The Hunger Games - ON HOLD

Hi guys! I just wanted to say thanks for stopping by to read this, first of all... and enjoy! 

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I wake up to the sun shining brightly through our small window. My mother is not in her bed on the opposite side of the room, and my older brother, Bay, is sitting in the chair, staring out the window. He hears me getting up, and turns and smiles.

“Hey,” he says. “You’re the last one up. You better get hunting.”

I nod, and yawn. Then Bay leaves the room while I get dressed into my trousers and green shirt. I go through to the kitchen, where my mother is busy making some lunch for us.

“You should eat something before you go, Bryony,” says my mother, but dismiss her suggestion with a wave of my hand.

“No, it’s OK. I’ll just go to my pear tree and eat some.” It’s only my mother that calls me that. My father, brother and all my other friends call me Bri, and I’m more used to that.

“Where’s–" I begin, but my mother interrupts.

“You’re father is out," my mother says. That's all she tells me. For now.

We live in District 7. Lumber. Right now, my father is probably throwing around axes and chopping wood.

I leave the house, and head over to the woods. As usual, the electric fence that protects the district from unwanted predators is humming with electricity, but I know a way to get around it.

To my left lies a big oak tree with low hanging branches, and one of these branches is just low enough for me to get a grip. I haul myself up onto it, and then climb down onto the other side of the fence. Because I live in District 7, I’m good at throwing axes, but I’m more accurate with a bow and arrow. I retrieve my bow from the hollow log I keep it in, and then get my sheath of arrows from under a log. I bend down and grab some leaves and let go of them in the wind to see which way it is blowing. Good. I’m downwind, which means the wind is blowing towards me.

“Hey Bri!” a voice calls. I turn towards my best friend, Larch, putting my finger to my lips. He just laughs. “Can’t see any prey at the moment, Bri.”

Suddenly I see two rabbits run away at the sound of Larch’s voice. I quickly put an arrow to my bow, but the rabbits are too far away now. I turn to Larch, scowling. He shrugs, and says, “I’ll make up for it. Here,” he says, picking up a stone. He chucked it into some bushes, and some sort of birds flew out, squawking loudly. I aim, then let go of the arrow. It hits one, and the bird falls to the ground. I grin at Larch, and then we run over to retrieve it.

It’s a pheasant; a good plump one too. After we store it in our special hollow tree, we go to my pear tree like I promised my mother we would. We each eat one, then picked four each and put them in our backpacks. We pick some greens, which include nettles, dandelions, asparagus and cattail. We also collect some more fruit; gooseberries, dewberries and apples. I shoot a squirrel, while Larch kills a wild turkey by throwing his axe. He’s much better with an axe than I am.

We go to our special clearing in the middle of the woods. It’s probably the most beautiful place in District 7. In the middle of it is a massive weeping willow, shielding us from the outside. The grass is very green, and running beside it which is the clearest blue I have ever seen.

I go over to the willow, and climb up it to retrieve our spears. I drop them to the ground, then clamber down. We spear five, and share one now.

“How many times is your name in there now?” Larch asks me.

I swallow, and say, “Thirty six. Yours?”

“Forty two.”

I sigh. “The odds aren’t in our favour, are they.” It’s a rhetorical question. This is Larch’s last year. My second-to-last.

Without talking, we just observe to river running by, we watch the flickering fish swim in the current. We then get up and head back to the district, stopping to collect the turkey, pheasant and squirrel on the way back.

We sell the squirrel to the butcher and half the fruits to the mayor of our district, then divide the rest of the fruit and the greens between us, while Larch takes the pheasant and I take the turkey. Then we return home.