97th Games - 10th Games Viewing with Gamemaker Kinkade!

The Kraken Cove was as old as the district itself. The wooden panels may have been replaced countless times over the decades, but the stone floor foundation was the same as they day it was built. The doors welcoming those lost souls when they had nowhere else to go, gathering stories from hungry mouths and passing them down to the next generation. Elderly singing the fables and fairy tales for the young ones to learn from. The strumming of a guitar often accompanying the heroines as they fought their battles gallantly.

Circe’s favorite hymn told the story of little girl named Hafen who had sewn the petals of the orange poppies into her heart to ward of the monsters hiding in the cave close to the coast the Kraken Cove was built on.

It was an old rhyme that had been around longer than Circe could fathom, no one really knew how it came to be or who Hafen really was, if she had existed to begin with. An immortal tale of fearless stupidity and reckless freedom. There has never been a single day in Circe’s life where she had felt freedom brushing through her long black hair. Forever chained to her fate, a last name with promise and mother with nothing to offer but a world full of broken promises. Was her choice to volunteer ever really her’s to begin with? Circe knew it was not, nothing had ever belonged to her.

As she would come to learn, not even the story of the girl with poppy petals in place of her heart.

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Still in her outfit from the reaping, her black platform heels rang a warning to anyone in her path, announcing her presence with a misguided sense of importance. Her father’s firm hand had always came with the assumption that they were something special, the Murdock named must have meant something. A striking punishment reinforcing its importance when Circe did not live up to the standard.

Circe did not know what she had been expecting, possibly Camera’s pointed in her face awaiting her arrival in the capitol. Cheering fans waiting for another one with Murdock name to take home the crown. None of which had happened, it had not stopped her from acting the role anyway. She walked down to the dining hall, with an attitude that had not budged even if the doubts had already begun to form in her mind.

Someone was always watching.

“Welcome to the first night of training” A voice boomed, explaining the plan for the night. Circe sat at a table alone, distancing herself from the rest of the tributes.

The tenth games, one year after her grandfather had won his. The ninth games had been studied in scrutiny; Circe was almost certain she knew how often Blair had taken a breath in that arena. His victory was everything, the man himself meant nothing. Not once had Circe even seen his face…until the tape showed district four….eighty-seven years before. What she could only assume was her grandfather up on the stage all alone, unlike the today’s stage filled with the victors of the past. He did not look much older than she was, of course he wasn’t….Blair was fifteen when he had won, the same age Circe was now.

That was all the two of them had in common.

“Hafen Dieu-Le-Veut”

Circe’s face almost turned as pale as her grandfathers. She watched a small girl, younger than herself with long curly hair run from the peacekeepers and failed miserably. They had shoved her onto the ground, placing metal handcuffs on her wrist as she kicked, screamed and even spat in their faces. For the first time, Circe believed she was witnessing the freedom of someone being robbed in plain sight.

Hafen. Hafen Dieu-Le-Veut had been a real person. The one they sang songs of putting her on a pedestal of what it had meant to be alive and fearless. Circe could see the resemblance of her mother, believing she was above the law and no regard for authority. She may have looked like Circe, but the two of them shared nothing in common….except for the violence bleeding from their eyes.

There were many too many questions to process, all of them blended into a whirlwind of confusion and a disgusting taste of betrayal. Why had no one ever mentioned that Hafen was real, she had a beating heart and most of all she had wore the last name of the lost girls of district four.

What Circe would never know; it was Hafen that had coined the last name she despised so much.

A fact most careers had learned in hunger games history was that the tenth games had put their tributes on display in the capitol zoo. A small detail that had changed the trajectory of how the tributes were viewed up until today…celebrities in their own right. The grainy black and white footage zoomed in on the cage and Circe could not take her eyes off of Hafen who was proving to be exactly what the capitol thought of the districts…a barbarian. Circe could not help but wonder what would have become of her with proper training, she had proven herself to be a fighter…of course she was. The women with the Dieu-Le-Veut last name tended to be such, never afraid to bend the rules to their liking.

That is what set Circe apart from the rest of them. Circe never stepped outsaid of the box; she reshaped it to meet her needs, they broke all barriers and never bothered to rebuild them.

Carefully Circe watched as her grandfather approached the beaten down girl, not once did she flinch in his presence. Amongst the other tributes she had always been baring her teeth, but with Blair she seemed just like any other girl. For a second Circe had found that ounce of humanity in her ancestor. Her hands reached up to take two petals as Blair handed them to her alongside some words of wisdom.

“You just have to survive. That isn’t always the strongest, or the cruelest”

Circe knew the color of the petals were orange as she watched Hafen place them in the pocket above her heart. Her hands reaching for the flowers in her hair, carefully pulling one of them out, looing down at what she was holding in her hand. Nothing made sense to her, the story was not a story and her grandfather showed sympathy to someone with her mother’s last name. The war between her mother and father had started long before she had ever come into existence, but Circe would only give herself a headache trying to make sense of it all.

One by one she plucked the petals off of the flower, the leathery feeling between her fingers told a story much older than she could have known. Throughout the footage of the games, it had become apparent the old song she once sang had its roots in the tenth hunger games.

Hafen had never killed a monster by the coast. She was nothing like the brave girl in the story Circe’s mother’s sweet voice would sing about. There was nothing magical or to be admired about her. Her grandfather was not the monster hiding under the bead. Circe saw the defeat in his eyes, but she also saw something she had never seen in either of her parent’s eyes.

Blair Murdock had a heart; he had cared for a girl that was already dead. What did that mean for Circe? She did not know, and it is quite possible she will never fully understand the gesture.

One thing for sure, the poppies in her hair were now much more than a silly tradition. They were her heritage.