Cage me like an animal • F Odair¹ •

I

"Glad to know who you aren't betting on,"

•∘♛∘•

The docks that day were as they always were - busy, bustling, and loud. Athena Maris had to shout to be heard, but after doing this for years, it was no longer hard to make sure her voice was heard clearly over all of the noise. Today had been a particularly successful day in terms of fishing, Athena having caught more fish than usual, especially considering that she had been out on the water for less time than usual. She was excited to head down to the marketplace, knowing that she could easily make twice that which she made yesterday.

"Hudson!" Athena called to the captain of the boat she was always on, The Adventurer, who was currently triple checking that her ship was safely docked. "I'm going to go sell now!"

She held up the net carrying all of the fish she had caught that day for clarification. Darya Hudson, a lean woman in her fifties with leathery brown skin and narrow, monolid eyes who was always addressed by her last name, looked over at her and nodded, showing her approval, but called, "I want you back in an hour at most! No lingering behind, flirting with that pretty boy from the pastry shop!"

Athena shook her head and let out a laugh. Hudson had caught her talking to the pretty boy in question once nearly a year ago and would apparently never let her forget it. The fact that Athena did find the boy very pretty and had a slightly embarrassing tendency to glance over at him repeatedly whenever she was in the marketplace was entirely secondary. Hudson didn't truly care when Athena would be back, mostly because she knew Athena was more than competent on her own and didn't need to be looked after so strictly.

Athena walked off the dock, carrying her net in her hand, nodding and smiling at fisherman and sailors with whom she was familiar. The noise died down once she had put distance between herself and the docks, thought it wasn't completely silent. There was talk all around, people her age running around, calling out to each other, a few of them even singing Panem's national anthem. Athena herself felt none of their excitement, but she knew why they did; today was the day of the Reaping.

Unlike some districts, the Reaping was a happy day in District Four, one that brought joy and cheerfulness instead of dread and misery. However, this was not thought universally. The Reapings made Athena sick with worry, to the extent that she had even thrown up twice as a result, once during her first Reaping at age twelve, and again at age fifteen, two years ago. The whole month leading up to the day of the Reaping was full of stress that kept her awake at night, and the relief she felt when her name wasn't Reaped was dizzying, regardless of how selfish it probably was to feel relieved that another person was possibly being sentenced to death.

For a time, she thought that she was the only one who thought this way about the Reaping and the Hunger Games - and it was fairly easy to think that way. Nobody dared say a word against the Games or the Capitol in general. There was too much fear of the wrong people hearing, of even a harmless complain being taken as a sign of rebellion, of being thrown in jail or even worse as a result. Even alone, Athena often felt too paranoid to do or say anything less than positive about the Games of the Capitol, as though Snow and the Peacekeepers had cameras rigged in every corner, waiting for her to say just the wrong thing. However, once she started to pay close attention to others, noticing the little things the Peacekeepers never bothered to take note of, she found she wasn't even close to the only one who felt that way. There was always one person whose smile was a little less genuine, whose laughter didn't quite ring true, who was singing just a little quieter than everyone else. Someone who looked grim as opposed to joyful, who only clapped a few times softly during the Reaping where others screamed and cheered loudly, who let out a sigh of relief instead of a groan of disappointment when it wasn't their name that was called. The fact that she wasn't the only one that felt nervous and paranoid and terrified during the Reaping didn't really change anything, didn't make her any safer, but it made her feel a little less alone, which she thought had to count for something.