The house is on fire. It's not my house, but that doesn't make it any less burnt.

The flames are gentle against the wood, taking their time to grow. Orange and red and yellow over-lapping a handful of ants, a chorus of heat and light intermingling with the crisp bodies of its victims. The heat reaches out to me, stroking my face and embracing me in a blanket against the crisp evening air.

The metal of the lighter in my hand bites at my skin, its cold surface is reminiscent of its days in the workshop where my father had battered it into shape. In my other hand, the wooden handle-bar of the bucket pinches my skin. Somewhere, as the flames began to roar, a voice is shouting my name. They are so quiet that I can barely make out a word they are saying, not that I want to. Who needs words when such a beautiful scene lies before you?

"Put it out!" I turn my face to the side, squinting at Martial- my friend.

He is standing at a distance, out of the shadow of the building, where the setting sun can reach him. His green eyes are dark and restless. Despite any and every effort to move towards me and the scene of utter beauty in front of me, his feet would not budge. The desperation on his face is pitiful, resembling the scared boy I had met so many years ago in the thin woods surrounding the District.

He had wandered through the treeline until a fire started in the treetops. To my surprise, he hadn't run to tell anyone immediately. And the look on his face, one of sheer terror, when I had dropped from the burning treetops with bleeding palms, still brings a smile to my face.

The bucket of water is snatched from my hands and the fire is doused before I have the chance to say goodbye. Beside me, Martial looks up at the scorch mark lining the side of the building. At the top, near the edge of the roof, a bird sings in her nest.

The bird's singing becomes shrill and high-pitched as the side of the nest begins to catch fire. It grows quicker than before and the mother has nothing to do aside from fly away and save herself.

Martial grabs my arm, pulls me across the road and into a dark alley between the two buildings. His hand stifles my protests as he peers out into the street. I bite his hand, to gain some release and follow his gaze. At one end of the street, Peacekeepers are beginning to run for the house as the fire now crawls along the roof. At the other end, coming over the hill, the village's workers were coming home from a day in the mines.

Their shouts echo across the street as they witness the flames climbing higher. I lick my lips. Crouching low in the shadows and watching the scene play out, I can't help the smile on my face. What a wonderful day today has been.

The lead peacekeeper, a man whose name I never care to learn, begins to peer up and down the street, scanning the surrounding area for any sign of the culprit. For a moment, his eyes linger on the shadows where Martial and I are hiding. As he moves on, Martial tugs on my sleeve. He nods to the narrow opening at the other side of the crevice. I glance back at the fire, the only thing that ever truly sparks joy in my life, before following Martial.

I leap silently over a pile of trash and scale the walls in order to climb over the large industrial bin blocking the exit.

This street is also empty, its residents having run straight to the excitement, much to the dismay of the peacekeepers. The houses all looked identical to the other street, their only notable difference being the numbers scratched into a stone plaque next to each door.

Martial and I jogged down the cobblestone street, making a sharp right turn down another alley which led to the back of the village. There was no way we would be leaving this village through its regular exits without the peacekeepers seeing us. Wired fences line each of the villages, allowing a small space for the cluster of trees to grow in-between.

Never in our childhood years had Martial and I ever squeezed through the wires and came out without a scratch. Once, I had attempted to climb, but the spiral of toothed wire at the top caught on my favourite pair of dungarees and tore the leg open. The fall that followed had left me with a twisted ankle and bed rest for a week.

We soon figured out that we could climb onto the roof of one of the houses and jump into the tree-line, where we would either cling to the tree's branches or fall to the ground with few scratches. It was an efficient method and lowered our chances of getting caught by a patrolling peacekeeper- they never thought to look up.

It's fortunate, really, that my home of District 2 is constructed of a semi-circle of separate villages at the foot of a mountain where we mine for stone. The justice building is the main focal point of the district. It is set in the centre of a square of shops that we call Town and acts as a disguise for the training grounds at the academy.

Due to an effort to maintain order, the villages are sectioned off with barbed-wire fences and a strip of forest is allowed in-between. In other districts, my grandfather told me once, the fences are electric and can kill anything that touches it. The reason our fences aren't electric is that our district is the most loyal and trusted in the Capitol.

