"They play in the meadow." The girl with dark hair and the boy with the blonde curls. But I can't help thinking about another little girl that should have been playing with them. An image of a girl standing on her tip-toes, poised as if to take flight hits me, as it has thousands of times before.
Why me? Why did she have to die? And Prim and Finnick and my father and countless unnamed individuals?
They want to publish the book of people who died that Peeta and I began. The saddest thing is that it will never be finished. 75 years of hunger games, countless years of oppression before them, and conveniently disappearing records means that we will never be able to complete it, and add every person whose life was tragically ended by the influence of the capitol, dying in their mines, in the games or simply those thousands of men, women and children who died of disease and starvation caused by the conditions they were forced to live in.
I don't want the children to see it. I don't want to open their minds to the horrific world I grew up in, or know the terrible things I did. What would they think if they saw me murder Cato and boy from 1? Saw me shouting "if we burn you burn with us"? See me in battle gear in the front line of the army overthrowing the capitol? Shooting an arrow through Coin?
I don't want them to see, but I want them to understand.
Finally, I come to a decision.
My story is played all the time on the television, stupid documentaries called "The Girl on Fire" claiming to show the 'real Katniss Everdeen'. They call me the star-crossed lover, the girl on fire, the mockingjay, and none of them know the real me.
They can't seem to understand that I never meant to start any of it, although I'm glad I did. They don't understand how I'm still plagued by dreams of wolf-mutts, and birds with Prim's voice screaming for help. But I don't have to worry about her anymore.
She's finally safe.
I hope what I told Rue is true. That there really is a meadow somewhere. Maybe Rue and Prim met. I bet they would have been great friends. My children take the words of the lullaby for granted, they have always been safe.
I take out the tapes I kept all these years for exactly this day. It's time to show them what really happened.