And finally
I love her from the instant I see her. I'm helpless not to, despite the fact that I am drenched with sweat, that there is already a bruise darkening on Peeta's wrist where my fingers gripped him tightly enough that I could feel the bones grinding together, that there is a hole in the window pane from where I've thrown six books and the lamp.
Her head is covered in a downy fuzz that is the color of spun gold, and her eyes are a pale gray-blue, the color of the clean rain that falls in glittering sheets from a cloud-laced sky. She smells like yeast, like bread fresh from the oven, and she is warm, so warm, when my arms rise like something in a dream and take her from Greasy Sae.
"Absolutely perfect," Peeta says quietly, sitting down on the bed next to me, his body pressing gently against mine as he leans over and touches her cheek with a shaking hand. He looks at me with blue eyes that are shiny with unshed emotion and tries on a smile. "I told you she'd be a girl."
I look down at her, at Peeta's daughter, at her little heart-shaped mouth that is the same pale pink as Prim's roses, at the nose that hooks up impishly at the end like his, at the almond-shaped eyes that look like mine. She looks like both of us, she doesn't look like us at all, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
"You know this child needs a name, right?" Greasy Sae interrupts us, wiping her hands on a dark blue towel that she then throws over her shoulder. I look up with genuine surprise that she is still there and then look over at Peeta, who is staring back at me with an expression I cannot read.
"We forgot to think of that," Peeta says unconvincingly.
"Uh huh," I tell him. "What's her name, Peeta?"
"He swallows and at that moment I realize that this baby is his in a way that she will never be mine; that while I was wasting all of my time worrying he has spent months creating for her the perfect identity.
"Willow," he says quietly. "I thought maybe we could name her Willow."
Willow
I think of everything I learned about willow from my father: It is good for tying things together; is flexible, will bend an impossible amount before it breaks. Not great as firewood. It will hold warmth, will catch fire, will burn, but it doesn't put out as much heat as other types of wood.
An addition from my mother: willow is a remedy for aches.
I look down at our daughter and think that we could wish worse for her: To bring things together; to be supple, adaptable, but not infinitely so; to hold her own fire, but never enough to go up in flames.
"Show-off," I tell him half-heartedly, still looking down at those gorgeous eyes that remind me of the camellia that grows wild in the forest intercrossed with the primroses. She yawns, her tiny nose wrinkling in the exact same way Peeta's does, and I watch, enchanted, as gossamer thin eyelids slip closed.
Greasy Sae discreetly leaves the three of us alone, the door clicking shut quietly behind her, and I watch Willow as her tiny fist comes up in her sleep and wraps around Peeta's finger, marking him as hers, holding on to him as tightly as I do on the nights when he is the only thing I can count on. He chokes out a laugh that could double as a sob, and I lean over and rest the top of my head against his cheek, both of us watching the steady rise and fall of her chest.
"I love you," Peeta whispers against my hair, and between us Willow sleeps, everything that matters to me contained within this tiny circle we've created; and for the moment this is more than enough; this is the only real thing in the world.