Tirion's POV

I sit in the shade of the elderly, gnarled oak tree that stands somewhat forlornly a distance from the house. This is a luxury unavailable to most others in the district; since our house is right on the edge of the Meadow and this tree has conveniently taken root on the far end of it. Our families' meal is over, and all conversation unrelated to the reaping has been exhausted. There is nothing left to do but wait, and I felt uncomfortable in the tense atmosphere in the house, so I announced that I needed some fresh air and came outside. Absently, I gaze up and stare at the huge, billowing white clouds that travel lazily across the perfectly blue sky, illuminated by the bright sun far above. It is, to put it simply, a nice day. A beautiful day. If only, I think, if only it could weren't spoiled by the reaping, the chilling gray shadow that looms invisibly over us.

Soft sounds on my right side catch my attention, and I turn to see Kaia taking the last few steps across the dry gold summer grass to my side. She silently sits next to me, and after a moment, she leans up against my side; with her head on top of my shoulder and her right hand on the front of it. We don't speak; just derive solace from each other's closeness. I think about how different our feelings about it must be. Kaia just wants her best friend close to her on this day, when the fear and apprehension of hundreds pervade the air, and closeness is natural and comforting. She doesn't know the deep, beautiful contentedness that washes through me from her light touch. This feels so right, I think. This is the way it should be. Just us, together. Always. And it seems so oddly easy, having her here beside me, so close and warm…

Suddenly, the silence is broken by the crunching of dead grass under small, fast-moving feet. Both of us look up and see Rowan trotting toward us, clutching something in his hand.

"Here," he says, handing me the object. "Mama said I had to bring it out to you."

Kaia and I glance down at it and I recognize the white paper packet of cookies. I open it carefully and hear Kaia give a little gasp of surprise at its contents. Rowan looks a little envious, but not very upset. "I wanted to eat them, but Mama and Liana wanted you guys to have them," he informs us.

I frown. "You can have some if you want, Rowan," I say, and take one of the cookies out to break a piece off for him. But Rowan shakes his head, his unruly hair – which is a far lighter tan than his sister's – waving with the movement.

"No thanks," he says, surprising me. "You can have them. I don't mind, because I've got this." He opens his mouth and, taking great care to not drop whatever is on it, extends his tongue and reveals one of the candies, the blue one.

"Oh, all right then," I say, putting the cookie back in the paper. "Do you like it, Rowan?"

After retracting his tongue and shifting the candy to the inside of his cheek, Rowan grins widely and nods vigorously. "It's really sweet!" he says happily. "It's the best thing I've ever eaten in my whole life!"

Kaia smiles beside me. "That's great. Hey," she says, noticing something and looking a little confused. "Rowan…did the stuff in the candy…turn your tongue blue?"

"Huh?" Rowan, with great effort, sticks out his tongue until he can examine it for himself. When he sees the blue-stained tip of his tongue, his gray eyes widen in surprise. "Wow!" he exclaims, and immediately he turns on his heel and dashes back into the house, yelling excitedly, "Mama! Mama! My tongue's blue now!", his speech somewhat impaired by the candy he's still sucking on.

I laugh, though it's quiet and brief as always, and Kaia's bright smile draws a small smile out of me. Then a tiny crinkling sound from my hand draws our attention to the packet of cookies in it. "We should probably eat these now," I say. Kaia looks at them, and I see her swallow as her mouth waters from the sight.

"They do look delicious," she agrees. "How did you manage to get them anyway?" I tell her about my encounter with Lek. "Your mother's right," she remarks when I've finished. "He's a sweet boy. I suppose that comes from living in a sweetshop all his life, huh?" she jokes.

"Yeah," I agree. "Which one do you want?" I ask, indicating the two different cookies. She deliberates for a moment before pointing to her choice. "That one, I think."

"Sugar, hm? Excellent choice," I say, taking the cookie and holding it out to her. It's close to her mouth, so she takes a playful bite out of it before taking it from my hand. I take the chocolate cookie and take a large bite out of it. It's thick and sweet, and the delicious sensation spreads over my whole mouth. An incoherent sound of pleasure comes from my throat as I savor the treat, and I hear a similar noise from Kaia. I glance at her and see that she's taken a more practical approach to her snack, taking tiny but still satisfying bites to make it last.

