Too Clever

Epilogue

I sit on the porch watching the autumn leaves fall from a rotted oak, red, shriveled, dead. The leaves were once so beautiful, glowing in the iridescent light, thriving in a time that seemed decades ago, only to become withered down with a sudden change of the seasons.
They remind me of her.
She was once so beautiful, so lively, so free. But that seems like ages ago. She lived a life she didn't deserve. To be whisked off to the Games so young. Away from me, away from our parents, away from her friends.
Away from her life. Her life that shouldn't have ended so soon. Too soon.
She had her whole life ahead of her. And now I live that life for her. I think of her every day and every night in my dreams. And in my dreams, she looks just as she always used to, her red hair glowing as brightly as ever, a sparkle in her amber eyes. It's what keeps my memory of her alive.
It's been three years. Today would have been her eighteenth birthday.
The Hunger Games are over now, and the war has ended. The Capitol fell to the Mockingjay and the rebels. But she will never get to see how the world is now.
The 74th Hunger Games was the last Hunger Games before the Quell and the final Games of the Capitol children. She almost saw the end of it all. But she didn't. She is dead, and there's nothing that can be done to justify her death.
But even in the cold, deadened season of autumn, there is still light shining off of those shriveled red leaves, awaiting new green ones to replace them and thrive.