“Are you, are you coming to the tree,” Emma softly sang, a crackle sounded with each step she took from the mixture of gravel, dirt, and rust from the ancient building frame that stood just outside of District Ten. Some of the more senile residents would tell the smaller children that this same building that housed them many years ago and that it was now plagued with their spirits. But that never stopped her from coming here every day on her walk home from the town square.
A soft breeze flew over her skin, carrying all the smells of the District along its current. Some where good, like the pine smell of the woods around her or the grass from the grazing hills in the west. Others, like the meat factory close to town square and the manure from the barns sprawled all across the small land the District owned weren’t as sweet. But Emma loved them nonetheless, it was the smell of her home and she wasn’t sure what she would do without it.
With a sigh she stopped walking, looking up at the blushing pink of the morning sky. A few clouds spotted it and the surrounding trees made her unable to see it past a certain point, but it looked like it would be a good day.
She let out a half hearted chuckle, it was ironic to her, to think that reaping day would be a ‘good day.’ Anxiety settled in her stomach, this could be the last time she saw this place, this could be the last time she smelled District Ten. The thought terrified her. She was only sixteen, she couldn’t be chosen, she was too young to be put in the blood baths.
But, as she had heard so many times before many tributes much younger than her died brutally during the games. She scolded herself, she shouldn’t be worrying about herself when hundreds of little twelve-year-olds were saying their goodbyes to their family’s today, just in case they didn’t make it back.
She looked at the ground, the concrete foundation of the building was still there, covered in gravel and with long stems of grass peeking through its many cracks. She should get home soon, she needed to watch the animals and get ready. Her stomach rumbled loudly, the last time she had ate was almost four days ago. Prices for food was too high right now, her family couldn’t afford anything.
“Where they strung up a man they say murdered three,” she continued. She began to walk back to her home, it was only a mile or two away and it was so early in the morning she doubted her siblings would be up. She knew her father would, though. He barely slept after her mother’s death and the debt that soon followed. She would often find him sitting at the table, staring at the trunk in the corner that contained all of her things into the early morning hours.
“Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be if we met up at midnight in the Hanging Tree?” Just a few weeks back she had read this song on one of the metal bars that made up the frame of the building, even though she only knew the words there was something inside her that told her how it sounded, told her that she had heard it before.
Since then, she’s had it stuck in her head. She wasn’t sure why, but the song calmed her, just like spending time in the deserted building did. It made her feel attached... to what she wasn’t quite sure yet, but she had a feeling she would figure it out.
For now, though, Emma had to take Gretchen, Kyle, Same, and Axel to the grazing fields so her father wouldn’t have to. Hopefully he would get some sleep because of it, although she highly doubted it.
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“I hope you get reaped, scumbag.” It’s amazing how much venom she injected into her words. The way she hissed them like a snake toying with its prey, spreading fear into its victim before it preformed the final blow.
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A Pawn in Their Games
Fanfic“In penance for their uprising, each district shall offer up a male and a female tribute between the ages of Twelve and Eighteen at a public ‘reaping.’ These tributes shall be delivered to the custody of the Capitol and then transferred to a public...