I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. “Katniss,” I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.

"I don't know how to say it exactly. Only... I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?" he asks. I shake my head. How could he die as anyone but himself. "I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not."

I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap and ripping it from the bag. For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air.

Something small and quiet, like a match being struck, lights up the gloom inside of me.

Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We're very familiar with each other's screams.” Annie, who's on Johanna's other side, does that thing where she covers her ears and exits reality. Finnick shoots Johanna an angry look as his arm encircles Annie. “What? My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy,” replies Johanna.

If there's a more helpless feeling than trying to reach someone you love who's trapped underground, I don't know it.

But don't worry; as I've been saying - and this has been very clever of me, I'm sure you'll agree - if you put enough pressure on coal, it'll turn to pearls!