Post by countlivin on Apr 23, 2019 4:12:40 GMT
Chapter 2: The Family Legacy
Aura Cantarella
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they said murdered three?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree."
Aura set her guitar down by the oaken chair. She was done with the final verse of the song. It was among her favorites, and one that her two younger brothers asked for many nights before bed. She would gladly accept the request. She often wondered why they wanted so badly to hear such a morbid song, but Corvin and Barker were still to young to listen for anything more than melody. She wished she could be so naïve.
Her story was a hard one. She was born into a life of luxury, at least in comparison to the rest of the families in District Seven. All her life, she had expectations of grandeur forced on her, by her mother and father, until birthing her youngest brother proved too much for Mom. She received much scorn from her peers for being a snotty brat, but in truth, she was the farthest from that. Although, she didn't force herself into the idea of being innocent and sweet either. The only thing she could say with precise certainty about herself was that she was, in fact, Aura Cantarella.
"Are you coming to the tree? Where they strung up a man… They said murdered three…" started Barker, the five-year-old. That wasn't exactly how the song went, but with something about the way the boy's mop of golden-brown hair bounced up and down jovially when he said it, Aura couldn't help but forgive him.
"That's not how the song goes," Corvin scold him. He had the same shade of hair, but was three years older. "She just sang it. Don't you remember?"
"Corvin, lay off him," she said. "Want to see something else cool, guys?"
"Yeah," they chimed in unison.
Aura fingered through the leather pack she'd purchased from the Lumberyard that afternoon, and retrieved an entire loaf of bread. The boys' faces lit up instantly; it was banana bread. It was their favorite, just like anyone else with the last name Cantarella. "Where did you get this, sis?" Corvin asked, struggling to hold his excitement.
"Bought it in the Lumberyard earlier today," Aura smiled. It was a lie, but she wasn't going to reveal to them what they need not know.
"Can we eat it now?" Barker asked enthusiastically.
Aura laughed. "Banana bread? At ten in the evening? No, you can have it in the morning for breakfast. Speaking of which, I think this is late enough for the two of you," she stood up from her chair and took them lovingly by the collars to the twin bedroom at the end of the hall.
"Can you sing us one more song?" Barker asked, pointing at Aura's old, rusty guitar. "Sometimes I get nightmares."
She squatted down to meet her baby brother face to face. "Now, listen, buddy—there's a reason I only sing you one a night. What do you think causes the nightmares?"
"The monsters in my room…" he replied shakily.
She shook her head and pounded her hand against the wall, proving how sturdy it was. "There aren't any monsters in your room. All the monsters are out there, behind the walls."
But at that moment, the front door slid open with a creak and her father, Rowan Cantarella, strode into the home looking as drunk as he did every other night. He clumsily withdrew one of the chairs from the kitchen table and plunged into it, almost shattering his bottle of whiskey on the way down.
"Int here, you're safe," Aura continued, trying to ignore Dad for a moment. "Now, go in. Turn the lights out. Go to sleep. You'll be fine."
Barker turned around and obeyed, but his brother lagged behind. "But what about—"
"I'll deal with this. Just go to bed. Get some rest, and close the door," Aura commanded him. He let out a brief sigh, and retreated to the boys' room behind him.
"Deal with this?" Dad quoted, setting the bottle of smelly alcohol down. "God, Aura, I'm your father, not some solicitor trash…"
"What are you doing?" Aura glared angrily at him, standing firmly beside the hallway. He didn't answer. "Dad, what are you doing here?"
"This is my home, girl," he sneered. "I get every right to sit down in this chair. In fact, I got more right than you. I won this house, not you. I'm the reason we aren't out on the street right this very moment, fending for ourselves."
"Don't pull that 'I'm a victor' charade with me again. I don't want to hear it," she steamed. "You stay out and do God knows what on most nights, and on the others, you limp back home so piss drunk you can't even see straight and sell me the same story about how you do all of it for the family. I want you to walk straight into your sons' room and tell them exactly what you told me."
He looked up with his yellowed eyes, enraged. "I am your father, Aura, and I deserve your respect. And both of us know I can hold my liquor."
