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October 21 - October 29, 2025
That’s me, Coriolanus wanted to tell people around him. I’m her true love. And I saved her life.
“Well, we certainly enjoyed those and appreciate all you did for Lucy Gray,” said Barb Azure. “I expect you’ll find her down in the Meadow. That’s where she goes early to work, so as not to disturb the neighbors.”
THE MEADOW?
With no younger siblings or other relatives, Coriolanus had little experience with kids, but it made him feel special, the way she’d attached herself to him, the cool little hand pressed trustingly in his.
“Lucy Gray didn’t like the Capitol. They tried to kill her,” said Maude Ivory. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “It couldn’t have been very nice for her.” “She said you were the only good thing about it, and now you’re here.” Maude Ivory gave his hand a tug. “You’re going to stay here, right?” “That’s the plan,” said Coriolanus.
Unlike the weedy expanse in front of the hanging tree, this one had clean, fresh, high grass and swaths of bright wildflowers.
“She’s our goat. Don’t be fooled by the boy’s name; she can give a gallon a day when she’s fresh,” said Maude Ivory. “We’re trying to skim enough cream for butter, but it takes forever.”
He didn’t recognize it, but it brought to mind the hanging of the rebel two days before. Had she been there? Had it prompted this?
Don't worry buddy you will!
“So, Coriolanus Snow, what are you doing in my meadow?” What, indeed? “Just spending some time with my girl,” he answered.
“You, too.” She flexed her fingers. “I clutched that compact so hard you could see the imprint of the rose on my palm.” He caught her hand and kissed the palm. “I wanted so badly to help, and I felt so useless.”
Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild.
As the drumroll began, Coriolanus squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could block out the sound as well. But he could not, and he heard it all. Sejanus’s cry, the bang of the trapdoors, and the jabberjays picking up Sejanus’s last word, screaming it over and over into the dazzling sun. “Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma!”
Who knew what crazy thing you’d say in a moment like that? And him dead and the birds screaming it all out until the mockingjays turned it into some macabre song!
Coriolanus regretted not placing some bit of home in his pocket to hang on to in his last hours. His mother’s powder would’ve been the thing, something to soothe him while he waited for the rope.
and he sank into the leather seat across the desk from Hoff, grateful that he could receive his death sentence with a little class. Remember, you’re a Snow, he told himself. Let’s go out with some dignity.
Coriolanus flew out of the locker room with wings on his heels.
“I almost forgot. I promised to sing this for one of you,” she said. And there it was again, ever so casually, her hand on her pocket. She began the song she’d been working on when he’d come up behind her in the Meadow. Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man they say murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree. The hanging tree. Her old meeting spot with Billy Taupe. That’s where she wanted him to meet her. Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
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you have to go to bed with the birds if you want to greet them at dawn.
think I’ll go dig up some katniss, since we got the fire going anyway. There’s a good patch by the lake.” “I thought they weren’t ready,” he said. “Two weeks can make a lot of difference,” she said. “It’s still raining,” he objected. “You’ll get soaked.” She laughed. “Well, I’m not made of sugar.”
And he did love her! He did! It was just that, only a few hours into his new life in the wilderness, he knew he hated it. The heat, and the worms, and those birds yakking nonstop . .
This was a booby
Hwhegehe
“While that could be a problem in the future, it’s a blessing this year, given that I’ve had to erase the whole mess,” said Dr. Gaul. “It was a mistake getting the students mixed up in it. Especially when they started dropping like flies. Presented the Capitol as far too vulnerable.” “You erased it?” he asked. “Every last copy gone, never to be aired again.” She grinned. “I’ve a master in the vault, of course, but that’s just for my own amusement.”
He was glad about the erasure. It was just one more way to eliminate Lucy Gray from the world. The Capitol would forget her, the districts barely knew her, and District 12 had never accepted her as one of their own. In a few years, there would be a vague memory that a girl had once sung in the arena. And then that would be forgotten, too. Good-bye, Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you.
Lucy Gray’s fate was a mystery, then, just like the little girl who shared her name in that maddening song. Was she alive, dead, a ghost who haunted the wilderness? Perhaps no one would ever really know. No matter — snow had been the ruination of them both. Poor Lucy Gray. Poor ghost girl singing away with her birds. Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free? She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again.
