Hey! This is my first upload on FF, and I'm a bit nervous about it to be honest haha. Anyway, hope you enjoy :)

The Bad Days

You wake up some days and think how ... different it is to not have anyone manipulating you, to not have to do anything, to live in such a peaceful world.

Such a blissful feeling is rare and long forgotten. So you're afraid that it's just another dream, another hallucination, just someone else using you as a piece in their games.

Then you remember how strange it is to wake up and not have your family beside you. Because they're either dead or too depressed to return to life.

So you become sad and depressed and suspicious. It's been too long since the last time this has happened. To wake up to a perfectly normal and peaceful day. So long since the last time you've woken up and your first thought was not of how afraid you are.

It feels strange. All your enemies dead or captured. Because of them, being afraid has become your second nature. Even in times like now, when there's nothing else for you to be afraid of.

Except for the nightmares.

The nightmares that bring the past to the present, that are but dreams - but at the same time, they are reality. You try to forget about your past. You really might be able to if it weren't for the nightmares that keep bringing back the disasters that happened years ago, blemishing your present, reminding you why they came. And why they will never really go away.

How many people have you seen die, loved ones, allies, enemies? How many people have you been unable to save, and watched them drift away from the world? Worst still, how many people have you personally killed, for whatever reason, driven by whatever motive, for whatever person?

You wake up some days and wonder why you're still alive. How it would be much more preferable to just die. To fall asleep and never wake up again. And you'll see all your loved ones again ...

You've lived in a broken world for so long you can turn something so blissful, so rare, into horror.

So what do you do? On the bad days, when you wake up after a nightmare of mutts, bombs and screaming children. On the bad days, when you are terrified of the world, unable to process the too-miraculous-to-be-true fact of there's nothing to be scared of. Not this morning. Not today. Not now.

What do you do?

You play a game where you list every act of goodness you've seen. It's calming. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after all these years.

But there are much worse games to play.

In Memory

She stands in the meadow. She stands there, as still and straight as a statue, her lips slightly parted. Her eyes, robbed of the happy sparkle they once contained, are now dull and dead and empty. Unseeingly, gazing into the space around her, oblivious to the light drizzle that has begun to fall from the darkening sky, she seems lost in her own world.

But her face contains nothing but sadness.

She looks, with blurry eyes, at the grave in front of her, sprung with beautiful dandelions and the wreath of primroses she had lain down moments before.

A single, pearl-like tear rolls down her face and into the dandelion-filled grass. This brings her out of her reverie and, shaking slightly, she slowly exits the gates without looking back.

Days slowly roll into weeks, then subsequently into months, and not once does the young girl miss the daily visit to the meadow and the grave. And not once does she shed more tears.

On the day exactly a year from when she wept at the grave, she, yet, again, returns. However she is no longer the still stiff statue she once was.

Today, she seems more relaxed, more carefree. The corners of her mouth are slightly lifted. And even her eyes have almost regained their bright sparkle.

She is no longer existing. Instead, she has finally learnt to begin living once more.

She reads the grave for the last time:

Primrose Everdeen

(3000 - 3013)

Then, slowly, she touches three fingers of her left hand to her lips and raises them into the heavy silence.

And, finally, she whispers her last words to the grave. They hang there quietly, softly, like a soothing lullaby carried gently by the wind, even long after she has gone.

"I love you, my little duck."

Thank you for reading! Reviews appreciated. Follow me on tumblr: on-wings-of-song. Thanks again xx