Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

District Seven Reaping: Jolie De'Luwa and Dalton West

The sun might be past the halfway mark, but District Seven is carpeted in a thick blanket of fog. The trees loom out of it suddenly, a grave of spidery hands reaching out of the ground. Leaves crumple underfoot as people make their way from the warm security of their cabins to the square; the trees are only half dressed and by the end of the next week will be completely naked. Only the pine survives.

District Seven is such a relaxed, scattered district that the Justice Building appears to be in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by small clusters of cabins and even the occasional treehouse. Ivy coils around the windows, and a huge tree stretches up through the middle, the staircase coiling around it, until it bursts through the roof, golden leaves fluttering onto the slate tiles. On the outside this is pretty and quirky but no more than that. On the inside, it is a different story. Names and faces are scratched into the trunk. Memorials.

Maple Birch, 14, 13th, decorates the space under a girl's face, her wooden lips slightly open in laughter, her carved hair plaited around her ears.

There is no particular pattern to the memorial. The broad and strong face of Juniper Twine, 5th, resides forever next to Ashling Morrow's serious, drawn features, 53rd. The two girls had never met, never even knew of each other's existance. But now they are entwined together, forever teenagers, two carvings of the same wood, carved out of the loving district and killed by the cruel dilemma that runs through the Games in the lower districts; kill or be killed?

Cedar Goldspring, 18, 33rd beams down on the mayor with a charming, wooden grin, as he stands at the bottom of the Tree. It should really have a proper name, but there's no point. People will call it the Tree anyway.

He does the carvings himself, or he has done for the last five years at least. Ten children. It used to be a talented carpenter with a grim sense of humour and a strong sense of duty, but the odds rolled against him. The last carving he ever did was of his only son, Julian Gaddieri, 12. So now it is Hurst's job.

"We'll run out of room, soon," sighs a sad voice from his right. Sycamore. Only just into his thirties, Sycamore has been a mentor for ten years. It shows in his face. He knows these kids. He taught them. He did his best to keep them alive. And he'll have to do it again this year.

"We'll have to plant another tree."

"Or the Games will have to stop."

Both men suddenly look around sharply, but the Peacekeepers are outside arranging the crowd. Hurst sighs. What if it was ever Briar? Every year he avoids the panic that he sees other parents have, but every year he can't help sighing in relief that he doesn't have to carve his beautiful daughter's features into the Tree.

"It's her last one today, isn't it?" Sycamore prods. Hurst nods, running a hand through his hair. Grey streaks flake off in his palm like leaves. He sighs, shaking them off. "Finally. I'm getting old, Sycamore."

"So am I," the mentor sighs back loyally, "Come on. Let's get this over and done with. For you, anyway."

 Outside, the screens light through the fog, an eerie glow casting to the back of the square. Hurst can't even see the row of aged oak trees that he knows lines the far side; only hear the sinister rustling and whispering. He wonders what the odds are this year.

Faces peer up through the thick mist, some fearful, others pensive. All of them are young; the pens are crushed up to the front of the stage, the adults forced backwards. People chatter, but it is muffled by the fog and the trees. Overhead the sky is grizzly and he can't pick out the sun through the mist. He knows exactly where it will be. District Seven runs on nature and harmony - hunting is allowed but frowned upon - and everybody who lives there can track the sun on a cloudy day. Besides, adults cry, love, get married, children grow up, kill, die, and still the sun will hover in the same place when the reaping starts.