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When Katniss Everdeen was three, she told her daddy she was going to marry him just like mama did. He chuckled and explained that daddies and daughters didn’t need to marry because they already had their own special relationship. He also explained that her mama wasn’t keen on him marrying anyone else. He assured Katniss that one day she might just find someone else she’d want to marry and when she did, if he thought that person would be good to her, he’d give his approval and sing happy songs at her toasting. This made her very happy because she loved hearing her father sing. Even the birds stopped to listen when her daddy sang.
When she turned five, Katniss was doing plenty of singing herself: with her father at home, whilst singing to her baby sister along with her mother, and at school in music assembly. They sang songs about love sometimes. They’d even learned a song about Cupid and she thought he was a wonderful being, shooting arrows just as well as her daddy but shooting people so that they’d fall in love. It all sounded rather dreamy. She asked her daddy if he’d ever made those kind of arrows before and he told her they were magical and since Cupid didn’t usually share his secrets, he didn’t have any idea how to make those kind. Then, he asked her if she was hoping to make some to get anyone in particular to fall in love with her and she just giggled at his silliness. She did tell him though that she thought maybe the baker’s son, who was in her year at school, might know a thing or two about the magical arrows; he certainly looked a lot like the picture their teacher had shown them of Cupid, with the blond curls and blue eyes and kind of chubby tummy.
At age eight, the eldest Everdeen daughter was kissed, quite by surprise, by Jeb Marsden, the son of one of her father’s friends, another miner. Jeb was nine and they were playing together out behind his house, hide and seek. She found him behind the shed and he exclaimed something about giving her her prize for finding him before nearly ramming his face into hers in his hurry to give her a kiss. She turned and it landed on her cheek but it was still disgusting and she slugged him. He would have told on her for doing so if he hadn’t been so embarrassed about being hit by a girl.
Ten-year old Katniss spent nearly a full school year glancing up from her notebook, blushing and smiling when her teacher Mr. Leer’s eyes landed on her and he offered her a kind smile, and then ducking her head again toward her writing. Mr. Leer was a newer teacher, younger than the rest. She found him very smart and funny and likable. He also had caramel-colored hair (that’s how her mother had described it anyway when she’d seen him in town), green eyes, and dimples that especially caught one’s attention when he smiled. He was one of the handsomest men Katniss could recall ever seeing. She tried not to think about him in this way because she knew that he was too old for her. Furthermore, he was from town and she was from the Seam. And finally, she knew that within two years, her name would be in the annual reaping bowl for the Hunger Games. Logically, it didn’t seem worthwhile to daydream about something so frivolous as a crush on her teacher when there were more serious things to think about, like what her parents and sister would do if she was reaped and died in the games, how they would cope. She didn’t really want to think about this either but she was old enough to know that years went by quickly, especially when you didn’t want them to, and she’d have to take her chances with all the other 12-18 year olds in the district when her time came. Still, if she could ever just have a dance with Mr. Leer, she felt certain it would give her the warmest, most spectacular feelings imaginable.
Katniss was not going to marry her father. She was never going to, of course, but now it was truly impossible. Her father was dead. She questioned the judgement of her three-year-old self when she’d made such a declaration. Because her mother had married her father and then she’d lost him…and then she’d lost herself.
Katniss Everdeen was not going to marry anyone. Because husbands died. And they wanted children. And children often died too. And if husbands or wives or children didn’t die, sometimes they still stopped loving one another. And sometimes that seemed worse than death.
As she trudged away from the screaming Matilda Mellark, she suspected this was the case for the district’s well-known bakery family. Mrs. Mellark always seemed angry whenever she’d seen her and Mr. Mellark always smiled but he seemed sad behind his smile. Their oldest son was most like his mother, their middle child a mix, and their youngest, a bigger (but no longer chubby) twin of Cupid now as he peered out from behind his mother’s back, was just like his father. Except his father never bore dark bruises on his face or arms or limped for a day, near as she could tell. It was rumored that the Mellarks’ marriage had been arranged and had never been entirely happy. Maybe it was best her father was gone and her mother had lost all sense of the present; neither of them would try to set up such a marriage for her.
