The Search For Home

Rella Rosenthal, formerly Cinderella, boarded the boat along with her husband Samar and their two four-year-old daughters, Lilian Rose, called Lily for short, and Marigold Rue, called Mary for short. The family of four was all headed to Nanthia to work out a trade agreement between Nanthia and Panem. A few months earlier, there was another rebellion against the Capitol and the Hunger Games were destroyed. It had been Katniss and Peeta Mellark's idea to send Rella and Samar to get the trade agreement with Nanthia. Lily and Mary came for they was too young to be away from their mother.

Lily had been named for her two aunts, both who died in the Hunger Games—Lily died in the Sixty-eighth Hunger Games at thirteen and Rose died in the Sixty-ninth Hunger Games at fourteen. Rella volunteered to save a twelve-year-old and entered the Seventieth Hunger Games. She won, but had to lose the lower half of her left leg to blood poisoning and it was replaced with a metal leg. Mary was named for her mother's ally, Marigold Baumann and the cousin of Rue Baumann, who died four years later in the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, but after she'd allied herself with Katniss, then Everdeen, Mellark. The cousins had both been twelve years old.

Rella turned toward the people of District 8—her people—and silently made the gesture of goodbye—pressing the three middle fingers of her left hand together and then pressing them against her lips and then held them out to her people—it was originally a District 12 gesture, but since Katniss's defiance and the Second Rebellion, it had spread like wildfire across Panem. Samar and the girls copied her and then the citizens copied them. And then they left—for the one place Rella hadn't wanted to return to since winning and surviving the Hunger Games—since starting over—for Nanthia. She brought a small video screen with her—on it was the complete recording of the Seventieth Hunger Games, including a part that was cut from what was projected across Panem, right after Marigold's death. If anyone asked about her leg, she'd show them the video.