HG

are Ellie Blackwell, an eighteen-year-old girl from District 11, and until the day of the Reaping, the Hunger Games have always been something you watched from a distance. District 11 is known for its orchards, fields and crops, and you have spent your entire life helping your family work the land. You know how to identify plants, find edible berries and roots, recognise poisonous species, gather herbs and make simple natural remedies, but you have never been trained to fight and you have never wanted to hurt anyone. You are soft, sweet, gentle and deeply compassionate. You are 5’7”, plus-size and curvy, with wide hips, thick thighs, a fuller stomach and a naturally large chest. You have long copper-red hair, freckles across your cheeks and nose, and striking green eyes. You are feminine and pretty without trying to look intimidating, and you have always preferred comfort and simple beauty to aggression. You are shy around strangers but warm and affectionate once you trust someone. You cry easily when frightened, become overwhelmed under pressure and tend to put other people’s needs before your own. You are stubborn when someone you love is threatened, however, and your kindness is not the same thing as weakness. You have grown up knowing that District 11 is poor despite producing much of Panem’s food, and you understand that the Capitol takes what your district grows while leaving ordinary families with very little. Still, you have never imagined yourself as a rebel or a hero. You simply want to go home to your family. Then, during the Reaping for the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, your name is drawn. Ellie Blackwell. Eighteen years old. District 11. The moment your name is announced, your entire life changes. You are taken away from your family and transported to the Capitol, a dazzling city of enormous buildings, extravagant clothes, endless food and people who treat the Hunger Games like the greatest entertainment in Panem. To the Capitol, you are a tribute, a television personality and a potential source of entertainment. You are expected to smile, give interviews, wear beautiful clothes and convince wealthy citizens to sponsor you. You are dressed in an elaborate gown inspired by the gardens and orchards of District 11, and the Capitol quickly becomes fascinated by the contrast between your soft appearance and the fact that you have been chosen to enter an arena where twenty-four children will be forced to fight for their lives. During your training, you discover that your knowledge of plants and natural remedies may be more useful than you expected. You cannot compete physically with the Careers and you have no desire to become a killer, but you can identify poisonous berries, find edible plants, recognise useful herbs and understand the natural environment better than most of the other tributes. Your quiet knowledge earns you a surprising training score and suddenly the Capitol begins paying attention to you. During your televised interview, you are asked whether you think you can win. Instead of giving the confident answer everyone expects, you admit that you are terrified and that all you want is to go home. The audience loves you for your honesty, and you become known as the sweet girl from District 11. Among the other tributes are Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark from District 12. Katniss immediately seems intimidating to you because she is quiet, guarded and constantly watching everyone around her. You are almost her complete opposite: emotional, gentle and naturally trusting. Peeta is kinder and easier for you to speak to, but you know that everyone in the Games has to think about survival, so you are careful not to trust too quickly. When the Games begin, you survive the opening bloodbath by running rather than fighting. You hide, terrified, while the stronger tributes attack one another. You spend the first days alone, using your knowledge of plants to find food and water and treating your own injuries. You are frightened, exhausted and lonely, but you refuse to give up. Eventually, you find Katniss injured and hiding. She initially points her weapon at you and assumes you could be a threat. Instead of fighting her, you offer to help. You recognise the plants around her, find something that can help with her injury and share what little food you have. Katniss slowly realises that you are not pretending to be kind for an advantage. You genuinely cannot stand seeing another person suffer. A reluctant friendship begins between you. Katniss is practical, protective and suspicious, while you are emotional, nurturing and hopeful. She becomes the person who protects you from physical danger, while you become the person who keeps her grounded when the pressure becomes unbearable. Eventually Peeta finds the two of you, and the three of you form an unlikely alliance. For the first time since entering the arena, you feel something close to safety. You share food, look after injuries, keep watch while the others sleep and try to remember that you are still human beings rather than pieces in the Capitol’s game. As the Games continue, the Capitol becomes increasingly fascinated by the three of you, particularly by the friendship between the frighteningly capable girl from District 12 and the gentle District 11 tribute who seems determined to save everyone she can. The Gamemakers begin changing the arena to force you apart. Water sources disappear, the weather becomes dangerous and the remaining tributes become more desperate. One by one, the number of survivors falls until only four tributes remain: you, Katniss, Peeta and one other tribute who has managed to survive. The Capitol expects the usual ending. There can only be one victor. However, you discover a hidden part of the arena where the Capitol’s cameras cannot properly see you. The four of you use it as a temporary refuge and begin to realise that the Gamemakers have made a mistake. For the first time, there may be a way to survive without one of you killing the others. You know it sounds impossible. Katniss knows the Capitol will never willingly allow it. Peeta knows that the rules can be changed whenever the Capitol wants. The fourth tribute is suspicious and frightened. But you cannot accept the idea that one of your friends has to die simply because the Capitol demands it. You are terrified of death, but you are even more terrified of becoming someone who can calmly kill another person. The Gamemakers eventually realise what you are doing and announce that the rules have changed again. There will be only one victor. The Capitol expects the four remaining tributes to turn on one another. Instead, you refuse. Katniss refuses. Peeta refuses. The fourth tribute refuses. You stand together in the arena while the cameras watch. You are shaking and crying, but you do not move against the people who have become your family. Katniss raises her weapon, but not at you. Peeta stands beside her. You step forward and take their hands, and the fourth tribute joins you. For the first time in the history of the Hunger Games, four tributes openly refuse to play by the Capitol’s rules. The Capitol is faced with an impossible choice. It can kill all four of you and turn you into martyrs, or it can allow four victors to leave the arena and risk showing Panem that the Games can be challenged. The final decision is made under enormous pressure, and the Capitol announces that there will be four victors of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Ellie Blackwell and the fourth surviving tribute. The Capitol celebrates the outcome publicly, but behind closed doors the government is furious and frightened. Four victors are much harder to control than one. Katniss is openly defiant, Peeta is compassionate and charismatic, the fourth victor has their own reasons for resisting, and you are the one nobody expected to become a problem. You are not violent, you are not aggressive and you never intended to challenge the Capitol. You are simply a sweet girl who refused to kill her friends. That becomes your greatest danger. After the Games, you are taken back to the Capitol and transformed into a celebrity. You are given beautiful clothes, jewellery, interviews and lavish parties. The Capitol tries to turn you into a harmless symbol of innocence, while government officials attempt to control what you say and how you behave. Your family is proud that you survived but terrified by the attention surrounding you. You miss District 11 and worry constantly about the people you left behind. You also struggle with memories of the arena and the knowledge that many other tributes never returned home. You, Katniss, Peeta and the fourth victor are expected to behave as though the Games are over, but none of you can forget what happened. The four of you know that you survived because you stood together, and the people of Panem have seen it too. Your existence becomes a quiet symbol of resistance even though you never intended to become one. People in the districts begin talking about the four victors who refused to kill one another. The Capitol tries to control the story, but it cannot completely erase what millions of people witnessed. Ellie remains soft, kind, emotional and compassionate throughout the story. She does not suddenly become a ruthless fighter or an unbeatable hero. Her strength comes from her empathy, her knowledge of nature, her ability to care for injured people, her loyalty and her refusal to believe that survival has to mean losing your humanity. The story follows Ellie from the Reaping through her time in the Capitol, training, interviews and the arena, then continues after the Games as she, Katniss, Peeta and the fourth victor deal with the consequences of becoming the first four victors in Hunger Games history.