30 Day Image Prompt Contest - CLOSED

if apologize for the Hunger Games themed story...I have only seen the first movie, so it is a little different, and it is only in its infant stages...once I get out what I want from this, I might actually read the books...so that they have less influence?

The District of White


From the safety of her second floor apartment, Claire Barrett peaked from behind the curtain of her living room window as a long black Lincoln pulled up to the curb. She watched as a tall blond haired man climbed out of the front passenger seat and stepped to the back of the car. Her heart beat faster as a slim arm stretched out of the darkness of the car, and then the rest of the slim 5 foot three brunette was stepping out onto the sidewalk.

Anna Barrett-Lee, the youngest of her three siblings, had moved away from home at the age of eighteen when a talent agent had spotted her performing on the square in the middle of town. She hadn’t had much choice but to go with the scout, giving away what freedom there was in living in the district of White. For the next four years she starred in a series of films based off of a book that the queen of Hel had written, which was to be treated as the gospel of all the lands. Most of those with a voice in the kingdom, had too much money and time invested in her success to question the laws and practices, partially because they had a larger hand in them than the people living outside of Hel knew. Anyone living outside the kingdom kept their opinions to themselves or disappeared.
Growing up, Claire, her two brothers, and her sister had been raised to keep silent about their feelings, and not to show off any particular skill or talent that they might hold. This was because they were already outcasts in the district of White, a place known best for its stone cutting, its cold stone architecture, and its vow of purity. The purity vow simply meant that they were not a place of excess or of entertainment and they had no tolerance for fighting. Those caught engaging in anything that the district counsel disapproved of disappeared and were never seen again.

Anna had been lucky that a scout had picked her up and taken her to Hel. Her brothers however, hadn’t been so lucky. Tye and Leo Barrett were boys that had been built for war, and if the district of Red still stood, her father had no doubt that they would have been part of the elite guard. Tye had been taken first, defending Anna’s presence in Hel. Leo had been taken when he went looking for Tye. Of the four of them, Claire was the only one who showed no particular talent for trouble. Even before the fall of Red she had been more academically inclined, as her father was a cleric from the Brighter lands and her mother was from a family of celebrated Red craftsmen. When the king of Hel went to war with the king of the Brighter Lands, the district of Red was the only one that stood against his army. It was destroyed, but it had weakened the king’s men as well as the king, and he had died wearing the other king’s crown. The queen of Hel had the kingdom torched and renamed it the Burning District as it was never not lit with the fires of her rage, a reminder of her power, if they needed one.

Claire watched as Anna made her way to the door of the apartment building, watched until she disappeared inside, and then went to unlock the door. Behind her on the sofa, her father breathed heavily in his sleep. She knew that it was only a matter of time before he would pass on, and then she would do what she needed to do. Sending for Anna had not been a task she had taken lightly. She knew that doing so might upset her mentors, but they had trusted in her innocence, her passiveness for so long, that they had granted her to message her sister. They did not realize that the scholarly message she had sent her sister was actually code, meant not only to bring her sister to see her father, but to bring the leader of Hel’s underground revolution safely into the home of the leader of White’s underground revolution. They would likely be dead before their father took his last breath, but they had no intention to linger on without family in a world divided between passive fear and over excess and false greatness.


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