Bramble Berry

## Bio

*Bramble Berrybush (she/her). Tribute. District Eleven. Twenty-five. Ella Purnell*.

Bramble doesn’t remember much from before she met Joe. She’d been eleven or twelve, just on the cusp of her first Reaping, moving from farm to farm across Eleven with the other migrant workers. The orchards and the berry farms needed more hands during the peak season, and Bramble needed the money to feed herself on more than stolen produce. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was hard work. She felt perpetually sticky from the sweet fruit and the sun, stuck, like she was waiting for something to happen, for herself to ferment and become.

  Joseph Appleseed ran the trucking company that ran between farms, bringing produce to the shipment yard to be delivered to the Capitol by train. At the time, he was riding the routes himself. The operation was still pretty small. So one day, Joe stopped. They packed the truck. He climbed back into the driver’s seat. And Bramble was sitting on the passenger side: young, and mischievous, and stubborn. She wanted to come along.

  Joe lived alone. He never married, never had kids that weren’t metal, four-wheeled, and rusted. And for a while, he wasn’t sure what to do with the feisty girl who’d demanded to do more. She couldn’t drive. Not legally. So he made her a navigator. Taught her how to read a map. Bramble hated it, but it was better than being out in the sun, so she stuck it out. Besides, she liked Joe. He took her in, and for years, it was just them. He was kind. They had fun. When she was fifteen, he started letting her drive the truck. From the moment Bramble saddled up behind the wheel, she knew this was where she belonged. For a brief bit of time, everything was perfect. She had a family, a purpose, a home.

  And then Nettle came and fucked it up.

  She showed up one day in the back of a berry truck, begging for a job, and Joe, thinking he was really doing something, paired them together. They were the same age. They were similar, he said. Bramble looked at Nettle Gooseberry and thought that he was crazy. Nettle navigated, and Bramble drove. And for months, that’s all they did – in silence. Bramble didn’t want a friend. She didn’t want to be watched or helped. She didn’t need it. So she thought about quitting, bailing on Joe out of anger. Or maybe icing Nettle out, bullying her into giving up.

  But Nettle persisted, and Bramble softened. She was like that, really. Like the berries she used to pick. Hard and sour, until she softened, decaying sweetness staining everything.

  Maybe it was inevitable, with them sharing both a truck and a room. But the silence turned to music, turned to singing, turned to endless miles of joy. Once Nettle was cleared to cover the driving when Bramble got tired, they got better assignments. They were driving across Eleven, not just local farms. The world got a little bigger, a little brighter. And because Bramble was growing too soft, a little mushy, she let Nettle in on a secret, one she shared with Joe: Bramble was a smuggler. Notes, information, support for the rebellion that was brewing on the perimeter of their home. When it was clear that Nettle wouldn’t snitch on her friend, she was let in on it too. Their truck had a hollowed out bed, one perfect for a bigger load. Now that both drivers knew, it turned from pocket-sized things to bigger horizons. Drugs, mostly. Luckily, Nettle had grown a rapport with the peacekeepers that their routes frequented, greased by the fact that she was making enough money to occasionally buy ingredients for moonshine. So Bramble drove. Nettle navigated the roads and the Peacekeepers. And Joe was always waiting for them on the other side. It was a good life.

  And then Vox took hold, claiming a sector colloquially known as Free Eleven, and that was perhaps the best thing to happen to them. The drugs turned to weapons. The weapons turned to people. Kids, sometimes, nearing the reaping age, needing to be hidden and shuttled away. But the Vox used codenames, so they took some of their own. Joe took on Barnabus. The girls chose Cherry. They were connected, the same stem. Why would they need to differentiate their beings? They shifted their routes, listening eagerly to Vox Machina between checkpoints. Delphi and Pascal were their oracles. Their guiding lights in the darkness that enveloped Eleven now, thanks to the Capitol shutdown. They’d dream under the stars of more than Free Eleven: a Free Panem for all. What would it look like? What would they do? But that was silly. They’d be together in every lifetime, just discovering new roads.

  After The 133rd Games, Barney told them to expect a special load. Maybe kids? Bramble suggested. But she’d been wrong. In the back of their truck, buried beneath burlap sacks and bushels of berries, were a hoard of victors and rebels. Delphi, and Pascal, and Meta Morphic, and more. No one else could be trusted with them, Barney said. Only his daughters. The girls held hands as they drove. That summer was the best they’d ever had. The most exciting – full of meaning and progress and insight. The T0MMYV0X became regulars (divas, Bramble called them), needing to go in and out. They were expected back at the Tower still, or they had loved ones elsewhere. It didn’t matter, really, the why of it all. The girls were happy to do it. Happy to know they were coming back.

  Until one day, they didn’t. Vox Machina reported that Meta Morphic had been caught. The transmissions faltered, went silent in odd increments. They were clearing out – the victors. Bramble held her breath at those checkpoints as they crossed the borders to drop them off. They’d need to regroup, figure out what was next, how best to help now that their friends – friends? – had been caught. They were both twenty-five, about to age out of Reaping. They were going to have a chance, now. They were going to have time.

  Bramble got called first. And shortly after, because they never did anything without each other and because life wasn’t cruel enough, an already-crying Nettle got called too. They were tributes. Both of them. One last drive down a dead-end road.

* Token: Rear-view mirror charm from the berry truck
* + feisty, clever, brave, compassionate, committed
* - hot-headed, possessive, crass, stubborn

**PENNED BY: LENA**