colt kingswell | district one | cb

 COLT KINGSWELL

His mother told him he was born with a sunshine smile, made up of belly laughs and balled fists. Dawn broke through a cloudy horizon when they named the first of many little miracles: Colt Kingswell. Neither of his moms kept their last name when they married, something about escaping blood-stained legacies of decades past. One is rampant with the power hungry and cruel, his mothers wanted to raise their family outside of it all.

Colt's pretty sure he was born to be a big brother. At school his peers always talked like being the eldest was some kind of terrible curse but he cannot look into Lotus' eyes and see anything more than the most wonderful kind of magic. They celebrated his twelfth birthday this year. Hard as he tried to bear that sunshine smile that day, the warmth never quite reached his eyes.

He can see it in the photo they took, all gathered around an excited little boy with a sloppily handmade cake. The fear that cut deep enough to make his mothers worry. They know him so well. They know him too well.

Lotus marks four of six siblings in the Reaping and he's only got two years left alongside them.

They are not careers. That is his family's pride, forged by a new name and embroidered by kindness and compassion. His moms tried, they really did, to raise them just far enough outside the City that they'd never know what they were supposed to be.

It'd kill them if they knew where Colt goes after dark, silhouette pressed against the silvery shroud of a moonlight scowl. He wears sweaters to hide the way training has changed his body for better or for worse.

Colt's pretty sure he was born to be a big brother, he's doing everything he can to protect them.

Even if that means lying, too.