A/N: Hey there! Here's the first reaping chapter. In this chapter you'll get to know Rosamond, our District 8 female. I will post these chapters in order as the tributes are submitted. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you on the other side (:

CHAPTER SIX: "FLY AWAY HOME"

ROSAMOND

In the fourteenth zone of the city the Capitol calls Ashville, a looming gray factory meant for manufacturing peacekeeper uniforms stands desolate and looming over a dead, dreaming world. Around it lie the endless slums of District 8, stretching hundreds of miles over the barren scorched earth. In one of these homes lives a mouse-like girl named Rosamond. She doesn't speak until she's four, then it's nothing but questions.

"What does the sun sound like, Bella?"

"Why do we have two eyes?"

"Why do corpses turn gray?"

"Do mosquitoes go to Hell?"

In fact, the old ladies in the Sewing Chapel call her Mosquito because she never stops buzzing around them asking questions. The peacekeepers call her Monkey because of the way she scuttles up the barren skeletal trees and shakes them to bring down the twigs on her young friends. They laugh and giggle as the sticks fall, and the fun continues until the peacekeepers come around to tell her to stop.

Nobody shoots her. Nobody could bear to shoot someone so curious and innocent.

Rosamond and her Caste-Sister Bella sleep in a one-room hobble with a single barred window overlooking the factory. At night the factory smoke is almost unbearable. In the morning it drifts up into the sky and blocks the sun in a dull purple haze of humanity. Between them, the girls own a spool of thread that may or may not have belonged to their father, a lithograph of President Hawke, a set of buttons, a small ice box, a patched wool blanket, and a flimsy volume titled The Gravedigger's Handbook published in 1952 CE.

At night Bella helps her read it. Most people would shudder at the book's contents or squirm in impatience. But Rosamond thinks it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

"The five sa… stages of death," she mutters. "The signs or strong id… indications that an animal is no longer alive include…"

The old widows in the Sewing Chapel hear the words drifting up from the small room and burst into the house to yell at Bella. Nobody should expose a child to that kind of material. Death is something that should be shunned, not celebrated. Of course, Rosamond thinks to herself, they're not celebrating it. Merely observing it as a normal part of life. To her death is like the sun, mysterious and inaccessible but all around her.

When she is nine the family who lives next to her dies of dysentery over the course of two weeks. Bella nails boards over the door and the windows knowing that, if she doesn't, Rosamond will run over to investigate. She has never been more certain about anything.

"Bella, does the moon fit inside the sun, or is it the other way around?"

"Eat your tesserae, Rosamond."

"And what if we fit all the stars inside the moon? Then we could throw them over the sky in a different pattern."

"I… Rosy, I don't know! It doesn't matter!"

Back in the Sewing Chapel, she finds herself surrounded by the Stringers, the old women whose husbands have died, their arms torn to shreds by machinery or their lungs clogged with black smoke from the factories. They, contrary to what Rosamond believed for most her life, decided what she should be named. Old, withered Stringer Spender jokes that her name should be Hopeless because she's the only child she's ever met in her eighty years of life who can learn a stitch one day and completely forget it the next.

"What is this stitch called, Rosamond?" she barks.

"Um… Bobbin?"

"No, not Bobbin. Where does this color come from?"

"Crushed bugs?"

Stringer Spender hmmphs and drops the needle. "And finally you remember something! Where do those bugs come from?"

"District 10."

Maybe she isn't so Hopeless after all.

Rosamond kneels next to Bella and watches her unroll a half-completed peacekeeper uniform over the table. Stark white with smoky gray buttons. On the inside, pomegranate vines twist around peacocks and doves, animals that existed before the Great Disaster. This is meant to be a reminder of what people used to worship, the priests and ministers who wore elaborately decorated clothing. Now there is nothing to worship, though, but the Capitol. Not since the Capitol proved that the afterlife was nothing but a fairy tale ruse.

"Bella, what day is the reaping?"

"June twenty-third. Just like every year."

"And where is it?"

"The Justice Building in Ashville."

"And why do we have to go to the reaping?"

