AN/ Guess what? More spoilers. Love you all, and I'm glad you like my people... it started out as me reading the epilogue and realizing that such epilogues are what fanfiction is for.
Dedicated to Finnick (again) who I know is up there, parading around in his skivvies and making the angels blush.
Rating: K
Spoiler Ranking: 9/10
His name is Calsone Mellark Everdeen. He loves his name, because his father loves it. He is filled with an endless capacity for such love, and he sometimes sees that in his father.
Though his mother is not so open about it, he can see that she loves him, as well. Sometimes, the love he feels for the world is almost something tangible, like the bread he watches his father pull from the oven. His greatest wish is to share that feeling with his sister, who is the quietest of them all.
Even his mother has to let it out sometimes. But his Rosie tries to hide everything she feels, and it makes his stomach tighten. He wants everyone to be as happy as he is. It is an impossible goal, but one befitting such an optimist.
When he smiles, it is hard for other people not to smile as well. Even the kittens in the basement let him stroke them, beasts that they are. He wears a halo of joy that is hard to resist.
In all the world, his favorite person is his father, who is always so warm and safe, even though he is clearly as scared of something in the past as his mother is. Calsone likes to be near his father, because he likes his flaws, likes how human he is.
When he grows up, Calsone wants to be his father. He wants to be a baker, to live in the house of his childhood, to marry a woman he loves like his father loves his mother.
The people his parents like are always kind to Calsone. Everybody is, though he does not yet understand why. His lovely teacher, Delly, who is the pre-grade instructor at school, has delighted him since their first meeting.
Innocently, he sometimes wishes that she was his mother. Her hugs are warm and tight, and he knows that she loves him almost as much as his parents do.
While his Rosie is shy and hides with their mother, he is always eager to greet any visitors to the home he loves. The big one, Haymitch, has always intrigued him. He compares his own lean build to that of the older man, and wishes he could have a bigger stomach. He is sure that the man must be hiding something inside of it, and takes every opportunity to check that it is still attached.
Haymitch makes his mother laugh, and he is thankful for that.
Once, back when he did not have to go to school, and his mother would carry him with her around the district, she travelled to a place with huge, flying crafts, and people he did not recognize. His sister would not have liked the unfamiliarity, but he was fascinated.
A woman who was surely older than his mother, but much shorter, met them there. She was pretty, he decided, but not as nice as he would have liked. She called his mother things like 'brainless', but she seemed happy to be around that woman, who she called Johanna. Because he loved his mother, he was okay with her friend. It was strange, though, how she would avoid every puddle in the streets, while he splashed eagerly.
Before his sister could return home, the woman had left for a district called Seven. He was a little bit happy, because his Rosie would probably not have liked her very much, at first.
Annie was another person that Calsone could never quite decide whether or not he liked. She was nice enough, but things she said made his mother cry. Her eyes were beautiful, but he could tell that there was something wrong with her. When he asked his father, he had said that Annie was very sad, and she could not feel better for a long time.
Now, he feels bad for having thought poorly of her. He hopes that he is never sad, like Annie is. Even his Rosie always feels better, after a while.
He likes her son, the boy called Shoal. Shoal plays with him, and teaches him rhymes about the sea, and about fish, and tells him stories of how he has almost caught things called 'whales', all by himself, in a very big net he has at home.
When he told his mother the whale story, it made her smile very wide, and she even laughed a bit. Then, his father said something about a person named Finnick being alive again, and his mother was quiet for a whole day.
Though he doesn't know who Finnick is, he assumes that he was one of his mother's other friends. One of the friends who died. She has pictures of them all, in a book that he sometimes likes to look at. He can't read very well, but he has seen the name often.
Calsone only met his grandmother once before, and he can't remember her at all. His Rosie can, though, and she says that she is the best doctor in the whole entire world. He believes her, and wishes that he could meet her again. He is sure that she would love him, too. He wants everyone to love him, because he loves everybody.
The only time he cries is when he hears his mother screaming at night. When he was younger, he used to toddle to her room, trying to comfort her. It made him cry, that he couldn't help, that he made it worse. Even his father's fits are better, though they scare him much more.
His father is the only thing that always remains constant. No matter what, Calsone will be able to find him in the kitchen, to find a loaf of hot bread on the counter, to know that at least one person will be willing to sit down and listen.
When his father hurts himself, trying to stay sane, when he digs his nails into his palms so hard that they draw blood, Calsone can let little worries blossom. That his mother will not love his father any more, that he will have to choose which one he loves more.
It has happened to some of his friends, in pre-grade. Their parents stopped being in love, so he can never fully banish the doubt that his will follow their example. No matter how hard he tries, his mind is too open for the already planted seeds to be banished. And he has tried, every night. When he can't go to sleep, when his Rosie is far away, across the hall, and his mother is restless in the room next to his.
That is when Calsone thinks, really thinks. He is a smart boy, but some doubts defy intellect, and fester in the dark. He worries that he will have nightmares like his mother's, that his friends will die, that the terrible things his Rosie once told him about will happen again.
Because his Rosie is older than him, she has already heard of the Hunger Games in her school. And though their parents forbid her to tell him any more, there is no erasing what he has already heard. That kids, older than Rosie, but not by much, had to die. Two from every single district. That it happened to his own parents, and that is why his dad only has one leg.
His mother yelled at his Rosie when she learned that he had been told. He was too young. But he still understood, and it still made him think, and cry. Not like his mother or his father or his Rosie, but quietly. Thinking of all the dead children.
He still hasn't made the connection between the book of his mother's dead friends and the games that his Rosie told him about. Someday, though, he will.
One thing that Calsone loves, almost as much as he loves his family, is to play. He and his Rosie can dance together in the Meadow, and he feels a state of bliss that many people would trade years of their life to achieve. No life is perfect, but he is certain that his is closer than most.
When he is playing, sometimes he doesn't even notice that when his mother watches them, she cries the same way he does when he thinks of what he doesn't understand at night. Quiet, almost unnoticeable. When he does see it, he wonders what could possibly diminish her spirits in such a place as the Meadow.
It is beautiful, all green and lovely, with a young willow tree that he is sure that he will one day be able to climb. The Meadow is peaceful, unlike his mother's restless eyes, the only part of him that he is certain he owes to her. His grey eyes are not his father's trait, and he loves that his mother gave them to him. He loves feeling like a part of her, because he admires her more than almost anyone else in the world.
Calsone Mellark Everdeen is happy. He will not be truly content, however, until the rest of the word smiles with him. Such is the fate of a true optimist.