She stormed into a seat across from her father, angrily eyeing the bottle of whiskey. I should just take it away, she thought, but that will just escalate things further. "Oh, you deserve something, but it definitely isn't respect."
"What's gotten into you today, girl? Why won't you get off my back?" he asked roughly, running a hand over his patchy gray beard.
A tear fell from Aura's eye. She didn't mean for it to, but there it was. "Carla's mom was taken today."
His eyes became wider than they had already been. "Carla? Honey… What happened?"
"They made her an avox, Dad…" She cried, turning away from him. They had taken out the woman's tongue so she could no longer speak out against the Capitol, and shipped her off to be a slave somewhere. Something like that made it hard not to cry.
"Well, I guess it's good I didn't take you out for training today," Dad said, and then belched loudly. "You're welcome."
"Why do you have to be like this?" she asked in distress, strands of disarrayed brunette hair hanging down in her face. "Why do you take me out training day after day? Is it fun to watch me throw knives at stumps until my arms feel like they're being put through a wood chipper? Is it fun to make me kill and cook rabbits all day? We don't even eat them…"
His eyes simpered with rage, but he held himself under control. "I do this for us, Aura, and to uphold our legacy. I won the Games. Your Uncle Crispin won the Games too. If your name is Cantarella, winning the Games is your destiny. Winning is in your blood."
"Just like it was in Ava's blood, Dad?"
His voice was shot dead with shock. After regaining relative composure, he replied, "Ava was a mistake. I didn't train her hard enough. I plan to fix that with you."
"Dad!" Why won't he listen? "Ava didn't just die in the Games, she killed herself! Her winning blood is still all over that boulder on that mountain. How can you tell me she was a mistake? The mistake was training her at all… Filling her mind with hopes of fulfilling a destiny that wasn't hers."
Dad's face was purpling. "Aura! Just shut up and listen to what I have to say." Aura crossed her arms reluctantly and sat back in her creaking seat. "I know I told you that you would volunteer on your eighteenth year, but I was just thinking today, what does that really accomplish? Volunteer this year. You're seventeen. They might judge you fairer if you're younger."
"You're not serious…" Aura gasped. "You're going to make me volunteer next week? You told me I had until I was eighteen!"
"Well, I changed my mind," he shook his head. "I was fifteen when I won my Games. You have an entire two year advantage on me. And look at Crispin! He was the only twelve-year-old ever to win."
Aura rested her head in her palms and on the table in front of her. She couldn't believe this. It had always been Dad's plan to have his children volunteer, but this was taking it too far. "Dad, Crispin is insane. You can't be in the same room with him for more than a couple minutes without him starting to talk about knives and killing things. Remember what happened to Corvin the last time you had him over?"
"Crispin is not the issue. You are," he said. "You're going to volunteer next week."
"I'm not."
"You are. The moment they call someone else's name, you're going to shout at the top of your lungs and claim the place as your own. This is your destiny."
"No. It's not."
"Honey, why are you protesting so hard against bringing your family honor?" He looked down at the table in frustration, at the place where his fists had made a crack the last time he'd gotten angry. His eyes found the loaf of banana bread she had placed there. The gears in his drunken mind turned faster than Aura would have thought. "Aura, where did you get that?"
"I… applied for rations earlier today," she admitted. She wanted to think of a lie to tell him, but then again, the thought of how furious he would be was enough incentive to tell him the truth. He looked confused, but he knew exactly what had happened. She had put her name into the Reaping more times for extra provisions provided by the Peacekeepers. But with the man pushing her to volunteer so relentlessly for the past few years, she couldn't help but want to be chosen by the Reaping, just to smite him.
"You… what?" he spoke through his teeth.
"I went and applied for ration at the Justice Building this morning."
Their eye contact didn't waver as the man spoke. "I see. And how many times did you put in your name?"
"One hundred and thirty," she lied. She had actually put her name in only thirty times, but she was so angry with her father that she couldn't resist making him angrier.
"Aura, you do understand that if you are chosen by the Reaping, all of this effort will become worthless, right? Someone will volunteer. Or if they don't, you'll appear innocent. People can't name you a hero if you didn't ask to be one…"
"I understand," she stated plainly.
