The air in the factory is thick with textile dust. The little sunlight that's allowed in through the thin windows by the roof only emphasises this, the hundreds and thousands of particles in the air visible in the sunrays. A cough echoes through the otherwise silent hall. All that is heard are the weaving machines, moving day in and day out, the only slaves resting less than we are.

I cough too. Not quite as much as those older than me, but I do. Almost everyone in the factories does. I wasn't here then, but once the workers had attempted asking for masks. The request had been promptly shut down.

I prick myself with the needle, lost in thought. I grit my teeth and look down at my blood seeping into the fabric of what was meant to become a peacekeeper's uniform. I quickly get up, the fabric clenched in my hands as I hurry over to the station we have with a wide array of different chemicals. To dye, bleach, flatten, break, melt…

Behind a row of bottles I find what I'm looking for. It's a well-used but expensive bottle of clear liquid. A droplet of it on the stain I've left behind, and soon I can see it fading. I sigh in relief and cough again as the expansion of my lungs irritates them. I need to thank Martha for making this concoction. She's got magic fingers with the chemicals.

"Poked yourself again? Isn't once a day enough for you, Freya?" A mirthful voice asks from behind me. I give him the evil eye across my shoulder. How Fedya can be in such a good mood on reaping day will stay a mystery. He lives his life as if it won't happen to him. I take him in for a moment. His ginger hair is pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck and covered in a light dusting of cotton remnants. I'd asked him, time and time again, to cut it short. I kept imagining that it got stuck in one of the machines. It didn't happen often, but it did. I'd seen a woman be scalped by the machine she was operating in my first week in the factories. But Fedya had refused - naturally - and only compromised with the bun. Most of us wore it short, but he had an odd attachment to his. Sometimes I pretended like I didn't understand, but I did. Our mother had always loved his hair. She used to braid it before he went to sleep, play with it whenever it was loose. It was one of the few things he had left of her now.

Despite the fact that we weren't identical, we very much could be. The sharp nose in contrast with the round cheeks, the brown eyes and the faintly cleft chin said what needed to be said. We were twins, born of the same womb. We'd lived all our lives together, survived everything together.

I wrinkled my nose and turned back to the uniform I was holding, wiping off the last of the chemical. The blood stain was completely gone. "Don't you have someone else to bother?" I ask, but I'm almost smiling.

"It's one. We're going home for today. Got to get ready for the festivities", he replies. I turn to look at the huge clock on the wall. Despite the boring nature of work and the grimness of reaping day, I'd lost track of time. It's better like that, I suppose. Better than worrying yourself sick all day for the potential of a death sentence.

"Let's go, then. You need to shower", I tell him as he follows me. I put the uniform down for the next shift to continue on. You're always replaceable in the factories. Where you put something down, someone else picks it up.

"Like I'll ever get the dust out of any of my crevices", Fedya replies with a grimace.

District 8 is one of the most urban districts, I've heard. I wouldn't actually be able to tell. I've never been anywhere else. Knowing what urban means, though, I'm sure I can amicably agree. The district has very little nature. Most of it is all (cracked) asphalt and block-shaped, concrete buildings. Gray. The little nature we have is really only small plantations of plants that can be used to make textiles, and food for the silk worms. I've certainly never been in a forest. Mother used to grow flowers by the windows in our apartment once, but they died with her. Not me nor Fedya could figure out how to keep them alive.

Everything seems covered in dust here, too. No matter how many times you wash, there's always more dust. On your clothes, on the floor, in the air. No wonder we coughed. No wonder people died of respiratory failure instead of old age.

As we walk down the street, more and more kids appear. Everyone is in their finest clothing, but a lot of it is too small, big, or too tattered to be perfect, but colorful. It looked ridiculous on some, but usually our clothes were made with batches of textiles that for some reason couldn't be shipped over to the capitol. Mine and Fedya's clothing is torn, worn down from use, and I'd had to leave my stockings behind despite the chill in the air because they'd gone too small this last year. We'd gotten better at making the textiles, which meant less bad batches to sew clothes from. Last time it'd happened we hadn't been there in time. We'd just turned fifteen. We were growing, Fedya significantly faster than me. We'd noticed last week that he was officially taller than me. He hadn't let me forget it yet.

As we approach the town square, I reach out and grab his hand. We'll inevitably be separated, but I need a hand in mine. It's similar to mine, rough from work yet warm. He squeezes it once, I squeeze back in a random rhythm. A game we'd played since we were children. Squeezing back and forth in a rhythm like speech, so familiar by now that we can talk through it.

