Ophelia Cinders // D12F

The year of the 89th Hunger Games

You are a young coal miner, minding your own business after a day in the mines. You've a bad cough; you're scared to find out why, so you mainly try to ignore it. Relaxing in the Meadow tends to help soothe the coughing. Air's fresh here, and it's nice to finally be out in the sun. It's a quiet, peaceful day, with a gentle breeze. You hear birdsong and people milling around. Now if only you could find a tree, maybe you could settle down and rest those lungs of yours--

"Excuse me, mis-ter!"

The accent sounds hilariously stupid: some inbred mutation of bastardized Capitolite and District 12's low, slow drawl.

You stop, turn around.  The speaker looks about what you expected: a random weird-ass. Some girl -- maybe eighteen, though she does have more mature features -- dressed in a faded blue dress, covered in off-colored patches and hasty stitches and sudden rips, adorned at the hem and bodice with crumpled pieces of colorful paper, perhaps meant to resemble flowers. Her long blonde hair is a crazy cascade of curls and fringes and tangles, tumbling down to her lower back. She wears a wide, bright grin on her long, pale, oval face, those big brown eyes smiling too, her emotions so vivacious (perhaps "manic" would be a better term) that your eyes are naturally drawn to her face, as though a spotlight lingers there.

She holds a basket of wildflowers in her hand. Some are wilted and crumpled. Some are weeds, like dandelions. Her grin grows so wide it stretches out her face. "Would yah like a flowah or two?"

Oh. Shit. You know her. Not know her, but..."know" her. You've seen her meander around the Meadow before, humming some wilting warbling tune as she plucked at flowers, weeds, and grass. "The Flower Girl," the people in the Hob call her. Comes to the market  stalls every now and again to show off her flower-basket. Damned if you know her actual name.

Batting her long eyelashes at you, she points at her wares with a white, slender finger. Fuck. By slender, you mean bony. The knuckles are way too prominent, they seem to bulge from the skin. Something's not right. "That's Taraxacum," she lisps carefully, gesturing at a golden dandelion head. "As in, 'Tara's come...to dinner.' Bee-yoo-tiful tur-quaw col'rin'. Makes yah feel sun-shine an' good feelin' whenever yah look at it!"

It's a shame. It's a damned shame. The longer you look at her, the more you realize she's a fine-looking girl. Slender, not really full in the hips or chest yet (if she ever will be), but there was a certain softness about the curves of her face and the lines of her waif-like body that gave her a distinctive delicate, feminine charm. Like a porcelain doll. Or a spirit. Or a...flower, even. (Analogies just pop into your head sometimes.)

"Only a dime each!" her wispy voice rises an octave. She tilts her head back, that big beaming grin turning coy, playful even.

...Sure. What could it hurt.

The year of the 88th Hunger Games

You are one of the orphans in the public home. It is lunch time, and all the teenagers have gathered in the cafeteria. Because God hates you, you are stuck sitting beside fucking "I'll-Feel-Yah, Sinners" again. What's the freak's real name? Who cares, you don't. Everyone calls her "I'll-Feel-Yah." Anyway, I'll-Feel-Yah's off in her own little world, humming some repetitive tune in her shrill, off-key voice, swaying from side to side, making those paper flowers jabbed into her dress crinkle obnoxiously. She keeps bumping her shoulder into yours, letting you get a good whiff of the fucked-up hair and untouched underarms. It's been a good fifteen minutes, and she hasn't touched her grain mush. Just swaying and humming, over and over again. At the rate she's going, she'll get her ass whooped by the matrons. Maybe that's a good thing.

You eat as fast as you can. You're hungry, but you always are. It's a "hollow day" -- that's what your pa used to call 'em, back when he was around, to describe days when you eat and eat and eat and still go to bed with your stomach growling. And that dumb broad's over there experimenting with new forms of sound. Not touching a bit of food. So, what if...what if...It's not like she'd even notice, she's incredibly stupid...

Your hand creeps towards the tray, you bite your lip...

You see the blur of motion, the glint of artificial light across aluminum-- you pull back just in time. A fork protrudes from the plastic table. I'll-Feel-Yah's scrawny hand twisted around it, I'll-Feel-Yah's shoulders hunched forward, the other hand braced against the table, as though to propel her forward if she needs to. She stares at you. Clarity shines in her round, staring eyes. Total understanding. And no mercy. Hatred and bitterness bites right into you as you, for one second, have the courage to look her dead in the eyes. You lose the courage fast.

