*cue the loud groaning and the throwing of vegetables at me*

Yeah, hey everyone! I'm back from the lovely grave of not updating this story for a good thirty plus days. I can only shrug my shoulders and say I'm sorry. My other stories have been falling very behind on updates as well, so don't feel too bad. A few times I thought of giving up because that thought always crosses my mind at some point when writing a piece, and you all do know how tough these reaping chapters are. I went ahead and typed ahead a few of the private training session chapters and even three arena chapters that involve our quell twist. I apologize beyond all means for being so late, but I'm happy I didn't decide to throw in the towel.

So yep, it's Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of Vermillion Shorelines, #8: Bloodied Velvet, our 3rd reaping chapter, this time visiting ironically District 8! Last time we visited District 12 and those responses were definitely entertaining. I hope my hiatus doesn't bother everyone too much - I mean, I know they do, but I have always promised to finish this piece and that will happen! - and we can enjoy the morbidity that is the Hunger Games. Senior year of high school started for me on the 10th, and that has definitely been something to slowly acclimate to, as I'm running four WIPS at once. That's quite a workload and trying to time manage four sets of fans at once is not fun.

Sorry again for the wait and enjoy the chapter!


Roman Bercucci: District 8 Male P.O.V (15)


Clouds filled with glass peer down from above with a glare, and Roman Bercucci has never felt more at home than he does in this singular moment. The fifteen year-old boy tosses the apple clutched in his right hand up in the air, shrouding the brightness of the sun, and the shadow covers his lanky file. Roman is quite tall for his age, a boasting six feet that he managed to spike in the earlier stages of puberty, where he's a good head and shoulders over the other boys his age, though there are those he spies coming closer.

Roman may or may not also be staring at their backsides, but that's a story for another time. Or so he thinks, as a blush settles on his cheeks.

He's leaning up against the side of a building, probably an old packaging plant for the shirts and jeans made in a factory a few blocks over. Weathered moss lines down the sides - the plant is devilishly envious of ivy, and the sickening decrepit gray is depressing on the walls, vomit, brackish and muted, bile - snaking around the pictures painted into the brick with chalk. A few sparse strands tickle his backside, and Roman giggles. He wishes the feeling can mutate into that of hands clasping against his shoulders, pulling him into a hug, but- never mind, Roman hates that he thought of such a thing.

There's a sense of infamy in District 8, memories and hauntings that linger into the cobblestone roads and the smell of tar and leather fills the empty air, thick and black, spilling over with fervent and a blistering fury of a thousand suns. After all, they're the district to have given the Capitol its very first victor. A gay District 8 male shooting arrows into the top spot. Roman hates that it just had to be someone different from the norm. He wonders if the Capitol likes the queer and weary. The two words don't necessarily mix, but in his mind they do.

With their first victor to be so strong, so handsome, so... outstanding, it's a chuckle of horror and dismay at how far District 8 has fallen from grace. He tries thinking about a victor they've had in the past thirty years. There's one, but he's always found her to be quite boring, muttering about squirrels and beehives incessantly till they fall asleep. Another, far older, and far worse than the former. Roman hates it. Almost as much as he hates the men who he falls in love with.

Roman Bercucci did not think that thought out loud.

"I thought you'd be here," a voice calls out from the distance, and Roman stops his apple tossing.

He looks over and is surprised to see his father, Yubin, a weathered and rough man in his mid-thirties who's seen too many harsh winters and too few bright summers, standing in the empty corridor. Roman has his dad's oily and greasy onyx locks, curly down to mid neck and it makes him feel like such a girl. He has no want for dresses and bows or corsages; Roman's a man through and through. Well, his boyfriend has other thoughts-

Roman Bercucci also did not think that thought out loud, or in his head.

"Hey, Dad," he says nonchalantly, trying to not show the distress of emotions on his face. Roman's found himself time and time again having his facial features betray his trust where he's gotten to the point of locking them away and throwing the key off a cliffside. Except, there aren't any cliffs in District 8 and certainly no long droppings, so his plan is thus ceased and desisted.

