Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.

This is another short one, but it is the last prologue! The next chapter boots up the story properly, and chapters will start getting longer. I'm currently aiming for around a thousand words per chapter for the pre-Games stuff.


The weeks continued to roll by.

He continued to follow his new routine, day in, day out, growing from an always athletic and muscular young man to a small giant, and the other prisoners mostly left him alone. They came and went anyway; most of his blockmates were petty thieves or those who had 'broken some rule' (aka done something one particular peacekeeper or capitol official took offence to) and only there for short periods of time, though some were repeat offenders.


Her classmates learnt to leave her be when they didn't get the reactions they wanted and in fact ended up meeting with bizarre accidents including missing belongings and mysterious injuries (Ariel did give her an odd look when a girl that slapped her broke her wrist the next day but it couldn't be her fault she fell down the stairs now could it). During class hours she swung her legs under her chair and watched the strip lights flicker.

She spent as little time as she could at her mother's house, roaming the woodland they had once roamed together. Sometimes Ariel came, but she was town born and bred, unaccustomed to the rough terrain and somewhat fearful of the coyotes.

What little time she did spend at home was spent closed up in her closet room, away from her mother and her brats. The lightbulb swung above her head every time one of the brats charged up or down the stairs and she felt the energy in it as it flickered.


The months rolled by. She continued to visit, and he pressed his hands to the glass, speaking silently with her. They needed no words while the guards were stood around watching them with their guns at their hips.

One day, they'd tell each other, one day they'd go where the coyotes went.