Ghost (A 'The Hunger Games' Fan-Fiction)

Prologue

The rain fell from the sky in large drops that night, pounding against the tin roof of little Juniper Roxen's house. The three of them sat infront of the tiny fire-place, Juniper laying with her head in her mother's lap as she braided her daughter's hair and sung silently in the light of the fire, while her father listened silently and watched the flames dance. 

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Where they strung up a man,
they say who murdered three.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
If we met at mid-
night in the hanging tree."

The rain pattered in time with the song and sounded like thousands of drums, rolling and roaring when the thunder rolled and roared from up above. Juniper was falling asleep to the sound of her mother's voice while she continued to sing her haunting lullaby, but this time, she heard her father's gentle voice join in as well.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Where dead man called out,
for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
If we met at mid-
night in the hanging tree."

Juniper's parents were good people who did whatever they could to help their friends in District 12. Whether that meant sharing their food with the homeless, helping a crippled man walk across the busy street, buying a trinket from an old woman at the market just so that she'd have some money to buy herself a meal that day....

Or even stop a peacekeeper from hurting a complete stranger.

That day, both of Juniper's parents had done the unthinkable: stood between a peacekeeper and an innocent man. To the peacekeepers, the man they were defending was a criminal. To the Roxen parents, he was someone just trying to get by. They didn't even know what the man had done wrong as he lay beaten and battered on the edge of the sidewalk. But what they did know was that no one deserved the abuse that the so-called 'peacekeepers' addressed to so-called 'criminals'. 

What the little seven-year-old child didn't know was that when she would wake up the next morning after the rain, her parents would be gone, never to be seen breathing again. This lullaby they sang to her as she drifted off to sleep would be their 'good-bye', their final words to the precious thing they loved most in the world.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Where I told you to run,
so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
if we met at mid-
night in the hanging tree."

The very next morning, Juniper would find her parents on the street, lying face-down in the dirt and pools of their own blood. Dead. She would scream a heart-wrenching scream that would wake the whole neighborhood and draw everyone from their beds to their windows to see what was the matter. In seconds, the entire community would see that there was a new orphan in town.

A woman would run out to the little girl and wrap her arms around her to comfort Juniper, and the woman's husband would bring out two blankets to cover the corpses of her parents. Juniper would cling to her dead mother's cold hand as if her life depended on it and wail like a siren of agony in the arms of another woman who she barely even knew. The woman's daughter would run out to join them as well, hugging the two tightly because she knew it was the right thing to do. The whole town would grief for the loss of a great man and woman, even though many of them had known this was coming.

Many of the Roxen's friends had seen what had happened the previous day with the peacekeepers. District 12 had known the consequences for an act like that, as well. And they would wonder why the two kindest people in the district didn't tell their little girl that they would be gone by morning.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope,
Side by side with me.
Strange things did happen hear,
No stranger would it be
if we met at mid-
night in the hanging tree."