Tessera
A year of grain and oil for one person, bought with an extra name slip in the reaping ball.
Tesserae are the Capitol's offer to hungry families: a year of grain and oil for one person, collected monthly, in exchange for one more slip carrying your name in the reaping ball. Anyone between twelve and eighteen can sign up, once for each member of the household, every year, and the entries accumulate instead of resetting. The grain itself is dark, dense, and unrefined. In District 12 nearly every child from the Seam takes them. In District 1 almost nobody does, which is one way of measuring the distance between the two.
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