wren sinclair || district ten || fin

To go from being a happy-go-lucky child to a cold, calculating head of house with a penchant for always choosing logic over feelings and emotions wasn't nearly as seamless a transition as one might think. Which, since people usually don't think such a thing is even possible, says a lot as to how the last near-decade of her life has been for Wren Sinclair.

But she's never been the sort of person to choose a path simply because of how easy it is, anyways. How could she, when her simple, easy life was ripped out from under her feet before she could so much as imagine her tenth birthday? Her parents were the stability behind the Sinclair family of five, as good parents usually tend to be, and with their sudden illness and death, someone else had to step up and take the reigns. And it wouldn't be Dove, despite her sense of responsibility as the eldest, for she was too much of a big picture thinker to catch each and every possibility that could possibly befell the newly vulnerable trio. And Jay was out of the question from the start - her brother, while brilliant, had a one-track mind when it came to such things.

No, it would have to be her - her, to pull off the impossible and keep a family's livelihood (and indeed, the very lives of its inhabitants) afloat. And how, pray tell, was a nine year old supposed to do that?

Why, through her genius, strategic delegation, illusion, and a fair bit of luck, that's how.

It was Wren's idea to delegate the tasks based on efficiency. Dove had always been the friendliest of the three, the most personable, and though she had a temper no one was going to take a ten year old seriously - if anything, it would just endear her to the bleeding hearts out in the world. Jay had always loved working with the chickens even before their parents' passing, and it was him that they trusted the most of the three of them, so the tedious but streamlined task of maintaining their health fell to him. As for Wren? Well, she'd keep her family afloat and their business alive all at the same time - what the outside world didn't know wouldn't be used to hurt them, and what she did know could come in handy indeed.

After all, of the three of them, Wren was most aware as to what happened to parentless children like them. Both Mrs. and Mr. Sinclair were only children with no living family other than the three of them (which was why, she'd posthumously learned, they had insisted on having three kids so close to one another in age), so there were no relatives that existed in close relation, much less those that were willing to take them in. And the only other alternative was one of the local orphanages - and Wren, like her siblings, may have been naive to the greater world outside of their own four walls, but Wren, like her siblings, was not stupid. She knew what an orphanage was. She knew what happened to families like theirs in such a place. Worse, she knew what happened to kids like Jay who fell in their desperate clutches.

It wasn't a choice to stretch every neuron in her prodigious brain to save her family. It was a necessity. And through trial and almost as much error as could be allowed, the nine year old prodigy managed to hold her family together through the years. It was a far cry from the idea of studying abroad in District Six's finest college that her parents had envisioned for her way back when, but their dream had died with them.

This was hers. Keep her family safe and together at any cost.

At seventeen, what was once a tedious gamble for survival has turned into more of an art form, delicately balanced between metaphorical strings that make up the webs she weaves. In truth, for once, she has no idea what's to come in the next few years. In two years, all three of them will be of age and free of the reaping, and in five, they'll all be considered legally adults and the façade she's worked so hard to maintain will no longer be necessary. But planning for the future has never been her way - she keeps her eyes firmly set on the present, not one minute forward and not one back. And in a way, she's envious of her siblings. Dove's the free spirit, the one most likely to make something of themselves out of the three of them, while Jay's got his diligent spirit and a certain innocence to the ways of the world that leaves so much to be discovered and a genuine method to find it. She, by comparison, has given everything to keep her family afloat. There won't be much in the way of choice for Wren Sinclair in a few years time.

But she doesn't mind. They're a team. A family. And the Sinclairs always take care of their own, whatever the cost.

ripred_bot over here too!