Hlenn Rambutan- Victor

It was strange to return to a normal life. I'd never been normal, and that perhaps made it easier to accept that I'd never be the same person again. I was famous. People crowded around me in the streets, pestering me for autographs or money. I had a new house in an entirely new part of the District. My roommates were Victors instead of other poor workers, and believe me, Frankie, Peppermint and Orchard were strange bedfellows. I gravitated toward Frankie, with his knowledge of death, and he was endlessly patient, since he was the only person on Earth I couldn't annoy.

If there was one thing that got to me, it was the lack of privacy. Everywhere I went, people recognized me. I didn't care that they only cared when I was a Victor. I just wanted some peace and quiet. And so, naturally, I found myself back where I'd always loved to be: the cemetery. Snow might not have accepted my proposed talent of embalming, but I could still freelance. After it was dark, when the dead were closer to the living world, I would creep out to my sanctuary and hang out with the only people who understood the Games. Sometimes I brought flowers, and sometimes I just brought myself.

When the next Games started to draw closer, I didn't dread it like most Victors. I hated the Games and the death they brought, but death had never been alien to me. I still wanted to understand it, even if I now knew death wasn't a child's curiosity. I wanted to know more, and now I wanted it with a new maturity. I hoped dearly that I could keep my mentees away from it, but knowing your enemy is half the battle.

"Hey, Dad. I actually did it," I said to my father one night in the cemetery, or at least to his ashes. "Wouldn't you be proud?" But he had always been proud of me. He was proud when I learned how to read, and when I climbed my first tree, and the first time I beat him in a trivia contest. I didn't carry his ashes around because of some unfulfilled urge to please. I just liked being with my dad.

Something stirred in the darkness. A moth fluttered up, seemingly from nowhere. It was a luna moth, with lovely pale-green wings. It landed on a gravestone, splaying its wings. Then, after a moment, it flew into the sky and vanished into the clouds.

Not everyone would know what it meant, but it was clear to me. Many cultures linked moths with death. Some called them omens, others messengers of departed souls. I knew which was true. My father was proud of me, and I'd known that before any moth told me. This moth had much more to tell than that. It was a single moth, but it held a message from souls all over Panem. From the hundred and three children from Eleven, and from the hundreds more from the other Districts. I didn't know exactly what they were saying, since only the dead understand their language, but I got the message. The dead had differing opinions of me. Some were proud, others resentful. But all were accepting. The dead had moved on, leaving only me. Just like the moth, I was left behind. For all the dead, I would live.


Another one for the books. I'll be rolling right into my next story, but I'm not putting the new doc up until tomorrow, because I'm lazy. And there might be an interruption in the next story, since I'll be moving to New Orleans in two weeks, but I'll soldier on after that. Hope you all had fun, and cheers to Hlenn for all she accomplished.