The matrons are upon you. Both of you. They don't wait to scoop you out of your chairs, their sticks are already bearing down on your spines. I'll-Feel-Yah doesn't even cry out, but she never does. Only bares her teeth and clenches her face in this toothy grimace. They take you both by the hair and drag you to the Boxes, one for each of you, to spend a few hours of solitary confinement. Or days. Whenever the matrons remember you.

You think of the way she looked at you when she tried to stab you. "Freak," you snort. But you remember that stare in your dreams.

A month later, you see her again. At the bunk-beds before bedtime, still in the dress she always wears. She notices you for a moment. Her eyes crinkle, her lips tighten into a thin sneer. A darkness there. But she turns her eyes down, at the floor, head slumped, resentful, even pouting. But somehow thoughtful. Maybe even remorseful. Shaking her head, she turns her back on you and wanders off, humming that exact same tune as she goes.

The year of the 83rd Hunger Games

"Mom, sing the song again!"

You are Evelynn Cinders -- Evie, for short. You were lucky enough to have been born into the merchant class of District 12. You are currently 34 years old. Life is hard, but you've done well. A loving husband, a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter -- and a successful flower shop, to boot. They said it couldn't be done, not in District 12. "Stick to the apothecary," your father used to grouse at you. But you did it. Your flower arrangements are now featured at the mayoral hall and at district-wide events. Sure, the occasional bribe helped, as well as a little infidelity here and there...and being just about the only florist in District 12, your reputation's bound to precede you...But you did it. You brought a touch of beauty to District 12. Planted vibrancy into a coal-black world. Not many people can say that.

And your daughter, sweet Ophelia -- she loves it. You've seen her hop through your gardens like a little rabbit, helping you whenever she can, however she can. She admires you. When she was very small, she used to say: "I'm going to be just like you some day!" She's past that age now. But you still see the sentiment in her eyes, when she sees you among your flowers. Among the color. The delicacy. Your home is a paradise. Not a speck of coal -- miraculously. Nor suffering. Maybe some hunger, here and there, when there's only enough money to keep the shop afloat and not much else...But there's happiness in that hunger. A willingness. You've found a reason to live. A reason for your daughter to live. And that's what keeps your family going.

Presently, Fifi calls out to you again, as she tips her watering can over a bushel of roses: "Mama, the song! C'mon!"

She loves your voice. You don't know why. Something that must've carried over from when she was small enough to sing lullabies to. All children think their mother's lullabies are the most beautiful. So you sing. For her, your little Flower Girl.

The year of the 84th Hunger Games

You are a Peacekeeper stationed in District 12, Investigations Unit.

Across the iron table sits Evie Cinders, slumped over, shirt torn, blood oozing out of a broken eye.

"Your accomplices," you snarl. "Name them. Now."

She stares.

"You think I'm stupid, whore?" You jump out of your chair, slam your fist against the table. She whimpers. "We know those roses of your aren't from Twelve. Nowhere close to Twelve. So out with it, c'mon, who'd you get it from, where?!"

Tears start to mix with the blood on her face.

The year of the 85th Hunger Games

You slog through the snow with your thirteen-year-old daughter, carrying her tesserae rations. The pang of starvation weighs heavily on your shoulders, your arms, you can barely raise either with the burdens. But you can't let Ophelia see that. A father should never come across as weak to his children. Her face is closed off, bitter. She's been like that since the Peacekeepers burned down the flower shop. Since they took her mother away. You try your best, but nothing helps. You know she's going to be impossible tonight. Last year, she didn't have to take out any tesserae. Now she's taken two. Not as many as other Seam children, with their overlarge families, but even then, it's hard to think about...Come reaping day, your little girl's name will be in that bowl four times. You know, you know, it could be worse, but you can't get over obsessing about it. It's been haunting you for months now. Anything that could make you lose her, lose another part of yourself...

Like your wife, you were born to a merchant class. You have tradable skills; at the very least, you can manage the books, serve customers. No one from the merchant class will even so much as look at you now. After what happened to Evie.

Your shack is out at the edge of the Seam, near the Meadow. Ophelia tries to break away from you, heading towards the Meadow -- towards the fence; with a spare hand, you seize her by the shoulder and herd her back towards the shack.