Yubin crosses the corridor to lean up against the wall with his son, swiping the apple from his hand with a deft motion that looked as if almost didn't happen. He winks as Roman begins to protest - halfheartedly, but a protest nonetheless - with open wide eyes and a stutter that brings mountain giants to their knees. The man takes a hearty bite out of the juicy red apple, the skin tearing and breaking like a bruise, shattered shards of pooling crimson and navy stains splattering to the concrete. Yubin smirks, Roman's face still registering slight disbelief. "Your mother is talking to Kassidy still, so I thought I'd give you some company since you're alone," he says.

"Well, you know I don't like being alone."

Roman is the eldest sibling of four, where he has a younger sister who is about to endure her first reaping, and two ten year-old twin sisters, which thank every god above are not at the eligible age just yet. There's not a day that goes by where Roman worries about life without any of his younger sisters, girls who he loves with every fiber of his being until there's nothing left by a straw man who makes dry baritone noises in the wind.

Unlike his sisters, Roman has the greenest eyes of the district; emerald orbs that practically glow in the dark given their sheer luminosity, but he grumbles that it makes hide and seek at night hard to do. Kassidy, like both of his parents, have stunning and gorgeous heavy setting dark eyes, warm maroons and distant mahoganies that glisten with joy.

"Are you nervous?" Yubin asks, crossing his arms.

Roman snorts. "That's a stupid question."

"It's my job, son. As your father, I need to-"

"Yeah, don't worry, you say it all the time. Can I have my apple back?"

"No." And to prove his point, Yubin takes another monstrous bite out of the apple, juice spilling down his chin and dripping to the sodded ground below.

The fifteen year-old switches spots, the moss digging into his shoulder blades starting to become a little too uncomfortable. He kicks around some of the dust by his feet, hands stuffed into the pockets of his withering velvet jeans. The description is hard to explain - Roman has a hard time trying to make sense of it to himself, and he's the one wearing the piece of clothing as it is - but in the most simplistic terms, they're a pair of jeans with velvet stitching that makes them feel luxurious to run your hands across.

Roman does this, actually, thinking about their originality, and the shivers clambour into his palm. Almost like is boyfriend's hands against his own as they kiss and roam and-

He blinks, furrowing his eyebrows, and wonders if looking into the sun will cause his memory to go blank.

"How's Kassidy?"

Yubin finishes the apple off, leaving the core to be crushed together in his hand, tossing it into the dirt like a discarded piece of trash. "Taking it better than most of the twelve year-olds in this district, I'd imagine. She's only cried once. I remember sobbing in my mother's arms for hours on end before my first reaping. I cried in her arms every single time. Seven years in a row, actually. It seems to have done the trick."

Roman raises an eyebrow. "Many scared kids probably cried in their parents arms-"

"Do you need to?" his father asks, gentle and warm, his eyes sorrowful as he looks his son in the eye.

Roman takes a step back, not expecting quite the abruptness of the question. His head is swimming with thousands of thoughts every single second - of course, he's upset that his life is being gambled away, but there's a part of him that is a stoned off wall, no emotion going in and no emotion going out - but a scowl complacently twists his lips. "No, Dad, I'm fine. The reaping no longer scares me."

His father stares at him, a stare that bothers Roman where he feels like bugs are beginning to crawl on his skin, but it is a look that pierces through flesh and picks apart the lies, the deceit, and it gets to the very inner core of that human being. "You're not a very good liar, Roman."

"At least let me think I am?"

"That'll be a sure way to get killed. You tell a Career you're good at this such thing so he doesn't chop your head off, and then he finds out you're incompetent and realizes you lied about it? The Capitol might as well prepare a casket for you if that's how it's going to be."

"It almost sounds like you're writing off my own death," Roman scowls.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm just playing out possible scenarios."