Of course, all of these thoughts didn’t matter much. Katniss wasn’t going to marry anyone because she was going to starve out in the pouring rain at the ripe old age of eleven. The Mellarks’ trash bin had been a slim hope and without any scraps from town and no money for Prim’s baby clothes, she didn’t know what other option was left for her other than to crumple up under the apple tree she’d stumbled into and accept her fate. Her father wouldn’t have been pleased with that line of thinking but then, he wasn’t there, was he? And she just couldn’t make her weak, soaked limbs move anymore.
When she heard the commotion minutes later, she waited for more insults to be hurled at her or, more likely, some heavy or sharp item. She was surprised to see the baker’s son come sloshing through the mud in her direction, looking distressed but resolute. He had a new bright red weal that stood out on his cheek and she heard his mother yell to him about feeding some burnt loaves of bread to the pig. But he didn’t, at least not most of them. Instead, he threw them to her, and she knew by the fear in his eyes when he looked back at the bakery before doing so that it could be at quite a cost to him.
She was glad to see him in one piece the next day at school. Peeta, that was his name. That’s what his friends called him when they greeted him in the hallway. She knew she’d heard it before but truth be told, he was a town boy and it hadn’t really ever stuck with her. Now, she was sure she’d never forget it. Just like she’d never forget the taste of that hearty bread she’d had for dinner and breakfast. Just like she’d never forget the two-second glance they’d shared in the school yard on the first day her belly had felt full in a long time or the dandelion that had changed everything when she’d looked away from her family’s blond-haired savior and seen it.
Gale Hawthorne was a truly vexing human being. A hulking fourteen-year old with attitude for miles. He kept interfering with her hunts and once he realized she was actually pretty good, he wanted to trade with her (though he’d gotten her to suggest it, as though it hadn’t been something he overly desired). But he gave her such a hard time at first, haggling with her over squirrels and rabbits and foxes. He’d finally decided they should work together and she’d reluctantly agreed. It didn’t do her much good to bag the larger animals if she couldn’t carry them back with her. And more than that, he knew things about traps and fishing and the cleaning of kills that she didn’t. She knew things about plants that he had never considered though and she could out-shoot him at a distance or when her prey was more undercover. She could also shimmy up a tree like no twelve-year-old girl he’d ever seen before, or so he’d told her, a skill that had come in handy more than once in their time out in the woods. It was definitely nice to increase the amount of food in her home’s stores and in some ways, to share this burden with someone who had also lost his father to the mines and was now supporting his family as well. But he called her Catnip. It made sense because of how quietly she’d said her name at first and then because of the lynx that had followed her around for a while. But he hadn’t stopped it since and sometimes she didn’t mind but oftentimes, she thought he was lucky she didn’t fire an arrow into his annoying backside.
Gale Hawthorne was a stud. At least that’s what the ridiculous giggling girls at school seemed to think. Sure, he was handsome. He was tall and muscular and had dark hair and soulful grey eyes. And he had a deep chuckle that seemed to set them all atwitter too. It’s not that she hadn’t noticed a few of these qualities. She was a fourteen-year-old girl and she wasn’t blind. But still, he was just Gale. Cocky, cunning, master of snares Gale. He was the same guy who could make himself so silent and unobtrusive he could blend in with the trees or who could disturb both she and their prey with an impressive array of bodily noises. He was Gale, her hunting partner and her friend. It made no sense to her when people tried to whisper any differently about the two of them. Although, on the upside, if they thought he was attached, they wouldn’t try to distract him from the things that mattered most to their lives. She needed him focused. He brought in half of their haul and they had eight mouths to keep fed, including their own. More if you included Prim’s animals, pesky needy things. She knew he spent time at the slag heap and she really didn’t care, at least not in the way folks thought she did or should. But he’d better still be in those woods when he’d said he would and he’d better not knock anyone up because she didn’t see how they could possibly add any more mouths to their current burden.
Fifteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen sat poking at her berries more than eating them. Madge Undersee, the Mayor’s daughter and her only semi-friend aside from Gale, sat across from her, trying not to snatch up one or two of those berries, her favorite, since they were just being played with anyway. Katniss let her eyes drift around the room, landing briefly on Joseph Carter. He had met her in the schoolyard that morning and asked if he could walk home with she and Prim. She’d shrugged and said he could do whatever he wanted. After all, Gale, Rory and Vick would likely be walking home with them too. What was one more person? But when she’d mentioned it to Madge at the start of their lunch break, Madge had gotten a big smile on her face that had made Katniss immediately suspicious. ”What?” she’d asked and Madge had explained that she didn’t think Joseph just wanted a group to walk home with. She thought he wanted the pleasure of Katniss’ company. Katniss laughed at that because since when did anyone actually find her company pleasurable? But then, as they’d begun eating, the idea had begun to niggle at her mind. What if the Seam boy, who only lived a block away, did see the walk home as some kind of agreement? She wasn’t interested in anything like that, didn’t have time for it, didn’t see the point in it. He wasn’t bad to look at but she was perfectly capable of walking she and her sister home today and any other day of the year. She would have to set him straight after school.
Katniss grinned. Gale didn’t look like he found Darius very amusing but she certainly did. Kisses, indeed. Like she’d really spend her limited trade earnings on something so unnecessary. But he was cute with his messy red-hair and his devilish smile. She’d give him that. And he was nice and more down-to-earth and younger than any of the other peacekeepers they ran into frequently. She enjoyed bantering back and forth with him but maybe she should be a bit more careful with that though. Not because he was like Cray, the district’s lecherous old head peacekeeper, but because, for a fleeting second, whenever he tugged on her braid in his teasing, she did wonder if his kisses would be as fun and teasing as well, not that she really had anything to compare them with anyway. Jeb Marsden most definitely didn’t count.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen leaned forward. She was kissing a boy for the first time, in a cave, in front of the whole country. And because life likes to throw you curveballs, that boy was beautiful, blue-eyed, muscular, blond and curly haired Peeta Mellark…and he was most likely dying. His lips were burning with fever and she had no idea what to do next but she knew that he could not die. He would live and she would kiss him again and the audience would love it, because after all, Peeta and Katniss were madly in love.
Katniss Everdeen was going to marry Peeta Mellark. That was her future. It was their fate. When you outsmart the Capitol and the evil men who run it, if they want you to marry your co-conspirator, you smile and accept his forced but somehow still completely believable and moving proposal. You try on wedding dresses and consider the children you will now bear, though you had never planned to have any before, who will likely be taken from you and killed in a grand way as soon as the Capitol is ready for that.
Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne were both excellent kissers. They were both also so much more than Katniss had originally known them to be. They had both saved her life in one way or another at one time or another. They had both been her friend and her confidante and, essentially, her family. They had both wanted more from her when she was not able to give it. They had both gone to war and won a rebellion with her and lost much, as she had. But there was only one that seventeen-year-old Katniss Everdeen still needed, only one that gave her hope and the promise of a life that could be good again. And there was only one who could help her with the only type of hunger she now faced, whose kisses made her want more but also made her feel full and complete.
When Katniss Mellark’s daughter was three, Katniss overheard her tell her daddy that she was going to marry him just like her mama had. She heard her husband chuckle and explain that daddies and daughters didn’t need to marry because they already had their own special relationship and also that her mama wasn’t keen on him marrying anyone else. But she also heard him assure their daughter that one day she might just find someone else she’d want to marry and if she did, if he thought that person would be good to her, he’d give his approval and bake her a beautiful cake for her wedding day and bake the bread of her choosing for her toasting. And furthermore, her mama would sing happy songs for that special day, songs like their friends and loved ones had sung for them at their toasting. This made her very happy because she loved all of her father’s cakes and breads and she adored her mother’s singing voice. Even the birds stopped to listen when her mama sang.