It's only one room, fashioned crudely with slats of wood and dried mud, barely large enough for the bedrolls and the small, portable kerosene-burning stove. But it's kept you alive this long, you suppose. Ophelia idles in a corner as you store away the grain beneath a loose floorboard, as you refill the stove with kerosene and light it, to at least get some heat flowing. You feel Ophelia's eyes on your back. You can hear her teeth chatter. The grain, the kerosene -- that's all you have. All from Ophelia's tesserae.

"We should figure out what to do with the grain." You've never really worked with grain before. Your family's trade was crafting storage containers -- boxes, vases, other such things...You have a basic idea of how bread is made, and if anything the cereal from the grain could be eaten raw. Either way, Fifi's got to eat. Neither of you have had real food in the past few days. You were lucky the tesserae sign-up started when it did.

"What if I get reaped, Dad?"

You turn suddenly. You can't help it, you bite your lip to stifle the emotion swelling in your chest. Because you can see it all in her face. The days of starvation, the isolation, the grief. In those hard, round eyes, you can still see the little girl running up to the flower shop as flames engulfed it. You can see your hand reach for her, trying to stop her. You can see the Peacekeeper, his hand cocked back to strike her, when no one's ever hit her before. Never.

"You won't, sweetheart," you're faltering. That's all you can really say.

"But I could," she insists.

"Yes," you say quietly, "you could."

What does she want from you. To admit that she'd be better off without you.

"And if I win, we'd be rich again."

Her gaze has wandered off. Clouded over with some sort of daydream.

No. You won't allow delusions like that.

"If you were reaped, you'd die, Fifi." Harsh, definitely. But necessary.

But the glaze of daydreaming doesn't leave her eyes.

"You'd end up like all the other kids," you raise your voice. "They all died. All but one dies. You think those are good odds?"

"How else are we going to eat."

The daydream doesn't leave the eyes, but the voice is changed. Something that's been becoming more and more apparent. Her voice is hardly hers these days, but something gruff and bitter, more like a middle-aged woman than a young girl. Subtle in its spite and hatred. Words clawed up from the back of the throat.

"We have food now, don't we?" you demand. She's acting like a bitch, why does she have to make everything so much harder?

"They'll take it from us," she spits. "Everything gets taken."

But she's coming forward. She takes a small tin pot from off the wall. "I'm going to get snow to boil," she mutters, stomping out of the shack.

Fine. Whatever gets you a moment of peace, you guess. No, you ought to watch her, make sure she doesn't fling herself into the fence -- no. She needs to be left alone.

As far away from you as possible.

Ophelia Cinders

She realized it the first night, but didn't want to believe it. About a week after he left her at the orphanage, Ophelia accepted that he wasn't coming back. All the same, that first year, she told all the other kids that she was only going to be there for a year, until Dad struck it rich on some business investment. (Mom used to talk about business investments all the time. Dad seemed to know something about them. It seemed reasonable to her.) They teased her for it, but she wouldn't listen. In her mind, she would crawl back to those days in Mom's flower garden. It was her comfort. The longer she stayed at the orphanage, the longer the daydreams grew. Until she would wake up, and daydream, and at night crawl back into bed, and daydream again.

On occasion, reality would break through. The force of a matron's hand against her face, the cruelty of one of the other children. It would burn her. Where was the color? Where was the softness? Where was there any beauty, hope, future? Where was her mother, where was her father, where was anyone?

Gradually, she forced beauty into her own world, for nothing less than a moment of stability.

She looked for beauty frantically. In the Meadow, in the Seam -- anywhere. Suddenly, she began to pay closer attention to the Games. Not to the arena, she had ceased romanticizing the Games long before her father had abandoned her. But to the footage of the Capitol. At the colors there. The richness. The vivacity. How no one there seemed afraid of living. How they always smiled, how fat they were in comparison to everyone else, how big and strong they seemed. And the funny, adorable way they talked! So much brighter and with more character than the way Twelvers drawled and mumbled.

What if I were them. She acted out the idea. Imitated the flouncing, the strange lisps of speech, even the posing. Having little to no acting instinct, she never really got the full swing of it. But she liked the way it made her feel. Like she was color incarnate -- just like the Capitolites, in a way.

To be beautiful... The concept haunted her. As it had once haunted her mother, decades ago. To be beautiful...

She would not be like the dark world surrounding her. She would not be the child that was cast aside, the child of a woman rotting away in a prison cell or of a father dying of starvation, she would not be the child locked inside an orphanage, she would not be the child waiting to hear her name at the reaping. Though she may seem that way to others, it would not be her. She would be beauty. Even if it meant breaking herself apart -- she would find it.