District Eight Pre-Reapings
CERIDWEN ADAMOS-CARDINAL (15)
DISTRICT EIGHT FEMALE
Life was totally good for Ceri.
It was absolutely great, in her one hundred percent honest opinion. Everything went so well and there was totally, definitely nothing wrong about it.
Ceri was totally ecstatic about being the absolute luckiest girl in District Eight!
Now, if you hadn't sensed the sarcasm practically dripping from her tone, well, in Ceri's mind, you could bugger off, get lost, and just never come near her ever again.
And so what if she was being rude? So what if she was being icy and cold and everyone didn't like her? There were no awards for the goody two shoes.
Her father had learnt that the hard way.
A former prison guard who tried his best to act all noble and respectful towards his prisoners at the Memphis Prison, he refused to fire a single shot at the oncoming surge of unruly bandits that had broken free during the August 12th Riots, by far the single largest riot in the history of Memphis since the Dark Days.
It was a decision that had cost him his life.
Seven years on and Ceri could still vividly remember the screams of the prison guards and prisoners alike, echoing through the walls that separated the prison from her family's shack right beside it. The desperate, anguished cries for help ringing through the air, the sharp sounds of blades being wielded burrowing in her ears, the loud gunshots that had sent her tumbling backwards in a fit of shock, it all still resonated like a loud air horn blaring through the voids of her mind, like a child thrashing about in a fit of rage, they continued to haunt and taunt her to this day.
And then there was the sight of her father's mangled corpse being thrown out into the ditch, his once loving hazel eyes that had always churned with a sense of pride and courage, now gazing emptily out of bloody sockets, void of any expression other than a blighted shock frozen forever in time.
Young Ceri, then still fresh from her second Reaping, hadn't been able to hold back the barrage of tears and screams that simply erupted out of her.
So Ceri had learned to deal with it her own way.
In fact, years after the incident, her life was absolutely fucking amazing.
Yeah, no, it was still a complete and utter mess but seriously what the heck did you expect?
Three dead siblings, one dead father, this was the epitome of a perfect life, wasn't it? A childhood of endless trauma, plagued by misfortune after misfortune that had befallen upon her impoverished family struggling to survive in the harsh, dark, gang-riddled slums on the fringes of Memphis, not too far away from McKellar Lake where trash and pollution reigned supreme, all of it had taught her to hide all of her inner vulnerabilities by hardening herself to the world, donning a facade of rudeness and toxic sarcasm, in a bid to evade her inner brokenness.
But aside from that, she knew she also had to evade the impending fate of starvation that was slowly creeping up upon her family. She knew that she had to do whatever it took to make sure all of them stood a chance at survival.
And so here she was, with her best friend Maize, ready to do some totally legal stuff.
She strode forward, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible. Pulling her black hood over her head, she gazed solemnly at the ground, trying to appear as subtle as possible. Beside her, Maize did the same, although Ceri could see her wrinkle her nose in a sort of frustration that she even had to do this.
"Stupid Capitol, pushing us to the bloody limits," Maize snarled underneath her breath, as the pair slowly approached the ancient ruins of what was often referred to as 'The House of E'. The name of this mysterious 'E' had been long lost in the annals of history, and any old photos of this house were similarly absent. The ruins themselves were simply piles of rubble, some still bearing traces of their original white paint. The whole place, though, was overgrown with vines and ferns and moss, as nature slowly began its quest to reclaim this once supposedly grand mansion, as the broken chandelier on the ground, one that had been left neglected over the centuries and allowed to gradually sink into the brown earth beneath, seemed to prove.
It was a place rich with ancient history, filled with hidden secrets of an olden age where life was probably of a much higher quality than the shit that Ceri had to put up with.
Yet Ceri couldn't care less about this stupid historical site.
No, she and Maize were here for one reason and one reason only. They ventured further, into what appeared on the exterior to be a set of large pillars holding up a crumbling roof adorned with a crown of vines and creepers.
