Fireflies

Prologue

The Day All The Dreams Died

I guess it started when I was younger. Younger isn't much to go on age, but I don't really remember much of the specifics. All I know is my daddy would take me down to the Orchard fields once a week, either strapping me to his four-wheeler or riding down on Bucky, his stallion. It was almost routine. Every Sunday morning, right after Church, we'd come home, get changed of our Sunday best and head out for our father-daughter time.

It was there in the field that I have my fondest memories. Just me and daddy. We'd pick apples and berried, him teaching me all about the different kinds. By the time I was old enough to ride my own horse I could tell you which wild fruits were edible and which would kill you before they even reached your stomach. It was a natural part of growing up where I was concerned. Daddy and I had tried to teach my baby sister Prim too, but she didn't have a knack for it like I had. I preferred it that way, though. No one could take the time daddy and I had together away from us.

It was there in the Orchard field's one hot, Sunday afternoon that I learnt the most important lesson of my young life. Dream.

"That's what you need to do, Katniss." My father whispered in my ear. "Dream as wide as the ocean and as high as the sky. No one can tear your dreams away from you." And I did as he said. I lived in a perfect dream, keeping every fantasy alive in my mind. There really was nothing in the universe that could take it away from me. I was a fairy Princess each night daddy read to me from our favorite book. Every Sunday when we went out to spot in the Orchards, down near our own private lake, I would collect up the frogs and give each one a kiss. Even now, if I try hard enough, I can still feel the slime of their skin on my lips. None ever turned into Princes, but my daddy taught me to never give up on things I really wanted.

My daddy was a good man. He always saw the good in everyone. He managed to keep our small farm running full time while also working every Friday and Saturday in the community coal mines. We lived in the twelfth district, a small town called Seam. Coal mining was the trade of our town district. All men were required to work i the mines as often as they could. My daddy didn't like it, but he never let it ruin his mood.

One Saturday night, I must have been about nine, he came home from working the long shift at the mines. Momma always let me stay up for daddy if I didn't have any school. I watched from my window as he parked the old truck outside His face titled backwards and his smile matched mine. His face was dirty, and his clothes looking equally the same. But he was my daddy. I watched him enter the house, but I stayed at my bedroom window. I didn't dare move too much in fear of waking Prim. So I stopped and watched the fairies dancing around outside my window, waltzing in the midnight air. Momma called them fireflies, but I knew better than that. They were fairies, all out and granting wishes to the deserving children of Seam. Daddy taught me that.

I could hear daddy rattling around in the kitchen at first, before he came to wish me goodnight. I bit my lip and looked at my sister, but she was sound asleep. No noise in the world could wake her from her dreams. Even so, daddy still tip-toed into our room, his hands behind his back. He leaned down and kissed Prim's blonde hair. She didn't stir. Then he came and joined me at the window, placing a jar between us. The blue lid had holes in it, so it wasn't a very good jar. Daddy opened it up and reached out of the window with it. I watched him in amazement as he caught a group of fairies.

"You need to do this every night," he told me. "We need to capture Tinkerbell." I gasped and leaned out of the open window. I took my time to examine every little glow I could see.

"Do you really think she's out there?" I asked in awe.

"Of course she is, Katniss." Daddy said, placing the no re-lidded jar on my nightstand. "See, there's the second star to the right." He pointed up at the night sky. "And just past it, over those hills, you'll find Neverland." I giggled at his words, wondering if there was such a place. "Everything that comes before Neverland is your Kingdom, Princess Katniss. And as long as you believe that Tinkerbell is out there, she will find her way across it one day to come and find you." So I believed. I believed in finding Tinkerbell with all my little heart. Daddy gave me more jars and each night I would try and capture her. I never did, but I never gave up.

Gale told me I was being silly once. He said Tinkerbell lived in Neverland, she'd never come to a town as boring as Seam. I punched him. He didn't understand the ways that Tinkerbell worked. Gale's daddy didn't teach him the way my daddy taught me. But that was okay, he was still my best friend. I tried to teach him everything he needed to know, and together we sailed the seas in his bunk beds. Hazelle told us not to damage the bed sheets when we tucked them into the top bunk. But we needed a sail to help us find Neverland. To help us find our little fairy friend.

Gale and I went on many adventures. I don't remember them all now, but I do remember our last. We were sat in the garden, between the two pig pens. There was a tall Sycamore tree with its leaves all fallen off in winter. The snow had dried up by then, so it was safe to sit outside. Daddy and Mr. Hawthorne had built us our own secret house up there a few years before then. We didn't climb up it that day, it was too slippery. We sat on the floor, laughing and playing our game. I was eleven, he was thirteen. I know now that he was too old to be playing my childish games with me, but he never told me he didn't want to. That day in particular I was a Princess, locked away in my tower, and he was the Princes, destined to save me. So he fought dragons and other Princes, not letting anyone come between us.