"You put your name into the Reaping a hundred and thirty times… for a loaf of damn BREAD?" He stood up and threw his whisky bottle against the wall, tearing the lilac wallpaper. "That's gotta be a tenth of the entire bowl! What gives you the RIGHT to—"
"What gives you the right to gamble with my life?" Aura shot back quietly, remaining calmly in her seat. Her fury was now manifesting itself in deep resentments rather than outright anger. Her father slumped back in his seat. She saw his crazed eyes glance past her and find Barker standing just outside his door, fearful as a child could be.
"Dad?" he whimpered.
"Go back to bed, Barker," Aura and her father declared at the same time. Once the boy had closed the door behind him, her father lowered his voice.
"Fine, hon, you win. You don't have to volunteer. But two victors in the family is not going to cut it. No, we need three." He sighed, glancing back to the boys' room. "I guess I'll have to train one of them."
"Don't you dare," Aura spat, pointing a shaky finger. "Those boys are too sweet to be ruined by a world like this. You're not going to take that away from them."
"No. You are."
75% of readers chose to [A. Agree to volunteer.]
He stood up in guarded silence and slid toward the door. As he placed his hand on the doorknob, Aura stood up, cursing herself all the while.
"Wait, Dad!" Aura called out just as he let in the chilly night. He paused and turned, waiting expectantly. Aura closed her eyes and sucked in her gut. "I volunteer as tribute…"
Dad smiled wide enough to show off his gold tooth and slammed the door shut. "There you go! The words aren't that hard to say. Just pray you say them fast enough next week."
"Is that a threat?" Aura frowned.
"I don't threaten my children, Aura," he said, leaning against the old wall with the hole through it.
"Right…" she pressed her fingers to her temple to rub the stress away "You prematurely discipline them… Dad, you've been in the arena. Tell me what was so glorious about it that you want to get back so badly."
"The winnings, Aura," he replied easily, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The winnings are how this family survives. We're running low on rations from Crispin's win. The settlement is a lot, but it can't easily support a family of five."
The winnings aren't worth it," Aura told him, lifting her head. "If we have to, we should sell this house and live out on the street if it means not going into the arena."
"Well, that's not going to happen." He stepped over to inspect the wall where the wall paper had torn and began picking out shards of glass. He cut himself twice.
"You used to be a good man," Aura said. "What happened?"
"I'm not a bad man, honey," he sighed, exasperated. "You know why I do the things I do. I do them to support this family. With what happened to Ava… and your mother… It sometimes gets pretty hard to do just that, but know everything I do is in your interests."
"Is that why you're carting me off to die?" she shot at him, hoping to wound.
"Aura, listen to me!" he shouted, spit flying brown from his mouth. He slammed his fist into the wall and made another hole. "You're making this really difficult. I'm not sending you to die. I'm sending you to win."
Aura stood up from the table, gaining a slight height advantage. "You and I both know there's no realistic chance that will happen."
"Not with that attitude," he said, shaking his finger. "No, we're going to train nonstop starting tomorrow. Get some rest, because we're going to be up at the crack of dawn." Aura danced around the table and brushed past her father's shoulder hard, not answering him. "Hey, I'm talking to you!" Aura put her hand on the brass doorknob and gave it an aggressive twist. She gave one last glance at her father before she left. "Where are you going?"
Tears began to leak steadily from her eyes. "I hate you…" she whispered. She caught a glimpse of his face just before she slammed the door on it. It wasn't one of anger or confusion, but genuine hurt. It might have been the first she'd ever seen on him since Ava died. She found she didn't care.
She strutted out into the evening, accompanied by a windy spring chill and her thoughts. She had forgotten her coat, but she wasn't going back for it now. The Victor's Village was quiet this time of night, even from Crispin's house down the way. His raucous parties wouldn't have started yet. Generally, the ones who lived here were able to sleep at night, having authentic beds to lie on instead of cots and straw. The rest of District Seven didn't have the luxury.
The full moon shone brightly over Aura's home. Sometimes she would gaze upon it and become envious. It was so far away from the world she called home. It didn't have to deal with the pressure that it meant to live in Panem. It didn't have to deal with the Hunger Games.