I'm scared.

Don't be.

But what if?

No. We're okay.

I take a deep breath. It'd hadn't been any of us for 3 years yet, why would it be this time? There were thousands of children in this district. I hadn't bought any tesserae. I'd been too scared. Fedya had, but only once, after I'd yelled at him for hours and hadn't talked to him for days. He'd never understood my fear of the games. The odds are so miniscule they couldn't possibly not be in my favor, Freya, he used to say. Any odds are odds enough, I'd reply. Again and again, year after year.

We're separated in the end. We're not far from each other, but still not we're I'd like to be. I line up with the fifteen-year-old girls and wait as more and more children gather in the squares lined out for them. I watch the twelve-year-olds. It's always worse when it's one of them. There's no hope, then. All you can do is wait to see them die. I hope it's not one of those years this time.

The escort for district ten was an odd man named Koltander Créme. As far as I knew, all capitol citizens were odd, but Koltander was, well, very odd. To me, at least. The top of his hair was a slicked-back jet black, but that was about where the normalities ended. The sides were shaved short and dyed a rainbow-esque leopard print, and he had a starched neckpiece so stiff it looked like it was gonna choke him out if he moved any more than he already was. His jacket was big and poofy and embroidered with a variety of small and huge gemstones - probably fake from the way they almost seemed neon - and his shorts were… way too short. At least he covered some skin with the high socks, but that was about it. His legs were oddly smooth. I wasn't even sure how you removed hair so completely like that. I was mezmerised by the shine of his kneecaps, like a couple of bald baby heads. There were gemstones attached to his thighs, I realized.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen!" He greets everyone through the mic. His voice is oddly raspy. Maybe his neckpiece gives him vocal fry? "To the reaping of the 63rd Hunger Games!" I repeat it to myself. The intonation is odd, so different from how we speak here. All the districts have such distinct speech patterns and accents. You could tell them apart blindfolded. As I watch the video about the civil war without really listening, I wonder why we speak so differently. If it's got to do with the isolation between the districts or something else.

Lost in thought, I switch my weight from side to side, pondering the truths of Panem's linguistics. I really knew nothing about how language works, but it has to be isolation, right?

I hear Koltander say something and I move my eyes from the now-black tv screen to him, only to see him sauntering over to the girls' reaping ball. I tense up and suddenly I'm alert again, aware of the silence in the square. I hear a mourning dove coo somewhere above me on the rooftops as Créme grabs the piece of paper amongst all the others. Someone's doom. His sharp shoes against the hardwood of the stage is the only thing heard as he walks back to the mic. It rings as he speaks into it again.

"Freya Fairwood!"

Silence lays itself over my senses like a blanket. It's cold, like the pit in my stomach that opens up. I feel myself falling, knees almost buckling. Someone gives me a slight shove and my feet start moving. Maybe they mean another Freya Fairwood, I think, even as I move toward the stage. Maybe there's a mixup.

But there is no mixup. I hear no correction from Koltander nor anyone crying in relief that they think its me and not her. It is me. I'm the 63rd female tribute of the Hunger Games.

It's not until my feet touch the stairs of the stage that I think about Fedya. I whirl my head around and try to find him in the crowd, but I can't see him among all the other faces, even when I know he has to be somewhere amongst the fifteen-year-old boys. My gaze dances across all the faces, some crying and some with their teeth bitterly clenched. Nowhere I see my brother. Koltander says something in his mic and puts it by my lips.

"Yeah", I just reply and he seems to laugh. Maybe I said something wrong. I don't care. All I can feel is my heart beating in my fingertips, how my arms have gone numb, hanging flat by my sides. I hear Koltander walking back and forth across the stage to draw the second tribute. All I can do is try to find Fedya.

"Fedya Fairwood!" Koltander Créme calls out, and suddenly I'm not in my body anymore, but watching it all from above. Koltander giggles in a way that's so innocently excited that it'd downright evil. "Oh dear! Is that what I think it is? Siblings?" He says into the microphone as I finally see Fedya, escorted by peacekeepers. His long, ginger hair is in a ponytail and he's paler than I've ever seen him. We lock eyes. My knees give in.

As I'm hauled into the mayor's mansion, it's all I can do not to let the anguish swallow me whole. Everything around me feels unreal, like it's nothing but shapes and colours. Nothing is real nor does it exist, not the soft couch beneath me as I'm thrown onto it and left in the room, nor the light shining through the windows. I lay still, unmoving, watching the sunrays.

The dust is as prominent here, in the mayor's house, as it was in the factory.