Nyx Ironside, District Ten

Eighteen
District Ten

In the middle of a damp field at sundown on the shortest day of the year, Nyx Ironside came into this world screaming. Her mother, too, hollered through the whole ordeal as she prayed for warmth and comfort somewhere in the vast expanse of pasture she collapsed in.

Maybe, then, Nyx was her mother’s fault.

Maybe Nyx was so messed up because her mother was full of contempt. Ever since she was born in that lonely field, she was nothing but pain and trouble. There wasn’t so much hate in her mother’s heart as there was indifference, but the effect was the same. Her mother was unmarried and didn’t have any other children. Growing up, Nyx -- lonesome and imaginative as she was -- only got in the way.

Their family, if you can call it a family, ran a pig farm. It used to be Nyx, her mom, her grandpa. After grandpa passed, it was just Nyx and her mom.

And the pigs.

They didn’t count as family, not really. Nyx’s mom was always warning her not to go anywhere near the pigpen when she wasn’t working, ‘cause the pigs would kill her quick as anything.

Unsurprisingly, this did not stop her. If anything, it encouraged her to keep them company. Ever since she was little, Nyx had a keen fascination with death, especially because it clung so close to everything all the time. With the reaping, the poverty, the pigs, and the loss of her grandpa, death was something like an old friend.

She liked that the pigs were violent things.

She also enjoyed slaughtering them, when it was time.

Of course, Nyx didn’t spend all of her time on the farm. As she grew older, she fancied herself a mischief maker of sorts. She was always out of the house when she wasn’t in school or working, and her mother gave her hell for it. And for what? Nyx was trying to help her mother, couldn’t she see that?

The mischief was just small at first. Ruining the fence of a competing farm’s pasture so all of their animals got loose. Stealing precious tools that kept other farms behind schedule while they worked to replace them. Sabotaging their equipment.

In the past year or so, things got a little more violent. And so what? They’d blame it on the coyotes, and she’d get home with a smirk on her face, hiding behind the guise of naiveté.

Their farm was doing a lot better these days, thanks to her mischief.

Who would suspect her? Nobody. Nyx was just 5’4” when she stopped growing, with chubby cheeks that made her look younger than her eighteen years. She didn’t talk to strangers, not often, and she kept her head low in school. Nyx hid behind her long black curls like a fox in a hole, and nobody paid her much attention. If she came across a little brusque when someone spoke to her, it didn’t make her mean, just busy and tough. A lot like the other people in District Ten. Mature for her years, maybe.

Ha.

Nyx liked to think she was mature for her age, but that’s only because she thought most people were idiots. She only shared these kinds of thoughts with her mother, and her mother thought she was a spoiled brat for thinking she was better than everybody else. Nyx and her mother fought like two pigs who’d caught the scent of blood. They got into vicious, vicious arguments, sometimes so loud that the Peacekeepers would come knocking on their door just to make sure things were alright.

Things weren’t alright, not really. More than she wanted anything else in the world -- trouble or violence or to feel something for real -- Nyx Ironside wanted to get away from her mother.

Unfortunately, the nature of District Ten was that families ruled. At least in their area, if you had a farm, you had a farm on the land that your family had owned for generations, unless you happened to work for somebody else. But there wasn’t much money in that. There was only money in grabbing a piece of land and using it until somebody else kicked you out.

Which is why Nyx Ironside decided she was going to kill her mother.

Sooner or later, she swore she'd do it.

She'd have all the power.