Rosamond stumbles backward and staggers to the floor, the ugly red mark standing sharp and prickly on her face. She has never, ever seen her Caste-Sister this angry before, except when she saw her shaking her fist at a peacekeeper in the Weft Zone when she was seven.

"The entire purpose of life is to see the Hunger Games! There is no worth in living for anything else!"

Those words were repeated to her thousands of times in her sleep during her development in the thick amber and every night when she was a baby. Every child in Panem, now, is exposed to the same five hundred messages on repeat, looped thousands upon thousands of times to drill them into the brains of each and every one. These facts are utterly axiomatic, self-proving, self-supporting. There is no meaning in human existence except living to see the Hunger Games each year.

"The Hunger Games are god's grandchild," Bella mutters. Repeated twenty thousand times while she slept as a baby.

"What's a grandchild, Bella?"

She shivers, tossing down the peacekeeper uniform and running her fingers over its creases and folds. "Humans were disgusting in the olden days, before the Source Incident. Mating in the streets like cats. Don't ask me about it ever again. It makes me want to throw up."

And she never does. But she does ask about God.

"There used to be a thing called God," Stringer Sophia mutters one day while they eat gruel beside a dying fire. "My grandmother told me about Him."

But, of course, he doesn't exist anymore. Now there is nothing but Hawke and Snow, nothing but the games. If there ever was a god, it is the Capitol now.

Birds fly around the dome of the Justice Building like prayers gyrating around the Hunger Games head gamemaker, and wind rakes the broad dirty river sending the plastic garbage flying into the square. The sound of crying from the square is even louder than usual. Kids as young as five are now eligible for the games – and it's not just they who are upset. Adults who thought they were out of the reaping for life have thrown their necks on the chopping block once more.

Rosamond staggers into the square with her copy of The Gravedigger's Handbook clutched tightly under her arm. A good luck charm for the reaping. She nervously re-reads the final chapter of the book as she finds her place in the crowd, letting the words wash over her.

"It's time to split up," Bella hums. "I trust you to find your section. And don't run away this time, alright?"

She can remember no time her Caste-Sister has been more furious than when Rosamond tried to leave the reaping beforehand. It was only because she was so pitiful and mouse-like that she wasn't beaten all the way to death by the peacekeeper forces lining the square.

Rosamond nods. "I love you, Bella."

"I love you too, Rosy."

The words taste strange in her mouth. It has been months since they said those words to each other. That's not to say that the girls don't have heart – it's merely stored miles up, within rows and rows of shelving. These are the girls that cared for each other and looked out from each other from the moment they were dropped into the Germination Facility two blocks down from the Stringer House. These are the girls who love each other more dearly than all the warm bread in the world.

A merchant's train rounds the square, carrying with it hundreds of tightly-packed reaping guests, and Rosamond flies over it, until District 8 is a fretwork of rooftops and factory smokestacks far below. She's in the clouds, a bird in dark delight, with absolute freedom, until…

"Rosamond!"

Her Caste-Sister shakes her roughly by the shoulders. The escort has taken the stage, and the last few children are shuffling into their places.

"Bella? How do birds fly?"

"I… I don't know, Rosy. We have to go, now!"

And she flies again, flies away from this dark and dirty place. Flies away into the air where falcons draw loops over the coughing gray earth. From beneath her comes the laughter of a happy world, one without the Hunger Games, one without peacekeepers and factories. A world where everyone believes in magic.

"Quick, quick!" Bella mutters, grabbing Rosamond by the shoulders. "Find your place!"

"Where?"

"And don't panic! Your womb will fall out!"

And then Bella is gone. And then she is alone.

She only finds her place because old Stringer Stone guides her there. She is coughing madly, light-brown mucus trailing down her chin. All that smoke, all that debris lodged in their lungs. It's no wonder nobody in this district lives longer than fifty.

"It's not too late in the day for Moonlace," Rosamond whispers, thoughtfully. "Find some in bloom after the reaping."

Stringer Stone's lips curl into a gentle smile. "You are a sweet child, Rosy. We all see that. May Snow bless you today. Watch for the Rogues. And don't run. There's no use panicking."

