This is the usual disclaimer, I own very little in the world and even less in this story. I am sure that most people reading this work are familiar enough with Hunger Games to know when my imagination begins and Suzanne Collins begins. Last part of the note, thanks for reading, reviewing, and favoriting and following this story. I thoroughly appreciate it.

Peeta's words that day pierced my consciousness as few things have before, even now I run them over in my mind in my lowest moments, especially as my life has been so tied into the shadows of the past, the dead, and those who have given up on living. "If you dwell on dying you might as well already be dead because you've already quit living." My mother quit living, and it affected me in ways that I will never be able to explain or make you comprehend. I see ghosts, but no ghost was more fearsome than the living specter of my dead mother as she lay in her corner in our cabin. Perhaps this was because in my childish soul I believed there was some way to recall her to life. I have read that when a loved one dies the people left behind are always looking for them to come back in the door, expecting them to still be alive. I can empathize. I lived in the belief that my mother would someday regain her soul. It was not until her body finally died and we gave her to the Mirror that I finally gave up hope. Not that she died at that moment. She had died when my father was drowned in the Mirror, but that the hope I had that she would someday awaken had finally left me. Now I began to wonder if I had ever lived, had the morose happenings that surrounded my birth and my, albeit unknown, communing with the dead made me dwell on dying, or at least the dead. Or were Death and I so intertwined with each other that one could not walk without the other? Did I dwell on Death, or did Death dwell on me? One way or another we seemed to be constant companions and one seldom seen without the other. It seemed, at times as if all that I had ever loved and all I had ever seen was touched by death. Haymitch had lost his fiancée and both Sae and Haymitch had lived to care with my dead mother. Little Prim, the companion of my childhood had been dead long before I had been born, my beloved Mirror killed my father, and indirectly my mother, and now Cinna was dying. Was there anywhere in my life death had not touched? I had been born of a dead woman and walking with shadows of the past, I had walked with Death all my life. Perhaps the better question was not whether or not I had dwelled on death, but whether or not I had ever been allowed to live. Or if I knew what living meant at all.

Yet in the past death had never been my choice, I had no hand in the circumstances that surrounded my life, and would have given much to have grown up a normal girl. A girl with a living mother and father and friends who called her by name rather than enemies that called her by the stinging epitaph, Witch girl. I would have loved to be normal. Then perhaps there would not be the great burden of choice upon me. I had been chosen for my mission because of my living altercations with death. Perhaps that was why I had been chosen because the things that happened could have only happened to me. I was designed to bear the burden they brought and was designed to see them to their end. I cannot say I am unhappy now that I was chosen, but at the time it seemed an unbearable burden. I believe it was in this time period that I finally accepted the path that I was later to walk, I do know that it was in this time that the Bird left my dresser drawer and was for the first time pinned to my breast. In hindsight, I wonder if this was not why she came to me. As if my acceptance of a round pin was the indication that the main portion of my story was to begin.

The first time I saw her, I was walking in a park with Peeta and we were walking near a pond, I suppose there is a touch of irony in the fact that a lake had been the directly connected to the appearance of Little Prim and a pond was directly attached to my first appearance of Rue. I suppose to explain the full impact of Rue's appearance, I must first make a revelation of sorts, I had not seen any of the White People since that fateful tea party under the apple trees. I wonder now if they were holding back and waiting for me to once more regain my equilibrium, after the events of that night, including my new identity as a bird shifter, I believe this what they call such things. I am not sure but this closest name to what I am that I can find in my books, my only other option seems to be something like were-bird and that name is not one that I desire to carry. Although I must say that I have found no accounts of such things happening to real people, indeed all that happens to me seems to be the denizens of fantasy, legends, and fairytales. However, as improbable as Rue's appearance might have been it was not a fantasy, but a cold hard truth.

As I looked at the beauty of the sun and the sky reflected in the water, I saw perched in one of the trees that overshadow the pond a slim young girl. If I had to guess her age, I would guess ten, she has bright brown eyes and satiny brown skin. Her white transparent appearance was even more emphasized by the natural darkness of her skin. She bore a huge ugly wound on her stomach that seemed to swallow her tiny torso its dark stain. She reminded me of a bird, a pretty nightingale that was made to sing. I knew her name instinctively, but unlike many of the White People who seemed to live on their own plane and to ignore my presence, she stared straight at me, as if finding me out, like a fawn assessing a threat. This might have been the first time I saw her, but it was not the last, she always appeared on the edge of the crowd, or in the distance, posed for flight like a small bird, but intently watching my every movement. After that first time, the wound had disappeared but little else about her changed, her wariness and her interest remained the same. It was also intriguing to see how many of my things disappeared and reappeared in random places during this time, I cannot say for sure that it was Rue, but as I searched, I could feel amusement in the air and I am sure you can see why I wondered if it might have been. Many people equate the dead with sadness or fear, but with both Rue and Little Prim, and indeed many that I have encountered as white People were not sad at all, nor were they anything to fear. They were simply dead. The good were good, the bad were bad, and the mischievous and young hearted remained just as lively.

