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chapter one. the academy
Asher awoke with a start.
It took a beat to wipe the sleet from her mind. She'd been dreaming, and violently. Asher struggled to grip anything more than mere fragments — the lip of a cliff face. A stag head. Rose petals. An avalanche that blotted the sun.
Light had not yet bleached the night away but Asher sensed the time. She was up late, thirty minutes or so out of sync. Her schedule thrown loose, still not used to her new bedroom in the Victors' Village.
White hair in a scalping ponytail, white socks in white sneakers, soles not yet broken in or down. Her Academy uniform hugged, glove to skin, not white but grey. Black would come, when it was a tribute's garb she donned, not yet soon enough.
District 1 was a basin of vast low grassland in the shadow of pine tree crusted mountains. Buildings of marble and limestone, sturdy and columned with a touch of the Capitol, were accented by jutting shards of glass that pierced the neoclassic structures like crystal in rock. Even the factories in District 1 shone, their surfaces of pearlescent steel: reflecting outward, locking in.
Asher jogged the slope from the Victors' Village, her breath forming great puffs of cloud, stopwatch in hand, ticking mechanical. She was not alone. A silent procession of hungry eyed prospects emerged from front porches, dressed identical, mirroring her gruelling determination, their destination shared. Between the uniform lines of well-paved streets, the Academy rose in the distance, ever lit and beckoning.
She picked up the pace, the icy air labouring in her lungs. Asher's form arched near the finish line: the first stair of many.
Toe met the steeple. Asher flicked her wrist, checked the time. A few seconds shy of her personal best. She cursed beneath her breath, low enough to hide the frustration, lest anyone hear and surmise her weak.
-ˋˏ ༻ ⟡ ༺ ˎˊ-
Everyone at the Academy called her snowflake.
The term was derogatory, and thus with most insults, was said snidely in her presence or whispered under breath. The nickname was three-fold; ghostly appearance, frosty nature, nasty rumour.
For a while the comments bothered her, and she would bite back, for there were few forms of bait laid that Asher had ever denied. She was reactive as an untrained dog, quick with her tongue, quick with her fists. It wasn't age that filled the chip on her shoulder, no, that stayed, outpaced by a growth spurt and hungry determination. When it came to life in District 1, a single year could mean a lifetime: or its lack therefore. It simply became easier just to ignore, to buckle down. Training demanded discipline, in all forms, including her mind.
