Greeting to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed," he says. "Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.

As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

There was no discussion between them; it was as if the bugs had worked out this whole scenario long ago. Temp put on a burst of speed for the end of the bridge, and Tick turned to face down the army of rats alone.

See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner," "A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could've had you?" "Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.

I curl up, make myself smaller, try to disappear entirely. Wrapped in silence, I slide my bracelet that reads 'mentally disoriented' around and around my wrist.

So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.

A hysterical young woman with flowing brown hair is also called from 4, but she's quickly replaced by a volunteer, an eighty-year-old woman who needs a cane to walk to the stage.