Sometime in the night I find myself just outside of the city. My thoughts are nothing but a jumble that I can't make sense of because it's mostly feelings and images. If I try to hold on to one of them for more than a second, it's slips through into another thought and then another.

There are sounds that are familiar to me, but it's so far away that I can barely make out what it is until a pair of strong hands clasp my shoulders. Slowly, the jumble of thoughts focus on the sounds and what they mean. "Katniss!" It's a name. Is it my name? My blurry vision finally takes in the handsome, blond man holding me, his eyes frantic and desperate.

He's making sounds, but their meaning has been lost to me. As I regain more of my focus, I remember that his name is Gale. No. His name is Peeta. The details start to flood back into my brain.

I'm under water.
He's my husband.
We have a child, no, an egg back in the city.

I blink a few times to rid myself of my blurry vision, and his sounds slowly start to make sense to me again. "Katniss! Where were you going? What are you doing out here?"

"Peeta?" I try out the name, and it feels strange. The problem is that I'm not sure if it's because I've been used to called him Gale, or because these sounds suddenly feel foreign to me.

To prove to myself that he's really there, I reach out to touch him with my fingers, gliding over his skin and into his golden hair. "Your hair used to be black. Real or not real?" I ask him, because frankly it all seems more on the not real side.

"Real," he answers and pulls me into a tight embrace, although I do catch the look of utter terror in his face before I nestle my head in the crook of his neck. I feel safe here even if I'm not quite sure where I am.

Twice I found myself outside of the city and disoriented before Peeta and Sae agreed to have a guard placed outside of my personal chamber at night. Even with a guard always there, I still wake up in unusual places. It's no longer outside of the city, but now it's at the exits when guards wake me.

Sae tells me what I already know: it's the float. It's calling me back no matter how much I fight it, no matter how much I ignore the pull to land.

This time, very early in the morning, I wake up choking. The guard outside of my chamber rushes inside to see what's wrong with me, but by the time he reaches my side, I already know what it is and correct it. For some reason while sleeping, I switch from breathing with my gills to breathing with my lungs. The only time this has happened since I've been down here is when I do it on purpose.

Boggs is at the entrance of my chamber in a heartbeat and my guard tells him what's happened before the leader of the guards disappears. The next thing I know, Peeta, Sae, Prim, and even Johanna are swimming to me, lights flashing and panicked looks on their faces.

"You couldn't breathe?" Prim asks me.

"All of the instincts you were born with are returning," Sae explains, even though I don't want her to. I wish she would stop telling me what I already know.

There's a look that's shared between Peeta, Sae, and Johanna, their faces grim and lips tight. Prim's oblivious, but if they're thinking what I think they're thinking, I'm glad she is.

I can't stay here anymore. I have to succumb to the float, go back to the shore. I pull the small girl into my arms and hug her tightly as though this will keep me anchored here.

I realize Prim's not as oblivious as I thought she was when she says, muffled by her face buried in my side, "You have to go, don't you?"

I pull apart from her just enough so that I can nod, because I don't want to say the words. Before I can, Johanna turns to Sae, even with their relationship as strained as it is, and asks, "Isn't there something in that myth of yours that can help her stay?" It surprises me that it comes from Johanna. I've had the feeling since my first day here that she didn't particularly like me, and from there we've developed a relationship solely based on mutual respect at best. But the way the sound of her voice tightens and her lights flash once from emotions that are barely within her control, I wonder if I'd underestimated it.

"Don't you think I would have told her by now?" the elder mermaid snarls. "As it goes, there were only two other incidences known. One was killed before he could fulfill his purpose. The other did succeed but left soon after, when she was called back. There's nothing about staying."

Prim buries her face in my ribs and curls her little body into me, tucking her soft pink tail fin between us. The mournful pattern of her lights glow, and she doesn't do a thing to hide them. It's then that I decide: if I have to return, I'm going to do so on my own terms. I'm not going to wander through the ocean to the shore without even so much as a good bye to those I love here.

