Kindling the Spark

The Twist

7: The Twist

Katniss POV

Being back in District 12 after the victory party feels good. Idly, I fiddle with the ring around my finger. I'm going to get married to Gale. The proposal itself didn't feel good, it felt horribly fake, but that moment that we spent together after it was almost perfect. I'm not sure what the wedding will be like. Part of me thinks that it will be happy, after all, marrying your true love is supposed to be every girl's dream. My dreams are more along the lines of survival and winning in a rebellion, but the fact remains that a wedding should feel good. Another part knows that it will be overly extravagant and fake and that I will resent the fact that our marriage will probably be in front of half the Capitol.

I have bigger problems to think about right now though. If I am to believe one of the game makers who visited District 1, the twist for the Quarter Quell will be announced soon, maybe even today. This will be my first year of mentoring and I doubt that Haymitch will be much help. He might have brought me and Gale back alive, but we came up with most of the ploys to get sponsor money ourselves. Also, I doubt that he pays that much attention to his tributes normally. After all, he has been mentoring for probably around twenty years now and we are the only tributes that he has brought back alive.

Perhaps some of the mentors from other Districts may be able to help me. I should be able to establish decent relationships with the District 5 victors and maybe the District 4 victors. Thinking about it, I should have looked into the other victors more. I know nearly nothing about any victor other than their names and if I was alive, the games that they won. I don't even know how Haymitch won his games, or even which games he won. I may have been caught up in other matters, but it was still irresponsible of me to ignore the fact that I will be mentoring in a few months time. In Games that will almost certainly be worse than usual.

I wonder what the twist might be. In the first Quarter Quell they had Districts vote in their tributes. It must have been a horrible feeling, knowing that your District chose you to die. Unless you were a career of course- they would probably be proud of the fact that they were picked to go to the Games. The second Quarter Quell, I know had double the amount of tributes reaped. This year, maybe they'll have something about the age of the tributes chosen, or maybe the tributes will be brother and sister or something sick like that. There are an endless number of possibilities for the Capitol to choose from. It seems a bit pointless to try and figure it out now- I will find it out in a few days time.

My thoughts drift over to Melanie. She is still recovering from her whipping a few weeks ago, but she is doing well. According to my mother, who goes over to see her everyday, she will definitely live and there shouldn't be any long-term effects of the whipping. It will scar, of course, but Melanie said that she wouldn't mind having a few scars last time I went to see her. Unfortunately, the electric fence is still running and whippings still go on. Not as often as they did before I intervened and not as many lashes, but they still happen. This hasn't affected much. Hunters still find ways to get under and over the fence, and we stick by each other, so the news spread quickly. Romulus Thread's attempts to turn this District into a poorer version of District 2 aren't going to succeed any time soon.

All in all, not much has actually changed since Romulus Thread came. People have to be more careful when committing crimes, but people still do hunt in the forests or rant about the Capitol or buy illegally hunted game. Whatever is happening in other Districts or in the Capitol, I am glad that District 12 is staying fairly constant. There are times in the woods with Gale, or at home with Prim and Peeta when I can forget that I was ever in the Hunger Games, forget the rebellion and just enjoy life with my family and friends. When the Quarter Quell happens, all of that will be thrown out of the window and I will be forced to witness the new arena, new tributes and likely more deaths.