he stabbed her throat and stumbled away holding the flesh as the games ended with the red haired sister gasping for air as her eyes wildly flew about until she was motionless as the camera zoomed out. Mom was crying into her hands softly at that point, not even responding.

I crawled up further and pulled them away from her eyes. "What's wrong? She was just being killed Mom, we're all meat, so it's alright since they were gonna use her right?"

Mom cried harder as she whispered words I only barely caught under breath before Dad picked me up from her lap and shushed me to my room with a plate for the night.

"Once you're pinned by a career, you're done."

Her crying echoed through the house with her nightmares continuing till morning.

Dad gave me a talking early the morning when we got up for breakfast and Mom was already up and about feeding the chickens.

"Hey darling. No more game talk alright? Yer Mama is sensitive about this stuff as you saw yesterday. Just keep yer head down low about it and go out with yer friends and go play with the foals or the old mares or something, schools out right?" I nodded and ate my bread that he gave me. "Go play with yer friends then, just go on, get on with it!" I giggled as he playfully swatted at me and hollered that there was a nice big rat in the house and he would cook it up for dinner and with that I squealed with happiness as I was chased out of the door. Dad soon left for work after that and I scrambled off to my new best friend's house.

Dalton.

Dalton was a boy who I first met while Mom took me to her job as she worked cattle. He was the one on the flighty little horse that was now calm as a gelding, yet held the beauty of the mayor's daughters. Dalton was raised by a goat roper of an ex-widowed housewife who got her way with her tall lanky husband. Dalton had four younger half-siblings that honestly didn't give a care about him. But then again the brown haired kid with the puffy red cheeks didn't care much about them either.

Dalton, under the guidance of his previous knowledge was the person who taught me how to ride flighty horses. He was the one to help me start training the filly Kokum, that Fiona recently foaled. Nothing much mind you, just putting a halter on her and starting to lead her around.

Dad didn't really like seeing me on top of a bucking horse though, about had a heart attack when he saw me face plant off of a bay three year old that Dalton was training.

I scurried my way over to Daltons front porch. My hand me downs hanging off of my shoulders with a looseness that only old clothes did. I rapped my knuckles faintly on the door in a pattern. That pattern in turn caused a flurry of activity in the back of the house and then faint yelling as several glassware seemed to break.

Dalton rushed out of the house with a halter dragging behind him. Cluttering on the old wood as he struggled to pick it up. I grabbed the bit end while he held the reins.

"Ready to go riding today?"

I nodded happily, and we ran off together, a nervous paint horse looking at us from the corral as we tried to wrangle it for fun.

Dalton and I were riding into town on his Dad's dapple grey. We were bareback and wet from just washing the horse in the pond. Children were running around happily, either helping their parents, or just plain goofing off. The sky was turning a beautiful shade of red and livestock danced across the horizon of it like paper cut outs that held no detail. I suppose we were like a paper cut out to others as well in the distance of us.

Occasionally the gray mare would pick up her step and the sounds around us would blur as we laughed and giggled in happiness with estranged conversations that led to Dalton's love of wild horses and my love of tamed goats. Then we would slow down as the mare grew tired of our frequent asking of her to run. The reason why?

We finally learned why no one liked the games.

We heard screaming all through the first night of the games and we ran to our parents rooms with the image of human blood on our minds as we cried, our parents unsure on how to soothe our aches that were trapped within our brains.

Slowly, Mom's health went down until she could no longer go out and work in the morning. A peace keeper came into the house and demanded to see her health. He ate our food as I stared at him from the screen door. Birds twittering in the background as I watched this strange man eat greedily to what we had to earn. When his teeth ripped open a piece of bread his teeth showed, white and clean, like a baby's.

He was a fairly young man, younger than my Dad, but older than reaping age. His helmet was white with a black visor and when he took it off after Dad left to get Mom presentable, I wanted to go wander in and touch it.

I shuffled a bit in the door and the screen creaked a bit, to a point where he looked up from stuffing his face and noticed me. He was blonde, and carried sureness in his posture. I was sure that I looked awful grubby looking, what with my dirtied face and blonde hair that blurred with the dust coating it. He screwed up his face for a moment in disgust and then motioned me forward with a crook of his hand. He found me answer his becking and for some reason he thought this was amusing because he let out a laugh, a laugh that sounded like the church bells on Sunday mornings. He shuffled through his pockets for a moment, the white uniform glinting slightly with the cover that protected his chest.

I came up to him, leaning over his leg with my hands touching him as I tried to peer into what he was grasping at in his pocket. Usually when a man did that around me, he was pulling out a pipe and some tobacco to smoke as he waited for something. This time though he pulled something out that crinkled in his hand. For a moment, he began to hunch over, as if he was going to share a secret with me, I leaned on my tippy toes to hear what he might say and show me.

But he didn't.

He straightened up when the boards creaked in my house and roughly shoved me away to where I fell on my bottom. He turned his face towards the screening of the games that were just beginning to end on the projector in my home. He ignored me completely as Dad silently looked at him and nodded for him to come into the back to see Mom.

When I got up with a slight whine, I saw a wrapper on the ground. It was one of the candies that the mayor would buy for his wife. It didn't seem a long time when he looked at Mom, but when he came back out, I smelt the mint from the candy, and his grin and he looked down at me.

"Going to be twelve eh? Have fun with that."

My Dad was somber for the rest of the night, patting my shoulder and going to sit with Mom. The candlelight illuminating her gaunt, tight features.

And all I heard her say in the dark night was. "Once your pinned by a career your done."

I've been plotting this story so much, and have got so many ideas and the whole thing is actually plotted now that I think about it. But I've fallen back in love with this fic and will most likely be writing tons more since all my ideas and the point of the story I want to get to are just sgoubaoifhiusbddi making me go crazy! I just want to get to the parts of the story I want to write cause I'm just bursting with ideas and those parts seem so good and fun to write!

Well then! Have a good day everyone and happy holidays! (If it's still close to Christmas? I don't know, i write my author notes ahead of time then re-edit them conforming to the chapter and blah blah. (Impersonal author notes I say) but yeah, happy holidays if it's still close to Christmas?)

(So yeah, most of this stuff was written around the 2014 Christmas, I edited a little bit and added a few things, but besides that, this has been sitting for awhile. So hehehe.)