"You like it?" I ask, knowing that it's an unnecessary question.

"Oh, yes!" Kaia says delightedly. "Thank you."

"No problem," I assure her. "It's a nice treat for me too."

"You know, I never had one of these before," she remarks. "Neither of us has." She sighs, and I wonder what's on her mind. "I remember my father was all set to buy me one special for my birthday when I was little, but the baker back then had raised the price for customers from the Seam. He didn't like our kind much."

I grimace and nod. The baker of almost ten years ago, when I was first learning to hunt and gather, and to trade with the town residents, did not take particularly well to people of the Seam. I still remember my first encounter with him, when I tried to exchange some very nice and perfectly fresh wild turkey for a few of his rolls. I internally wince; I hadn't known multiple blows from a rolling pin would ache so much or leave such nasty bruising, but the baker obviously hadn't known how to tell rotten meat from fresh and so his outburst over my attempt at trade was entirely unreasonable.

Kaia sees my indignant expression and giggles. "Oh, still upset about that?" she asks.

"No," I reply honestly; I haven't had much reason to be upset with the former baker since his daughter and son – who had no qualms about cooperating with a young hunter from the Seam – took over his business. "Just a little annoyed. Which is a bit stupid, seeing as it's nothing to get worked up over now."

"I don't think so," says Kaia. "Well, it's better now anyway. There's no reason to think about it at all, anyway; I don't know why I brought it up."

"Strange things often come up when you're looking for something to make conversation with," I tell her.

"That is true," she says. "Especially when there isn't really much left to say."

I'm about to reply, when I see her expression. She looks odd, somehow – nervous, pensive, and something I can't quite place combined. I get the sense Kaia has found something more she wants to say, and so I remain silent, and wait patiently for a minute until she finds her voice again.

"Well…" she begins hesitantly. "Now that you've got me talking…There is one thing I've wanted to talk about…" She turns to gaze at me with a strange, curious look in her eyes. "How old were we when we met? About five?" When I nod, she goes on. "Remember how?"

"Yes," I say, wondering where she's going with this. "Don't you?"

"Of course!" she says, smiling at me. "It was…early summer, I think. I was going to meet up with my father on his way home from the mines. I was running along the fence, and I saw a very unusual sight – someone on the other side of it, up in the apple trees gathering up all the ripe ones."

I laugh lightly, remembering how surprised a much younger Kaia had looked as she tentatively approached the fence. "You had the funniest bug-eyed look on your face," I say. "I would have laughed if I weren't so scared that someone saw me."

"You know I wouldn't have ratted you out," she says. "It was just like I said then, I didn't want to see anyone hurt, lawbreaker or not. You know, when you begged me not to tell anyone," she adds teasingly.

"Hey, I was five," I say defensively. "And I did not beg. I was just emphasizing my point."

"Oh, of course you were," she teases. "Though I have to say, I was a bit taken aback by how nervous you got about me. I just wanted to know what you were doing on the other side of the fence. And you came down from the tree and told me – well, after I was able to get it into your head that I wasn't going to tell the Peacekeepers – how you came to pick some of the apples for your family."

"Actually, I told you rather a lot that I wasn't exactly supposed to be telling people," I remark. "What I was doing, how long I'd been doing it, who I was…All that."

"You knew you could trust me, didn't you?" Kaia says.

"There was that, of course…And I was very young, and so wasn't quite as careful as I ought to have been," I say truthfully.

"Well, you were certainly as generous then as you are now," she says after considering this a moment. "Maybe that's not the term for it, but it sure seemed like it then. When I asked you if I could have one of the apples, since you had more than I'd ever seen in my short life, you agreed right away and passed a nice one through the fence."

"Chalk it up to the bit of childhood innocence that wasn't lost by then," I say. "No offense, but you looked very skinny and hungry, and I knew what that felt like, so I wanted to help you out."

