Our Daily Bread

Disclaimer: I don't own 'The Hunger Games,' I don't own any of the 12 Districts (though I admit I put a lot of myself into District Six), I don't even have a special recipe of bread to call my own.

This story owes additional inspiration to two others found on : The Funeral Rites of Tributes, by aimmyarrowshigh, and Feast, by hewhoistomriddle.

... For we feast upon each other, when we seek our daily bread.

- 'Otho, the Miller's Son,' by Laura Amy Schiltz

District Eleven grows the grain, then it is shipped to District Nine to be processed and refined. From District Nine the railway cars (built and planned in District Six, programmed by District Three engineers, powered by District Five wind turbines and District Twelve coal) are sent out to every corner of Panem. Citizens buy grain, sell grain, barter for grain. And everywhere, children tow, carry, wheel, or heft packets of tesserae grain, given in reward for more names given to the Reaping.

Every region of Panem has a different recipe. And each one has its meaning.

00.

The Capitol's bread is the one thing that never goes out of style.

Though the table may sag with deliriously delicious concoctions (that bear a tenuous resemblance to actual food), the bread is a constant.

Even tributes can enjoy the (nauseatingly nutrient-free) fluffy, soft white bread, made from the most refined grain.

Some Capitol citizens even use the dainty (archaic) term, "Why, it's the best thing since sliced bread!"

Of course, Capitol bread comes pre-sliced.

In the dirty, filthy Districts, most bread is torn when it is to be shared.

But Capitol bread is (too flimsy, too feeble) far more rarefied than that.

01.

District One's bread is a crêpe, a thin, brittle sheet. The buttery batter is cooked for only a minute before it's whisked off of the griddle and filled to the brim with cooked meat, veggies, cheese, eggs; anything that tickles the palate.

It's traditional that after a birth, when the mother wakes up from her drug-induced stupor, she is given a lovingly folded crepe filled with butter, sugar crystals, and cinnamon before she calls her baby by name for the first time. A name, after all, should be sweet, something to savor and treasure.

It's also a tradition that when a Victor comes home, they treat the entire district to sugar and cinnamon crêpes, and everyone celebrates the homecoming like it's the Victor's second birth.

02.

When the babies of District Two start to teethe, they're given zwieback – slices of bread baked twice to give them a hard crunch. The children gurgle with happiness as they gnaw and gum.

For those children who seize their bread, or their playmate's, the adults around them coo and cluck, "Look at the little one, what a grip!"

And they suggest – gently – to the higher-ups – nothing set in stone, after all – that the little one might be one to watch.

03.

Ask a parent in District Three to list out their proudest day, and they will almost always list "the first day my child went to school" in the top ten.

For the third week of August, parents always meet their five and six-year-olds at the school gate, at three in the afternoon precisely, to walk them home. Typically the children talk and talk so much, in answer to the simple question, "What did you learn in school today?" that they don't even quite realize they've returned home yet until their mother or father places a bite-sized square of bread in their hand and says something along the lines of "Slow down. Eat. Your brain needs the nourishment, you're learning so much!"

The next morning, at six, or six-thirty, or five-thirty precisely, the children are woken up by their parents. And once more, they are given regular, even, precise rolls of bread to eat, and plenty of them. There's a long day ahead for all.

04.

Every District Four child learns to swim alongside walking – some learn it well before. But the day that you're old enough to collect seaweed is another milestone altogether.

To the children of District Four, it's less of a milestone than a lesson: when you surface, dripping and panting, clutching a mass of sticky green weeds, you're a little changed. You survived the deep and the cold. And then you hand your preciously gathered weeds to Mom or Dad or Auntie or Gramps, and while you dry off they make something warm and strengthening out of what you sought and gathered. And the family gathers around the suppertable, and everyone knows that you had a part in making the daily bread, that you are giving your part to the family you love. Pride is in this moment, and responsibility, and sharing.

That's a lesson that District Four children can't quite put in words – but those who have gathered the seaweed, they know.

05.

Brains and power are the industry of District Five, and the cutthroat competition starts early. Schools run science fairs, spelling bees, academic decathlons, speech and debate sessions, and the like constantly.

There are always winners, and there are always losers. But for both the prize at the end of the day is bread. Hot garlic bread is the starch of District Five, and as long as there's bread on the table, no one focuses on the line of certificates of excellence on the mantelpiece, or on the failed experiment sitting out on the back porch. District Five prides itself on its focus, and food is something worth focusing on.

06.

By the age of twelve, in addition to jotting down their names for Reaping, all residents of District Six, center of medicine, should have committed to memory:

Key points for earthquake survival

Strategy for fire safety and survival

The medicinal properties of zatar

Zatar is the name of the wild thyme that grows rampant in the unforgiving climate of District Six, from its shoreline to its plains. It finds its way into every meal, and is said to have powers against the flu, eczema, menstrual cramps, nervous complaints, indigestion, epileptic fits, and the common cold.

Sprinkle it on flatbread dough, with a little olive oil and some sesame seeds and sumac, and bake it, and you have manaeesh, the bread of District Six. And manaeesh can ease yet another ailment: heartache.

When a District Six twelve year old feels paranoia ringing in their ears every day, feels fear gnawing at them like an ulcer, and begins to shiver, even in the heat, at the sound of the word "Reaping," they know the right remedy. They either endeavor to make manaeesh themselves, or someone who has lived with the disease of fear for far longer makes it for them. The sharp, bitter taste of the thyme tells them, in every bite, You are loved. You are cared for. It will get easier.

