Cassella Lorde | D12 | FIN

She doesn’t know how she got to this place.

Her hands are wrought, tired from constantly kneading and smashing.

Her family owned a bakery, a small one, but one that brought a lot of business from the people that could afford it.

Her parents were friends to people in the government of twelve, and she made it very clear that she didn’t know how.

After all, when you come from nothing, how does one become anything.

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All she could remember was the sound of her siblings crying for food as they spent time on the streets. It didn’t come by often, she knew that, that is food. Sometimes her father would come home with bruises on his face but food in his hands.

They had to share, something that Cassella was used too, her small hands ripping off parts of their meal to pass to the others until she realized that it was her turn to take a piece for herself. Her family wasn’t large, but in Twelve, anything more than yourself was too many, at least, that is what her parents said multiple times as she gingerly snacked on whatever they could scavenge.

She tried her hardest to go as long as she could without food, but that always proved to be hard, especially when she had opportunities to explore the district as a young child. Her father worked in the mines when she was younger. Her mother stayed home with them, keeping the small shack that they lived in as clean as her energy would allow her.

It was a simple childhood, a painfully dull one, but one that Cass could at least see her roots in.

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She was always a curious child, roaming places that she had no business being in. The house was close to the woods, so she spent a lot of time exploring them and pretending that she was the queen of them.

Her bare feet stood in the dirt and sunk slowly into the crater known as twelve, and she never stopped herself from tapping into her curious side. Even if it was dangerous, curiosity always got the better of her, and she would find herself in the weirdest situations because of it.

However, sometimes she would find fruit in her weirdness, and when she saw opportunity, she struck.

From time to time, she would find animals in the wild that looked like they got the bad end of a deal. Whether it be they would fall from high heights or be the victim of a slaughter, Cass would take the opportunity to turn their lemons into her lemonade. She would take what she found home, and most of the time, her mother would be thankful because it was just another source of food for them.

However, when she came home with something and her father was home, he realized that there might be something more here for them. Cass was a lucky girl, at least, that is what she told people. Cass didn’t let people in on the fact that she was smarter than she seemed.

Her eyes followed various patterns in the forest, and soon she realized that there was a good chance of her finding prey due to traps that had been set around the forest. Before she knew it, she had set up basic traps around the house in order to see what she could snag. Most of the time it didn’t yield much, but from time to time she would find small game that she could bring home for the family to eat. However, her father would take some of it and sell it for various items that could provide for a better future for them in twelve.

At the end of the day, Cass didn’t mind, because she believed that her father had the best intentions, and while eating was probably the most important thing to do in twelve, she could at least sacrifice a large meal for the greater good of the situation.

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And soon enough, Cass was able to reap some of the rewards of her trapping abilities.

They were able to obtain wheat and flour for what they traded, and her mother was able to turn that flour into bread, in which she started to sell in the district square to the people of the district that could afford it.

It went from bread to some pastries. There wasn’t much in twelve when it came to sweets, mostly because the plant life left little to be desired.

However, what they could make ended up selling more than just their normal bread, and before Cass knew it, she was being taught how to bake a cake and a loaf a bread instead of going out in order to trap food for her family. They went from poor to lower class in a matter of years, her father making sure that they were supported in every way possible. From time to time when Cass had free time, she would wander into the woods in order to see if she could still trap game for fun. To her surprise, her traps, even though years had passed were still good enough to grab a small animal here or there.

It was that little thing that made Cass smile on a day to day basis. She was told by her parents many times that she is the reason they are able to provide a better life for them, and while Cass didn’t want to feel the world on her shoulders, she couldn’t help but be proud of herself for bringing fortune to a family that thought they weren’t going to last through another winter.

Some days she sat at the dinner table, looking at the spread of food that her family traded and bartered for with others and wondered what could have been if she never ventured into the woods of twelve. She took a deep breath before ripping off a piece of bread and savoring every chew that she could muster.

It tasted like a future that would be bright.