One month before the reaping for the Seventy-Fifth Games.
The spring morning dawned bright and clear, though it was still quite cold outside. The flowers slowly began opening up their petals to receive the sunlight. The air was alive with the perfume of flowers and the sound of bees buzzing as people started to go about their days heading to work or school. So far, it was looking to be just another ordinary day for the citizens of Seven.
Blight stepped out onto his porch, swathed in a fluffy bathrobe with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigar in the other. He breathed in the air, temporarily clearing the smoke from his lungs before taking another drag.
It was quiet in the Victor's Village. He was grateful for that. He liked to have the silence. He was glad that he was no longer obligated to stop and have a full-on chat with everyone he passed on the street. Out here though, all he had to do was say a quick hello to his fellow Victors, maybe a little nod, and that was it.
The air was a little hazy out here. He could smell smoke, much more than his cigar could ever produce. He wondered if Berry was burning leftover mulch and grass clippings again. She usually had people over to do so about once a month. Today must be that day…
...But hang on, didn't she do that last week?
Blight went out into his front garden and looked around. The smoke wasn't coming from Berry's house. It was coming from Sylvia's.
He dropped his coffee and cigar and raced over to the house. He couldn't even reach their garden because the intense heat drove him back. As he shielded his face, he became aware of several other figures moving over to him.
It was the other Victors - Darren, Johanna, and Logan pushing Berry in her wheelchair. All there with their mouths agape.
"Oh my god!" Berry croaked out, her voice weak with age and horror. "Sylvia! Where's her family! Are they still inside?"
"Haven't seen them," Blight felt the first coils of dread unfurl in his gut. He turned away from the scene. "I'm going for the fire services!"
Darren braved the heat and ran into the garden, not yet alight. "Someone help me find the garden hose!" he called out.
Johanna did so, stony-faced.
Logan and Berry just stood there, watching the house burn. Smoke poured out of every orifice and tongues of flame leapt up to give the wooden structure a kiss of lethality.
Above the cracklings and roar of the heat, there was another sound too.
A scream.
Berry clutched a hand to her chest and keeled over, never to straighten back up again.
The fire services arrived twenty minutes later. It took them twelve hours to completely extinguish the fire.
The Morris house had been completely reduced to its foundations. Very little of the wooden walls or furniture remained. Very little of the human occupants remained either. Only a handful of ashy bones.
The Capitol was saddened by the loss of one of their Victors, especially one so confusingly entertaining. Sylvia's small fanbase generously paid to send over several forensic analysts to help determine whose bones were whose, so that they could be buried properly. It was them who discovered something shocking.
The bones were that of an elderly man and woman and a middle-aged man. And that was it.
There were no bones of a middle-aged woman. No Sylvia.
Her bones were nowhere to be found.