jayson hope || district eight || cbd #3 || fin

To this day, you still can't understand why they did it.

Technically speaking, the number of Hopes that perished in the Games should have been zero. There hasn't been a single instance where your surname, attached to your own first name or otherwise, has been drawn from the reaping bowl.

And yet, within the last five years, two Hopes have succumbed to them, dying well before their time in the Hunger Games themselves.

Lily was first, volunteering for some random girl that had gotten chosen as an extra for the Quell. Paige followed, in a move that had surprised no one that had once been close to her.

After all, you're not quite so sure you won't follow the same path yourself one day.

Life in the Hope family was filled with anything but the feeling it is named after. Money was scarce, often leading to nights without much to eat, even without the extra burden of two mouths to feed. You've recently taken up a job at a factory like most of the kids your age, but that has done little to alleviate the financial burden for those that remain.

And oh, what a burden it has become.

You have been called a mountain, strong and enduring and standing tall in the face of adversity. But you think of yourself more as a volcano, dormant and seething and gradually building up strength over time.

And you know full well that even the most dormant of volcanoes are prone to eruption.