There are two reasons I will always remember this day. As soon as I was deemed rescued, Gale kissed me. Not a quick peck on the cheek like our mothers had made us do every year on birthdays. Not a quick peck on the lips like we usually did when I had been rescued. But his lips pressed against mine and stayed there for at least four seconds. I don't think I kissed him back; I just stood there and received it. I noticed Gale blushing as he pulled away from me. I wanted to ask him about it, I wanted to know why he had done it. But I never got the chance.

My first kiss is reason number one why I will forever remember that day. Reason number two is the same reason Greasy Sae came calling for the two of us at that very moment. She had Prim standing by her, clutching onto Rory's hand, and Vick shying away behind her billowing skirt. Rory and Vick were Gale's younger brothers. Rory was Prim's age, seven, and Vick was two years younger. Greasy Sae was our neighbour; her son was a farm-hand for my daddy. She often baby sat both me and Prim, as well as the Hawthorne boys.

I was confused to see her standing in the back door porch, calling our names as if they were her last words. Momma should have been at home. Gale and I knew better than to disobey our elders. We ran back up the garden, and the closer we got, the more frightened little Prim looked. As soon as I caught up with Gale in the house doorway, I scooped my little sister onto my hip, holding her tightly to me. She didn't look or weigh her age, Prim was very small, very delicate, like the flower she was named after.

"Where's my momma?" I asked Greasy Sae. She gave me a sympathetic look and gestured for us all to follow her. Sae didn't talk much, she was quite quiet. I didn't know a lot about her. I don't think anyone did. She moved to Seam the same year I was born with her son and her daughter. We didn't know where she came from or why she moved, but she did bring a bunch of cooking recipes with her. Every time she'd babysit us, Prim and I would find some new and exotic food on our plates. And now that I'm old enough, I realize it wasn't quite so exotic as opposed to strange. Wild dog stew? No one else in Seam would ever have tried that.

I dropped Prim back to the floor where she held onto me with one hand and onto Rory with the other. Gale followed Greasy Sae out of the house first, Vick scrambling on his little chubby legs to keep up, and Rory, Prim and I bringing up the rear. We were led down the street and turned the corner onto the next. That was when I saw it.

Thick clouds of black smoke were hurricaning in the sky. There was ash in the air and the sun had been blocked out on this part of town. I wasn't sure how Gale and I had issed this from the garden, but I didn't have time to question it. My feet were already moving faster and I was dragging the two seven year olds through the side-road mud. Because there was only one place that could turn the sky that way.

Gale had picked up speed too, little Vick struggling even more now. I let go of Prim's hand and Gale and I ran further ahead. I could the panting of the three younger children, but neither Gale nor I were going to stop for them now. They had Sae to watch them; we needed to keep moving forward. The two of us sped down the rest of the road and skidded onto the dirt track near the bottom. It was a shortcut to the mines.

It didn't take us half as long to get there as it usually did, but I don't even remember most of the run. My mind was only thinking about my daddy. I wanted to know he was safe; I needed him to be safe. I know Gale was thinking the same as me. Mr. Hawthorne was down the mines that day too.

We fought our way through the crowd of sobbing women. A few miners were stretched out on the floor, making the sobs happy ones. But most were grim. I tried to spot my daddy amongst them, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen. And then I found my momma and Hazelle at the front, right by the do-not-cross barrier. There were holding hands, trying to be comforting. Momma had her other hand over her mouth to silence the crying; Hazelle had other stroking her large stomach. She was having another baby. Gale wrapped an arm around his mother's shoulders and I wrapped both of mine around my momma's waist.

We waited there for hours. The moon started to creep up before there was any news. Very few miners had emerged by then, and all were taken to hospital. There was a small relief flooding through me as one more miner was pulled through. Mr. Hawthorne. Hazelle and Gale rushed to him and he was rushed to the hospital.

A little while later, a few more firefighters came running out of the burning entrance, some carrying more miners with them. Just moments later, the entrance collapsed. It was like some horrible movie, the world slowing down and my mother falling to the floor. I knew what this meant. No matter how much I tried to fight it, I knew this meant that he hadn't survived. I was never going to see him again. My daddy was dead.

Greasy Sae pulled my momma, crying and shaking, all the way home. I carried a tired Prim, too young to understand what had just happened. One of our other neighbors took Rory and Vick to the hospital. Hazelle and Gale had gone in the ambulance.