Roman sucks on his bottom lip, turning around from his father and listening to the calm serenity of District 8's marketplace. On Reaping day, it is a ghost town with banners floating in the wind, their letters torn off and commodities strewn everywhere as if a Tasmanian devil came in and made a wreck of the place. It brings goosebumps to his arms when he thinks about how on any other given day there is too much cacophonous and boisterous noise for the buildings to handle, where the sounds and syllables bounce around the bricks and fling themselves into the air where one end of the District can hear the other. Roman thinks the buildings in District 8 are poorly designed, with paint coming off if one runs their hand through it.

It's his coping mechanism - Roman's coping mechanism, in particular - that makes sense of everything. The world is in shambles, but he does not want it to necessarily change. Having it change shall put everything else out of proportion and presumably mess everything up, because before someone is able to create conduct and order, it must slough through the mess first, and that only causes more oil spills, more factory fires, more dead children, more Hunger Games casualties, and more talk of rebellion.

District 8 is too stupid and poor for a rebellion.

Yubin sighs, putting his hands behind his head while he leans back. "Man... if I was a teenager again..."

"You'd be going through the same crap I'm going through."

"It was slightly easier."

"How's that?"

"It just was," Yubin shrugs, smirking as a twinkle in his eyes plays with every passing word. "The Hunger Games have been around for two hundred years, Roman. Imagine how many generations of a single family in any district has had to go through with these wicked games. Life in Panem for the past two millennia have not been easy, but it seems like each upcoming group of eligible teenagers become more reckless and crazy, and that just makes everything that much more unpredictable."

Roman smiles, a full fledged smile for all his scowls and plain faces. "Crazy is fun, Dad, that's the whole point."

"Which crazy are we talking about?"

"Does it matter?"

"One is clinical and makes you insane. The other is you putting yourself in life threatening situations and escaping them unscathed. Either way, there's a dead 'crazy' person."

"You worry too much," the boy says snippily.

"You are talking to your father, Roman, I suggest you watch the tone."

At least, that's what Roman thinks, but he hopes no one of importance hears him say that aloud.

Roman is not even listening to Yubin, but rather having his gaze become transfixed on a fly as he watches it zip and zap from concrete corner to the other. Fragile wings of reflective glass shine in the sun's glare, spherical orbs of darkness to peer into, and he's tilting his head to observe the creature. Bugs are fascinating. As long as they're not on his skin. However, what he does like is that one guy's hands cupping his face as they-

He has absolutely no idea where any of these thoughts are coming from, and it's bothering him. Can a man live if he removes his brain from his skull?

Back to the fly. It seems to sniff the corner it's currently perched on precariously, as if the stone is toxic and will cause the poor nuisance to plummet four feet to its death. Roman watches with fascination as the legs twitch out, one seemingly to go limp as if it is paralyzed, and then for a strange reason, the fly drops and goes to the concrete. It has to be dead, and in Roman's head, he plays a sound effect of a loud THUMP to signify the fly hitting the ground.

Yubin watches his son's face go through an array of emotions, and the father is unable to pinpoint exact rhymes or reasons why, except he's scared that his not too bright boy has suddenly gotten a bright idea that'll forever hurt him.

"Roman?"

The boy looks at his father, glorious emerald eyes lit aflame with an idea, a thought at shock value where the paralysis sets in, rigor mortis comes afterward, and the luminous void of death with paper white skies and lights meaning doom is certainly near. "I've got a strategy," he smirks.


Chiara Domitt: District 8 Female P.O.V (12)


The sketchpad smells like mildew, but that's because it's been dropped into the kitchen sink one too many times. One of the corners is crusted over with mice droppings that forms a solidified ridge of fecal matter, another opposite it dyed a bright hue of carnation pink. The cover is scratched off and now nothing more than an empty grayness that can be used for anything. One particular page that has been flipped to does not have a drawing on it, but rather words in a fancy calligraphy that looks like it's been written by a machine. The swoops are too perfect and calculated, with a dabble of ink going down from a 'k' swipe, the letter z having crossing tails that almost make it resemble a sideways and fancy s.

