A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Reaping - Thalia

Thalia

“Look on the bright side.”

I glare at Shell. My agent always looks on the bright side, especially if there’s money involved. “What bright side?”

“We’ll be back in business once all this is over!”

“Oh. That bright side. Right.”

“I’m sure we can get something while we’re waiting, Thalia dear,” she says, patting me on the shoulder. “There’s bound to be something, even if it’s just advertisement work.”

I sigh and flop back over the couch. Since they shut the old arenas I’ve had no work and it’s dull. There’s nothing but replays on the holo-screens. Around me the Silver sector is buzzing, the theaters packed to the rafters every night, the rehearsal studios fully booked, the movie sets thriving, and I’m not part of it. I go out to parties and premieres just like always but it’s inevitable that someone will ask me what I’m working on and I have to say nothing and in Silver that’s the same as saying you’re bad at what you do.

Or, of course, I could lie. I’m an actor, a proper one. Lying is what I do. Which is why Shell doesn’t know how worried I am about these reapings. I’ve pretended to be a tribute so many times that I don’t think I’d be able to be a tribute as myself. And I know I wouldn’t be able to fight.

“Oh, don’t look so glum, dear!” Shell chirps, perching delicately on the couch next to me. “I know you don’t like advertising much but it’s about time you started showing your talent in the Capitol. You could be on every holo-screen…”

“Advertising is for models.”

Her glossy pink grin doesn’t even twitch. “The models work very hard.”

“Oh yes,” I say. “It’s such hard work to pout and smile at a camera. They should try choreographed fight scenes and rolling around in mud – live. With people right there watching so there’s no second takes if you don’t happen to smile in quite the right way.”

Shell knows all this. She’s been my agent since I was thirteen and was first scouted for the re-enactment circuit and she knows all my gripes, everything that irritates me and makes me want to tear my hair out with frustration. Don’t get me wrong; I love my job. But it doesn’t seem right that the Platinum-sector models get all the attention.

Shell knows this, but it doesn’t stop her sticking up for the brainless robots plastered all over our holo-screens. She could have been a model herself, in her younger days, though I’m not sure exactly how old she is. She’s tall, taller than almost anybody I know, and slim, and her face is one of those that you have to stop and look twice at because it’s so impossibly beautiful that it’s nearly ugly. When we go out to events she wears flowing silver dresses like Pandora and everybody watches her out of the corners of their eyes.

Right now, though, we’re not being watched and so she’s in a pair of soft dark bootcuts and a pale blue shirt, with her hair piled up on top of her head and held in place with a few pins. She twiddles with a strand and sighs. “Re-enactments aren’t for everybody, dear.”

That explains why there’s so few of us. I must know just about everybody on the circuit by now.

Oblivious to the fact that I don’t care, Shell carries on. “Besides, I hear Titan Illiant is looking for a co-partner for his latest…”

“Shell, I said no.”

She looks hurt so I turn away and peer through the window tint. My apartment is a tiny little studio flat in Innovation Towers and if I look right I can see down the Gloria Boulevard, with its rows of palm trees, to where the Silver sector reaping stage is being set up. It is surrounded by a crowd of people eager to offer their own opinions, all of whom seem to be purposefully ignoring what it’s actually for. Typical Silver (unofficial sector motto – ‘everybody is entitled to my opinion’). I would probably be the same if my job didn’t bring me face-to-face with the Games every day.