"Maybe it was innocent kindness…Like how Lek gave you the candy and cookies this morning, right?" she says. I nod, only now realizing the connection, like her. "I know that just a few years later, you wouldn't have even thought of doing that unless the other person had something to trade you. But still. I know it sounds a little sentimental, but it was then that I knew what a good person you were."

"You're right, that is sentimental," I tease.

"But it's true," Kaia persists. "And that's how we became friends, anyway. We started talking after you gave me the apple, and it was like we'd known each other all our lives instead of barely a minute. I remember thinking to myself that we could be great, great friends."

"The perfect friends," I say softly, feeling a part of me sink inside at the word. Friends…Only friends, she said…

Kaia goes on, oblivious to the effect her words have had. Then again, I can't blame her; I never show my emotions outwardly if I can help it, so usually nobody can tell what I feel from just looking at me. "We got along so well already, we'd probably have gone on chatting all afternoon if your – "

Kaia catches herself and quickly stops talking before saying the next word, feeling how my body has gone rigid against hers and realizing her mistake. My eyes are shut, but I feel her turning around to look at me. "Tirion?" she asks in a small voice, and I picture the worried look on her face. I don't answer her, because I don't want something to come out of my mouth that I'll regret saying to her later. I know what she was going to say. Not long after I'd given her the apple and we'd struck up a conversation, my father, Saine, emerged from the woods and stopped us. Like me, he'd been worried about Kaia revealing our secret to the Peacekeepers, but calmed down when we explained what was going on, and when Kaia left to go meet up with her father after promising to keep our hunts secret. After that day, we talked at school and started spending time together, and without either of us realizing when, we became close friends. Not long after, our fathers happened to meet while on duty in the mines, and became friends as well, bringing our families close together.

This was all well and good, but after what my father did to us – getting himself and dozens of other people, innocent or not so much, killed and the district far worse off from then on than we once were, and my family left disgraced and with the heavy task of building back the trust of the rest of Twelve's populace – just for the sake of his empty delusions of bringing justice and better lives to our district. The Capitol declared him the worst of traitors, and though I hate to agree with them, I did as well. Not a traitor to the nation – to me and everyone else he falsely claimed to love and care for. My father's crime against me was that he valued his own selfish, foolish desires over what was truly important, and no one, least of all I, will ever forgive him even after his death.

Incredibly, my family did not completely agree. My younger brother, Seth, and my mother refused to say anything bad about my father, and so did Kaia, Rowan, Farrah, and Kaia's own father Pearce before he succumbed to a lung disease from years in the mines. They would try and talk to me about him, to convince me that he had been a good person with the best intentions behind his actions. But I would not be moved. Hearing my father's name sent the images of the blood, the panic, the fire, the deaths, and all the devastation he had caused, and I'd get so furious at that and lash out fiercely at whoever was trying to talk to me. Everyone quickly learned not to mention my father around me, and that was fine with me, as I wanted to banish him from my life forever. However, on occasion, one of them will forget and mention him, as Kaia has just done. I sense her apprehension and know she is afraid I will react that way once more.

Well, she's right to be nervous. Even now, eight years later, the mere mention of Saine Sagitto makes my blood burn with rage. I take one more moment, body unnaturally still and eyes shut tight, to steady my breathing and calm myself. When I feel ready, I slowly let out a long, deep breath. "You're right," I say in a low voice, trying to gloss it over and make it sound as if she never mentioned my father, that' we should just forget about it. "We probably would have stayed there, talking all day."

I open my eyes and look at Kaia, who appears to understand that I'm not angry with her. She has relaxed, but her face is grave. "I'd love to stay here all day with you too," she says, looking downward to the dry gold grass at her feet, and I am surprised to hear the tone of her voice. She speaks with unusual softness in her voice, and with the air of a person who's made up their mind about something.