But this was not simply an abandoned hall.
Ceri pushed her way past another section of particularly thick vines, revealing a triangular wooden structure that jutted out of the soil, the old oak slightly decayed after years of minimal repair, but it was nonetheless a key part of life in Memphis.
Because this was the entrance to the secret, elusive Market of the Dancers, one shrouded in mystery and intrigue, and one kept hidden from the Capitol and all those associated with it.
Ceri pushed open a door, and in a mere instant, could feel the sheer quietness and tranquillity of the market practically explode into her face like one hard slap. It was business as usual in the resident black market of District Eight, with the Masked Merchants, underground merchants who travelled around the Districts and the Capitol in vast, underground networks built long before the Dark Days, using them as a means of transportation to carry goods between markets like these and collection point in the Districts and beyond. As Ceri marched forward, she glanced to the side, and saw a stall owner wearing a mask that resembled that of a fox with white fur, screeching at a customer who was trying to buy some 'magical powder from the mystical Bahamian Isles'.
How utterly ridiculous, Ceri thought, rolling her eyes and scoffing. Some of these Masked Merchants would tell anything to get a good bargain deal. In this case, it was a laughable, conjured-up story about associates setting sail and managing to evade the watchful eyes of the Capitol, arriving at some mythical place called the 'Bahamian Isles' and trading for their bogus stuff.
Ceri found all of this just frankly ridiculous.
Yet she didn't know that the merchant's tale was, in fact, true.
"Come on," Maize urged, tugging Ceri's sleeve a little too forcefully for her liking. Ceri recoiled her arm, giving Maize a cold stare. She did not like being touched, and she made that clear right from the start. Maize simply ignored her, and continued to beckon her forward. "We have to be quick, remember?"
Ceri gritted her teeth. "Yes, yes, of course, I remember, Maize. I'm not an idiot."
Mazie put a hand onto her hip, cocking an eyebrow. "Oh yeah, sure, you're as blunt as the butt end of a bullet-" Immediately, she clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Ceri stood there, her mask of frostiness quickly thawing, slowly revealing that nervous, terrified little girl that Ceri had so desperately tried to hide at all costs.
Bullets. It's raining bullets. Bullets everywhere.
All those flashbacks just crashed into her like one big wave, and all of a sudden, she was back at the Memphis Prison once more, fleeing from the riots as the hordes of barbaric rioters swooped through the ranks of guards and Peacekeepers, gunshots filling the air, the desolate sound of devastation and destruction, as the jaws of death quickly devoured so many lives.
It was all still so vividly clear in Ceri's mind.
Her father, standing his ground, refusing to harm the people he had devoted his life to helping, educating them for the better, massacred right there and then on the steps of the Prisoners' Atrium, his final, anguished cry, the tears streaming down his face as he begged and pleaded for a mercy that he was so coldly denied of, all of it, she could still relive every single last horrifying second of it to this day.
"Ceri, please, I'm so sorry," Maize whispered, putting an arm on her shoulder, her eyes regretful and apologetic, but Ceri could only see the bodies. The piles of bodies stacked up all across the rubble and ruin of the prison, her poor, sweet, nine-year-old little brother's corpse hanging from a noose, the victim of mob violence in the immediate aftermath of the riots, her father's body, once so full of life and glowing energy, drained to a hollow shell of a lifeless corpse.
Tears began to brim in Ceri's eyes but she blinked them away furiously, trying to regain her composure, to regain that cold mask that she always wore on her face.
It was far from easy, but right now, she couldn't possibly afford to dwell on a lost past.
She had a job to do.
"Let's go," she snapped, biting her lip, her front teeth drawing a bit of blood but she didn't even give a damn about that. She pushed past a couple of Masked Merchants talking about a possible rebellion in District One, ignoring their yelps of annoyance, her eyes dead set on the most crowded stall in the Market of the Dancers.