Legs stretched out and crossed together sit in a cushioned field of flowers, a hill overlooking a clear and aquatic lake down below. A pocket of bright sunshine covers the vicinity, and it being one of the only spots in District 8 not constantly plagued by at the very least a centimeter of smog that blackens out the bulb of light in the sky. Everything is enriched and alive here in this corner of the world, warmness that is able to be seen on the tips of the grass blades. Dew drops make pictures in the raised foliage. A spider, a teardrop, a broken heart, and the aspiring poet takes them all in.

Perhaps the only discordant noise in the outcropping is the harshness of a pencil against the paper of the sketchpad, obsolete gray tips slashing and stabbing, tearing the through the veil of white till nothing but scraps of paper remain that flutter into the wind - words that go unspoken, chronicles that go unheard, memories that go unrecalled, lives that go and thrive in the clouds - leaving the poet feeling quite unsatisfied.

The valley has gone through autumns where the sun shines all the time. Each leaf is a human personality exemplified by the brilliance of color in the stem, through the flowers that bloom among the wild mushrooms hiding underneath the hill. Animals thrive and nibble away at the flora, and there would be no Capitol painting in the world that could accurately capture the pure and sheer ethereal beauty being shown. Springs are even more delightful to sit through. The concerts of new hatchlings chirping through the skies fill the airwaves with harmonies of bluebirds and blue jays, cardinals, mockingjays, sparrows, ravens, and the once upon a time heard squeal of an ostrich. The hill does not change much between the Spring and the Fall, but it is where Summer and Winter make their grand appearance.

Summers are scorching, but a heat that makes being outside bearable. Steam evaporates off the lake, and the sand is white as a newly discovered pearl, gleaming in radiant bursts of light that are perfect for the poet to conceptualize into something of greater importance. Dipping into the water below brings sounds of utter alien-like feel to the poet's ears, bubbling croaks of frogs that swim. The hiss of a snake that slithers. The subtly and beats of a fish's tail that swims. The smile of the imaginary dolphin. The Atlantis feel of the coral reef beneath the shores. Beauty that goes understated.

Winter is a feeling District 8 knows all too well. The smog makes the skies darker, bleaker, grayer, and colder, but the valley is a wonderland of huge proportions. A frozen over lake to skate across, to trace your name in the snow flurries that glide on through the air like a visiting group of Capitol tourists. The trees are naked, and the wood is a mix of ashy gray and beautiful white. A silver snowstorm that leaves snowflakes in the poet's hand. A snowman with a lack of a carrot for a nose. A burlap sack found in the drift, filled to the brim with scarves that are in a numerous plethora of colors.

The poet sees it all.

The poet feels it all.

Fifteen year-old Chiara Domitt may be the most blessed human being in all of Panem to encounter such a gem and find it to be all for herself at times. It almost does feel like a fantasy - Alice in Wonderland has nothing as Miss Domitt, snap and swift side thrust of the hip and all - but there's no talking rabbit with a watch swinging around its hairy wrist.

She's sitting on the hill overlooking the lake, sketchpad, and pencil in hand. This time, however, she's not drawing. She's never been an artist. As the lake finally knows what to call her, Chiara Domitt is a poet through and through. Influenced by the ever so great Edgar Allen Poe himself, she takes pride in the gloominess of his works that is sprinkled throughout her own. There is only a few more minutes before she has to go and stand in the District 8 square for the Reaping, so she might as well use up all the time available.

Her stubby locks of auburn hair are tucked underneath her ears, a few strands poking out that tickle her nose. Chiara sneezes, almost losing her pencil, as it'd not be all that fun to go racing down the hill to go retrieve it. She knows better than to let go of precious objects. Her life is one of those things. She doesn't understand why people volunteer to give away their life for a one-in-twenty-four chance of survival, but it is every single person's right to live the way they want to.