I didn't cry. It was like I didn't know how to. I just walked up to my parents' bedroom and curled up on my daddy's side. I couldn't think of him as gone, as never coming home. I wanted it not to be real. I wanted him to be alive, to come walking in through the bedroom door and carry me into my own bed like he had done many times before. He never did, though. And he never would again.

Mr. Hawthorne passed away that night in hospital. Gale told me that the doctors said his body had been too internally damaged. I knew that meant it was very bad. I still didn't cry over Mr. Hawthorne, who had been like a second father to me. I didn't know how to cry over it.

Every night I would crawl into my parents bed, on my father's side, and just curl up to sleep. Prim joined me most nights. There would have been room for all three of us, but my mother never got off the couch. She just sat there, a living corpse. She would not speak, she would not move, she would barely eat. Sae had to force feed her before she withered away before our very eyes. Sae tried her best to take care of all of us, but it shouldn't have been her job to.

Hazelle was back on her feet within a few days, watching over her three boys and expecting the new baby at any time. My momma ignored me and Prim. I was the one who had to sit her down and explain that daddy wasn't coming home. He never was going to play Princess' with us again and we'd never get to wait up for his truck late at night. That wasn't my job, but I did it because momma wasn't going to.

We were allowed two weeks off from school, but we went back after one. There was no point in all three of us being vegetables. Every day before the bus came, Prim would braid momma's hair. She would make no response. Sae would silently make us packed-lunches and send us on our way. After two weeks, she had semi-officially moved in. She took good care of the house while James, her son, took good care of most of the farm. The others hands did their best to help out too, but no one wanted to put any effort into it without a pay check coming out the other end. My daddy wasn't there with his cheery nature anymore to spur everyone on, hope was lost.

Sae helped deliver little Posy Hawthorne three weeks after the accident. She was almost two weeks late, but she was perfectly healthy. Hazelle hadn't had time to get to the hospital and the ambulance came twenty minutes late. Posy was a great little addition to our make-shift family. Prim adored her and her brothers loved her with everything they had.

It was a whole six and a half week after the accident before I lost it completely. I finally had worked up the courage one Wednesday morning during Spring Break to go into my bedroom. Prim was downstairs, watching TV, Sae was cooking breakfast for all of us. I slowly pushed the door open and at the sight of the mayonnaise jars on the windowsill, I just lost. I threw all seven jars out the window, shattering each one. The fireflies in them were long dead. I tore at all my fantasy books, saving daddy's favorite for last. Fairytales had lost all meaning to me now; I wasn't going to get my happy ending, so I couldn't be a Princess anymore. I scratched at the wooden trunk that had been sat at the end of my bed for three years. Daddy had bought it for me one Christmas. It was filled with dressing-up clothes. I was never going to wear any of them again. I took the photo of the two if us off my nightstand and I threw it as hard as I could at the wall before collapsing onto my bed. I was finally crying, sobbing as hard as I could into my pillow.

Daddy told me that no one could take your dreams away from you, but someone had found a way. The day he died was the day I was stripped of my hope and my dreams. My Kingdom had fallen to pieces.

A/M: What a sad start to a story...

No, seriously, I don't start bawling my eyes out until chapter 5 at least, but I'm all blurry visioned here!

As I reread through this, it reminded me of A Cinderella Story...Ever seen that film? Yeah, I must have been thinking about that in the back of my mind while I was writing this...What a good film that is...haha!

I honestly think that this is one of my best chapters I have ever written. Like EVER! (Go Taylor Swift XD) I hand write it, BTW. I haven't hand written a story in a very long time...Like, two years...And even then they were just short stories for English class! But this story is going to be completely hand written and then typed up, which is one of the things that I think make it so special ^^

The reason for it being hand written is that I am saving this story to be written in my spare time while I am at college. You see, I have big gaps between my classes sometimes, and the college bus only comes twice a day; morning and afternoon. So I get bored sometimes and what better way to quench some boredom than writing? haha! So, if there are no frequent updates, that is also the reason why.

So, that's just a bit of info on the writing of this story...And if you haven't fallen asleep yet, CONGRATS!

This is my second multi-chapter Hunger games fic! My first only got to chapter three :( But it just wasn't thr right fic for me, you know? I'm not much of an action writer, more of a romance and fantasy writer...And I guess you're a fantasy and romance reader if you're reading this story! haha!

Sooo...I think that's about much of a ramble I can fit into one AN!

WARNING! My AN's can get pretty long sometimes...I ramble...Like...A LOT! So, you have been warned!

Thanks for reading, please review (:

Love, Miss C. Rhiannon X