Author Games: The Last Cannon

TASK ONE: Reaping Entries

District 2 Female - VALERIA THRACIUS [3]

Come on, Val; this is what you were born to achieve. Greatness is just within your reach. Reach out and take it.

Don't you dare do it, love. It's not worth it. Believe me.

Just as they always do, the voices of my parents dance around my head, both trying to win me over to their side. Today, however, they are far more insistent than they have ever been. For years I have put off telling them who I choose, though I have known far longer than either of them could begin to guess. Now I need to make my final decision, and the thought of that is something that utterly terrifies me. But, I'd be lying to say there wasn't something thrilling that comes with it - I suppose it's true that fear always brings with it a little bit of excitement.

Before me, the District Square is beautiful. I've always tried to avoid thinking about Reapings, but today its entire marvel stands before me. I see row after row of teenagers stretch in front of our marble buildings, different levels of excitements varying through them. Even the children who have just started training - the twelvies, as we call them - stand with a certain determination. In a few years, it will be their turn, and they will be ready. Some of the older kids stand with a look of certain defeat to them; just by looking, it is clear they were not chosen to participate. That honour belongs to me.

It's no honour.

Even without her words, and even though her voice sounds like mine when it is in my head, I could recognize my mother anywhere. Her sentences are short and to the point like nothing I have ever known. Once upon a time, supposedly, she surrounded herself by so much artifice that she could have rivalled even the most ridiculous of girls from One, but that is not the woman I know. She who I call my mother can barely get even the most basic of words out, only ever bothering to do so when she absolutely needs to. These times usually revolve around me; nothing else matters much to her anymore.

The line moves forward and I follow it unconsciously: this is as routine an action to me as combing my hair or washing my face - maybe more so, in fact. I sign myself in for Training or a Reaping every day. That most definitely cannot be said about taking care of my looks. It isn't until I notice that I'm right in front of the stand that I begin to speak in the most robotic of voices.

"Thracius, Valeria."

"I know."

The joking tone that addresses me can't belong to anybody but Instructor Milena. Though nobody knows her name, she has a certain openness to her that's made her feel like a friend despite how closed off I tend to be. Still, I wish I was faced with anybody but her at this moment; I have absolutely no wanting to socialize even with those I consider closest. Knowing her, however, this is not a choice that is up to me.

"Big day, huh?"

There's a certain pride to the way she speaks this word, almost as if she had won the Tournament herself. I suppose to her this is pretty much the same thing; from the start, I was her protégée, and her gamble on me, by all appearances so far, has paid off. While many other instructors avoided me like the plain - something about my personality, according to the gossip mill - she's never been the type to train people based on who she likes. She's the best because she trains those who she thinks will be the best.

I am supposed to be the best.

'Yeah, I suppose it is," I say, though my voice is flat. I'm by no stretch of the word a good liar, and that much has been clear for ages. But Instructor Milena doesn't budge and doesn't pry; she knows me enough to know I'm not going to say the things that are most on my mind - just all the small ones nobody actually wants to hear.