prisma undine d10f [fin]

Your mother is an alcoholic. Your father is constantly working because of it, just to feed the family. So, that leaves you to take care of your younger brother, Rein. You’ve become the closest thing he has to a parental figure in his life, and you do your damn best to make sure you’re a good one.

You’ve raised him, as well as yourself, since you were about nine years old. That was when the Games started and Mom started drinking heavily as a response. She claims it’s because she’s terrified of you kids going into the Hunger Games and it’s her way of coping. You never thought much of it until you were a teenager and realized how bad it was for her health. You’ve tried to convince her to stop, but that just upsets her more, so you’ve reluctantly left her be on the subject in the last couple years.

As soon as you were tall enough to stand over the stove burners, you taught yourself to cook for your family, since your parents never had the time to do it themselves and Rein was too young. You mend your own clothes when they’re worn out or torn because your family can’t afford new ones, even though you became self-employed by selling your art that you made to help out when you turned sixteen.

You’re afraid of what will happen to your family if you were to end up in the Hunger Games, or even worse, if you were to die in them, never to return home. How would Rein get by without his older sister to guide him? He was only eleven, and even though you fended for yourself at that age, he’d never been on his own before. It was a scary thought.

Your recent income was also one of the only reasons your family made it through the last winter. You supplied the money for firewood to keep the house warm while your father provided the money for the food the family needed. There wasn’t much for spending after that. What would they do if the next winter came along without you there?

Your anxieties have always been a problem. Fear and panic would often take you over too. You knew that should you end up in the Games one day, your fear might take over. Would that mean you’d freeze up and be too scared to fight back? Inevitably that would be the worse outcome. Perhaps instead your fear would empower you, making you fight for your life. Or maybe you’d run and hide, hoping no one found you until the very end. Then you wouldn’t have to fight as much, and maybe you’d actually have a chance of winning.

Only time would tell.

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455 words