Chiara watches from her spot, a marked butterfly quietly named 'Roger' flutter around before landing on a golden daisy. Her pencil spins around in her grip, and she begins to write.

Days of beauty.

Roger flutters and floats.

Days of happiness.

The flower is blowing in the breeze.

Everything is a mystery to me.

He's landed.

Added and extra weight.

Days of serenity.

A butterfly has met a daisy.

Days of friendship.

She doesn't think her poetry is all that good. She hates using such a basic word in her vocabulary. 'Good.' Utterly pathetic. Those in the district find her to be quite an aardvark, the one who summons strange tidings and bizarre events to grace the weathered tar factory land of District 8. Chiara wants to call herself a creationist, but the problem is, her poems never quite seem to pop off the page and rather land in a muddled pile of scrapped ideas by her feet.

Her hand hesitates, hovering over the recent poem of Roger that she just wrote about. It is all about the repetition. The swipe of the letters, the slant of the hand as she writes. The breeze blowing through her hair at five minute intervals. The fact her work will get her absolutely nowhere. She authors another poem, one of much darker content, but still jolly and warm hearted in one looks deeply enough.

A beggar is poor if he doesn't have a cup to hold out.

A plant is dead if there is no soil for it to stick its stem into.

A child is lonely if there is no one to hold its hand.

A world is desolate if there is no one to occupy it.

A hillside is dull if there are no flowers to bloom from within.

A soul is tired if there is no fire to come and ignite it.

A Hunger Games is useless if there are no victors to be given.

Her head perks up as she writes the last line. Chiara would say she's a woman of magic, where her thoughts often go to places unseen, but something about where the tangents wander make them journey into uncharted territories where she's unsure of what exactly she'll see. Chiara rereads the sentence. A Hunger Games is useless if there are no victors to be given. It is no secret that every citizen in Panem slightly envies a victor. They are bathed in the bath of luxury from the time they win to the time they give their ceasing and dying last breath. A hitch in the road - kink, Chiara corrects herself, a kink in the road - occurs in isolated spots, but victors can act like a black sheep if left untamed.

Without a victor, could the Hunger Games slowly start to die away? Would the tyrant that is Jade Dermure wake up to see its lack of importance? Chiara frowns. She hopes that there is some sanity in this idea, or otherwise she may take an eternal swim in the lake.

Though she is too poor to buy a watch - those things are what victors buy - Chiara can tell that the time for an impending judgment day is coming. She stands up, brushing herself off. Where she sat, lays an impression into the grass and dirt. It pains her to leave, the poetess is supposed to stay forever rooted in the place where she comes from. Chiara hugs her sketchpad close to her, keeping the pencil tucked in between her locks of hair and her ear.

She walks on silently back to the district; smokestacks and emotionless windows appear in the distance. Chiara imagines herself walking through an invisible wall every time her feet cross the threshold of the magic valley to the dull home of her troubles. The distinction is unsettling. She looks up and a clean divide is drawn down the middle. Bright blue skies represent rebirth and joy, dark ominous skies represent death and solemnness.

Chiara can see the throngs of people filing into line as there are many avenues into the town square. She taps her foot impatiently on the stone and jots down another poem. It perhaps is a representation of thought that cannot be said without eliciting great confusion, but Chiara doesn't have too much time to think about it.

We file in like mindless robots.

They prick our fingers.

Our blood is splattered on the page.

Two children and their deaths await.

Cheery. Chiara scowls at the thought. It is not in her prerogative to think negatively. She is generally incapable of filling it into her schedule. Occasionally one will stumble across like a straggler during broad daylight, but at night the game plan shifts and Chiara tosses and turns, screaming and screaming till the throat has gone raw with pain and blood because her mind is too malicious to handle.

