Staying quietly in bed is harder than normal. I want to do something, find out more about the winner from last year, or helping in the cause to bring down the Capitol. No one hates them more than I do. Instead I sit around stuffing myself with cheese buns and watching Willow stretch, Nolan stops by occasionally to bring me news from town, which is always bad. More people being punished or dropping from starvation.

Winter has begun to withdraw by the time my foot that I twisted helping the man is deemed usable. Willow gives me exercise to do and lets me walk on my own a bit. I go to sleep one night, determined to go into town the next morning, but I awake to find Neem, Kai, Ivy, and Ace grinning down at me.

"Surpise!" they squeal. "We're here early!"

After I took the lash in the face, Nolan got their visit pushed back several months so I could heal up. I wasn't expecting them for another three weeks. But I try to act delighted that my annual Victor's photo is here at last. Willow had hung up dresses, so they're good to go, but to be honest, I haven't even tried one on.

After the usual histrionics about the deteriorated state of my beauty, they get right down to business. Their biggest concern is my face, although I think Willow did a pretty remarkable job healing it. There's just a pale pink stripe across my cheelbone. The whipping's not common knowledge, so I tell them I slipped on the ice and cut it. And then I realize that's my same excuse for hurting my food, which is going to make walking in high heels a problem. But Neem, Kai, Ivy, and Ace aren't the suspicious types, so I'm safe there.

Since I only have to look hairless for a few houses instead of several weeks, I get to be shaved instead of waxed. I still have to soak in a tub of something, but it isn't vile, and we're on to my hair and makeup before I know it. The team, as usual, is full of news, which I usually do my best to tune out. But then Ivy makes a comment that catches my attention. It's a passing remark, really, abot how she couldn't get a shrimp for a party, but it tugs at me.

"Why couldn't you get shrimp? Is it out of season?" I ask.

"Oh, Ember, we haven't been able to get any seafood for weeks!" Says Ivy. "you know, because the weater's been so bad in District Four."

My mind starts buzzing. No seafood. For weeks. From District 4. The barely concealed rage in the crowd during the recent Victory Toyr. And suddenly I am absolutely sure that District 4 has revolted. Maybe I should make a phone call to Finnick.

I begin to question them casually about what other hardships this winter has brought them. They are not used to want, so any little disruption to supply makes an impact on them. By the time I'm ready to be dressed, their complaints about the difficulty of getting different products from crabmeat to music chips to ribbons has given me a sense of which district might actually be rebelling. Seafood from Dristrict 4. Electronic gadgets from District 3. and, of course, fabrics from District 8. The thought of such widespread rebellion has me quivering with fear and excitement.

I want to ask them more, but Teak appears to give me a hug and check my makeup. His attention goes right to the scar on my cheek. Somehow I don't think he believes the slipping on the ice story, but he doesn't question it. He simply adjusts the powder on my face, and what little you can see of the lash mark vanishes.

Downstairs, the living room has been cleared and lit for the photo shoot. Mica's having a fine time ordering everybody around, leeping us all on schedule. It's probably a good thing, because there are six gowns and each one requires it's own headpiece, shoes, jewlry, hair, makeup, setting, and lighting. Creamy lacy and pink roses and ringlets. Ivory satin and gold tattoos and greenery. A sheath of diamonds and jewled veil moonlight. Heavy white silk and sleeves that fall from my waist to the floor, and pearls.

The moment one shot has been approved, we move right into preparing for the next. I feel like dough, being kneaded and reshaped again and again. Willow manages to feed me a bit of food and sips of tea while they work on me, but by the time the shoot is over, I'm starving and exhausted. I'm hoping to spend some time with Willow now, but Mica whisks everybody out the door and I have to make do with the promise of a phone call.

Evening has fallen and my foot hurts from all the crazy shoes, so I abandon any thoughts of going into town. Instead I go upstairs and wash away the layers of makeup and conditioners and dyes and then go down to dry my hair by the fire. The house has grown quite over the years, with just me living here. I think back to moment I had with my mother before she was taken from me. After I won the Games, I was forced to do whatever the Captiol tells me to do, and I still am. But after a couple of years, I got tired of doing it and I refused and as a punishment Snow had my mother killed. When I fall into my bed, I wonder if my mother would blame me for getting her killed.

In my nightmare, I'm dresesed in the silk dress that my stylist likes to put me in when I visit the Capitol, but it's all torn and muddy. The long sleeves keep getting caught on thorns and branches as I run through the woods. The swarm of birds that I encountered in the arena draw closer and closer until they overcome me with sharp beaks and long talons and I scream myself awake.

It's too close to dawn to bother trying to get back to sleep. I eat breakfast alone as usual and head out. The air's warm with hopeful hints of spring in it. Spring would be a good time for an uprising, I think. Everyone feels less vulrearble once winter passes. And ever since my games I've hated everything about winter, it brings back painful memories that I would like to keep locked away.

