nicholas ilsidore {twelve} fin

I don't remember when I first saw fire. Well, at least not the exact time. What I do remember is the fascination I had with it when I was younger. I remember sitting next to our fireplace, watching the flames lick at the stone walls and charring them from grey to black. I loved the way it moved. How it danced, how it flickered and sparked. I loved the way it sounded. The crackling, the sizzling, the popping.

It helped to distract me from the noise in our house. The miners marching past our door, Gwin crying for food, Papa yelling at our Mum. I don't remember much about our parents, because all too often I tried to pull myself away from them, to look at the ground instead of their faces, to listen to the fire instead of their voices. I know for certain that I didn't like them, but I also know that they tried their hardest.

I guess it just wasn't enough.

What I remember most of all is the hunger. I avoided my parents so much, all I could focus on was the empty pit in my stomach. I would pull one of our chairs into the kitchen, climb on top and swing open a cupboard, peaking in to see if we had any food. I was only ever met with a mouldy piece of bread or a some sort of dried up greens.

When I couldn't take the house anymore, I'd walk over to the community home, and sometimes the children there would come talk to me. One of the boys said that if I could find some mint leaves, they'd fill my stomach. He was almost right. I was able to find some along the fence, and although I would consider bringing them to the home, I would always end up eating them myself. Sometimes I think I looked worse than them. Skin and bones, sunken in cheeks, skeleton-like fingers. I'd walk around with my hand pinching my stomach, hoping I would focus on that instead of the hunger pangs.

Gwin and I had parents up until I turned nine. My birthday was in the fall, but of course, we didn't celebrate. We couldn't, even if my parents remembered what day it was. Most of the time they were too busy working or scraping up whatever food they could. The cold swept through our homes, pushed against the walls, chilled us to the bone. I remember drawing pictures in the frost on my window. We had no coals, because Papa was too weak to go to the mines. I didn't realize that at the time.

People always describe Death as cold. They say he has blue eyes, black, crusty skin, a hooded cape and a chill in the air about him. I guess I should've realized that he was the one causing the cold.

We woke up one morning, Gwin and I, and our parents had disappeared. What remained were two bodies, huddled together, blue lips and stiff limbs. I found them first. I wouldn't let Gwin in the room after that, not because I thought she'd be upset, but because I didn't want her to meet Death just yet. She was only six at the time. I knew she could forget the day if I gave her a couple of years.

I had no intentions of staying in our house. The Peacekeepers were especially busy that year, knowing how cold it was, they swept the neighbourhoods every few days for frozen corpses. I knew that if they found the bodies in our house, they'd take us to the community home., and I didn't want that. I had seen the children there all too often, hopeless and starving. Sure, we had it worse at times, but I knew that if we tried, we could end up better of than them.

So, we started fresh. If you can call it that. I took two of Papa's coats from the closet, wrapped one around Gwin and the other around myself, grabbed a couple matches from one of the cobweb-web filled drawers, and headed out into the cold. The first few days were the hardest. I was scared then, but I knew Gwin was even more than I. I kept telling her over and over again, we'd be fine, we were going to be fine. Sometimes I was talking to myself more than I was talking to her. When she got too scared, I'd tell her to count her steps and focus on that instead. Sometimes I'd catch myself doing it. I don't like being scared, and I know she doesn't either. I don't think anyone does.

It was difficult, but we managed to scrape by for the next couple years. We picked greens in the summer. We sifted through trash cans behind the merchant's houses in the winter. One time we found a dead squirrel in the allies, so we started a fire and cooked it for dinner. It was awfully stringy, and we both got stomachaches afterwards, but at least we were full.

We found our salvation a few years later. Gwin was the one who discovered it, trying to light a fire on one of the colder days to keep us warm. She tripped, and I shudder now to think of the burns she could've had, if it weren't for Papa's coat. The thing was fireproof.

It took us a while to find the real value in our discovery. Gwin was fascinated with the coat, and she insistently tested its limits, holding matches to it and dropping it in the fire, until I'd snap at her and tell her she was wasting matches. She's never been the level-headed one between the two of us. She becomes too interested in an idea, something that could be wonderful to think about, but not at all practical. But this was one of the times she was right and I was wrong.

At first, I thought she was crazy, talking about the fire shows and circus performers she'd seen from the Capitol, played between screenings during the Hunger Games. But she just wouldn't drop the idea. And of course, I had my own fascination with fire. It had always brought some sort of comfort to me, some sort of hope, like a light in the dark that I knew would protect me. Eventually I gave in. We dug through the trash heaps, tested our matches, found materials that smoked and sparked and burned quickly. We tested and practised and experimented for months before we ever did a show.

Nowadays, we perform every night, when it's darkest outside. We stand in front of the Justice Building, next to the merchant shops, in the middle of Town Square, any place we know will grab attention. We were afraid to do it at first, and especially when the Peacekeepers started coming to watch. That was until we realized they were the ones who gave the most money. It's the perfect disguise, performing in the dark when shadows hide our faces and fire draws the crowd's attention. We've been better off since then. We still don't make a whole lot of money, but it's enough to get by, enough to keep ourselves well-fed and alive.

And best of all, I get to play with fire.