Sampson Izar [District 11; finished]

(Name) Sampson Ignatius Izar

(District) 11

(Designations) farmer, former wanderer; former reaped tribute (65th games); rebel

(Gender) Male

(Age) 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 24

(Favorite Color) Green

(Family)

Bakar Izar [father]

Ara Denar Izar [Mother]

Clara Iza [grandmother] Deceased

Reeve Izar [grandfather] Deceased

Benat Izar [brother] Deceased,63rd Hunger Games Tribute

Deval Izar [brother]

Rum Tum Tugger [half-brother]

Iago Izar-McClaine [cousin] Deceased, 65th Hunger Games Tribute

(Pets) Gregor [Dog]

(Likes) Stars, the outdoors, boys, flowers, snow

(Biography)

I got a scar above my left eyebrow. It’s from when I slipped on the rocks outside of District Four. Rum Tum went all top heavy when we were trying to get down the side of a hill, and that’s when I lost my footing, too. He said to me that scars built character, and I said well you must have a lot of character with all the ones on his arms and gnashed into his back. I hate my scar. It’s all ugly, sticking up on my skin and colored purple. Rum Tum didn’t think it was ugly, though he never thought nothing was ugly. Could see a pile of toads in the water and probably would have said that they were the best looking little things. ‘Course when you’re blind you don’t have the power to see much, but I knew Rum Tum ain’t always been that way. Prolly made it easier though to find out what was beautiful if you didn’t have to see through all the ugly to get there.

It’s my second season back in the orchards since I went away. Momma and Poppa had said I’d passed of a fever, and ain’t nobody were gonna check on an Izar when so many of us died already. Benat weren’t even a memory next to Iago, and me being so little and so weak they just as well shrugged they shoulders and said yep, ‘cause when someone pass around here they might as well just nod they heads like it weren’t nothing. I weren’t dead but I might as well have been. ‘Cause I set out into the woods just before winter, when the world just put that crown on Saffron’s head and all the rest of us mourned how close Eleven had come. Except I wasn’t gonna mourn no one, especially not when it was supposed to be me up in that casket. I packed up all my troubles in a little sack and wrote my little note to Deval, and then—I was gone.

‘Course after three days I had wished I stayed. The hunger gets you first, and I was already skinny enough. You can feel it peeling under your skin and driving daggers into your stomach. Then there’s the thirst, when you feel your lips all chapped but there ain’t nothing to get them better. I came on creeks that were frozen over, and cracking the surface gave me fistfuls of water. But then there was the trouble of knowing whether or not I was gonna get sick or not, and how after all the time spent wandering where I was gonna go. I guess I kept going ‘cause I didn’t have no other place to go. Momma and Poppa had enough trouble with one son dyin’, then another that was supposed to be plucked from them, too. And if Deval was gonna have to go I would’ve been left all alone—I would’ve had to be by myself anyway, and I couldn’t let that happen.

It was what kept me going. Thinking about all the ones that had made our lives miserable was enough to push through the pain in my stomach and then some. The other kids that had killed my brothers, the victors that did nothing but stand up there in they crowns, like they owned the place. And then there had to be the ones that made the choice, that always made the choice to take us from one another. I could dig up roots to keep my stomach from going flat, and I could drink up water that weren’t gonna make me sick. I could tie up a snare that caught me a rabbit a time or too. And I could hide myself in little holes, in trees, down over rocks so that no one could see me. ‘Cause there was more than one time when I smelled smoke in those woods, or a branch snap.

I like to think that we find what we’re looking for, even if it takes us until the end. I guess I have to believe that, if I don’t want to come with the bitterness and hatred that all the rest of the world seems to have. When I was gone not three weeks, my clothes hanging from my body and my feet blistered and bruised, I found what I needed. Rum Tum Tugger was at the bottom of a hill, broken just as much as I was. He wasn’t awake, and first I thought he might have died—there was blood, from his head. He’d hit it on a rock and gone out cold. Except he weren’t dead on account of him still being warm, and still breathing. I pulled him up close to me and got us into a set of bushes so I could wipe away the blood and make sure he wasn’t hurt none too bad. I spent the afternoon and then the evening holding him, listening to him breath, and waiting.

He told me that there would be men coming for us, because there are always men and they are always angry about people living outside of the walls. And I ask him, I said, well why would they want anyone that lives outside the walls? ‘Cause we don’t want to go back inside and aren’t worth having, if all we want is to live beyond the walls. I wasn’t big enough to hurt nobody, and Rum Tum couldn’t even see which way was north, so the two of us seemed next to useless. Except—and this was my first lesson, one of the most important—that all we have to do is exist for them to be mad. Because we can exist outside the wall, it means that we can live without. And living without means that we aren’t following the rules. The whole world follows those rules so—so we exist, and that means there’s another way to live. It’s a para-dox, because if we didn’t exist there wouldn’t be nothing to tell nobody anything different. Even when we don’t tell nobody nothing anyway, just existing has us against them.

