Life Through Sea Green Eyes - A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Part 1: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own or claim ownership to any content related to or included in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I write this story purely for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of others, with no intent for making money.

Life Through Sea Green Eyes

Part One: Fish Out of Water

Chapter One

          I may have been born a creature of the land, but my heart belongs to the sea. In that first, shocking instant, when my head breaks the surface of the cool water and my entire body is suddenly submersed in this weightless world, I feel like I could live here, among the fish and eels and coral, and just leave my real life behind. And for a few minutes I can, but then my lungs betray me and force me back to that place of harsh sunlight, and back-breaking labour, and the Hunger Games.

          My father tells my sister Natare and I every night, as we lay down on the scrubbed wooden deck of our little fishing ship staring at the stars, that we’re lucky to have been born in District 4. Our district is in charge of everything to do with the sea, which basically means we’re all fishermen. “You think knotting lines and hauling nets is hard work?” father says. “Imagine mining for coal hundreds of feet underground, or dragging a plow across a twenty mile-long field in the mid-day heat. What we have, my children, is paradise, or as near as someone from the districts can get.”

          And for the most part, he’s right. School is technically compulsory, but attendance is only enforced when kids, like Natare and I, are on land. When we’re out on father’s fishing boat – which is most of the time – he is our teacher, the sea our classroom. Natare and I dangle our feet off the edges of the dinghy, making elaborately knotted rope nets with our dexterous fingers, while father steers us to our destination. When we reach the fishing grounds it is hard work – casting the nets and baiting the lures – but once all the prep is done, we can swim and play until the sun sinks into the water and the moon becomes our lantern in the sky.

          But today my little family and I aren’t on our fishing boat, trawling the waters for tonight’s dinner and, ultimately, a decent-sized haul to sell at the market, so we can keep our boat in good repair and continue our relatively carefree lifestyle. We’re ashore, in the small, thatched-roof cottage my mother so painstakingly decorated before she died of a plague that cut a swath through our section of the district two years ago.

          Natare is standing in front of the vanity – a simple wooden table attached to a large, relatively flat shell that has been polished until you can see yourself in its shiny surface. Father is helping her twine her long bronze hair into dozens of braids, which is our traditional way of doing a girl’s hair for formal events. This is something that mother used to help Natare with, and we can all feel her absence more keenly on a day like today.

          “Brush your hair,” father snaps at me. “The Capitol is watching us on Reaping Day. We have an image to maintain, especially you.”

          Especially me. Because Natare is only nine years old, whereas I’m fourteen. And that means that when Pompey Birch, the official District 4 spokesman for the yearly Hunger Games, sticks his hand in that big plastic ball and pulls out a slip of paper, my name could be on it. Natare is safe a few years more, but I’m at the mercy of fate.

          “Girls like the tousled look,” I say, running my fingers through my thick hair. Girls like a lot of things about me: my hair, my face, my body, my eyes. Oh, definitely the eyes. Whenever I actually go to class, I’m surrounded by flocks of girls whispering about my “dreamy” sea-green eyes, as if I can’t hear them when they’re working themselves into a near frenzy.