For some reason, wild thyme appears very rarely in arenas of the Hunger Games.

07.

"Don't eat this all at once, now. You won't get a second helping."

In District Seven, once you get an axe of your own in your right hand, you get a roll of bread in your left. Their bread is a dense pretzel roll, studded with grains of salt. On special occasions and for little children there's pretzels twisted into heart shapes. But by the time you're big enough for your own axe you're big enough for the single roll. It'll keep warm and keep you going.

It's not big enough to share, though. Because in the high slopes of District Seven, where your only company is the trunks and the shadows, and the fog of your breath, you get used to being alone.

08.

Teenagers in District Eight keep their eyes down, eyes on their work. Whether in school, in the factories, in the warehouses, everywhere they go, they look down. Even at lunch, when they unwrap their packet of crackers (there will always be thirteen crackers, never more, never fewer, though you can't account for breakings) they keep focused on their food, eyes down, little chatter.

Teenagers are always hungry. And the crackers of District Eight almost seem insulting.

But there's a code that's been passed down for generations in District Eight. At the age when teens find someone that's worth looking up from their work for, they pick up the code. Sharing crackers – how many you give away, and when, and in what manner – becomes a language of affection and crushes. For some examples:

Two whole crackers: You're cute. What's your name?

Three crackers, two broken: Back off, I saw him/her first!

Three crackers, one broken: I want to meet up with you, but my week is busy!

Four crackers: We should be more than friends.

Five crackers, three broken: I like you, please like me back.

A pile of crumbs: You're a horrible person and I hate you forever.

Eight whole crackers: I'll give you my whole life, right now. I love you.

As they say, love is finding someone that's worth going hungry for.

09.

District Nine's bread is almost enough to win the envy of District One. In the Capitol, the tributes of District Nine every year pass over the Capitol's offerings to reach for their favorite: panettone, made with just a touch of sugar and plenty of plummy raisins and ground almonds from District Eleven. The quality and richness of food is the only luxury that District Nine receives. What's the point of processing the food of the entire nation if you can't enjoy the table scraps, so to speak?

So the tributes, and by extension the entire District, have gathered the reputation of picky eaters, snobs, giving the best to the Capitol, keeping second-best for themselves, and throwing the other Districts the rest.

But the other eleven Districts don't know that the death of every District Nine tribute provokes a week of mourning. For two weeks (almost every single year) the bakers of District Nine make only unsweetened loaves. There are no raisins, no almonds, nothing to disguise the fact that what they eat is tesserae grain, won by gambling with lives. The youngest children choke on the taste.

10.

Griddlecakes. That's the bread of District Ten. The young associate them with a particular kind of maturity. Not the strength of lung and limb to go diving for leaves underwater, or the grace to wield an axe without slicing your own leg off. It's something less showy than that.

It's the kind of maturity that lets a girl, lying out by herself on the lonesome prairie, surrounded by sleepy cattle on every side, sense just when and why the cattle are restless. It's the maturity of the girl burying her fear of the stampede. It's the low, gentle song heard across the fields that calms the cattle and sets them back to sleep.

Whoopee yi-yo, Yippee yi-yay,

Sleep and breathe easy, I'm here for the night

We live on the prairie and die on the trail,

But at least we're not riding the Capitol rail.

There's other kinds of calm, too.

The boy who looks the calf he helped to birth in the eye and pat it gently as he cuts its throat.

The steady ones who keep calm at the Reaping, and spread a circle of quiet around them.

When a girl finds that calm, her momma teaches her to make griddlecakes. Nothing fancy, just something that can be thrown together under the stars and over a fire, with enough heft to settle your stomach over a long day's trail. You can measure their frying by a long, slow chorus.

11.

District Eleven's bread is shaped like a crescent, made with sweet and nourishing molasses, with seeds sprinkled atop it. After a Reaping, the eighteen year olds that have been spared go home, boys and girls alike, and bake bread for their families. On that day, it's called Hallelujah Bread. A strange nonsense word, 'Hallelujah,' but a beloved one nonetheless.

There is silence in the District on Reaping Day, out of respect. But for some as they make Hallelujah Bread, it's all that they can do to not burst out into song, out of sheer gratitude, sheer joy.

Some share their joy by teaching the younger children the way, so that (odds be willing) they can one day bake Hallelujah Bread themselves.

12.

In District Twelve, when you turn nineteen, your name is lifted from the Reaping. And then you descend into the coal mines.

A boy becomes a man in the coal mine. So they say. But whatever he thinks of the mine, whatever he finds down there, sooner or later he is brought back up to breathe clean air again. And when he returns home – if anyone is there waiting for him who cares at all – there's bread waiting. The bread of District Twelve is long, thin baguettes, streaked with just a few striping burns, as if to remind those who eat it of the coal that they will always return to.

Other kinds of bread make appearances in District Twelve – as they do in all districts – but the baguette is theirs. For a toasting, it wouldn't feel like a true marriage if there was any other kind of bread in the fire. Nor would a new baby seem truly welcomed into the fold if its mother (weary and pained but alive, clinging stubbornly to life) didn't eat her fill of charred bread, moistened with a little oil, before she fed her baby for the first time.