I'm surprised to see Willow moving around in her kitchen so early. I walk into her house without knocking, knowing she wouldn't mind. In a few minutes I've updated her and she's told me about rumors of uprisings in Disrict 7 and 11 as well. If my hunches are right, this would mean almost half the districts have at least attempted to rebel.

"Do you still think it won't work here?" I ask.

"Not yet. Those other districts, they're much larger. Even if half the people cower in their homes, the rebels stand a chance. Here in Nine, its got to be all of us or nothing," she says.

I hadn't thought of that. How we lack strength of numbers. "But maybe at some point?" I insist.

"Maybe. But we're small, we're weak, and we don't develop nuclear weapons," Willow says with a touch of sarcasm. She is referencing District 13 that got destroyed during the first uprising, but there have been rumors spreading aorund that it still exists, that there's still people there.

"What do you think they'll do, Willow? To the districts that are rebelling?" I ask.

"Well, you've heard what they did to Eight. You've seen what they did here, and that was without provocation," says Willow. "If things really do get out of hand, I think they'd have no problem killing off another distict, same as they did Thirteen. Make an example of it, you know?

"So you think Thirteen was really destroyed? I mean I heard that the footage they show is the same each year. There is always a mockingjay." I say.

"Okay, but what does that prove? Nothing, really. There are plenty of reasons they could be using old footage. Probably looks more impressive. And it's a lot simpler, isn't it? To just press a few buttons in the editing room than to fly all they way out there and film it?" she says. "The idea that Thirteen has somehow rebounded and the Capitol is ignoring it? That sounds like the kind of rumor desperate people cling to."

"I know. I was just hoping," I say.

I go home shortly after, my mind caught up on the idea of Thriteen really being out there preparing for a fight. I know I shouldn't believe the rumor, because as Willow said it is desperate but I can't bring myself to let it go.

At seven thirty that night I sit in front of the television and I discover that the wedding pictures for Katniss and Peeta are being aried. Cesear Flickerman is speaking before a staning-room-only crowd in front of the Training Center, talking to an appreciative crowd about Katniss' upcoming nuptials. He introduced Cinna, who became an overnight star with in costumes for her in the Games, and after a minute of good-natured chitchat, we're directed to turn our attention to a giant screen.

Then they're showing the few pictures that I did yesterday. I see now how they could photograph me yesterday and present the special tonight. Initially, Teak designed two dozen outfits for me to wear. Since then, there's been the process of narrowing down the designs, creating the dresses and choosing the accessories. Apparently, in the Capitol, there were opportunities to vote for your favourites at each stage. This is all culminating with shots of me in the final six dressed, which I'm sure took no time at all to insert in the show. Each shot is met with a huge reaction from the crowd. People screaming and cheering for their favorites, booing the ones they don't like. Having voted, and probably bet on the winner, people are very interested in the dress. It's bizarre to watch when I think how I never got to pick the one I liked the best.

Then they are back to the wedding. Caesar announced the interested parites must cast their final votes on the wedding gown by noon on the following day.

"Let's get Katniss Everdeen to her wedding in style!" he hollers to the crowd. I'm about to shut off the television, but Caesar is telling us to stay tuned for the other big event of the evening. "That's right, this year will be the seventy fifth anniversary of the Hunger Games, and that means it's time for our third Quarter Quell!"

"What will they do?" I find myself asking to the empty house.

I remember learning about them in school, the Quarter Quells, how the presidents reads from a card what will happen during that year. The anthem plays, and my throat tightens with revulsion as President Snow takes the stage. He's followed by a young boy dressed in a white suit, holding a simple wooden box. The anthem ends, and Preisdent Snow begins to speak, to remind us all of the Dark Days from which the Games were laid out, they dictated that every twenty five years the anniversary would be mared by a Quarter Quell. It would call for a glorified version of the games to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts' rebellion.

These words could not be more pointed, since I suspect several districts are rebelling now.

President Snow goes on to tell us what happened in the previous Quarter Quells. "On the twenty fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it."

I wonder how that would have felt. Picking the kids who had to go. It is worse, I think, to be turned over by your own neighbors than have your name drawn from the reaping ball.

"On the fiftieth anniversary," the president continues, "as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes."

I imagine facing a feild of forty seven instead of twenty three. Worse odds, less hope, and ultimately more dead kids. That was the year that District Twleve won, Haymitch.

"And now we honor our third Quarter Quell," says the preisedent. The little boy in the white steps forward, holding out the box as he opens the lid. We can only see the tidy, upright rows of yellowed envelopes. Whoever devised the Quarter Quell system had prepared for centuries of Hunger Games. The president removes an envelope clearly marked with a 75. He runs his finger under the flap and pulls out a small square of paper. Without hesitation, he reads, "On the seventy fifth anniversary, as a reminder that even the strongest among the strong cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."

I sit there for a moment. I feel more like the people I see in the crowd on teleisvion. Slightly baffled. What does it mean? Exisiting pool of victors?

Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 9 only has three existing victores to choose from. Two female and one male...

I am going back into the arena.