Her eyes, though bright, are bloodshot from a current lack of sleep through which she is suffering. A few doctors in the district, and even one from the Capitol that the mayor specifically called for, have classified her ailment of insomnia, and that Chiara is perceptible to nightmares of a wide variety. There is one where she's devoured alive by a gigantic snake with mind engraving black eyes that swallow up all of her creativity. Or where her voice is taken from her and the life that is her poetry and her vocabulary crumbles to the wayside like a sand castle being taken away by the waves.

One come to revisit her at least twice a week. Flames that are taller than tornadoes shoot into the sky during this nightmare. Chiara's vision is clouded with smoke, tar and tobacco and coarse wine filling her throat, spilling everywhere to the tiled floor as she scrambles around, looking for an exit. The screams of the burning - oh god the smell, oh god the sounds - they fill her ears till there is nothing but a roaring sense of humanely suffering. Loud crashes. Lights in a hazard pattern of red and blue dance around her dazed skull. Chiara is sobbing, but her tears are dry, and there's no emotion in them.

She's been too caught up in her thoughts on smoke and fires and the loveliness that is the cheering of death, that Chiara doesn't register the stabbing of pain going through her as a Peacekeeper grabs her pointer finger. Her bloodied finger is smeared to the paper - she's thinking of the latest poem. The Games don't need a victor. They don't deserve one. - and Chiara walks. Mechanically, robotically, she files into a spot. She has never felt like herself. Chiara Domitt is only twelve years of age, and yet feels distanced and dispatched from all that is Panem and the travesty that surrounds her life.

The doors to the Justice Building open, and out steps two people. One of them is the escort, the other being the one of the victors made to mentor the tributes, but Chiara cannot see who it is. Stepping up to the microphone is the youthful and engaging Hilly Yiss. Chiara's always found it quite funny that the escort's first name ends in the same letter as her last, but she's tripping herself up on trivial matters. Hilly has luminescent sea foam green hair that is held up in a monstrous bun. All of the reaping kids in the pens - Chiara knows they're labeled sections, but a pen makes it far more ominous and dreary - have a dull brown or grey clinging to their skin. Even Chiara is dressed down in a simple one-piece black and white almost maid looking attire. Hilly's hair that has been birthed from all of District 4's citizens is damn near the brightest thing. She's energized, every year she's energized.

A rabbit never knows when to stop hopping.

Hilly Yiss never knows when to stop existing.

What do these two things have in common?

Chiara writes that poem down, ignoring the weird stares from the other girls around her. Hilly is currently bouncing around on her heels.

She gets a good look at the victor now, the man sitting himself in the chair that is the farthest away from the escort as he can possibly be. Chiara whistles low, because their victor is looking fine. Needle Finch is twenty-five, having won the 189th Hunger Games at the age of fourteen. Chiara has watched over and over again his games, Needle's bulking muscles appearing through the dress shirt he's wearing. Needle is built the way he is because District 8's factories need to have their equipment created. Although the custom used to be that District 1, 2, and 3 made the machinery for the factories, Jade wanted the industries to grow and support themselves and thus smelting facilities and blacksmith companies were created. Needle built his core, volunteering to help create the machinery, and thus he became to be a Career killing machine.

Hilly taps the microphone and wastes absolutely no time at all in getting down to the business of things. "Hello District, 8! Man, wow, it has been quite the year hasn't it? You all came so close to winning last year, top three must've been a dream come true! Well, luckily for you all, this is a Quarter Quell this year so who knows what'll happen! Any of you lucky guys want to be a victor this year? Needle will be glad to help you! Won't you Needle," she tosses a glance over at him, smiling expectantly, frowning heavily when all Needle does is glare at her. "He'll be there for you. Anyways! Let me start with the girls!"

She has one hand constantly gripping the microphone in case of some natural disaster - honestly, Chiara wonders why Hilly is so worried about things going wrong or that she's unable to impress Needle. Needle is a tough guy to impress - while the other digs in the large clear bowls filled to the brim with female names aged twelve to eighteen. Chiara watches as Hilly swipes her long nails down and against the side of the bowl, one slip of paper caught between lioness claws.

