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THE headstone read: IN MEMORY OF JUPITER ROYCE, LOVING MOTHER AND WIFE. It was short, but not very sweet. So much more could've been said about the woman that was Jupiter Royce, but like all the other people buried six feet under the ground around her, they were confined to at least ten words for an epitaph.
Greer Royce knelt down in the soil before her mother's tombstone. She was all dressed up in a silver frock with black feather embellishments, along with a pair of black tights and four-inch heels. Her tawny brown skin was covered in faint body glitter and her usual braids were wound in an updo. Regardless of her attire, she was still planting fresh daisies for her mother's grave in the District One cemetery, tearing her manicured hands through the dirt. Daisies had always been her favorite, and they paired well with her headstone. It was made from white grey marble and decorated with precious gemstones, like most tombstones found in One.
Greer had wanted to bury her in the Victor's Village – with her family, where she belonged – but President Snow, of course, insisted on sending her body off with the rest of the citizens. As if she were just a speck of dust on his radar. Maybe she really was. Why should he care what happens to the mother of a Victor? She never risked her life for his entertainment.
But that was where the problem lied, though. Every person in Greer's life became a risk since her winning. That was the price of being a Victor, and why she kept very few close. Her win had caused her own mother's death, after all. What other reason was there when Jupiter had been mysteriously murdered on a morning walk a week after Greer's eighteenth birthday, when she refused to never participate in Snow's agreement. What were those words the President said to her again as he walked out the door? Ah, yes ... "A life for another life, then."
Now it was just her and her father, Dolan, living right next to each other in the Village. Dolan was all alone in that big empty house, and even though Greer insisted on moving back in with him, he refused to put her through that. "You're twenty-eight," he said. "You don't need to cater to your dear, old dad anymore." Little did he realize how lonely her house could get too.
