How the Days Go By (zakattak)
Aug 18, 2011 2:07:26 GMT -5
Post by pthalorarity on Aug 18, 2011 2:07:26 GMT -5
Julian finally stopped running around the track he had fashioned for himself in the old junkyard. He was clutching his side and breathing heavily, having been running for about the last hour and a half. He looked around the nearby piles of rubbish, trying to recall where he had set his bottle of water. The early morning sun was harsh and forced Julian to squint. Finally he caught a glimpse of the water sparkling in the sunlight. He lightly jogged over to grab it and take a long sip. He was parched.
Usually the time period during the Games, his father lightened his training load since there would be an entire year before the chance to compete would come again. This morning however, Julian went for the run for himself. His stress levels were up as the chances for District 2 to take another victory seemed to be growing fainter and fainter as the Games wore on.
“You could have done it,” Serge Bryze, Julian’s father, would say every time they watched he Games together. “You’d already have left the arena as the victor by now.”
The older Julian got, the more forceful his father, a former victor, had been getting about him being reaped for the Games. Of course, Julian had been training for that moment almost his entire life, and though he would never admit it, his father’s pressure was beginning to wear on his nerves. He wouldn’t even reveal that to his best friend, Midas.
Midas. It was lonely running without him this morning. They’ve been training together since Julian was 8 or 9 and did almost everything together. In fact, usually Serge would have them both out in the junkyard running laps at this time and the slower would get some sort of punishment. Unfortunately for Midas, Julian was always faster; speed was his thing. Midas had the bulk and the power while Julian had all the speed and dexterity. The two would probably be unstoppable together in the games, however they could obviously never be reaped at the same time.
Julian stretched a bit and made his way out of the junkyard and back to the Victor’s Village to clean up. He wondered if Midas would be working today since they wouldn’t be training, and with this close to the end of the Games there would likely be no school.