Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel) (The Hunger Games)
Sunrise on the Reaping: Epilogue

When Lenore Dove comes to me now, she’s not angry or dying, so I think she’s forgiven me. She’s grown older with me, her face etched with fine lines, her hair touched with gray. Like she’s been living her life beside me as the years passed, instead of lying in her grave. Still so rare and radiant. I fulfilled my promise about the reaping, or at least lent a hand, but she says I can’t come to her yet. I have to look after my family.

I first saw the girl at the Hob when she was just a baby. Burdock was so proud of her, he toted her around everywhere. After he died in that mine explosion, she started coming alone, trading the odd squirrel or rabbit. Tough and smart, her hair in two braids then, reminding me for all the world of Louella McCoy, my sweetheart of old. And after she volunteered for the Games, that nickname couldn’t help but slip out. I didn’t want to let them in, her and Peeta, but the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable, not if they have ever known love. That’s what Lenore Dove says, anyway.

I didn’t want to have anything to do with their memorial book after the war. What use? What point? To relive all the loss. But when Burdock’s page came up, I had to mention him showing me the grave. And I felt compelled to tell them about Maysilee Donner, former owner of the mockingjay pin. And how Sid loved the stars. Before I knew it, they all came tumbling out: family, tributes, friends, comrades in arms, everybody, even my love. I finally told our story.

A few days after that, Katniss showed up with an old basket filled with goose eggs. “Not to eat, to hatch. I raided a few different nests, so they can breed all right.” Never mind that we had roast goose for dinner. She’s not an easy person; she’s like me, Peeta always says. But she was smarter than me, or luckier. She’s the one who finally kept that sun from rising.

Peeta fashioned some kind of incubator, and when the eggs hatched, mine was the first face those goslings saw. Sometimes they just graze on the green, but on fine days, we’ve been known to wander on over to the Meadow. Lenore Dove likes it best there, and I’m content where she’s content. Like the geese, we really did mate for life.

I’m not sure I’ll be here in the old therebefore much longer. My liver’s wrecked and I only dry out when the train’s late. I drink differently these days, though, less to forget, more out of habit. When my time comes, it comes, but I’ve no idea when that will be.

I know one thing, though: The Capitol can never take Lenore Dove from me again. They never really did in the first place. Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping, and she is the most precious thing I’ve ever known.

When I tell her that, she always says, “I love you like all-fire.”

And I reply, “I love you like all-fire, too.”