End of Chapter 2
Aura Cantarella
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they said murdered three?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree."
Aura set her guitar down by the oaken chair. She was done with the final verse of the song. It was among her favorites, and one that her two younger brothers asked for many nights before bed. She would gladly accept the request. She often wondered why they wanted so badly to hear such a morbid song, but Corvin and Barker were still to young to listen for anything more than melody. She wished she could be so naïve.
Her story was a hard one. She was born into a life of luxury, at least in comparison to the rest of the families in District Seven. All her life, she had expectations of grandeur forced on her, by her mother and father, until birthing her youngest brother proved too much for Mom. She received much scorn from her peers for being a snotty brat, but in truth, she was the farthest from that. Although, she didn't force herself into the idea of being innocent and sweet either. The only thing she could say with precise certainty about herself was that she was, in fact, Aura Cantarella.
"Are you coming to the tree? Where they strung up a man… They said murdered three…" started Barker, the five-year-old. That wasn't exactly how the song went, but with something about the way the boy's mop of golden-brown hair bounced up and down jovially when he said it, Aura couldn't help but forgive him.
"That's not how the song goes," Corvin scold him. He had the same shade of hair, but was three years older. "She just sang it. Don't you remember?"
"Corvin, lay off him," she said. "Want to see something else cool, guys?"
"Yeah," they chimed in unison.
Aura fingered through the leather pack she'd purchased from the Lumberyard that afternoon, and retrieved an entire loaf of bread. The boys' faces lit up instantly; it was banana bread. It was their favorite, just like anyone else with the last name Cantarella. "Where did you get this, sis?" Corvin asked, struggling to hold his excitement.
"Bought it in the Lumberyard earlier today," Aura smiled. It was a lie, but she wasn't going to reveal to them what they need not know.
"Can we eat it now?" Barker asked enthusiastically.
Aura laughed. "Banana bread? At ten in the evening? No, you can have it in the morning for breakfast. Speaking of which, I think this is late enough for the two of you," she stood up from her chair and took them lovingly by the collars to the twin bedroom at the end of the hall.
"Can you sing us one more song?" Barker asked, pointing at Aura's old, rusty guitar. "Sometimes I get nightmares."
She squatted down to meet her baby brother face to face. "Now, listen, buddy—there's a reason I only sing you one a night. What do you think causes the nightmares?"
"The monsters in my room…" he replied shakily.
She shook her head and pounded her hand against the wall, proving how sturdy it was. "There aren't any monsters in your room. All the monsters are out there, behind the walls."
But at that moment, the front door slid open with a creak and her father, Rowan Cantarella, strode into the home looking as drunk as he did every other night. He clumsily withdrew one of the chairs from the kitchen table and plunged into it, almost shattering his bottle of whiskey on the way down.
"Int here, you're safe," Aura continued, trying to ignore Dad for a moment. "Now, go in. Turn the lights out. Go to sleep. You'll be fine."
Barker turned around and obeyed, but his brother lagged behind. "But what about—"
"I'll deal with this. Just go to bed. Get some rest, and close the door," Aura commanded him. He let out a brief sigh, and retreated to the boys' room behind him.
"Deal with this?" Dad quoted, setting the bottle of smelly alcohol down. "God, Aura, I'm your father, not some solicitor trash…"
"What are you doing?" Aura glared angrily at him, standing firmly beside the hallway. He didn't answer. "Dad, what are you doing here?"
"This is my home, girl," he sneered. "I get every right to sit down in this chair. In fact, I got more right than you. I won this house, not you. I'm the reason we aren't out on the street right this very moment, fending for ourselves."
"Don't pull that 'I'm a victor' charade with me again. I don't want to hear it," she steamed. "You stay out and do God knows what on most nights, and on the others, you limp back home so piss drunk you can't even see straight and sell me the same story about how you do all of it for the family. I want you to walk straight into your sons' room and tell them exactly what you told me."
He looked up with his yellowed eyes, enraged. "I am your father, Aura, and I deserve your respect. And both of us know I can hold my liquor."
