A Story Of Nightlock.

Part 1 - A Tribute in Training.

                                                   CHAPTER ONE - A TRIBUTE IN TRAINING

I remember the Reaping. It was held in the town square, where the whole District had waited in sweat, tears, anticipation and anxiety. Our presenter, Zaera Leafe, had walked onto the stage wearing a green dress glittering in the sunlight from the emeralds. Her made over face wrinkled in the heat, and her curly black and red streaked wig had turned straight from sweat.

I remember hearing my name being called out, and how my thoughts couldn't process at the time. I had stood up on stage with Eric, my district partner, and tried to stay strong. Things have changed a lot since then.

As I have been training for The Hunger Games, my mentor had said to show Seneca Crane my abilities as best as I could posses them. He said that as long as I was confident, I had a good chance in winning.

Feeling nervous, I step into the private training room wearing my District Five shirt. The room is cold and grey, so different from the rest of the Capitol which is bright and beautiful. The first thing I see are the weapons. Silver and dangerous and lingering close to me; knives and swords glinting wickedly in the lamp - light.

My audience sits expectantly above me, drinking wine and whisky in comfortable plush chairs and probably wishing that they weren't here, that they could be doing something else with their life. Something important.

Like this wasn't of any importance to me.

My voice catches in my throat and I can't breathe properly. I step closer into the room, feeling over exposed. Seneca's eyes burn into mine like freezing ice, washing over me and watching my every move.

As we are being assesed on how good we are with weapons and survival, I pick up a few wires and do the best I can make with a snare. I test the snare by picking up a rock at the camoflague station and throw it at the trap. I watch with a sense of pride as the snare comes down in a flash.

I move over towards the plant logic board, and know that I should score some good points for this. I've been training on this for days, trying to see if there was any possible berry, root or flower that I didn't know about. Like that was going to happen.

My slender fingers delicately whiz over the control keys, and I feel thrilled knowing that I'm not useless after all. Over all, I know that I'm not going to be gaining a huge training score because of my non - weapon selection, but this will make me less of a target for the Careers.

The Careers, as always, are over confident and greedily excited. The two girls from Districts 1 and 2 always look past me, thinking that I'm easy prey. The tall blonde with green-grey eyes, Glimmer, I think she's called, is strong. Yet she obviously doesn't have a special talent like the other girl, the one with the dark hair. I'm not sure what her name is, but I know that once she targets a person with one of her throwing knives, they're dead for sure.

I know that the Careers should win, that I should think that they would win. But there's something about Katniss, The Girl on Fire, that seems different to anybody else. If I could bet on anybody to win, it would either be her, or Cato, the ringleader of the Career pack. He's tall, strong, muscular...  I try to stay out of his way, for my sake, but some people like that little girl Rue from District 11, have the guts to take him on. And that's when I noticed that Cato isn't capable of observing. He thinks he'll win. He knows that he will win.

I begin to think about my district partner as I exit the training room, leaving the forever hungry eyes of the Capitol audience. I never really knew him, but now I know that he's terrified. He told me he's going in for the Cornucopia. Although I don't think that's a wise idea, I don't tell him. If he get's killed in the bloodbath, I won't be threatened.