[93rd] The Reaping - District 11

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

"It is time," the Escort said as they stood over the impatient people of the District, "To once again send two of our own children to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. Let us begin the Reaping!"

They did not look to see the reaction of his district before reaching into the glass ball that held the names of the children. "First up," the Escort announced, pulling out a slip of paper. They unfolded it and read out to the crowd, "Karl Jardens!" They then reached into the ball again, selecting another name. "Haizea Rose-Izar!"


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[Deleted]

h a i z e a   r o s e - i z a r

Today, she feels as if she's outgrown the entire district. 

Impossibly young and starry eyed, Haizea spent the morning with her abuela in the vineyard, a place she has always felt impossible to reach. Outside those gates it's whatever, an entire district to wage teenage war against, but here there's nothing to get her. She sings for her abuela, strumming at a guitar lazily as they accidentally make a melody together, falling into a rhythm like an old hug. You should be getting ready you know, Haizea would hardly hear over the tune. A truth she'd rather not hear, for at least another ten minutes. 

Can't I just stay here?

But as always, she listens to her elders. With a berated sigh, as if she's release a piece of her soul to pick up when she returns, Haizea takes herself and the guitar inside to her mother. The fresh scent of morning dew carries over the entire vineyard and clings to her as she enters the house, finding her mom already dressed. She always hoped to grow up as gorgeous as her, with better taste in men hopefully. Haizea stands in silence for a minute, hands clasped in each other until she's noticed. 

"Where is your dress, mija?" 

"I didn't like it," she says, comfortably in her denim overalls. It didn't feel like me, in the boutique she felt much prettier, but on a day like this it felt like she was dressed for the casket. It's just another day - just one day closer to finishing high school, to pursuing music, to following something she only sees in dreams. "I want to wear this," a floral blouse she got three years ago. Wears it weekly, her mother inspects her and tears off a loose thread. 

It's her favorite shirt, with tassels hanging over her belt loops and sleeves that billow as she walks. "Very well," her mother says, cupping her cheek in her hand, "next time, tell me before we buy the new dress, okay?" 

"Deal," she says between a cheeky grin that only grows as her mother's does. 

The two pray together before leaving the villa. When she was twelve her mother spoke prayer for the both of them, the next Haizea mimicked those words of protection under her breath. At fourteen, they spoke in rounds, adding to each other's segments when one lost the words to find. This year, Haze guides her mother through it, holding each other hand and hand as she asks Ripred keep her home one more time. She's always been an unexpecting child, ever content with never asking for much, but today she prays she makes it home for another round of her abuela's flautas de polo simple as it may be. 

They don't speak much after, the somber air far too heavy for small talk. 

Her mother drowns her in kisses as they separate, the district square greeting them like a guillotine. "Mamiii, quit it, I'm not going anywhere!" She pleads with a nervous laugh, her mother backs off in composure. "That's right, baby," she says, but the corners of her lips say you don't know that. Haizea would be blind not to notice it and heartless to ever mention it, so she just hugs her mother goodbye without much more. 

Instead, she chases day dreams as the escort's words drone on. She holds her head high, picturing herself at the plant again, envisioning the tickles that come from handling honey bees. Counting them as the seconds pass, imagining the queen bee crawling into her palms and onto her wrist. It's easier to ignore the beckoning of death sentences when you live in your own world. 

" Haizea Rose-Izar! "

As if she was shot through the chest, she freezes. It rings and rings and rings but the realization never settles, Haizea Rose-Izar. Haizea, Haizea, Haizea. It's the Izar that hooks her, a pang in her heart thinking she'll die with the name of a father who never loved her. Never loved anyone but himself - of all the Izars in the world, why me? 

She swears she feels blood, right where her heart should be. A phantom pain that settles over the longing to have never left her vineyard, what do I do? The strained, low hum of her abuela chimes in the back of her mind as the person next to them pushes her forward, and it's as if every eye finds her in the crowd. Stares through her, like she was already in the process of disappearing and they all bore witness. 

Mami, she begs to god, the prayer didn't work. 