I reach for Prim's face and pry it from my body. "How about we go to the Hob?" I ask her. She smiles at me in agreement, but it's not the sparkling, glowing smile I've seen from her before. This one's far more subdued, but I won't let that get in the way.

We set out through the Hob, floating hand in hand. Typically when we do this, Prim's bursting with energy, swimming from stall to stall, but this time she stays at my side and maintains a calm pace.

"Katniss!" one vendor calls out. "The mother of the city!" another calls. "Thank you for the egg! Our most precious gift!" someone from a stall in the far corner belts out. I've heard this before and thought it was strange the first time it was said to me, but after thinking about it, I could've died giving this city an heir. So yes, I do deserve their thanks. What they don't know is that they deserve my thanks as well. I haven't felt this welcomed anywhere since my parents. I can't thank them aloud, but I squeeze Prim's hand and thank each and every one I've met down here to myself.

It's almost morning, and I can't sleep. I won't sleep. Peeta spends it with me talking. "I'm glad it was you, even if only for a short time," he confesses out of the blue.

"You didn't want the other Katniss?" I tease. To that, he gives me a curt, "No."

"She couldn't have been that bad," I tell him. With so many people to love her, how could she be? And yet, he gives me the answer I would never in a million years expect.

"She was ready to trade Prim, Katniss."

"What?" I react, my lights flashing, my tone harsh, so much so that several guards at the entrances of the main chamber peek in to check on the egg.

"I've only told Johanna. I couldn't bear to tell Sae or Prim. The reason why we found you was because I knew where she died. I saw her die. We were coming to retrieve her body. Although, when we found you, Johanna thought I'd imagined her death."

I shake my head, trying to reconcile what he's telling me with the decent person I imagined in my head as well as this bit of new information that he saw her die. "Wait! Start from the beginning."

"I'd already made up my mind," he tells me, "that I wouldn't accept her proposal. I didn't like the way she treated those around her, including Prim, sweet Prim who reminds me so much of Delly. She was the only reason why I considered that woman at all."

"How did she die?"

"I guess my answer didn't come fast enough for her. She found a way out of the city undetected, except I happened to be looking for her to tell her my decision. When I caught her sneaking out, though, I followed her. Where she went, Cato was there waiting for her," he pauses there and I'm glad. My brain is having an awful time with all of this information, and I need those couple of seconds to prepare for the rest of what Peeta's telling me.

"They were some distance away, but I was able to hear most of the conversation. She wanted to trade Prim so that the City of Silver would leave the City of Fire alone. Cato, however, answered her counter-proposal with a spear. He didn't have time to aim it properly and wounded her shoulder, but by the time she swam towards shore, Cato speared her stomach. She lived long enough for him to tell her what he really wanted: that he could have both Prim and the City of Fire with her dead. She died right there, shaking her head in disbelief."

"That's how he knew I wasn't Katniss! That's how you knew he knew. He would've had to confess to killing her to prove that I wasn't the real Katniss."

He nods, but then takes my hands in his, our bodies maintaining a respectable distance. "But I want to make something clear with the time we have left. You're more Katniss to me than she could ever be."

There's a heat that rushes over my skin as we release our hands quickly.

"I just wish Delly were here to meet you. She would have loved you, probably more than I do."

I feel that heat burning over my skin, but I ignore it, glossing over the fact that it was close to a declaration of love. "Why would she?"

"Delly used to wonder what life was like up there. She would prattle on endlessly about the things she'd found and the ships she'd seen. To have a real human…as a sister," he says as he settles back into a floating position, a smile spreading across his face that's full of so many emotions. "She would have drowned you in questions, though."

My first reaction is to laugh but I stop myself in time. Laughing doesn't work underwater. I concentrate and let my lights flicker with the pattern of amusement, but it scares me how easy it was to slip back into human reactions. Peeta's saying something, but all I can hear in my ears is laughter. It's my father and mother. They're playing with me in the backyard again. I chase my father, reaching out to tag him when I'm yanked back.

