The Hunger Games: Death of the Mockingjay

Chapter 1

I step through the darkness into the kitchen. Outside the storm rages, wind and rain, pounding against the windows. I take a clean glass from the cupboard, fill it at the sink and gulp down the contents. The water feels good as I sense it's passage through my body to my stomach, the cold fluid cooling and soothing me. I refill the glass and take it back up to our bedroom just in case Peeta and I might need it. I step from the kitchen and cross the lounge headed back to the stairs. The streetlights outside shine through the windows illuminating my way across the room, a pattern from the falling rain on the glass paints a strange image across the lounge rug. I stop in my tracks, it's not the droplets of water steaming down the glass that's stopped me, it's a shadow of a person who's projected on the floor from the lights outside. There's a blinding flash of lightning making the shadow even clearer and I slowly look to the window, fearful for whoever it is who's at my window in the middle of the night. I drop the glass and it shatters on the floor as my eyes meet those of Casper Wolfe. With a twisted grin on his face he raises his arm, points his gun at me and pulls the trigger.....

I jump awake. The sound of waves crashing and a warm breeze strokes my sweat covered face soothing me as my heart beat slowly returns to normal. I open my eyes to find myself alone in bed, the large glass doors at the foot of my bed have been pulled back and look out over the boardwalk which stretches out across the beach to the sea beyond. I throw back the covers and sit on the edge of the bed massaging my temples. This dream, the one dream which visits me every night, the dream that only I know about. Peeta knows about my nightmares as I know about his but I've never told him of my fear of Casper Wolfe. I never told him of his visit to District 12 in the storm all those years ago. When he stared at me from the other side of victors green in the torrential rain, his casual wave as he disappeared into the night, a sign that one day he'd be back to taunt me again, just as his father had done.

I pull on my robe and walk out through the open doors and onto the boardwalk. As usual it's another beautiful day here in District 4. The hot sunshine, white sandy beaches and Paylor's beach house where we come to quite often since the war. Before she died she offered it to me and Peeta for us to use whenever we wanted but it's kinda become our own, I mean, no one else uses it.

I turn to the sound of laughter and the squeals of children playing further up the beach. Peeta and Rue are passing a ball back and forth between them while Kyler, who's only just turned five years old is trying to get it from them. I swear he's the happiest little boy I've ever seen. Not a day goes by when he'll not say something funny or come out with a question that seemed to appear from nowhere. Rue on the other hand is most definitely the thoughtful type just like me. She's still only eight years old but definitely beyond her years, always top of her class at school and incredibly bright but she's not mine, she's daddy's girl.
At weekends she's up at dawn to head to the bakery with Peeta and when she finishes school each day she heads straight for the bakery to walk home with him, quite simply she idolises Peeta.

She'll always be my daughter and people say that when she gets older she'll look just like me, with her long flowing dark hair and her grey seam eyes but she has no interest in the forest or hunting.

Kyler on the other hand is my boy. When he was little I'd regularly carry him out into the forest back home and he immediately seemed to be at ease with the forest and its wildlife, his mouth agape in fascination of the tall trees, the vivid colours and the sounds of the forest. I just know that one day he'll be a hunter, just like me.

"Hey look, it's Mommy!" yells Peeta pointing at me.
Rue and Kyler turn and run across the beach toward me. Rue wraps her arms around my waste while Kyler reaches up for me to pick him up.

"Hello my angels" I say as I bend down to embrace them. Rue starts babbling about the games she's been playing while Kyler tells me all about how his big sister keeps teasing him.