I use the narrow alleyway to my advantage and scale the walls first, scrambling onto the roof of the one-storey building. I then watched as Martial pulled himself up with more ease- his upper-body strength is tested more regularly than mine at the academy. He usually insists on jumping together if he has climbed up with enough time. Now, however, he begins to speak in the same tone he uses whenever he starts an argument.

I leapt over the wire fence and crashed into the leaves. My hands reach out, catching a branch and waiting for my body to stop swinging. There is no way I'm listening to him lecture me, sometimes it's as though he wants me to be angry at him. Behind me, I hear Martial grunting as he jumps from the roof and I glance back to see him heading in my direction.

Looking down, briefly, I drop to the ground and scuttle away as he barrels into the branch and snaps it. He hits another branch on his way down and catches it, slowing his momentum, before dropping again.

He brushes off his trousers and straightens the oversized jacket falling from his shoulders.

"How did I do?" I roll my eyes at him. As if he's going to act like he hasn't been trying to antagonise me. I cross to the tree nearest the adjacent fence.

We each climb a tree with ease and crouch in the leaves as we watch a peacekeeper pass by the fence. A few moments pass and Martial jumps the fence and lands on the ground with a roll. He stepped into the shadow of the building and waited for me. I watch the peacekeeper turn around at the sound of Martial landing. They begin to wander back towards us. I bite my lip, anticipating the confrontation. Karma truly does work fast.

Martial had been watching me expectantly but, upon seeing my change of expression, he turned and scurried down the alley. I only seem to notice this as he disappears around the corner and into the street, the peacekeeper peers around the corner. They stand there for a moment, a gun in their hand and a black baton sitting against their white armour.

An age seems to pass before the peacekeeper moves out of earshot and I welcome the sudden jolt that spreads through my body as I hit the ground. Even though I had landed in the wrong way, the action never fails to be satisfying.

I wobble slightly as I skip down the alley, closing my hand around the lighter in my pocket.

Martial isn't waiting around the corner as I had expected, and I stop in the middle of the path. It's not like him to leave me alone without a word. Then again, he has been antagonistic and probably needs time to cool off.

Pushing the thought of him to the back of my mind, I turn on my heel and begin walking towards home. I feel more at ease, now that I'm back in my own village. The peacekeepers here aren't looking for someone to make an example of- not yet at least. And if they were, they won't sweep this village until tomorrow, at least. The usual routine for a sweep begins in the targeted village and then works away from the peacekeeper village- which just so happens to be next door to my home. I stick my chin in the air and dodge a group of children barreling down the street.

My name is called from across the street. I narrow my eyes and look over to see who it is and whether I want to talk to them or not.

Martial stands there, next to an older boy and girl. The girl had called my name and I didn't want to talk to her. Turning my attention back to the street, I keep walking. They were two people I cared for the least.

Artemis and Lewis are three years older than me and the two most influential candidates at the academy. Rumours have been spreading through the District that this year's Hunger Games is to be theirs. Considering they had managed to avoid getting reaped every year, they have trained ruthlessly to be the most vicious careers the Hunger Games has ever seen.

It's useless, the training, because the tributes will never know what they're facing in the games.

Artemis, like the goddess she's named after, values the bow and arrow. She favours it above all and her brother, conveniently named Apollo, once bragged to me about their personalised bows. A few years ago, when Martial really began to prosper at the Academy, she became involved with us. I don't remember it too well, but she had offered to teach me to shoot. I accepted, the prospect exciting me, but she took the opportunity to show off the entire time. She showed me up and made me look inferior to her in front of Martial. No doubt, she was laughing at me when I was trying to dock an arrow, finding my lack of academy training amusing and a source of entertainment.

I have never held a bow or an arrow since then.

Lewis is one of the burliest eighteen-year-olds District Two has ever produced, which he puts to use down in the stone mines which makes our village much more prosperous than the others. He had even avoided lashings from the peacekeepers because he scared them. The two of them, everyone assumed, were a couple. And if the rumours are to be believed, they would each volunteer for the games this year... even if they had to kill each other at the end.

He didn't seem to exist when I met Artemis but, after a year or so of Martial hanging onto her every word, he began to sulk and complain about Lewis to no end. I relished in going home after seeing Martial and witnessing his pitiful emasculation.

The two of them are idiots, truly. They value the prospect of killing over knowledge, although, I can't blame their desire to be victors. Who wouldn't want fame?