I told Rum Tum that I didn’t want to ever go back to living there, because they weren’t like me. Neither was he—never had been, never would be. And we sat around a fire and we watched, we watched the embers burn from red to orange to white little ashes, until when I couldn’t keep my eyes open Rum Tum came over to kiss my head. Okay, he said. Okay. We wouldn’t be going nowhere without each other. He could teach me how to live without the world and I could tell him all the things that I saw. I thought it was going to last forever, because I was young and believed that fairytales always had happy endings. We marched up through the forests and across plains, and I told him of all the places I saw.

We walked a cracked slab of stone, which was missing patches, or would have whole sections filled with flowers. There were sunflowers, which were my favorites. Rum Tum said they had been his favorites, too. That’s when I learned that taking your time is more important that letting out all the air in your lungs. ‘Cause lots of people think that lots of words pretty up a place, but for me—for us—we could spend hours just stepping along, through the blades of grass and into the rivers, until the silence had pushed out all the words from our heads. I liked that about Rum Tum, his not having to say much for me to know that we were better off together. He wouldn’t ask me about our dead brother, or cousin, or anything that we were supposed to face. Instead it was all about the way we could tell which way was north, and how there were whole patches of land that had gone years without so much as a footprint.

We spent a whole lifetime out in those woods.

Time must have stretched itself out ‘cause I learned as much from that than bein’ in a District ever taught me. It’s no wonder he and Benat practically the same. They got the same head on they shoulders. When Rum Tum would talk about something you could hear the excitement through all the cracks and edges. He might not have been able to see then but that didn’t mean he couldn’t bring out the life—the colors, the way that he could speak to them. Not a single person back in District Eleven could have ever found so much love in the sun, or felt so much from a gust of cold winter wind. That’s what I got from him, that this whole world is a lot bigger than you and me, a lot more than just what happens in the games. That all of us are just pressing on a little path, but that don’t have to be the path for any of us, if we don’t want it to be.

‘Course, Rum Tum didn’t stay.

The second winter was going to set in, and our clothes were practically threadbare. I was running a fever every other day, with a sour throat and runny nose. And the hunger might not have ever showed itself but I could see it with the ribs that stuck out from my sides, or how thin my fingers got. He was the one that had looked at me and said that it was over. Just like that, We got to get you home. Because I had spent the night coughing, and he had stayed awake with me until I finally fell asleep. Well, when I woke in the morning and the smoke was running to touch the tips of the trees above, Rum Tum clicked his tongue and told me we were doubling back for District Eleven. And I—because I was all of fourteen, almost fifteen—screamed and carried on like the world was going to fall apart.

Must have looked like the child I was, carrying on and crying. Sayin’ that he wanted to abandon me, that I was going to leave him in the cold so he could find his own way. But he never stopped me, never told me that I had to do nothing. Just watched, ‘cause he was a good older brother like that. And when I looked at him, and felt the wind blow through my clothes, and a set of coughs come on again, I threw myself into his chest and wrapped my arms around him tight. We both knew that if we went back it would be the end—that we weren’t never going to see one another again. Because we got one second chance, and then a third. There just isn’t enough magic left in the stars for us to be together again.

We walked not two hundred yards from the wall. Snow had fallen and kept the hard, cracked ground soft. It was just before sunrise. The whole world seemed to be still. No sound of birds calling out, no boots marching, just two boys standing and staring at one another. Two young things that didn’t know no better, that had to come apart again because of someone else’s sins. He touched my cheek with his hands and I could see the dirt underneath his fingernails. I had to close my eyes to keep the tears from coming, but they dribbled down my face anyway. For him, he had about a day or two worth of food and shoes that were about to fall apart. He had to know that it meant this was the end. I tried to open my mouth to speak, to say anything—but the words didn’t come. Instead I wrapped my arms around his waist, kept my eyes shut, and prayed that he wouldn’t let go.

And then, for the third time, someone decided to give their own life so that I could live.

I guess it’s about finding out what really makes you a person. To be able to take all that you’ve ever had given to you, and finding your place. That’s what Rum Tum Tugger gave to me. Each of them did—Iago, that sacrifice could make you strong. And Benat? That there was love everywhere, even if we couldn’t see it.

I may be locked away, I may be just another face in this district but I will not fall into the silence Ma and Pa keep. Or the words that my own brother Deval won’t say, words he won’t speak to me because I abandoned them. There is a fire I need to burn, no matter what. Because I’ve seen what is outside the wall, I’ve seen how much there is to live for. Not just the capitol, but for all of us. And I’d rather die than become just another face here. That’s not why I got so many chances, to just fade away and keep that happiness to myself. I’m going to set us free, even if it kills me.

HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0