AMNESIAC || Finnick Odair

ℂℍ𝔸ℙ𝕋𝔼ℝ 𝟙

✑✑✑✑✑✑✑✑✑

"How in the world did we lose the comb?" Olive, the second oldest of the four Cresta siblings, wondered out loud, glancing at Annie, her twin, and Gianna, her older sister. The three of them were looking for their mother's keepsake while their father prepared everything to go hunting.

It was an important day. Not only was the reaping a few hours away, but it was also the day on which Theodore, the youngest of the siblings, could finally pick a token. It was a sort of tradition in their family. Before each child's first reaping, they would choose an item of their late mother to wear for protection. It was a silly thing to do since everyone knew it wouldn't save them from having their name put in the ball time and time again. However, it gave them hope. One of the few things they couldn't afford to lose.

Joe Cresta, an illegal hunter that traded in Four's black market, was the father of the four lively and chaotic children. It was the first and last year all of them would be in the reaping together. It was Theodore's first year, so he hadn't attended with his older sisters before. The twins, Olive and Annie, were seventeen, which meant they still had one more year to go through after the day was over. And the oldest, Gianna, would become nineteen in a month. However, since she was still eighteen, she had to attend her last reaping.

"Can any of you go wake Theo up, please?" Joe asked his daughters, who were roaming around their tiny living room while still trying to find their late mother's pink and golden comb. "The animals won't wait for us to hunt them down."

"I'll go," Gianna claimed, getting up from the crouched position she was in to walk towards the nursery, where all the siblings slept on handmade bunk beds.

"Found it!" Annie exclaimed, raising the comb in the air for everyone to see, while her twin sighed in relief. It wasn't the first time they had lost something of their mother's. Most of them were very clumsy and forgetful, which made them leave things anywhere, only to forget where they had left them minutes later.

"Mum would kill us if she knew how often we lose her things," Olive muttered, walking to her twin with a box in her hands. In it, there were most of their mother's belongings. "Let's put it in the box, or we'll lose it again."

"If only you would wear one of your mother's dresses . . . you would look so lovely," their father mentioned, leaving the small kitchen, a bag filled with fruits and berries, which they would eat once they were in the woods, hauled over his shoulder.

"I'm pretty sure that if I wear a dress to the reaping, they'll shoot me on sight," Olive laughed, shaking her head as she left the box with her mother's keepsakes on the table. "Having been born a boy sucks."

It wasn't an abnormality in Panem for people to identify as the opposite gender from which they had been born as. However, only those with money could fully do the transition legally. Because, for some reason, undeclared and illegal gender transition was punished by death before eighteen years-old, and by lashing after nineteen.

"It's just another way of controlling the population as if we were sheep," Gianna always claimed whenever the matter was discussed.

"I can't believe they won't let you change rows. Like, what does it matter if you're on the boy's side or the girl's side?" Annie commented, letting her body fall onto the sofa, patting the side for her twin to sit.

The reason Olive couldn't change rows was simple: she hadn't fully transitioned to the other gender yet. For an obvious reason, such as the lack of money that they had to pay for the legal transition's high cost.

Changing gender was indeed possible in some districts, Four being one of the few lucky ones. The only downfall, it was way too expensive for a normal person to pay. After all, the implementation of such a process had been quite recent, making the innovative Capitol procedure 'worth the high cost', or at least that was what the people said.