Hilly pulls off a musical theater trick by swinging herself back to the upright position, hand still glued to the microphone, and she unfurls the name on the slip. "Chiara Domitt!"

Chiara has read in books and has created poems off this fact, that sometimes, because people are in shock, there is no median response on the face or actually anywhere else on the body. She doesn't drop her sketchbook, she still has the pencil in her hand from drafting the last poem about the ditz Hilly, and Chiara climbs the stairs. Her stomach is twisting and churning inside as if she's been punched, but that's all the poetess feels. No pain. No hurt. Just emptiness. Chiara stands by the escort, who is chattering away at her, but she's unresponsive and instead flips open her sketchbook to jot down a poem.

Life is too short.

I didn't heed the warning.

The Hunger Games shall be my grave.

Hilly looks at Needle nervously, slightly perturbed by Chiara's lack of initiation to make conversation. "Okay... this is Chiara Domitt everyone! Your District 8 female tribute for the year! Will that pencil lead her to victory? Who knows! Let me select the boy!" She repeats the same exact action, right hand now clutching the microphone in her death grip, a single piece of paper coming from the bowl, and she flicks it open. "A Mr.-"

Only those first two letters are spoken, not even the first name of what could be one unlucky fellow when the bravado filled cry echoes around the square. "I volunteer!"

Chiara locks eyes immediately with a boy stepping out of the fifteen year-old pile that is the male's side. He jogs up, and the first thing she notes is a crazed, wild look in his eyes. A strategy of sorts, perhaps, but she's unable to pinpoint it exactly. While the entire world is distracted by Hilly Yiss, and the boy whose name she learns to be Roman Bercucci, one last poem for the day - she's made at least six - goes in with all the others.

He's a crazy one, just by the look in his eyes.

Well dressed, coated in velvet as if he thinks he owns the ground he walks on.

A bloodied one suits him better, I feel.

It has a nice ring to it. I hope it happens.

Roman Bercucci drowning in a suit of red velvet.


And there we are ladies and gents! That was Chapter #8: Bloodied Velvet, the third reaping, and this reaping being for District 8. It feels weird and yet comforting to be writing these chapters again after its been so long to write a real reaping. What are your initial thoughts on Roman Bercucci and Chiara Domitt? I'll admit that this I think is the first time I've written tributes that stray a little or a lot off the beaten path that was given to me, and I sheepishly admit that Roman is slightly different that what was given to me, and Chiara is going to be a lot of fun to write.

After the last two chapters made it quite clear that Cassiopeia and Amber were not as near likable to you readers as Milner and Joshua, I wanted to try and make Chiara just as compelling as Roman, if not more. Her section in this entire eight chapter so far has been my favorite part to type, and I don't regret changing her character arc one bit. A few things to ponder about, though. What is exactly Roman trying to hide, either within him or that he's running from? What type of strategy do you think he's connected with coming from the fly becoming paralyzed and dying? I'm super excited for that part of his arc, if I am to be honest. Chiara is a lovely ball of complexity. Which one of her poems was your favorite? I think I wrote either six or seven, all entirely free verse because poetry is so bleh to me, so my luck I get a character I love revolving around poetry. And is the fire dream all in her head or realistic?

With all that being said, I randomized the numbers and bless be the powers of RNG that I did indeed did get a district in the one to four range. Our next chapter is District 2, and maybe this means we'll get another chapter in those upper constraints after that one as well. I can't, as usual, say for sure when I'll have the chapter out, as I did manage to type this 6k in about two hours and twenty minutes after weeks of staying away from the material... so eh. This was Chapter #8: Bloodied Velvet, and I'm always throwing in those hints about the chapter and reference to it somewhere. Chapter #9: Die by the Sword, will be the District 2 reaping. Thank you so much for reading! Please review, I hope you're still around for this chapter as it has been so long! Have an amazing day you guys! Love you all! Bye!

~ Paradigm