"I think…That day, I was the luckiest person in Panem, to catch sight of you and meet you," she goes on quietly. "That was all so long ago, and so much has happened. We've been friends for, for twelve years now; I can hardly believe it. We've been through so much, done and said so much, and now we know each other better than we know ourselves. Tirion…"

She straightens up and turns her clear gray eyes directly into my own, and I feel my breath catch in my throat. "I…I don't know if it's the right time to say this, but there's something I want to tell you," she says. Her gaze is calm but determined, and I feel as if it's piercing me to my core. "I've waited for a while for it – okay, a lot more than a while – but since it's so close to the reaping I feel like this could be my one and only chance, and I can't afford to wait anymore." She takes a long breath, similar to the one I let out just a minute ago. "Tirion – "

But she's barely able to get my name out before the loud creak of the front door opening makes us both turn. My mother has come out of the house with a stony face. She is followed by an equally grim-looking Farrah, carrying Rowan, who is clutching his mother's dress in his small fists and resting his head on her shoulder. Even he, the still-carefree four-year-old, has a sad and resigned expression. I look past them into the house to read the elderly, battered grandfather clock in the kitchen and see that it's thirty minutes to one.

It's time. Kaia and I exchange apprehensive glances. The reaping is upon us.

~0~

We are silent as we make our way down the street to the square. What words are there for this day? Kaia and I stride in front of our mothers, trying to keep our features emotionless masks in preparation for the cameras. As we near the square, we are enveloped in the dismal throng of District 12's youth. My mother and I share one somber glance – Kaia doing the same thing with hers, and adding a quick ruffle of Rowan's hair – and Kaia and I go alone to the sign-in area. When we step up to the table at the head of the line, the Peacekeeper gives us a disdainful look. I extend my arm, and the man's instrument buzzes as he sticks the needle into my fingertip and presses the bead of blood onto the sign-in sheet. I only twitch a bit at the small twinge of discomfort, but I hear Kaia give a hiss of pain as her blood is drawn. She's not as used to pain as I am.

"Go ahead," says the Peacekeeper gruffly when he's done with us. Kaia squeezes my hand as we go together into the roped-off area near the front of the crowd for the seventeen-year-olds. Whatever she had wanted to say to me before, the words are apparently gone now. I look up at the stage, and my eyes are fixed on the tremendous glass ball on the left side of it, which holds the names of the possible male tributes. I think of the thousands of slips of paper in that ball. Compared with all the other slips in there, the odds of one of the thirty-seven with my name on it – six of them because they were required, the rest for the tesserae I've taken out for myself, my mother, and Kaia and her family, since I firmly refused to let Kaia take any of her own, even when she offered to – are actually relatively slim. There are hundreds of other boys with their names in there, and most with tesserae of their own as well. But then again, when are the odds ever in the favor of a person from District 12, and from the Seam to boot?

Our attention is directed from the glass balls to the two people emerging from the Justice Building. The first is Rosiel Frieze, our Capitol escort. She beams brilliantly at the solemn crowd below her, looking as if she's overjoyed to see us all, but she fools no one. District 12 repulses her and all she wants is to get a promotion and be rid of the lot of us for the rest of her career. I study Rosiel, and find that once again her appearance is unchanged. She's dressed in a vivid magenta suit, with carnation pink high heels and bejeweled gloves on her hands and bangles on her arms. Tattoos swirl beneath her eyes in iridescent rainbow colors. Her thick hair is shoulder-length, and was a blinding lemon-yellow in her first year here, but has since been dyed what was likely meant to be strawberry-blond, but looks more like a salmon color.

Rosiel finds herself glamorous in her fancy outfit and accessories, like any Capitolian. But to us, she and all her kind look like freaks. For a while when I was young, I wondered how they couldn't realize how they look, silly at best and hideous at worst. But then I realized that if they can enjoy watching two dozen children slaughter one another and celebrate it like a festivity, they're certainly not going to realize how utterly ridiculous they appear to normal people. I glance at Kaia, whose reaping outfit is much simpler: a light and soft looking dress of a pale green color – that reminds me of the glimpses of the sea we get when watching the District 4 reapings – that hangs smoothly to her calves. Her only accessory is a bright blue gem hung on a black string around her neck, which she found embedded in gravel near a river during one of the times I tried teaching her to hunt. She dubbed it riverstone, which I know can't be its true name, but sounds nice. She looks so pretty in such a simple outfit, a concept most Capitolians can't fathom. In my eyes, she is more beautiful than all of them in their best fineries combined.

