Day/Theme: Jan. 24, 2014 "if they fail to feed the hungry monster"
Series: Hunger Games trilogy (set post-Mockingjay, so beware of spoilers)
Character/Pairing: Annie Cresta, Johanna, etc.
Rating: PG
What was once twelve large houses clustered high above a secluded beach is now just another portion of the lazily sprawled out central town of District Four. Annie likes the former Victors' Village much better now that it's just "Victors Street." She and Noah and Johanna live mainly in the second story of the house and she operates a combination cafe and seashell jewelry shop out of the first floor. Even between living and the business, there's leftover room inside, which is always convenient when friends come over to stay.
There are ghosts in the nine lived-in victor houses, but what families remain of her deceased colleagues must feel as reluctant to leave these familiar spirits as she does, because no one who lived in any of them before the rebellion and lived has left. On the contrary, there are even family members of the late victors in some of the houses who weren't even born before the war. Noah, for instance, and first of all. There's also Esperanza Barrow, who inherited her grandfather's cheery brown eyes, and who likes to sit on the balcony with Noah, sticking her legs through the railing to let her feet hang out in the open air, and play "fishing," dangling pieces of twine attached to sticks over the balcony. Johanna stands on a chair sometimes and tweaks their lines for a laugh and ties cheap rubber fish lures to the ends of the twine to complete the game.
Annie loves that, how naturally Johanna and Noah fit together. Between the three of them, they are a family. It's like the Village now. New and old are mixed together ("grafted," Johanna says) to create something better.
Sometimes at night, Annie goes for a walk by herself along Victor Street. Johanna knows not to worry about her anymore when she goes. Annie lives nearer the inland end, as she always has, but when she takes this walk, she heads up toward the cliff, meaning to climb down the wooden staircase to the beach. The house furthest inland was never home to a victor- it's part home now, part tailor shop, part music school- the victor houses are easily large enough to be all these things at once. The husband, Sam Shallow, is a native of Four, but his wife is an immigrant from Eight. People are mixing against across district lines, bit by bit, but there's a part of Annie that remembers that there has been mixing like that before and the Capitol stopped it arbitrarily. There were other qualifiers people used to divide themselves before there were districts.
Life is safer now, more secure, but Annie knows as well as anyone how your happiness can be snatched away at any moment. Noah is eight, but that's old enough for her to see him in her nightmares sometimes on that reaping stage. Tyde was the only victor in Four to take that risk have children before the war- she wonders still what made him that foolhardy or brave (she cannot ask Rita, his wife, who she never felt comfortable with even before she lived when all the other victors died). Esperanza has no Aunt Margie because even in a district that honored volunteers if the Capitol wanted a child enough, they would manage to quiet those volunteers to steal them away.
The Games are gone. The Capitol is just Capitol City now. But every year the districts sent their tributes and people still need rituals. Annie goes to stand before the ocean some nights, to stare at the waves alone from the same place she used to swim with Finnick, to walk with Mags, that she shared with all her fellow victors here. She says a little prayer to the god who walked on the ocean and lets the movement of the water calm her nerves. Usually, it's enough to feed the monster of fear inside her.
She remembers standing with Shad and looking at the horizon like this. "What do you think is out past there?" he'd asked.
Neither of them knew. Sometimes he thought about going. Annie was never quite sure whether that meant he wanted to sail off and find forgotten lands or he wanted to drift off and die at sea. It was too horrible a thing to ask.
Mags had never spoken of it much, but what little things she'd mentioned, Annie remembered. She wanted to believe they would all meet again on the other side. First, she would live the longest, happiest life she could here.
Source:
http://ift.tt/1dWCXiC