VESTIGE || ❝if it's not the careers or the mutts or the arena itself that kills us, then it's our own will to survive.❞
Emersyn Hale wasn't always afraid of the Hunger Games - that is, until the entirety of District Seven prepares for the Reaping of...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴
IT IS NEARING DAWN, the sun beginning to rise from its deep slumber, surfacing from beneath the horizon in an array of warm hues. The morning brings a plethora of ambers and golds that slowly seep through the small window of the room, illuminating the dull tiles with its radiance. The trees in the woods beyond the outskirts of District Seven, just outside the Hales' modest home, must be casting shadows along the ground as the rising sun silhouettes their long branches. As the morning mist wanders through the wilderness, cloaking the sky with its pale greyness.
Emersyn Hale is up relatively early for an off-day: it's a regulation that workers do not attend work on the day of the Reaping unless the situation calls for it — and, even then, those called in must work for less than half the amount of hours they'd normally work. Schoolchildren do not attend school, either. Since it's the day of the Reaping, everyone in the District needs to get ready for the most anticipated event of the year: the sixty-seventh annual Hunger Games.
The Games are the reason Emersyn hasn't gotten a wink of sleep. The mere thought of being Reaped — or worse, having little Boris Reaped — crawls beneath her skin like ants have been trapped under her epidermis.
There's a numbing ache in her arm — and it's difficult to determine whether it's from the vigorous labour she's been engaging in this entire week, or if it's the way that Boris fell asleep on it. Perhaps it's a combination of both. She lets her eyes wander to the idle body of her half-brother, curled up on his side, chest rising and falling evenly against his arms that have been tucked between his torso and his sister's side. Up until a few years ago, Boris would sleep with Gwen, his birth mother, in one bed while Emersyn slept alone and Cadmus, their father, on the couch. They would alternate every few nights, with Boris sleeping alone while Emersyn slept with Gwen. However, since that day four years ago, Gwen would sleep on the couch while each sibling took one of the beds. Emersyn has been lying beside Boris from deep into the night, when a nightmare of the Games woke him in hysterics. It took what felt like several hours for his breathing to even, for his racing heart to slow and his sobs to be silenced. Careful not to wake him, she moves the long brown curls that has slipped into his face while he rests, revealing the freckles that brush his baby face.
Emersyn considers waking him so they could go and hunt, but he's still asleep, possibly still weak as a result of not eating anything for two days while engaging in vigorous labour. Because of their poverty, Boris gives up his share of his family's meals and splits them between Emersyn and Gwen. He's been like this since that day — sometimes he wouldn't eat for only one day, other times he wouldn't let anything pass his lips for up to three days. Although his sister has reprimanded him about it, he continues to starve himself. If he is still suffering the ramifications of his selfless actions, Emersyn doesn't want to force him outside when he's so hungry.