The stall of Merino Starse, arguably one of the richest Masked Merchants who hailed from District Eight. Crowds of intrigued buyers flocked around his stall, a table filled with goods from all parts of Panem, and even some items from District Thirteen, which, as Ceri knew, was still very much alive and kicking, that she couldn't quite identify. They were drawn to him like bees to a flower filled with nectar, craning their necks and peering to take a look at the wide variety of exotic products that he had to offer.
Ceri and Maize knew that they could use this to their advantage.
They pushed and shoved their way into the crowds, until they were right in the thick and thin of it. It was a process that they had repeated many times, a plan they had executed to perfection since they were twelve. Ceri glanced at the woman beside her, her shabby brown purse dangling loosely by a piece of cloth string on her side. She gazed eagerly onward, her attention completely focused on Merino rambling on and on about some quirky item from District Two.
It was the perfect opportunity for Ceri to strike.
Swiftly, she pulled out a small pair of scissors, and cut the cloth string, claiming the purse, before stuffing it into the backpack that she carried.
After all, desperate times called for desperate measures, she wasn't one to shy away from thievery, an act only punishable if she was caught, which, let's be real, Ceri was absolutely sure she never would be.
The woman didn't even seem to notice as the remnants of the cloth string fell limply to the asphalt ground beneath, disappearing from view in the mad trample as people continued to attempt to fight their way through the crowds. Ceri, however, was only concerned with the wallet right in front of her. The shiny, grey leather wallet in the back pocket of a man in a fairly fanciful suit, the mark of a wealthy factory owner with riches and possessions and happiness that Ceri totally did not envy with a burning heart. She reached forward, careful not to touch the man or alert him of her thievery, and swiped the wallet, and once again, she quickly tossed it into her backpack.
She and Maize repeated this process on and on, racking up as many purses, wallets and possessions of as many foolish buyers as they could possibly find.
Because when Ceri wanted something, you bet she was going to find a way to get it.
LEVI VERSCACE (15)
DISTRICT EIGHT MALE
Life had taught Levi to care for others.
But in the process of doing so, he had slowly begun to neglect his own well-being.
On the outside, he was that shy, rather anxious young boy from the Pepper Neighbourhoods in Jackson who everyone seemed to love, the boy who barely had any muscle in him and was far from being the sharpest tool in the box.
And yet, he was also known for never turning down a request for help.
It was just something that had been drilled into him, that he always had to lend a helping hand, in an attempt to help fix the world of its countless problems. Every weekend, he would help Calico Pepper, District Eight's most recent Victor, go door-to-door distributing food with a wicker basket, spreading a sort of joyous hope throughout the streets of Jackson with little cards that he and his friends Virgil and Josie painstakingly created, filled with messages and artistic decorations to brighten up the lives of the impoverished. They never had too many qualms in the process of going around Jackson on foot as three young boys with wicker baskets, after all, Jackson was certainly not a town of crime, much unlike Memphis, that other major city in District Eight, the one that seemed to grab all the attention these days.
Not that Levi minded, he was more than perfectly fine with the more laid-back vibe here in Jackson. The efforts of Calico and her family to donate home-cooked food had provided a sense of hope for the future in Jackson, and their attempts to rehabilitate convicts had proven extremely successful in lowering the crime rate and increasing the morale of the town as a whole.
And one day, Levi hoped that he would be able to make the same impact as Calico.
In addition to all this, he would also spend time at the Runn Orphanage, helping to bathe and care for the children every fortnight. Yes, it meant that he would have to endure a rather busy schedule, one that did strain his own personal well-being, but hey, it didn't matter to him. The children there adored him, even if he was almost always too shy to say too much about himself. However, his main incentive for working here wasn't to help these kids out, although that was something he loved to do.
No, it was to be able to spend more time with a good friend of his, Riley Nylon.
In Levi's eyes, she was the loveliest kid in all of Jackson, a rather pretty girl who Levi had been introduced to by Josie while they were playing by Lake Hico when he was twelve. There was a warmth her brown hair brought to her features, a simple frame for that smile and eyes that held more love than she would ever admit to, although this loving look could quickly be replaced with a snarky confidence that coursed through her body. The hue altered as the strands curled and moved, as free as autumn leaves playing in the dayshine.
