Growing up in District 12 is the worst thing that can happen to a child of Panem.
In the capitol, and the wealthy districts, children sought the aprobation of their parents. In the intermediate districts, children sought to be useful to their paren...
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The air around the breakfast table was stale. Jamie had been slowly peeling a boiled egg for the last ten minutes, I was moving the remains of my plate around and Effie had been sipping the same cold tea cup for a while. We had all been waiting for Haymitch for the last half hour to give us a briefing, a talk, something, but he was yet to appear. Effie sighed loudly and left her cup back onto its plate clanking them in the process. Jamie and I look at each other silently raising our eyebrows thinking what would be the reason to Effie's sudden disregard of etiquette.
"Well, he is not going to come, is he? So I will repeat what he says every year" Jamie and I nod. "Do mainly survival things the first day, recognise the habilities of other tributes, careers or not everyone has something they are better at and you have to be careful of those"
"What about allies?" Jamie asks.
"Stick to only non profesional tributes"
"We were thinking 9 and 10" her face turns slightly sour.
"I meant not carreers, not lower useless ones"
"We are lower than them" I counter.
"You know what I meant Andrómeda" I decide not to argue so I shut my mouth.
"Anything else we should know?" Jamie asks.
"Mentors can see you from a special room next to the training room, they don't care much after the first day though. That's why keeping the profile low at first it's important".
The three of us stand up and head towards the elevator. She motions us to go on without her as she probably isn't allowed to acompany us. She seems hesitant as if not knowing how to properly let us go. I extend my arms and let her hug me what she does in a heartbeat. Her skinny arms were conforting and somehow motherlike ignating inside me a feeling that I thought to have forgotten. Getting out of her embrace, she touches Jamie's arm as sign of farewell to him. Jamie and I get into the elevator which quickly decends to the training room. As the door opens, it was obvious we were the last District to get there and the main trainer was already in her pedestal about to give her speech.
"In two weeks 23 of you will be dead. One of you will be alive, who that is depends on how well you pay attention over the next four days. Particularly to what I'm about to say. First no fight with other tributes" she laughs softly. "You'll have plenty of time of that in the Arena. The are four compulsory exercises the rest will be individual training. My advice is don't ignore the survival skills. Everybody wants to grab a sword, but most of you will die from natural causes: 10% from infection, 20% from dehydration. Exposure can kill as easily as a knife. You'll may start".
The pecakeepers make us go into a bee line in order of Districts and gender, therefore I was last. The four compulsory exercises were to be evalued now and again at the end of training just before the individual assessment to see everyone individual progress. The couse was a ring swinging section of about 20 meters from which at the end, one would have to propulse itself onto a gridded net climbing on it to get to a higher section. After that there was a block course to test the propulsion capabilities and the final exercise was a thin beam to test balance.