She stormed into a seat across from her father, angrily eyeing the bottle of whiskey. I should just take it away, she thought, but that will just escalate things further. "Oh, you deserve something, but it definitely isn't respect."
"What's gotten into you today, girl? Why won't you get off my back?" he asked roughly, running a hand over his patchy gray beard.
A tear fell from Aura's eye. She didn't mean for it to, but there it was. "Carla's mom was taken today."
His eyes became wider than they had already been. "Carla? Honey… What happened?"
"They made her an avox, Dad…" She cried, turning away from him. They had taken out the woman's tongue so she could no longer speak out against the Capitol, and shipped her off to be a slave somewhere. Something like that made it hard not to cry.
"Well, I guess it's good I didn't take you out for training today," Dad said, and then belched loudly. "You're welcome."
"Why do you have to be like this?" she asked in distress, strands of disarrayed brunette hair hanging down in her face. "Why do you take me out training day after day? Is it fun to watch me throw knives at stumps until my arms feel like they're being put through a wood chipper? Is it fun to make me kill and cook rabbits all day? We don't even eat them…"
His eyes simpered with rage, but he held himself under control. "I do this for us, Aura, and to uphold our legacy. I won the Games. Your Uncle Crispin won the Games too. If your name is Cantarella, winning the Games is your destiny. Winning is in your blood."
"Just like it was in Ava's blood, Dad?"
His voice was shot dead with shock. After regaining relative composure, he replied, "Ava was a mistake. I didn't train her hard enough. I plan to fix that with you."
"Dad!" Why won't he listen? "Ava didn't just die in the Games, she killed herself! Her winning blood is still all over that boulder on that mountain. How can you tell me she was a mistake? The mistake was training her at all… Filling her mind with hopes of fulfilling a destiny that wasn't hers."
Dad's face was purpling. "Aura! Just shut up and listen to what I have to say." Aura crossed her arms reluctantly and sat back in her creaking seat. "I know I told you that you would volunteer on your eighteenth year, but I was just thinking today, what does that really accomplish? Volunteer this year. You're seventeen. They might judge you fairer if you're younger."
"You're not serious…" Aura gasped. "You're going to make me volunteer next week? You told me I had until I was eighteen!"
"Well, I changed my mind," he shook his head. "I was fifteen when I won my Games. You have an entire two year advantage on me. And look at Crispin! He was the only twelve-year-old ever to win."
Aura rested her head in her palms and on the table in front of her. She couldn't believe this. It had always been Dad's plan to have his children volunteer, but this was taking it too far. "Dad, Crispin is insane. You can't be in the same room with him for more than a couple minutes without him starting to talk about knives and killing things. Remember what happened to Corvin the last time you had him over?"
"Crispin is not the issue. You are," he said. "You're going to volunteer next week."
"I'm not."
"You are. The moment they call someone else's name, you're going to shout at the top of your lungs and claim the place as your own. This is your destiny."
"No. It's not."
"Honey, why are you protesting so hard against bringing your family honor?" He looked down at the table in frustration, at the place where his fists had made a crack the last time he'd gotten angry. His eyes found the loaf of banana bread she had placed there. The gears in his drunken mind turned faster than Aura would have thought. "Aura, where did you get that?"
"I… applied for rations earlier today," she admitted. She wanted to think of a lie to tell him, but then again, the thought of how furious he would be was enough incentive to tell him the truth. He looked confused, but he knew exactly what had happened. She had put her name into the Reaping more times for extra provisions provided by the Peacekeepers. But with the man pushing her to volunteer so relentlessly for the past few years, she couldn't help but want to be chosen by the Reaping, just to smite him.
"You… what?" he spoke through his teeth.
"I went and applied for ration at the Justice Building this morning."
Their eye contact didn't waver as the man spoke. "I see. And how many times did you put in your name?"
"One hundred and thirty," she lied. She had actually put her name in only thirty times, but she was so angry with her father that she couldn't resist making him angrier.
"Aura, you do understand that if you are chosen by the Reaping, all of this effort will become worthless, right? Someone will volunteer. Or if they don't, you'll appear innocent. People can't name you a hero if you didn't ask to be one…"
"I understand," she stated plainly.
