Serena Shova | D4 | Career | FIN

Boom. Boom. Boom.

That’s all she heard when she was a child. She was forced by her parents to watch the games religiously, because that was what they wanted her to aspire to be. The next great victor of district four.

She was told from a very early age that she was destined for great things, and that her life was meant for more than just being a fisherman’s daughter.

That she would bring great pride home one day, and she could honestly admit that she loved it.

It wasn’t every day that she would get the chance to prove herself after all.

She was fortunate, to have parents that wanted so much for her. They supported her instead of tore her down, and that was more than enough for her to embrace training at such a young age.

There was something whimsical about it to her, and the fact that she had a whole ocean to play in was just the icing on the cake.

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It started easy for her. They showed her how to hold a knife. She was nine, supple and fresh, but ready to impress. Her parents were both ex careers that were never given the opportunity to go into the games because there was always someone that outshined them every year they were able to volunteer.

It made it hard for them, but the moment they had Serena, they knew that they had an opportunity to rectify their chance for fame.

However, they did not come from families that thought of blood as water. Maybe that was why they were never picked, because their families didn’t want them to turn into monsters. However, Leon Krigel was never considered a monster when he won his games, just a boy who wanted to come home more than anything else.

That is when they realized that there was no value in trying to teach Serena harshly. It would be gradual, and only one her terms. If she didn’t want to focus on career training that day, then so be it. They were not going to force it on her.

That relationship is what Serena now attributes to her love for combat. She was able to choose what she wanted to learn instead of it being forced on it. She always pitied others in the gymnasiums of four who lived and breathed the games, because there was always more to the world then the games. She could feel how blood thirsty others were, and she never vibed well with that type of mentality, instead, she did her best to distance herself from those types of people. She knew that if she surrounded herself with people that shared her ideals, she would thrive even more then she already was.

And as she grew older, she only got better at what she did.

That was thanks to the amount of work she put into her training, and the way she carried herself, she was able to prove to the others that you didn’t have to do anything alone. After all, while only one could come out of most games, they could learn from each other.

And while she wasn’t the most popular, she didn’t care. It was more than enough for her to just be liked.

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Outside of her training, her parents ran a bar in four. Growing up around alcohol was nothing serious to her, in fact, she did not care about it, even now. What she enjoyed was talking to people.

The bar was right on the ocean path, something that she enjoyed because the sunsets in four had always been her favorite type of backdrop, and when she was behind the counter, she always had an opportunity to enjoy them.

It was that type of beauty that she could enjoy in her world that made her love for being a bartender easier.

Sometimes she would come to the bar as a patron, and those were the nights where her parents would test her. She would be tasked with confiscating items from patrons without them noticing, a simple task that could prove beneficial.

Serena learned quickly that some of the people in four did not trust anyone, and she learned to use her words to disarm people into a comfortable position where she could slip her hand into small spaces without being noticed. Some people kept treasures in their right pockets and weapons in their left, and Serena was never afraid to confiscate them.

She did it with a certain amount of finesse.

Right before they would leave their establishment, Serena would always hand back what she took, because it did not belong to her.

She always found an opportunity to teach someone something, and even when they would get mad at her, she would simply shrug it off, because at the end of the day, they let their guard down, and that was more than enough for Serena to abuse.

She was always teaching people lessons that they never asked for, and that was why she thought she was more than ready to go into the games, because she always found opportunities to excel where people didn’t ask her too.

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But on most other days she spent it behind the bar with her parents, laughing about the life that waited for them when Serena would go into the games, and while she was nearing her last couple reaping’s, they knew she would take her shot soon, because she was more than ready to show the world of Panem what she could do.

But until then, they would keep showing her everything that they knew, in order to prepare her for the world that was outside of the district.

For now she would stand behind the counter, polishing glasses until the day would come that she would throw her hat in the ring.

Besides, she could continue to enjoy the color of the sunsets that graced her every evening.

She wouldn’t trade that for the world..