Apocope Birch [District Nine]

Apocope Birch -- fourteen -- male -- District Nine

reaping check name note*

When you were little, your grandfather told you his mother's mothers' hunting stories from before the fence went up, way back when they were younger than your parents. Seven years after his death—half your lifetime ago, long enough to render his face a blur in your mind—you still remember perfectly how it felt to drift away with his voice warming the air. He told you about long days on the trail and long nights hiding from storms in makeshift shelters, and—best of all—about shared understandings and cautious truces with animals he had to describe because you had never seen them.

Those were your fairy tales, and your grandfather's grandmothers your heroes, braver and stronger and wiser than anyone alive. For years, you daydreamed about following in their footsteps. Instead of dragons you had mountain lions, and instead of fighting you earned their trust by rescuing a cub from a trap. They adventured with you to look for your great-great-grandmothers, who you never met but always knew were still making new legends somewhere. You attacked Peacekeepers to protect your second family, and found yourself tenacious and clever enough to win. In the winter, shivering at home in too-thin blankets, you escaped to chase deer with them and wait out snowstorms in their den.

As you got older, you started sneaking to the fence sometimes, all but holding your breath until you caught a glimpse of something that proved the stories true: the bright flash of a fox's fur here, a velvet-antlered deer there. You never caught more than fleeting images, broken up by lines of electrified metal, but you tucked each one into your heart next to your grandfather's stories.

When you thought about it for too long, you always felt vaguely guilty for your fixation. Home was never so terrible a place to return to, after all, and thinking about your mountain lion family felt ungrateful to the family you already had. Your mother mends machinery, which has always been enough to keep a family of six-then-five alive if not quite afloat. When she has time at home she tells her own stories, of prophets and perseverance; even as you skirt around the uncomfortable guilt of feeling like you've never understood them right, there's comfort in the familiar, careful rhythm of the Arabic she only breaks out for these occasions. Once in a while your father manages to bring home toys squirreled away in his bag at the factory; even though you and your siblings have all sort of outgrown them, the surprise and mystery of something new brightens any day, and that was all the more true when you were children. (The first time you broke one of those treasures quarreling over who got to use it first, you all sat around it sniffling together—even Sal, the oldest, always so proud of being put-together and respectable—and promised to never fight like that again. For the most part, you even succeeded.)

It's just that it always felt like someone else's life. The wilderness of your dreams, where you never tangled with the forest but wove yourself into it, was the only place where you recognized yourself—mostly. Sometimes, maybe, catching sight of yourself in the mirror at just the right angle for something about the outline of your face to look a little different, maybe longer—but every time you turn, it's gone.

Anyway, childhood daydreams don't hold the same magic now that you know a little more about mountain lions and a little less about hope.

Now, you only think about the forest in practical terms. There's a place in the fence where the electricity doesn't work; you grabbed it once in a moment of daring, half-expecting to die, and a new dream furled out in front of you. At fourteen you know better than to think you'll find any more meaning out there than in District Nine, but at least you'll live and die on your own terms: not making tools you'll never be rich enough to use, not haunted by the shadow of the person people see when they look at you. Leaving your family will hurt, but you'll visit when it's safe. Maybe in the winter, when you can bring them food and fur from outside.

You don't spend all your time preparing, but you do know that real dreams are the kind you have to be willing to work for. In your room you write, revise, and rewrite lists of supplies. You practice building traps out near the fence; you always have to keep one eye and one ear alert for patrols, but it beats your parents scolding you for playing with something dangerous. (Arguing that it's not playing only gets you grounded.) In boring classes you pass the time considering things like the best time of year to leave—mid-spring, you've decided, to avoid as much rain as possible while giving yourself time to practice finding food before it gets scarce.

Sometimes you get as far as the gap. You hover there for what feels like hours with your feet itching and your heart pounding, a bag on your shoulder and your hair tied up, telling yourself it's time. It has to be time. Wait too long, and they'll fix the fence.

You always find a reason to go home. You don't like the look of the clouds rolling in from the east. If you're caught, your family might be punished. You forgot to tell Sal something important. None of them are lies, same as telling yourself you've never told your parents about picking a new name because you're proud of the one they gave you.

You dig up a lot of nicer truths to avoid admitting you're a coward.

* The listing isn't a mistake; since he's not out, he's in the check under what would be on his official documents. Please don't use that name outside of Reaping lists and the like.

I keep a list of initials I've already used here to try to get myself to branch out but A names are still holding me hostage, please send help

Apocope is a phonology term (deletion of segments at the end of an utterance) but he absolutely doesn't know that. he stumbled across it in a textbook or something and was like "hey, that word sounds cool. I want to be cool! what if I had a cool word for a name"; he didn't really mean for it to be permanent, but he's attached, at least for now.

probably going to age this kid with the site timeline! things will assuming he doesn't die in the Games get better for him; I'm not into making characters be miserable forever, these days. sometimes being fourteen is just [gestures expansively] like that.

Gamemaker Lauren Kinkade called this one <3