"Happy Hunger Games!" Rosiel sings out. "And may the odds be ever in your favor!"

Her words ring out over a silent district. My mother says that the several escorts in the years before Rosiel also used that greeting, one after the other. No escort stays in District 12 for very long, as we are so undesirable to their kind. I don't find it very insulting, as I see no reason to take their opinions into account. I find it more interesting that their stock greeting never changes, and that it will probably stay the same for all eternity. What do the opinions of such shallow people matter?

Rosiel takes her seat to make way for our stern-faced mayor, a man in his late twenties named Delroy Neximus. He strides, unsmiling and businesslike as always, and in his deep stentorian voice he recites the history of Panem. How a torrent of disasters devastated the world of our ancestors. How a long, bloody war broke out over the meager resources left when the disasters had subsided. How the nation of Panem rose up from the chaos, with the Capitol reigning supreme. I tune it out now, as it's just one more part of the reaping process to endure. But when I was younger, I regarded this part of Panem's history with interest. I wondered about the world before ours. I wondered if it looked like it does now, and what the people were like and how they lived. And after the disasters and the wars, how exactly did the world end up this way, with thirteen poverty-stricken districts and a rich and all-powerful Capitol? It used to spark my curiosity, but I never think of it now if I can help it. The distant past doesn't matter in the here and now, and it's of no use in helping my family survive.

Mayor Neximus continues to read, telling us again how, eventually, the Dark Days were brought upon us, when the thirteen districts (apparently "ungrateful" for the Capitol's "generosity", according to the paper Mayor Neximus reads from) fought together against the might of the Capitol. How the twelve that still exist today were beaten into submission and the thirteenth was blown off the face of the earth, and its remains left to burn with toxic fumes. How, with the Treaty of Treason, new laws to prevent rebellions were established, and the Hunger Games came to be.

The Games. The ultimate method of torture, reminding all of us in the districts just how helpless we are against the Capitol's power. To us, it is the most hated, sadistic punishment of the Capitol…and Capitolians are so twisted that they find it the most thrilling form of entertainment ever devised. It makes no sense to me. Surely at least one Capitolian can see how wrong it all is?

Well, if there is one like that, it's not Rosiel Frieze. Rosiel exemplifies the excitement of her kind as she walks – or bounces, I suppose would be a better word for it – up to the podium after Mayor Neximus finishes and takes his seat.

"All right now, the moment has finally arrived!" she chirps, flashing an unnaturally bright grin. "It's time to select our tributes!" She hops quickly over to the ball on the right side of the stage, the one for the girls. "Ladies first!" she says as she reaches into the ball.

I feel Kaia grab my wrist, her nails digging into the inside of my arm, gripping me tightly at the moment of greatest fear. I twist my hand around and take hold of her hand in the same way, if only to give her a small bit of reassurance, whatever may happen.

"Shiori Atanne!"

At first I give a short sigh of relief, because Kaia is safe for this year. Then the name of the girl registers in my mind, at the same time Kaia takes in a horrified gasp. "Oh, no…" she whispers, distraught.

I grit my teeth in anger when I see a visibly unnerved Shiori making her way to the stage. Her face is even paler than usual, and I can see her shaking uncontrollably with terror. She moves for the stairs and tries to conceal her fear, but her wide, frightened eyes betray everything. She reminds me of trapped prey, after it sees a hunter and realizes its peril, a moment before an expertly thrown knife ends its life. I look at her helplessly. I don't know Shiori, but I see her at school and around the Seam. She's fifteen years old, I know, and she's the frailest and most timid girl I've ever encountered. Inwardly, I shake my head as she ascends the stairs and is enthusiastically greeted by Rosiel, who is apparently oblivious to her distress. Thin, sallow-faced, and weak, she won't last a minute in the Games. Against my will, my mind slams me with an image of what her bloody fate may be as soon as the gong sounds, and I push it back angrily.