Autumn leaves.
The brown, reddish leaves piling onto the ground, dropping like the temperature around them as winter approached, they were a beautiful sight that Levi had only seen once, when he and Josie had snuck out in a rather foolish attempt to follow the railway tracks that led south to the village of Brookhaven, on the southernmost frontier of District Eight.
Visiting that gorgeous autumn forest not too far away from Jackson was a memory he would never erase from his mind.
Those leaves, they reminded him fondly of Riley, who, yes, Levi would admit he had a teeny tiny crush on. It wasn't just her looks, or the way there was that wonderful whiff of cinnamon her hair seemed to give off. It was that tough confidence, those snarky jokes she would tell, that mask of kindness with a touch of grit underneath, qualities that Levi admired so very much about her.
Qualities he knew deep down that he, a ridicule of a human being, did not have.
Oh how he wished he could be like her, to be able to walk up to people with a cheerful smile and make a great first impression right on the spot, to be able to confidently march up to a bully and tell him off, to be able to shine brightly with her inner light in the midst of a large crowd.
Levi hung his head as he and Riley exited the orphanage together, having finished the day by telling stories to the little kids, only for Levi to mess up on the last page and become the butt of the youngsters' jokes.
Why can't I just be more like Riley? he wondered, casting a slightly envious glance at the girl who had curried the favour of all of the kids in the orphanage with her fluent speech and incredible charisma, as well as her antics and sly tricks that had entertained them, while he was merely loved for goofing up every single time due to a lack of confidence, that kid who made everyone laugh for all the wrong reasons.
It really wasn't fair, but he wasn't one to complain.
Especially not considering Riley's past of being abused by her aunt.
Riley hadn't revealed much about the horrors that she had been forced to endure at the tender age of eight, but the physical and psychological torture she had been put through for a whole month while her parents were serving time in jail for a crime that Levi was certain they hadn't committed, from the bits and pieces that he had heard, it made him utterly disgusted.
It had been a violation of her rights as a human being, something that had always angered Levi, although he didn't have the courage to stand up against such violations when he came across them.
But they still churned up a bubbling, molten, lava-like outrage within him.
Riley, though, being the strong, tough girl that she was, pulled through and Levi could hardly see any mental scars still lingering within her, although occasionally whenever spiders were brought up she would recoil and wince, the trauma flooding back to her, thrusting her back to face her old demons as she lost all focus with the present for a brief period of time.
That was why he and his friends were extra careful not to trigger these lapses of traumatic blank-outs.
Levi desperately wanted to go back in time and fight off that horrible aunt who had done this to her, who had ruined her childhood, but he knew that even if he could, he would probably chicken out and fail miserably.
Such was the patheticness of Levi Verscace.
"Hey," Riley uttered, snapping him out of his long train of thought. "Should we go to that place again?"
Levi blinked, the little wheels failing to turn in his brain whenever Riley was around. "Huh? Place? What? Hmm?"
Real smooth, Levi, he groaned silently.
Riley rolled her eyes, clucking her tongue exasperatedly, although her smile betrayed her. "The Jackson Market, silly. Come on, we need to find some scrap materials to sell."
Silly. Whenever Riley or Josie or Virgil called Levi that, he wouldn't bat an eye. They were his friends, the people he knew, trusted and loved.
But when others called him that, it was a whole different story.
Everyone used to call him just that. Silly. Stupid. Idiotic. Moronic. Imbecile. All the words with all their negative connotations, just lashed out at him over the course of many years. And no matter how hard Josie and Virgil tried to defend him from these people, they just kept on coming, the memories of all the times Levi sued to help them out seemingly vanished in a wisp of smoke.
Before long, Levi believed it himself.
He was stupid.
He was a nincompoop.