Haizea finds her way on stage with not much left. The district looks to her, and she looks to god, and finds nothing but the blue sky. 

[ haze accepts her position ]

[ trib wall photo ]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

★

Yani Izar

Vasco had tried to get her to wake up before the sun had risen.

One of the few perks of having a mayor as a father meant a dedicated escort to the center of the district in a squad car. They wouldn’t have to manage two bus transfers and leave three hours ahead of time, nor sit shoulder to shoulder listening to the breaks of the bus whine at every curve of the road.

Yani had taken him up on the offer exactly once since she’d turned twelve, the first year her name had popped into the reaping bowl.

That morning, she’d rolled over in bed and muttered for him to leave her alone – ¡déjame en paz, papa! – before he’d come to kiss Yani on her head and whisper 'te quiero'. She’d thrown the covers up over her head and let out a groan because she was fifteen and if the world was going to give her one thing on a day she might be sentenced to die, it was a few extra moments of sleep.

Of course, she’d thought better of what it might’ve meant as her last moments with her father when his footsteps echoed across the hardwood. She’d thrown off her covers to sit up in bed at last.

"Papa, te quiero…" She cleared the sleep from her eyes. Years ago, he would’ve sat across the kitchen table having made stacks of pan dulce and memelas, all smiles. They’d pray for her sister and cousins, give a kiss to abuela Marisol and head for the long journey to town. Too young to stand in the long rows of children, yet not too young to understand that the facist in their dress whites would have loved nothing more than to tear either of them apart in the broad daylight if the capitol had wanted.

But she got older. The creases on Vasco’s forehead got deeper, his hair grayed, and his voice more delicate. She’d seen him ride out to the fields when Snow had died and the crops had burned. His patience had never wavered from all the peacekeeper visits and whispers of treason, the riots, or slander he’d endured.

Like the sunflowers he planted, despite where they’d grown, an unrelenting hope had bloomed from the sun cracked soil.

No matter how small a man he might’ve been, his spirit would pull the whole of their universe back together.

"No te preocupes por mí." She forced a smile as she pulled her knees to her chest. Dark, heavy bags sat under his eyes now the morning of each reaping and she knew no matter what they prayed or what she promised, nothing could keep her safe. She reached over to him and he moved to take her in a firm hug.

Hope could grow in the space of fear, so long as one had the courage to believe that they were not powerless.

She loved him for teaching her that.

---

Her mother Emma had ridden the bus with her to the transfer depot, and then after another half hour of waiting in line, had taken the south forty-seven bus across district to the town center.

They’d talked about what Yani would pack for her trip to district eight. About how the Hopes were an odd breed of old gentility – they had both wondered aloud if the stories about district eighters not using salt and pepper with their food to be true. Or if they’d burn crimson in one afternoon of district eleven sun.

When they were separated between stanchions and herded in opposite directions, she’d hugged her mother to be sure that all of this is real, and that no matter what was drawn from the bowl, she’d remain real to her, too.

At fifteen, her part of line had grown impatient with youth and clumsy with maturity. They gossiped about one another and made jokes about who had fainted last year. They traded pins to stick on their jackets and bookbags. They yawned, tired from the long hours of work and the brutal morning. Yani was certain she could hear another girl sniffling at the edges of their crowd, but someone whispered that it was too soon for the waterworks.

And when the microphone crackled and she saw her father take one of the seats on stage next to the victors and capitolies, Yani’s heart beat out through her chest and into her ears,

The first name passed right over Yani, unknown and unplaceable.

She breathed.

'… Haizea Rose-Izar...'

As far away as she was, she could see her father wince.

Yani stood still enough she thought she could be invisible to the rest of the crowd while Haze was marched up toward the steps leading to the stage. No one did a thing to stop Haze from what so many other kids had gone through, what so many of her cousins, sister, and great aunt had gone through. She walked with the dead and the living as though it weren’t some form of magic to make such a sacrifice.

As though none of it made any sense, but still they accepted that ninety years they paid in blood for the amusement of people none of them would ever see.