"You put your name into the Reaping a hundred and thirty times… for a loaf of damn BREAD?" He stood up and threw his whisky bottle against the wall, tearing the lilac wallpaper. "That's gotta be a tenth of the entire bowl! What gives you the RIGHT to—"
"What gives you the right to gamble with my life?" Aura shot back quietly, remaining calmly in her seat. Her fury was now manifesting itself in deep resentments rather than outright anger. Her father slumped back in his seat. She saw his crazed eyes glance past her and find Barker standing just outside his door, fearful as a child could be.
"Dad?" he whimpered.
"Go back to bed, Barker," Aura and her father declared at the same time. Once the boy had closed the door behind him, her father lowered his voice.
"Fine, hon, you win. You don't have to volunteer. But two victors in the family is not going to cut it. No, we need three." He sighed, glancing back to the boys' room. "I guess I'll have to train one of them."
"Don't you dare," Aura spat, pointing a shaky finger. "Those boys are too sweet to be ruined by a world like this. You're not going to take that away from them."
"No. You are."
75% of readers chose to [A. Agree to volunteer.]
He stood up in guarded silence and slid toward the door. As he placed his hand on the doorknob, Aura stood up, cursing herself all the while.
"Wait, Dad!" Aura called out just as he let in the chilly night. He paused and turned, waiting expectantly. Aura closed her eyes and sucked in her gut. "I volunteer as tribute…"
Dad smiled wide enough to show off his gold tooth and slammed the door shut. "There you go! The words aren't that hard to say. Just pray you say them fast enough next week."
"Is that a threat?" Aura frowned.
"I don't threaten my children, Aura," he said, leaning against the old wall with the hole through it.
"Right…" she pressed her fingers to her temple to rub the stress away "You prematurely discipline them… Dad, you've been in the arena. Tell me what was so glorious about it that you want to get back so badly."
"The winnings, Aura," he replied easily, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The winnings are how this family survives. We're running low on rations from Crispin's win. The settlement is a lot, but it can't easily support a family of five."
The winnings aren't worth it," Aura told him, lifting her head. "If we have to, we should sell this house and live out on the street if it means not going into the arena."
"Well, that's not going to happen." He stepped over to inspect the wall where the wall paper had torn and began picking out shards of glass. He cut himself twice.
"You used to be a good man," Aura said. "What happened?"
"I'm not a bad man, honey," he sighed, exasperated. "You know why I do the things I do. I do them to support this family. With what happened to Ava… and your mother… It sometimes gets pretty hard to do just that, but know everything I do is in your interests."
"Is that why you're carting me off to die?" she shot at him, hoping to wound.
"Aura, listen to me!" he shouted, spit flying brown from his mouth. He slammed his fist into the wall and made another hole. "You're making this really difficult. I'm not sending you to die. I'm sending you to win."
Aura stood up from the table, gaining a slight height advantage. "You and I both know there's no realistic chance that will happen."
"Not with that attitude," he said, shaking his finger. "No, we're going to train nonstop starting tomorrow. Get some rest, because we're going to be up at the crack of dawn." Aura danced around the table and brushed past her father's shoulder hard, not answering him. "Hey, I'm talking to you!" Aura put her hand on the brass doorknob and gave it an aggressive twist. She gave one last glance at her father before she left. "Where are you going?"
Tears began to leak steadily from her eyes. "I hate you…" she whispered. She caught a glimpse of his face just before she slammed the door on it. It wasn't one of anger or confusion, but genuine hurt. It might have been the first she'd ever seen on him since Ava died. She found she didn't care.
She strutted out into the evening, accompanied by a windy spring chill and her thoughts. She had forgotten her coat, but she wasn't going back for it now. The Victor's Village was quiet this time of night, even from Crispin's house down the way. His raucous parties wouldn't have started yet. Generally, the ones who lived here were able to sleep at night, having authentic beds to lie on instead of cots and straw. The rest of District Seven didn't have the luxury.
The full moon shone brightly over Aura's home. Sometimes she would gaze upon it and become envious. It was so far away from the world she called home. It didn't have to deal with the pressure that it meant to live in Panem. It didn't have to deal with the Hunger Games.
End of Chapter 2