Pixel Watt Pov-
30 Years Later…
The four of us wake up before the sun. We've got a long day ahead of us and we figure we may as well get it started as early as possible. We quickly change and wash and then slip into our shoes.
Cade, my husband, looks so out of place in District 3 it's crazy. He's literally the only District 3 citizen I've ever seen with green eyes, apart from the rest of his family. His hair is short, wavy, and brown. When he smiles his eyes smile too, lighting up playfully like two stars.
Microh is almost 10, and he seems to have inherited more of my traits than those of his father. His hair is jet black and smooth. His skin is the color of ivory. And, of course, he's always up for some mischief.
Lucia is 8. She wears thick-rimmed, steel glasses. She's always pulling her hair back. To keep it out of her thinking space. She's always thinking. Watching. Analyzing everything.
We quickly shuffle out of the door into the gathering light.
"Are you sure you remembered the fart bombs?" I hiss.
Microh nods, holding up the small suitcase. The four of us stayed up all night making them yesterday. Other than my friends Gamma and Giga, they're the only people who know the secret recipe, per se. The nasty stink isn't easy to recreate unless you know exactly what goes in it.
In no time we've arrived at the place where Giga, Gamma and I set off our first fart bomb the morning I was reaped for the 83rd Hunger Games. It still looks exactly the same as it did thirty years ago. The same tall, grey buildings to the left and right. The same well. The same rickety steel shed.
"Shhh!" Cade says. "Someone's coming now!"
We duck into the shadows. I clap my hand over Lucia's mouth to keep her from laughing as a group of two boys comes into sight, chatting quietly. Ever so carefully, Microh reaches into his case and tosses one of the fart bombs at the boys' feet.
The four of us burst out laughing as the small spherical object explodes, sending out a white cloud of stuff that sends the boys reeling. It takes minutes for the stench to dissipate. There will always be something uniquely satisfying about pulling a harmless prank on somebody. Even when I'm 100.
It takes about an hour for us to use up all of the fart bombs. Microh tosses them all into the suitcase to be reloaded later and then we start back to the Victor's Village to drop them off.
My heart catches in my throat in a kind of throbbing ache as we step out of the house to travel to our next destination. The tribute graveyard. Every year, Cade and I lay flowers on the graves of the dead tributes. It isn't much but we feel like it pays a kind of tribute to their memory.
The Hunger Games are a terrible thing. Even though mine ended three decades ago I can still hear the screams as though they were ten seconds ago. A tear rolls down my cheek at the thought of little Microh and Lucia in their childhood days, unaware that the world ahead of them is uglier than they can even pretend to imagine. Someday they'll know why Mommy wakes up screaming every night. Someday they'll know why I get the nightmares; why they'll never go away. But I have to take things as they come. I have to live for the now.
I take Cade's hand in mine as the graveyard grows closer. I wonder how many tears have been shed here. How many hearts have been broken beyond repair. How many innocent young souls have been torn out of the universe far too soon.
Cade pulls out the bouquet of flowers when we pass the gateway of the graveyard. The cemetery is beautiful. Butterflies and grasshoppers flutter to and fro. Colorful songbirds soar overhead, their feathers gently illuminated in the light of the rising sun. The fuzzy green grass is like a carpet. It's the most breathtaking place imaginable. But behind every beautiful thing there is some kind of pain. I know that well. All too well.
Cade tightens his hand around mine, and a kind of warmth spreads through me. The warmth of another's love. The light of the heart that makes tolerable this existence.
"Ready?" Cade asks as we kneel beside the first grave, helping me wipe away my tears with the back of his hand.
I nod. "I'm ready."
Six months go by fast. Some crazy stuff has gone down in my life since then and I'm so glad this story has been a part of everything. Thank you all for sticking with me, whether by submitting or reviewing or just being there.
I know this question will get asked a lot if I don't address it now, so I figured I'd put something here. I don't think I'll be doing another SYOT in the foreseeable future. Accepting 24 characters and shaping and developing them over the course of their separate journeys is an exhilarating ride but also an extremely difficult one. I'm taking a break from art of the SYOT for now. Besides, I seriously need to pay more attention to 23 Cannons anyway.
I also think it's so satisfying this SYOT is ending on a perfect 50 chapters. I know there's so much more I could write about Pixel's life after the games, and who knows, I might in the future, but for now I think Ms. Watt's story is best left up to the imagination of the reader.
I've been rambling far too long. Thanks for shaping this little story into what it is now. You guys are the best.
-Cjborange