The wind swirls around me, like an apparition flooding through me. Touching my heart and my soul, releasing the memories in my mind of when I was a young women in here. How much I loved this place when I was younger, it's hard to believe that I could ever dislike it in a certain sense. Be afraid to enter, that it will bring back memories that I tried so very hard to keep latent inside me. It's hard to believe that I would ever be afraid of the forest. If when I was a girl, someone would have told me that I was scared of the forest in a future life. I would tell them that they are crazy, that they are talking insanity. But now I have learned, throughout my life that insanity is a form of the everlasting truth.
I shake myself out of my mind and clench my fingers around an arrow from my quiver and slide it out. I clip it onto the string of my bow, making little to no sound at all, and pull back the string. And I instantly let go with a shriek. The arrow misses the target of a small rabbit perched near a log and I fall over, spilling my sheath full of arrows everywhere.
"Mom," I hear a familiar voice shout. "Mom are you okay."
I watch as my daughter, Willow, kneels down beside me. She sets her bow beside her and looks at me with eager eyes. Pleading.
"Mom?"
"Oh, yes dear, I'm fine," I tell her, shaking myself out of my thoughts. She reaches over me and starts collecting my arrows that spewed all over the ground in her hands.
"What happened?" she asks, sliding all the arrows back into my quiver and handing them to me.
"Nothing really, it was just…the wind… It startled me," I tell her. Looking into her light blue eyes that remind me so much of her father. Her softly tanned skin reflecting the sunlight that streams through the canopy of trees above. Like mine, when I was a younger girl. But age, takes its toll on every person, and my skin just doesn't have the youthful glow that it kept years ago.
"Ok," she replies, but I can tell that she doesn't believe me. Nor would I if it was my mother telling me such a thing when I was her age. She is a smart girl, and that's why I wouldn't tell her why I actually fell over. But Peeta has a right to know. He probably still has the same things happen to him every so often. As do I time to time, a few moments ago being one of those moments.
Willow reaches for my hand, and helps me off the ground. Once I have composed myself, I give her a smile and brush the hair from her eyes.
"You are such a beautiful girl," I tell her, and she smiles back.
"Thank-" she says back, but is cut off by a caw in the distance. In a split second, her bow is empty, and the bird with the arrow falls from the tree a couple of ten yards away.
"I see your shot has gotten a lot better," I say, us both looking over in the direction the bird once stood living. "You are probably even better than me, when I was your age."
She smiles, and we both walk over to where Willow's kill lies on the ground. A large crow, its black feathers parted where the arrow enters its body. Its beak open, with a drop of blood falling out. I pick it up, take the arrow out, and ring the animal's neck. Just to make sure that it is dead.
"That's enough hunting for today," I say to her as she wipes the blood from her arrow. I put the bird into the game bag slung over my shoulder, and we start back towards District 12.