He was nothing compared to Riley, an incredible queen who he could never even hold a candle to.
And it stung just to think about it.
But with Riley, he tried his best to hide his emotions, not wanting to burden her with the weight of his own petty little problems. "Sure, let's go," he replied, and with that, the pair jogged off down the empty streets filled with dark clouds of thick, black smoke and imposing fortresses of dirt, grime and pollution. It was far from a pleasant sight, but from what Levi heard, the conditions here were nowhere near as bad as those in other slum-riddled towns, so Levi was still pretty grateful to be able to grow up in Jackson of all places.
Eventually, the pair reached the famed Jackson Market, one that had withstood the test of time, deriving its origins from the very founding of Panem. The market was usually a large, bustling one, selling all kinds of trinkets and items, the prices of which were usually subsidised with the generosity of Calico, who never seemed to spend any of her riches for herself.
But now, as dusk befell upon the town, the workers had left their factories to make their way home, and the market was barren, empty, void of any movement with the exception of the occasional sheet of paper tumbling about with the shove of a gust of wind. The merchants had all packed up and gone home, something Levi was more than thankful for. The crowds that usually flocked here often spooked the shy kid, and he always had that uncomfortable flutter in his stomach every time he was called upon to help out a merchant or a seller for a short period of time, the sheer waves of people surging into the narrow dirt paths overwhelming Levi with nervousness.
Levi and Riley shuffled across the stalls, trying to examine each and every one of them and all their cupboards, drawers, shelves, everything, in a bid to find anything that they could snatch up and sell to earn a profit and feed their families.
Surely there has to be something, Levi thought, refusing to let that hope flicker away even as they neared the end of the market, having found absolutely nothing other than piles of dust bunnies and some rodents hiding out in holes that frightened Riley, for reasons that Levi was unaware of, but he didn't dare to ask. Riley lifted the lid to a wooden crate in one of the smaller stalls, one Levi knew mainly sold fruits, then looked up and shook her head.
"Nothing here," she murmured, biting her lip in frustration.
"We'll find something eventually," Levi assured her, trying to let his optimism shine through that bit of frustration that was starting to creep into his heart.
Just then, he heard a scuffling noise from behind him. Whirling around, he saw an older girl guiding a younger one across the winding dirt paths, tugging urgently on her hand as she pocketed what appeared to be a copper chain. Levi had never seen these girls before, in fact, he wasn't sure if they were from Jackson. And yet, the shabby rags that they wore seemed to suggest that they weren't among the wealthy few who were permitted to travel between towns on non-Reaping days.
Who are these girls? he mused, raising an eyebrow as the older girl began shouting frantically at the younger one.
"Tia, come on, we have to hurry!" she implored.
"Slow down, Cecelia!" Tia wheezed, seemingly out of breath. "My ankle, it hurts!"
Cecelia sighed, and scooped Tia up in her arms almost effortlessly, as if she were weightless. There seemed to be a lot more strength in those weedy arms of hers than Levi could have imagined. "Okay then, now we can move much faster!" And with that, the two mysterious girls disappeared in the direction of the bright, setting sun in the horizon. Levi had so many questions surging through his head, yet he could not pluck up the courage to march up and ask the girls himself.
Because, as many had pointed out to him in the past, Levi was simply too pathetic to do so.
A/N: What did you think of Ceri and Levi? Will they go far, or will they die early? Oh and by the way I've decided to stop issuing sponsor questions so people won't have an absurdly high number of points, but if you answer sponsor questions in previous chapter, well, they still count aha. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, the POVs did take quite a while to think up of since idk, I just couldn't think up of how to portray them. Thank you to contemporarydancer2 for these two, they were great, and I had fun putting in all the Tia references in this chapter lmao. Oh and I'm extending the deadline for submissions to early March for those who have reserved, this will hopefully allow you guys to have more breathing room and be less stressed out. And yeah, let me know what you think of this chapter in the reviews, and I'll see you next time for District Eleven. Cheers :)