This continued on for weeks, meanwhile, despite our small and for Peeta's part unseen chaperone, Peeta and I became good friends and when Cinna and Portia invited me back to their house for the first two weeks of the summer, I was quick to accept. My first night there we had a bonfire and a picnic of sorts, I had a glorious evening. It was the first time I had ever roasted ring baloney and hotdogs, having been more accustomed to rabbit stew than the usual food of campouts. It was also the first time I had ever eaten Peeta's cheese buns, and they were to die for. I feel as if I often speak of food in these pages, but if any food deserved a mention in any book it was Peeta's cheese buns. On the outside, they simply looked like normal rolls, but when you bit into them your senses were filled with the rich taste of mozzarella, cheddar, and few other changes I cannot name, mixed with savory spices and the whole thing was contained in a crisp flaky exterior. The first time I had one I just about died of bliss right then and there. Cinna, Portia, and Peeta, all shared a good laugh when they saw my eyes roll back in my head as I first bit into one. Cinna commenting laughingly,

"Well, Peeta I think we can assume that she likes them,"

While Peeta's eyes shone with well-deserved pride and amusement at my extreme reaction. If I had one, I had twenty that night and it was amazing that there were enough to go around, although it is possible the rest of the company avoided them for my sake, as my preference for them was so marked. It was while eating one of these delicious treats and contemplating the flames with Peeta, Cinna, and Portia having gone back to the house, that Rue touched me for the first time. Peeta and I had both grown silent and I was contemplating the play of the light across his beautiful face. The warm flames took his beautiful blue eyes, his light skin, and long tangled lashes and threw them into sharp resolution. His strong body as he lay beside the log, I was perched on was drawn into long strong line and only emphasized by the halo of his hair. I have seen very few things in my life more beautiful than Peeta that night, under a dark sky and relaxing by the glow of the fire in the summer air. It had almost been a year since we had met and I could not help but think of his first conversation to me in which he had admitted that he had loved me for years. Here away from the Mirror, and the memory of my mother made complacent by the soothing and romantic balm of the night I found myself wishing to kiss him.

Was it with this purpose that I leant in towards him, or was it for some other unknown thing that made me move? Would I have kissed him, if I had been left alone? I will never know and the answer is among all the other obscure things that may have in a moment changed the course of any story. Perhaps on some alternate plane, another Katniss kissed him, I did not have that chance. For as I leaned in, I felt a sharp coldness go through me, radiating from the pin I wore on my breast. My instinctive reaction was to look at it and on it, I saw the pale cold hand of one of the White People. Imagine my shock when I followed that arm to look into the face of mischievously grinning Rue.

I must say that she startled me, much in the same way a bug in my hair or an ice cube down my back would have startled me. I say this to explain the high pitch scream I emitted at this juncture and the fact that I jumped back. Rue, laughed at me, much in the same way a mischievous younger sibling would have laughed at having startled an older sibling, and in that moment, she reminded me of Little Prim with such distinctness, that I could not help myself, I laughed with her. Together we stood there laughing together. It is my personal opinion that there is no greater cementer of any relationship than shared laughter or shared tears. In this case, I was fortunate that my relationship with Rue began with laughter. Peeta, however, was substantially less than amused at our antics. Among other things he could not see what had startled me and in his view, I had jumped a mile high only to break down into maniacal laughter five seconds later. He was looking at me like I was insane when I stopped laughing, but whereas a few seconds before he had been the sole object of my attention, now I had very little attention to spare him. All my attention was on Rue, who, after this time checking to see if she had my attention, reached out her hand and touched the Bird. I was instantly transported to another place and time, and I was Rue running for my life before turning to face a slender, half-starved looking, black-haired boy who threw a spear, a spear that pierced my stomach. I was shot through with a massive amount of pain and my whole body began to convulse. Then I felt a warm hand on my arm and was able to center myself by concentrating on that hand. The cold emanating from my breast was pulling me away from this world, into Rue's world and death, but the warm presence of the hand upon my arm was pulling me back. Back to Peeta, to the orchard, and the warm balmy night that might have ended in a kiss by the bonfire.

It may seem as you read this that I was conflicted or torn between these two emotions and these two words, Rue's and Peeta's, but I was not. It was rather as if one could not exist without the other. As if there were two portions of me, and that both were necessary to maintain a whole. The dead played a large role in my life, but at the end of the day, I was a living person and not one of the White People I loved so well. In this case, as he would many times in later dates, Peeta was a symbol of life, of hope. A dandelion in the spring.

Then thorough my vision of Rue's final struggle, for no one could survive such a wound, much less such a small and petite girl, I heard, for the first time, the spoken words of one of the White People. Her words were simple and few, three whistled notes, followed by the words "Help us."

After this, my little songbird disappeared, but not with the ease that I had seen her disappear before. Instead, she seemed to be sucked away as if through a large tube or simply as if her essence was being pulled through the air. It was obvious from her expression that she was going against her own will, for her hand fell from my pin as she was pulled away and her arms flailed as she was drug, as if she was attempting to find something to hold on to, something to keep her by my side and in my world. I had the distinct impression that she had something more to tell me and that someone or something more powerful than herself had a vested interest in seeing her silenced. Goodness knows she fought and struggled against it, and seemed to be in pain. I reached for her, but went right through her, as if we were on different planes and one could not touch the other, I stood there helpless as I saw her drug away, and horror filled me as I saw her mouth open in a silent scream, a scream that was all the more terrifying, due to the fact that it had no sound.

The next thing I heard Peeta was yelling at me.

"Katniss! Katniss! Can you hear me? Are you okay? Katniss!"

I cannot imagine how his mind must have been reeling when I, instead of answering, buried my face into his shoulder and burst into tears.