What would she be able to say when the world had moved on and Haze had disappeared? That she did nothing, because what could be done? Or that she what she was about to do wouldn’t change a thing, only make it worse for those that she loved?

“… fucking bastards…” Yani felt the words come from the deepest reaches of her stomach as she balled her hands into fists.

Fifteen years and she’d been her father’s daughter. Dutiful. Patient. A miracle child after the death of her own sister in the games, she should have known the gravity of everything. Or rather – have understood that change was slow and uneven. A man’s hair had grayed before they were free to travel as they pleased.

Anger tempered like glass, carefully bent to channel into something beautiful.

Yani shook her head.

Haze had never been one to step out of line as much as Yani had. No matter that it’d taken twelve years to find her and fold her into the family. This was the same girl Yani had whispered secrets to in class, or spent an afternoon at the creek with in the heat of summer. Not just a cousin but a best friend, one who deserved to finish out her years drinking botellón in the back fields and dreaming together of what sunrise would bring.

“Let her go! Haze!” Yani’s voice rose out over the crowd as she pushed up through the girls around her. “Eh! You haven’t had enough Izars already? What’s our blood worth to you?” Her voice carried out as she saw heads turn, but whoever she’d been moments before had disappeared, replaced with the girl who could only shout –

“Fascists! Despots! Vete a la verga!” She carried on as she heard the familiar chomping of boots through the dirt. She raised a fist and pushed back against the man in white in front of her. He pulled out his baton and threw it open with a clank. Another pk was soon at his side.

It didn’t matter if no one else joined her.

She was done watching her family be made to sacrifice for this.

“Hijo de la chingada!” She shouted a final time in the man’s face until each of the keepers in white grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down to the ground.

[Yani causes a scene]

elegant

[calla]

k a r l .

"sunset smudged across your brow
the guilt of your innocence
a toast to the nosebleeds"

It's almost time to clean the bogs out again.

The Keepers always come when the days are the longest, always a pair of them that'll pay extra as long as they don't have to get their whites stained. Karl's fine with that. They come when the sun starts to go down, and he hands over the little pocketbook of names that have gathered since the frost.

One of them ticks the list while the other watches Karl haul the bodies out of the bog and into their truck.

Sometimes a foot will slip out of his grasp and they have to step in, suspicion laced tight through their silence. The last time it happened the entire corpse convulsed while being lifted and the entire sleeve of that white uniform ended up red.

They shortchanged him for that.

He never asks where they're taking the bodies, or where they end up. They never ask him why the attic light's still on, or why there's a section of his fence trampled down. Or why he's all alone on such a big piece of land.

He's always stood too tall. Smiled too wide. There's always been something dead in his eyes that makes them drive away faster.

The lights in the square are warm. They don't get smaller and dimmer and colder like the truck headlights do. Karl stands there under the warmth with his hands stained red around the edges. From the bog. From the cranberries.

He's like this insurmountable thing. Nondescript. Crawling.

He's unsettling the same way a summer storm is. He fades into the background like an old photograph, curling and burning and crumbling around the edges. The sun doubles over his head, like a coin flashing, the lights wink and twist and melt down his back. He tucks himself away in the shadows under the stairs, blending in with the lampposts.

There's a dog from one of the properties about a half a mile down the main road. It pulls at its chain whenever Karl goes by, barking and snarling and foaming at the mouth. The whites of its eyes gleam in the dark, just like the gloves of the Peacekeepers, they shiver and shake and watch him with a trepidation that borders on violent. They know.

He's a thing of fate just as much as the red string is.

And yet the district always looks cleaner after a summer storm. The rain comes down like a baptism and washes all the dust away, leaves the cobblestones looking shiny and new. The feeling of it hangs in the air still, the peat tells stories that only the algae can understand, the sky cracks open and three syllables fall like a downpour.

The crowd shifts, but doesn't part. They murmur over the name of a ghost.

Karl looks over at the line of Keepers, but they all look the same behind their nondescript visors. One of them shifts, hand moving from belt to baton.

There's a stain of red on their sleeve.

karl accepts
trib wall