"Oh…" Kaia whispers, and my heart wrenches when I remember that Kaia is a friend of hers. "Oh, Shiori, why you?"

I hear choked, heartbroken noises from somewhere in the crowd to my left, and know without looking that it is her parents, sobbing for their only daughter. I have to force myself not to look at them, because I know the sight will hurt. I glance at Kaia and see her struggling to keep her own tears back. I start to put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her, and then Rosiel practically sings into the microphone, "One down, one to go! Let's choose our boy tribute!"

When Kaia hears that, she finishes what I started, whipping around to wrap her arms around me, as if she thinks it could protect me from the Capitol. I drape an arm over her shoulder, and fully intend to whisper words of comfort to her, when the sound of Rosiel's gloved hand searching through the many slips of paper in the ball, which is faintly audible in the dead silence of the district, makes me involuntarily freeze. Sudden fear grips me with icy iron fingers, and my stomach twists. Terror consumes me within seconds and violent images of death race through my mind. The only coherent thoughts I can form as Rosiel picks out a slip and starts to pull it out of the reaping ball are a fast, desperate, mixed-up rush of pleas along the lines of Don't let it be me It can't be me I can't leave them Please not me I can't go Not me!

As Rosiel, with extreme care, opens the chosen slip, I feel robbed of the ability to breathe steadily. And when she reads out the name neatly written on the slip, my breathing stops altogether.

"Tirion Sagitto!"

When Rosiel Frieze reads out my name into the microphone, I feel as if some huge, invisible mass has slammed into me at full force, and at the same time Kaia lets out a horrified shriek. All I can think, dazed and struck dumb by the shock, is, That was my name. That's me. It's me this year. I step forward leadenly, moving as if I'm in a confused dream and unsure of why I'm doing what I'm doing. My sluggish advance towards the stage is based only on a lifetime of seeing every year's chosen tributes, however terrified or distressed they are, resignedly make their way up to the stage as the crowd solemnly parts for them, as they do now to let me through.

As I move through the crowd, with every pair of eyes in District 12 locked on me, Kaia darts after me and grabs at my arm. Instantly, I snap out of my stupor, stop dead, and my head snaps back to look at her. She looks more frightened and upset that I've ever seen her, and the look in her eyes, brimming with tears, makes me feel as though my heart is tearing itself apart. "Tirion," she whimpers frantically, desperately. "Tirion – "

I open my mouth to try and calm her, to tell her it's all right, but no words come. And some part of my mind tells me this is best, because if I did say those things I'd be telling her the most awful lie, getting her hopes up for me and then letting her down. So I stay frozen for a moment, mouth agape, when I suddenly remember the cameras trained on me from every corner of the square. It hits me that I probably look weak and foolish to the audience, and I know I need to act fast if I'm going to leave a good impression on them.

Getting out of this situation quickly is the first thing that comes to my mind, and, knowing it's cruel but seeing no other way, I yank my arm out of Kaia's and stride swiftly towards the stage. I do my best to make it appear purposeful, strong, and unafraid, when inside I feel as though I'm breaking. Kaia screeches, "Tirion, no!", and I hear quick, panicked movement behind me. Using every ounce of strength I have not to stop, I glance back to find out what's going on. I see Kaia, crying uncontrollably now, fighting to get to me but held back by Halle, the son of the mine captain. Like Shiori, I don't know Halle well, but I see him often in school and also when I trade my game, because his father can always be counted on to buy my rabbits. He's holding Kaia tightly and trying to keep her from rushing to my side, and he looks oddly pale and distressed, as if it was one of his siblings that had just been reaped instead of someone he barely knows. With his gray Seam eyes wide, Halle nods his head towards the stage, motioning wordlessly for me to go on.

With that, I nod back and turn to go and I stride to the stage uninterrupted. Rosiel greets me the same way she did to Shiori, and again she is undeterred by the lack of response. "And here we have our reaping winners! How exciting this is!" Rosiel gushes into the microphone, trying to give the reaping – which is turning out very dully by her standards – a bit more pizazz. She's all set to spout more of this to a district that looks even more depressed than at the start of the reaping, but is cut short by Mayor Neximus.

