Cirque Isosceles // [District One]

When I was little, my mother used to tell me a story about a Queen who abdicated her throne. You see, the Queen was very much in love. Not with a knight or a duke or a frog. She was in love many times over: with a warrior, an arms dealer, a prince-in-waiting, a champion and an addict. She loved them so much, she toppled the tiara from her golden curls and fought her way to the clock tower where they had been jailed by a dark and powerful being. She slayed the mechanical beasts who looked like ghosts and fought her way over the rattling train tracks. She trudged up the spiral staircase, hounded by poisonous cloaks. At the top of the tower, bloodied and broken, the darkness spoke to her.

"You have fought bravely, my Queen. But you are no match for me."

The Queen lowered her blade. She could sense the darkness' truth in her heart, in her soul. "What is it that you want?"

"Proof. Throughout the kingdom, they say there is no love as great as yours, none as enduring and deep and pure. Anyone can fight off monsters and leap over tracks and face death on the stairs. If you really love them, more than anyone has loved anyone else in all of history, prove it to me, or I will take your life in recompense for your lie."

The Queen, so close to her loves but divided by darkness, agonized. How could she come so far - how could she have given up so much - to be thwarted in the end by nothing? And how can anyone truly prove their love to a stranger? To love is to be loved, to feel the tension between your heart strings and know that bond is stronger than steel, stronger than life, stronger than death.

The Queen does not lift her blade. She raises her right hand to level of her eyes, aiming it at the darkness. "No. If I must prove my love to you, my life is forfeit, because you can never know what I know. You can never know the truth." Still holding the pistol of her fingers, she bends her elbow, arching her stiff fingers until the barrel of her index and middle come to rest over her left eye. "Five," she commands, a Queen without her crown.

The darkness does not scream as it implodes, shattering into a billion bits of light.

The Kingdom thereafter commemorated the fifth day of every fifth year in honor of the Queen and her Five Wives.

♚♚♚♚♚

My mother probably didn't mean to imbue with me an obsession with fives, but it was much too late to correct course once they realized it wasn't some childish fancy I'd outgrow. I always wanted five dolls, five ponies, five rooms. When I was young, we were very wealthy. My twin James and I had an entire wing of the house to ourselves. While I was busy decorating in fives, James had the run of the equipment rooms. He was my first trainer, my first mentor. I didn't know it at the time, but those precious young years were perfect.

Until my baby brother was born and my father was taken by the Peacekeepers.

I'm still not exactly sure how he cheated the President. But our wealth was built in money laundering, and in the span of a moon's cycle, we went from landed gentry to paupers. My mother was left to raise the three of us and she had never been all that maternal. We went to live with my grandparents in a small valley at the edge of One. I hated it. She had dozens of slobbering muttations that she bred for the Capitol and people like, well, like who we had been. I cried in the small room I shared with my brothers.

The next day, I began my official training as a Career.

♚♚♚♚♚

Being in the center took me away from my cramped and depressing home. I threw myself into the routine of school and training with hardly a glance backwards. I made friends, most easily than either of my brothers. James was my constant shadow - annoying sometimes, but comforting always. It was difficult, as we aged into adolescence, to be anything more than friends with anyone, even though some caught my eye. One in particular.

But it didn't matter if James was there or not, in the end. Yusei was destined for someone else. To be honest, looking back on things, I never really gave myself much of a chance. I was too young to know that honesty is the best policy. I should have just told him how I felt. Then, one day he disappeared, and he didn't go into the arena. He just vanished, like my father did. I guess like people do. I haven't forgotten him though.

In between school and Career training (who needs sleep, really?), the wolves that ran rampant over my grandmother's home grew on me. The puppies were just too damn cute. I kept my distance as long as possible, but for my fourteenth birthday I was given the beautiful runt of a litter. I named him Joffrey. I have never loved anything so much in my entire life. I felt like I had found one-fifth of The Queen and Her Five Wives fable.

Of course, feeling that, I knew I needed five of them. I've been working up to it slowly. For my sixteenth birthday, I picked out Myrcella, and again for my seventeenth, Tommen. Their training and care is completely my responsibility. That's how I met Royal, the butcher. The wolves need fresh meat to keep their coats healthy, and there's no one better to go to, even though her shop is clear across the district. I didn't really mean to strike up a friendship with the butcher girl, but I find that every time I go into her shop, I find reason to linger a little longer at the counter.

In the winter, I can pack a bit of ice and head over to the La Torre compound. Sometimes I wonder if she's more eager to visit with Tommen than me, but I always leave satisfied. She has some decently good looking friends as well. I'm determined to make enough from breeding and training my wolves to move closer to her training center and the bustling middle of the city. I'm sure Tommen would love it.

♚♚♚♚♚

At seventeen, I finished my required courses. I've been making a little money helping to train younger Careers, and every so often we have another litter of puppies. If I help with the birth and care of the pups, my grandma will give me a little of the profits. It's not much - nowhere near what I was used to growing up - but it keeps me going.

For my eighteenth birthday, I wanted another pup, but we've had a bit of dry spell. I'm waiting for the right one, you see. The critical fourth. While I save up for that, James decided to spend our day... at a strip club. I couldn't very well let my shadow go without me. I almost left him at the door. The bouncer - flare gun, as I suppose he's called - is more brains than brawn. If it hadn't been our birthday, I would have been perfectly content to flirt with him all night. But James whined and I ended up inside at the edge of a table, staring up at a girl with legs as tall as the ceiling.

I forgot all about everyone else the moment I met Kayak.

It's been a few weeks, but like Yusei, the memory of her is everlasting. I know she is important somehow, and I know I have to go back to the strip club and convince her that I'm important too. I just have to convince myself that I can face the darkness.