"Katniss!" The backyard is replaced with the main chamber. My parents are replaced by Peeta. He looks so worried, and I want to ease the tension in his face, but he has every right to be worried.

"That's new," I say, wrapping my arms around myself. "I haven't done that awake before."

His gills are opening and closing in great bursts. "We're not going to be able to fight this, are we?" It's the first time he's acknowledged that all of our efforts were not just to delay the inevitable, but to stop it.

I don't answer because there's only one answer and I don't want to say it, no matter how true it is. Glancing over at the top of the pedestal where I know the egg rests, I close my eyes and picture what it would be like to stay here and watch it hatch open. All I can do is imagine because each day proves that my imagination is all I have left of this world.

Inside the main chamber, I immediately head for the center of the room, the top of the pillar. The egg's already grown noticeably since it was placed here.

I curl my body around it inside the bowl of the pillar where it lays, covering it with my body and feeling its warmth. I've said my goodbyes to everyone in my own way, even to Johanna. She floated there without a hint of emotion, until her arms wrapped around me without warning. It was a quick hug, and then she was gone. Sae's goodbye was even shorter. I wanted to tell her how much her guidance meant to me down here. I wanted to tell her that I've never known the love of a grandmother because both were dead by the time I was born, but she was what I imagine them to be. There were so many other things I wanted to tell her, but I couldn't say any of them.

It was hard enough to find her, but when I did, when I opened my mouth to say all of those things, her lights flashed that mournful pattern Prim's had. It was the first time I'd ever seen Sae's lights and was completely startled even as she whooshed past me.

I think of Sae. I think of Johanna and Prim and Peeta.

I think of my egg.

"What will you look like?" I ask it softly, my finger playing over the glass-smooth shell that's warm to the touch. "Will they tell you about the mother that comes from land, or will you only know 'Katniss'?" I feel the prickly burn in my eyes and realize that I'm crying. No one would ever be able to tell here, but knowing that I'm doing this only makes more unseen tears. I'm crying instead of having my lights flash my emotions. I'm having everything that I've become taken from me little by little.

"Will your father bring you above water to breathe air?"

I startle when I actually get an answer. "Of course."

Peeta's near the pillar, and by the look on his face, it's clear it's time for me to go. I can't put this off any longer, and I've said my goodbyes.

At the exit of the city Peeta leads me to, Prim's waiting. "Johanna said she had duties. Sae said she didn't want to lose another…" she says, letting the rest float away before the three of us swim to the outskirts of the city boundaries near the shore I'd come from.

Prim's the first to pull me into one last hug. "Don't forget us, Katniss," she says to me in my ear.

When she releases me, Peeta takes hold of me, and at first I fear that he may squeeze me like mating. His arms are tight around me, but not that tight, and I hear Sae's words in my head, "Mating starts with the mind." I can definitely say that mating is far from our minds, so in these last moments underwater we can touch. I'm thankful, especially when I feel my tail fin snagged. I look down to see the tendrils of seaweed wrapped around it, worming it's way up my tail and towards the rest of my body. Peeta doesn't let me go; Prim's lights are flashing wildly with emotions I can't read fast enough.

"Peeta! Let me go!"

"No!" he refuses and holds me tighter as though strength alone can keep me here.

"You have to," I say to him just as the seaweed reaches my chest, "for Prim and the egg."

At that, his arms release me and the seaweed doesn't hesitate to take his place along my body. I'm covered to my upper chest, and then they cover my arms just as I see movement beyond the two.

By the time my neck and mouth are covered, I can see what the movement is clearly. There are a handful of mermen with weapons, and their leader is Cato. My eyes widened with terror doesn't get Prim or Peeta's attention at first, perhaps thinking I'm panicking from being covered this way, but they do turn and see the mermen after a few moments. Prim's quickly seized by one of them while Peeta immediately launches for Cato. All I can see before my eyes are covered is them locked in battle with nothing but a flurry of tails.

I try to call for them but I can't speak. I try to reach out to them, but I can't move. I'm uselessly cocooned in the seaweed that will make me human again.