The dark hours

I wake up before the rest of the household, make up my bed and go down to the kitchen to find Noël, the family cook.

Good morning, ready for harvest

Not really, I say piteously

Don't worry, you've got three years left.

I go upstairs and put on my blouse, skirt and old apron and boots and go downstairs to prepare the table for the family.

The family I work for is the mayor's. The mayor, his wife, and their four sons. I've been working for them since I was eight years old. I've seen the youngest boys grow up, and before that, I worked at the butcher's shop. She took me in off the streets. I helped her give birth to five of these children. I love this woman like my own mother, and I'd like to protect her from those cursed harvest days.

I finish the table and go to get my list of things to buy. There's no one outside except the peacekeepers watching over the town hall stage. I enter the butcher's when she sees him and comes to kiss me, her 12-year-old son Gus has these heels. He looks like his mother, but where the butcheress has a strong, jovial face, he has a round, closed face and is pale. I order what the family needs and leave to get the other provisions: cheese, fish, a few loaves of bread, thread.

I get home at 8:30 a.m., Elias and Xavier, aged 15 and 9 respectively, wake up, and Elias is already ready for breakfast. I like this boy as a friend, someone I can talk to about myself.

I go upstairs to change him too, I have to get ready, I find a little parcel on my bed, surprise, I open it, it's a sublime light violet linen dress. Who wore it to me, the mayor? No, he's not that close to me, his wife is more likely, but it's hard to see her sacrificing one of those rich dresses, the butcher? She sacrificed her little hard-earned money for me, not for her son, no, but I'll keep that in mind.

I take a bowl of water and wash myself with my sponge, then put on the dress and my boots, I leave with the youngest of 12 Matt I reassure then sneak into my category 15 years.

The hostess's name is Harmonia Sleeve, she smiles strangely, her teeth are an unnatural orange and her hair is yellow, and her look isn't very harmonious: she's wearing farting yellow and flashy multicolored tutus.In contrast, our mentor Lain seems a normal man with olive skin and patched clothes.

ladies first

I glance at Elias in the row of young men.

Wallyne Cotton.

What an unlucky girl, no, it's me who's unlucky. I feel like throwing up but I move towards the stage, biting my lip.

Congratulations, my daughter," says the hostess, taking me by the shoulder.

I glanced at the mayor, who also seemed distressed. The hostess went over to the boys and shouted

Mathys grey

I shudder to think of this little 12-year-old boy, the butcher's son and only child. He's crying as he steps out of line to join us.

I'm a volunteer cries out a man in the row of 16-year-olds.

The boy steps forward in his work coat, no doubt working in our Peacemaker uniform factory.

What's your name, young man?

Warm Brett, he says.

Well everyone, here are our two tributes for the games, congratulate them and you two shake hands.

I shake his hands he has hands that have been worn in a factory but soft the most remarkable are those strange green eyes like two little mirrors.