Yolly Petit-Beau, District 12 {fin}

What are you waiting for, to start your life?

That’s what her adoptive mother tells, eyes all full of fire. It was a great storm that brought down trees and drowned so many, all found her life remarkable—she was still alive—this little baby in the tree. One small girl that had been washed from her mother’s arms, and caught tangled in an oak. Plucked and sheltered, the gods had smiled upon her. Or so two old peasants, walking down the road, had determined. Yurie and Julian were but two elderly folks that had long since ceased hard work in the mines, or searching for minerals in the river. They sold scraps of metal and hunks of junk instead, or helped trade for a better price.

That morning they had debated to take her—but why had she been spared, when so many had not? They looked to one another, and thought of the reality as well. We are too old to take care of such a child. Both were old enough to remember when the games were a new punishment; how could they ever hope to raise a toddler in their arms. Yet Yurie would not let her be, and after a morning of arguing back and forth, underneath the tree where she sat, the two moved to take her down.

Yolly cried in her arms, and spoke the few words that she knew—no, momma, daddy! And it hurt their hearts to know that they were not who she was searching for. They took her back to their little house of tin. Julian set out to find anyone that knew of this lost little girl, but there was no one that could identify her. Not a one stepped forward to take the child, and so, by the light of the fire at night, after a week, they named her their little Yolly. She would dream with them, growing, becoming a part of their lives like the sun and the clouds above.

They spent their hours worrying and fretting over such a child. Her eyes were always were searching around corners, wanting to know why? Their answers could keep her at bay when she was small enough to carry on their backs, but as she grew, there was no satisfaction. They would whisper about old gods, of things that were beyond her control, and Yolly—half believing, half hoping for a miracle—took to hear what she had been told.

You were spared for a reason, my love.

But what could the reason have been? She was nearing eighteen, and no reason had yet presented itself. Here she was, dark skin basking in the sunlight, eyes aflame, cast away from the thought of not knowing. Was it to work in the mines like the rest of district twelve? She remembers thinking of it atop her little mattress, and scrunching her face at the thought. She was a better cook, or singer, or anything—than one that spent long hours down below. She liked to take off her shoes and walk through the river, to see from atop trees and in the fresh clean air.

Perhaps she was to be a caretaker like Yurie and Julian had been to her. So she spent one day with the woman who looked after the young children, little ones no more than three, and thought she had found her calling. Except—this one pulled at her curly hair too hard, another screamed into her ear for not having the right rock, and still another vomited his whole lunch atop her shoes just after he’d finished. She could not imagine taking care of even a few of them long before taking them on a long walk in a deep river.

She could not be content, she reasoned, with the littleness of the world around her. Boys and girls that were happy to take part in a life that seemed empty; a world where she had little and less to give. The one thing she marveled at were the peacekeepers—something that made Julian and Yurie hiss.

You will never be like them.

They warned, but Yolly would imagine a man dressed in white armor, racing with her, taking her to a place that she could not know. Couldn’t she just imagine, outside of the walls of twelve, flying or soaring above in the planes that they had—was that what she was waiting for? She couldn’t help now, standing and staring at the way the sun shone off their armor.

One day, she reasoned, her life would begin.