"Thank you, Miss Frieze," he intones in his always-formal tone. Rosiel narrows her unnaturally green eyes and looks very affronted, but does not say anything to him as she steps back and lets him take the microphone for the required reading of the Treaty of Treason.

As he reads, Shiori fidgets uncomfortably, scared and alone in the silence with everyone looking at her, and trying desperately to keep the tears back but failing greatly. The poor thing's a wreck; everyone will know that she's got no chance in the Games. I don't want to see the sorrow and pain, so I keep my eyes shut tight, blocking out the world as best I can. I present my body to the cameras as strong and fearless, hoping I will be perceived as such instead of deathly scared as I am starting to be now. Because I am a tribute now, and coming from District 12, there's no hope for me. None of our tributes have ever survived, and few have ever even made it out of the bloodbath.

Mayor Neximus finishes reading, turns to Shiori and me, and looks at us expectantly. Remembering what the tributes do at the end of the reaping ceremony, I take a short step towards Shiori and extend my hand to her. She is hesitant, but a moment later tentatively slips her slim hand into mine and gives it a limp squeeze.

"Lovely!" says Rosiel, and gestures to the two Peacekeepers standing at attention at either side of the Justice Building entrance. Without looking at her, the pair march forward to flank Shiori and me, and the one next to Shiori nudges her forward with the butt of his gun. She yelps when the metal touches her and she jumps forward and starts walking towards the Justice Building. I am already following when the Peacekeeper beside me prods me in the back with his own gun, and I feel a twinge of irritation for the unnecessary act.

The Peacekeepers march us through the double doors of the Justice Building, and when the doors slam I feel a sudden drop in my stomach, and the realization hits me – I am going to die within two weeks. It's over, I think. Everything is over for me. And on that thought, I feel no pain, but an awful emptiness inside like I never felt before, and to me it feels so much worse. I feel the worst sense of being lost and helpless than I ever have in my life. I'm meant to be one of the next victims of the Hunger Games…What on earth am I going to do now?

~0~

[A/N] Hm…Four chapters and no reviews, how saddening. :(

But I know plenty of people are reading, so that makes me feel better. : ) Still, it would be nice to get some feedback.

Name meanings:

-Saine is a made-up name and has no meaning. If anyone was confused, his name is pronounced like "sane."

-Kaia's father's name Pearce means "rock." Halle means "solid as a rock."

-Shiori is a Japanese word, which, when used as a name, means "poet" or "weave." (When I was looking for a name for the character, I originally found a translation that said it meant "white," and I thought it fit her. I later found out it was wrong, but the name stuck anyway.)

-Rosiel is a made-up name that comes from "rose." A frieze is a richly ornamented or sculptured band in a building, or a banner covered with pictures. Effie's last name is Trinket (literally a showy ornament), and I chose Rosiel's last name to mean a similar thing.

-Delroy means "king" and Neximus means "I bind."

Musical themes:

-Tirion and Kaia's theme (I guess it could be their love theme, too) is "Calm and Hope", from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It's a very soothing and peaceful melody, which fits well with Kaia's personality and how Tirion feels calmer and more at ease around her.

-The theme of the reaping is "District 12," another piece by YouTube user RaeofRandomness. It's short, but it fits the gray and gloomy feeling of District 12's people perfectly, and it sounds a bit like a dreary march (you can definitely picture coal miners walking to the mines with it in the background). It's short, but good, and another reason I really think that's what should have been in the movie. Danny Elfman's a great composer, but I wasn't too impressed with his music for the Hunger Games movie. I didn't think it was very memorable or lent much emotion to the scenes or characters. (Flames in response to that opinion will be used to burn all of President Snow's rose gardens. Flame away, if you don't have a constructive argument.)

Next up, we go back to Rakhir and Ühel for District 2's reaping ceremonies. Stay tuned for updates!

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