Finnick's Games - The 65th Hunger Games

Prologue

The low-pitched, monotonous alarm swells across the village. It signals 5:00 AM, the start of the day. In March, at least. In my village, one of the few fisherman-only villages of my District.

I beat the alarm by at least ten minutes, like I do every morning. These ten minutes are precious; it's six-hundred seconds of having well and truly my own space. My own time to sit on the gnarled wooden chest under my bedroom window and survey the view - it's still dark, so there isn't ever much to survey - but I do, and it looks like this: a tight-knit, log-cabin village laying across a rocky, somewhat wooded piece of land. Ocean birds swoop groggily through the sky - they precede the morning alarms like me.

Me and these birds that I watch stretch their wings after an unnoteworthy night spend these 10 minutes together. I, at least, am thinking about the day that's about to begin. This time of year is usually one of the best in the ocean; we've had a bountiful catch this last week, no problem meeting our quotas. But it isn't not hard-earned. It's long hours of labor, often in the cold, always in the wet, casting and re-casting heavy nets into salty deep blue swells. Dragging hundreds of pounds of squirming, silvery creatures into the boat and collapsing on the deck with the effort. Sometimes you feel like a fish yourself, lying there heaving for air among a mob of suffocating flounders. I expect today to be much of the same.

As soon as the alarm airs, the tiny windows of my neighbors' cabins begin glinting gold. No one misses a second. Everyone will be automatically donning their layers - hand-me-down thermals and thick wool knits - and brushing their teeth; marching downstairs in heavily socked feet, dutifully, setting the watered oats on the stove. It's what Dad does, anyways.

He stands over the large pot, stirring mechanically. If there's one thing he does for his kids, it's keep them fed. My oldest sibling, Aiven, has been trying to shift the responsibility of cooking to her own shoulders for years, but Dad likes his rituals. He says it's because no one can cook like he can, but that's only a bluff. In truth, Dad needs to compensate for the lack of nurturing he displays in every other aspect of parenthood.

And I'm not going to intervene. I couldn't fry an egg to save my life.

Ron is already sat at the kitchen table, sharpening the knife he uses to cut through fishing lines. At sixteen years old, he likes to think that being the oldest male sibling is enough to grant him the next highest authority over the family. He calls himself a "breadwinner", and minimizes Aiven to "another mouth to feed". It's the opposite, really. While Ron relies on arrogance to give him a leg up, Aiven, at nineteen, has skills and qualities he couldn't procure in a lifetime. Now out of school, safe from the Reaping, she's a full-time fisherwoman, and a talented one, too. She stands almost as tall as Dad, about the same height as Ron, and shares the same genetic qualities of my family: flax or copper hair, skin with a warm honeyed tone, green-blue eyes. But that's where the similarities between her, Dad, and Ron finish. Both Dad and Ron are skinny - strong, yes, but without much physical advantage to aid. Aiven, in contrast, has tight, hard muscles that contract impressively while on the boats. She consistently outperforms Ron in every single aspect, and could take him down in a fight within a matter of seconds. In fact, she has. There's been a fair few spats between the two oldest siblings that have resulted in Ron pinned to the floor, demanding in a tone higher than his station that she get off him. She sits on him longer than she needs to, long after the point's been proven. Then she lets him go.

I think it's this continued bruising of Ron's ego that enrages him so.

He takes after Dad in the way of ignoring me. I'm not greeted - never greeted - when I join them in the kitchen every morning. Silently, I put the kettle on to boil and prepare six mugs of tea for the family - aside from Aiven, Ron, and me, there's also Terris, who will be joining the Reaping for the first time this year, and Mari, only 5. Doing the tea is my meek way of showing Dad that I'm helpful.