She forces herself to move slowly until Stringer Stone is out of sight, then runs, runs like mad over the stones, weaving through the crowds to her place with the other fifteen-year-olds. Through the gates of the square. It's no longer necessary for the guests' fingers to be pricked; the saliva in their breath is picked up by the DNA detectors within the gates, and they are registered automatically. She races between two rows of scared children plodding their way up to the square, crowds of humanity hopeless and dreary under the dirty brown sky.

And then she is flying again, high above District 8, outside the walls and the gates, into the woods where there are no DNA detectors and no peacekeepers. She is flying, soaring, until…

"Rosamond Brownlow!"

It comes like a hammer to her heart. Probably ten thousand prickly bushes grow up around her, wrangling her like a strangling snake. She imagines herself being dragged down into the ground, tugged six feet under to the places her book talks about. Her wings have melted, and now she has fallen into a dark stormy ocean.

"Rosamond, where are you, dear?"

Breathless, she waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness that seems to have fallen around her. A yelp rises up hurriedly from the back of the square. Her feet are moving ten seconds before her mind has time to catch up, and suddenly she is on the stage of the Justice Building, thousands of eyes boring into her mouselike frame with pity. With thankfulness that it isn't them.

"What's that you've got there?" asks the lady in pink.

"It's… it's my book."

She's flying again, but the earth has fallen away and now there is no sky, only a dull gray haze.

"Would you like to read us some?"

"Not really."

"Oh, please do."

Her fingers run over the flimsy aged leaves. "Be… before you begin your grave-digging career, you must acquire the appropriate tools for the job."

"That's wonderful, Rosamond," she says, grimacing horribly.

"A proper shovel, pick, and rake are just the start of the list of items one needs to dig a suitable gravesite."

She slams down on the microphone. "Okay, I think that's enough."

Yes, death is not something to be celebrated. She remembers it suddenly. It's an ironic statement even to think about. Death is not something to celebrate. This entire affair is a celebration of death.

Bella is her first visitor. She comes dashing in on the proverbial heels of the air itself and grabs Rosamond by the shoulders, slamming her into the wall in desperation.

"We shouldn't have taken those tesserae."

"It doesn't matter now."

"I was so selfish. I'll never forgive myself."

"It's not your fault."

She buries her face in her hands, pacing back and forth between Rosamond and the door. "Why does it have to be this way?"

"That's what I've asked myself every day for ten years. Why does it have to be this way?"

A moment of silence. "I don't know. But… well, we have each other. We were given each other, if you want to put it that way. That's got to count for something."

The old Stringers come next, hobbling in drawling and ambling after the peacekeepers drag Bella out of the room. Stringer Stone holds out a bundle of white flowers and drops them into Rosamond's lap, where they flutter down like dead butterflies to their eventual rest.

"Moonlace," she whispers. "It's not too late for them, child."

It is like the old song, the one sung quietly at night in the east of Panem…

Roses are red, violets are blue, birds in the heavens know I love you –
Late it is, and dark and cold, but Moonlace still shines through like gold.

The lullaby comes from the days of the First Rebellion, when the Moonlace (agrarian mutts accidentally released by the Capitol where they spread rampant through the nation) were the only flowers that survived the fallout after the bombings. The rebels gathered them in truckloads and spread them around the country until they were perfectly incorporated into the Panemian climate, as natural as the Mockingjays and the Tracker Jackers that live in the woods of District 12. And like the Mockingjays, the Capitol had not anticipated their drive to survive. They were a reminder that life can spring up and stay strong even in the most unsuspecting of places.

"Nature's first green is gold," murmurs Stringer Stone. "Her hardest hue to hold."

The Stringers leave, and then there is silence, and Rosamond sits patient ever letting her fingers run over the flower petals and wondering as hard as she has ever wondered anything why it has to be this way. Her entire life she has demanded answers to questions like these. Now, it perhaps seems, there are none.

She lays back and tries to fly away again, but it doesn't work. Her wings have been broken. A seal forms in the grey sky where the gold sparks came raining down, and the last few rays of glimmering sunlight are seen for the final time, shattered and iridescent as they turn and flutter.

A/N: One reaping down, twenty-three to go. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you soon (:

P.S. The book Rosamond reads in this chapter is a reference to a popular historical fiction novel. Anyone know what it is?