fiction {Vallen & Larissa}

Vallen Watkins

Life in the Capitol has been quite boring. It's the same thing over and over, and now that he's on his third day of training, Vallen simply wants to roll over and sleep for the rest of the day and ignore everything else. Not that he's done anything anyway. Instead, most of his time has been spent at the trapping station looking at different wires and batteries and trying to figure out a way to make a tiny robot out of them. The first day was a test while things started coming together on the second day. Now that he's on the third and final day, Vallen is determined to finish the little project he's started on.

Having different batteries is helpful, and having the different wires and knowing where exactly to put them makes it all much easier, but making the wheels hasn't been that easy. It takes a lot of work, and nothing here is the equivalent of what he has back home. Supplies are fewer and far between, and right now, the only thing he can think of is all the items he left at home.

What will happen to them if I don't make it back home alive?

A heavy sigh leaves his chest as he quickly places different wires from one end of the battery to the other before placing them on the motherboard he's trying to create out of nothing. Not that it makes a difference. Instead, all he does, is watch the lightbulbs turn on, and for a moment, Vallen thinks he's succeeded, but something goes wrong, and the lights turn off. Trial and error. That's all there is to it, and now he's looking at the skeleton of a robot wondering where he went wrong.

Scratching his head, he finds some more wire and different sorts of pins hooked onto a piece of plastic. Wrapping the wire around one of the pins, Vallen touches the wire to the bulb again, and this time the light goes on and stays on. Sometimes the tiniest connections are lost, and it completely ruins everything. A smile spreads from ear to ear as he gathers a tiny bit of rope to hold the wires in place. It's not the best thing he's created, but given what he has to work with, it's better than nothing.

A robot won't help me win the games, but at least it offers me freedom from everything that's going on around me.