[D5] The Reaping

S o l S h i m

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Today ‘Ma had said that once I had gotten home, she would make us a meal that would seem like it was a toast to the kings or the heavens up above for none of them have been walked upon by the title of tribute that day to live another year while others go and perish. Others including Luna Shim and Erebus Turner, Tyler Westbrook and Saxton Hale. They had planned a toast to the gods up above that said that their family was safe again, they had planned something of happiness and celebration for they do not have to watch their child’s death be planned out across television. ‘Ma had told us that we shouldn’t worry about what was going to happen to us, because we were safe. She told us that.

But if she told us that, if it was supposed to be a truth escaping her lips; why am I standing upon this stage shaking hands with a girl who had been sent up here just like me, to die? I wonder this, ponder it for a moment before it all sinks in. I am going home, I am going to the place where my friend had gone and never returned from. Though, maybe this time I will return. Return to my friends, to the people that had made my life a something instead of a nothing. To come back for Lluvia, to come back for Nieve. To come back for all of the people that ever made my life something more important than it had been the day before, that sounds like a promise I’d like to make.

It is a battling war as I had woken up to get out of bed and actually go to the square that had called away Luna to a place she never returned from. To a place she had died in, fashioned like a place that would be figured out to be something that was old; a place that would only result in one single cowboy or cowgirl. For they were in the wild west, where only the toughest of the tough could survive. Though it seemed the battle to get out of bed would be a loss as my mother’s shouts, prying and nagging me out of my bed seemed to be a spell placed to make me do such things, because I did them.

It felt like burning fire to move downstairs, the fire chewing at my bones and telling me that I was too weak for this, but I’m not. I’m not too weak, I am strong. I am only broken from the promises that had been given and taken away by a single girl that was the age of fifteen. I gulp down the food that tastes like bread, close to no taste for my mother is not one of special tastes. She is not one to make things different. She is a lady that likes to stick with the same things, to stick with things that are easy to change but all depend on human actions.

It seems like liquid fire to gulp down each glass of water that is on the verge of being healthy, the passion of each gulp growing to a sin because every gulp I take makes the stomach quiver in disgust.

There is no stopping my body as I excuse myself from the table, telling the family that I am going early.

(“You’re fine, Sol. Don’t worry about anything.”)

She had always been one to speak lies. 'Ma believes that everything will end up fine, that nothing will happen to me. That everything will go straight back to normal, because they never will. I had waited for the first six months after Luna’s death, even during the time that she had been inside of that arena by the tree we always met at. The tree we talked under, the tree we grew up under. It was our own little tree that nobody bothered to touch since it had obviously meant so much to us. Though she never returned, so why should I believe ‘Ma when she says everything will be fine? You’re right, I don’t.

My footsteps become quicker the closer I get to the square, the small amount of people there looking like a deathly pale that shouldn’t be painted on another’s face normally. The white that fills their cheeks, the white that crawls all over their body is decorated with fear. The tense arms staying right by their sides, their heads bowed towards the ground where they won’t have to face the eyes of another person. I had been there awfully early, for at least one hour had passed by before people started to fully file in. It was a long time before it seemed to slow down, the people dwindling down and down until everyone was packed into the small district square where two people would be plucked from the crowds of young boys and girls to be sent to a battle to see who is the strongest. To see who’s the most courageous of them all, where only one may come back if they had the blessing of it being one of them.

The footsteps of a male that comes from that place enters the skies, booming all around the district square and letting everyone know that it had become time for two people to go together into the Capitol with their mentors to be taught how to survive.

His voice speaks up in the microphone, the people of the district growing impatient. "It is time," He said over the impatient crowd, hoping to go home as soon as they can and to find out if they had gone lucky or not. "To once again send two of our own children to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. Let us begin the Reaping!" The male hadn’t taken a second thought of what he was doing before placing his hand in the bowl filled with female names, speaking out loud again. "Ladies first," He unfolded the slip of paper, a name ringing out through the crowd that Sol hadn’t found familiar. "Nell Locke" A girl made her way up to the stage, almost white hair that seemed to wave and shine in the wind as she walked and made her way up to the top of the stage. The male wasted no time. He reached in the male’s bowl, pulling out a name that seemed a bit too familiar for comfort. Something that sounded like a person I've grown to know over the last few years. "Sol Shim!"

And that was the day that I figured out we all have our own comics, our own superheroes and our own super villains. My story has one super villain, claiming the person I had loved so much already.

The Capitol, a group of people designated to ruin people’s lives.

[sol shim accepts his position as tribute]

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