Embers (A Hunger Games Fanficion)

Hello all! This is my first story on Wattpad :3 this and other I've written are also on my Fanficion.net account and I plan to move some others here as well :) I don't know what else to say so for now please enjoy! And if you like this so far please vote or maybe even review :3 Hope you enjoy :)

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The air is crisp, the smell of leaves and baking reminding us that winter is fast approaching. I walk calmly, with my hands in the pockets of my jacket, when on the inside I am a ball of anxiety. I made myself so sick with it that I had to take a medicine so as to not empty the contents of my stomach into the sink this morning.

In almost any other district not even the wealthier shop owners could afford such a luxury as that medicine, only a victor or maybe a peacekeeper could afford it. This I do not take for granted. My only reason for using it was for Scarlet. The cause of my anxiety.

Five years ago, when she was ten and I sixteen, they took her away from us.

Our mother was screaming, begging, crying when they came. She lashed out at the peacekeepers who forced themselves into our home when it became clear what they wanted. Her nails gouged ragged lines down the face of Aldon, one of the younger recruits, he still has the scars.

She quit struggling after he slapped her, just long enough for them to drag her outside before the kicking and screaming resumed.

I sat huddled in the corner on the kitchen floor, holding Scarlet tightly to me, unwilling to answer the stark question in her doe like brown eyes; protecting her as long as I could from the cruelty of our district.

Both of our parents were dead now. Our mother taken by a terminal illness not even the Capital's medicine could cure; our father died shortly after from heartbreak. It took a lot of convincing for them to let Scarlet attend the funerals after she'd been taken to the galley. That's where all the defects go. The talentless.

That's where I was headed now.

Most of District 15 still sleeps as I walk the carefully polished streets, a few shopkeepers are getting reddy for the busy workday, and to my luck the sweets shop has just opened.

The little brass bell above the door jingles as I enter. The walls are all painted bright Capital colors; aquamarine, neon green, hot pink. It's like one of District 3's genetically engineered rainbows threw up in here. But the owner is a sweet old lady who bakes the most beautiful pastries and crafts the most delicious candies I'd ever seen.

When we were little, Scarlet and I would come here every day after school to help the old woman carry out her creations from the kitchen and arrange them in the store window for her. She usually displayed her most expensive artistic confections there. My favorite was one from two falls ago, a pumpkin cake spread with buttercream icing, and detailed with what looked like edible pastry leaves blowing in the wind, each a warm fall shad of orange, red, or brown.

It's a shame Scarlet never got the chance to see it.

"Good morning Cassia," Greets the little old woman from the shop counter.

"Good morning Mrs. Hanson," I reply with a warm smile.

"Up at the crack a dawn as always I see," Her smile makes the creases around her face more noticeable though it only adds to her charm.

Most in my district regard those with her age as distasteful, lumped in the same category that they thrust the talentless into. But here I see wisdom and life, and a grandmotherly love I'd never had from my own small family.

"And you as well, I could smell your baking from the gate," I joke.

"Maybe I ought to find a new profession then, I fear it's my baking that draws all these capital folks here," She says with dark humor.