The Selection

01| The Letter

Nora Brooks was sat on her front porch step, calmly watching the Carolina Province sun rise. She was naturally up early, seeing that she was a four and lived on a farm. The sun was just peaking over the edge of the trees in the far distance. The area surrounding was a yellow-orange color that faded to a pink and then purple; where the sun was furthest away from they sky.

The soft and crisp morning air blew against her skin and made tiny goosebumps appear on her arms. Nora was a beautiful girl that the typical female would be jealous of when they're her age, age seventeen. Her dark brown hair was grown to halfway down her back and had beach waves in them, though sometimes the sun made her hair look like a kind of red color. She didn't mind though. Her eyes were a dark blue and her skin was perfectly tanned to perfection.

Today she was wearing khaki pants and a dark blue v-neck with sleeves that went halfway down her arms. It wasn't much compared to the upper caste's like the two's and three's, but it was better than what the five's through the eight's owned.

The fields surrounding her were dark but the gold color of wheat and corn was starting to show as the amount of sunlight grew. She had been sitting there awhile when someone abruptly sat down next to her.

"Hi," her younger sister, Nathalie, cheerfully said. She was four years younger than Nora herself and was three years too young to be a considered girl for the Selection. That was much to Nathalie's disappointment, but nonetheless she was a brilliant girl and knew her stuff for only being thirteen years old.

"Hey Nat," Nora greeted but didn't look at her. She didn't need to look at her to know what she was going to ask. The letter had came in earlier and Nora didn't really know what to do or think.

She obviously knew the Selection was coming up, seeing as Prince Jonathan had just turned eighteen. She just didn't see the big deal. Of course the Prince had to get married and produce a heir, it was needed. They needed to keep the royal bloodline going. Nora just didn't see why they had to take one girl from each province in Illéa, thirty-five, and force him to chose from there. Couldn't he go out and find his own personal mate without people forcing him to choose from a narrow amount of girls?

Obviously not. This tradition had been going on since the first Prince heir was born. Gregory Illéa had come up with it and it was to stay that way. It was an unbreakable law that no one, not even someone in the royal family, could chance. No one seemed to want to either.

Ever since the most epic and romantic stories of them all came out of it, people knew the Selection was the best tradition of all of them. Maxon and America Schreave. America was a natural born five and the most unlikely to win. Plus she came into the Selection heartbroken by the person she thought she would marry, Aspen Ledger.

The stories were always told of how Maxon and America were deeply in love because of the Selection. It was rough when the thing was actually going on, from start until Maxon's proposal. They were getting in fights and not to mention Maxon's Dad hated America. Their love found its way through, though. It's funny how you can kind true love in the oddest places.

"Have you decided yet? Both Mom and Dad are going crazy inside wandering if you're going to do it. Surprisingly Nathan is too. You know how much good this could do us. Even if you don't win but make it in, the money they'd give us would immensely help us," she asserts.

Nora looks down at the think paper in her hands. "Of course I know that, Nathalie. It's just- if I do make it into the competition and tried to win, would it be worth it? I mean is being princess a life I could really want?" Nora questions. It was the most constant thought that was working its way through her mind.

"All I can say is that you never really know. You could say that it's something that you don't but once you make it in, it could swiftly become something you do."