A Baird and the Snow

Running

Coriolanus and Lucy Gray spent the rest of the day in their room. There was so much space and openness surrounding them that they felt comfortable simply lying together on the bed that made them feel small in a simple, wonderful way.

They were surrounded by comfort rather than a cramped space and what made it even better was the feeling of their arms around each other.

However, Coriolanus had questions, and they roamed his mind as he stared up at the ceiling, listening to Lucy Gray's absentminded humming.

He wanted to know what Coin had planned and not knowing was killing him. When he didn't know every detail about everything, it drove him mad and caused paranoid thoughts to move about his head far too freely for his taste.

Paranoia has come so close to making him lose everything on multiple occasions.

And she ran to the water

Throwing herself in and letting herself drown in its lull.

For what could she do without her love?

All that was left to do

Was follow him into the abyss he was lost to.

The song Lucy Gray sang was low and entrancing while it was dark and sad. Coriolanus had never heard her sing it before.

"I've never heard that one before," he said, happy to leave his thoughts behind.

"I wrote it a long time ago," Lucy Gray said, shifting onto her side to angle her body towards me. "Have you ever heard of the fable of The Girl Lost to the Water?"

Coriolanus furrowed his brows. "I haven't even heard of it," he frowned.

Lucy Gray smiled. "I thought so. My Mama learned it far away from here, before I was born and we weren't in Panem. I asked for it every night before I went to bed. It's a love story. A rather tragic one, but beautiful all the same."

"Tell me." Coriolanus whispered. And then he listened.

"There was a girl," Lucy Gray began, "and her entire life, she had felt something was missing, but she had everything she wanted and everything she needed. She had a loving family and a home that kept them safe. She had a life that never let her down. But then she met a boy who was everything she never knew she wanted. He changed her life for the better. Suddenly she had more than everything. She had him. But then she lost it all.

"There was an accident." Lucy Gray took a deep breath, as though the story she was telling shook her to her core. "The boy she fell in love with, worked in the quarry, and there was an incident that caused him to hit his head. He lost all sense of who he was, who she was and what they were together. She waited for him to remember her, waited for years until she could no longer bear it. She threw herself into a river and the current held her under until she breathed no more." Lucy Grays voice is somehow softer than it was before as she continues. "The next day, when they found her body downstream, there was a miracle. The boy remembered everything, only to find the love of his life dead. If only she had waited a little bit longer, they could have had the rest of their lives together.

"But instead, the boy was left on his own to live out the rest of his days without her, but not once did he let himself drown the way she did. He promised to live for her, because he knew that's what she would have wanted. So he kept her memory alive until he died of old age." She looked at Coriolanus. "And that's the end."

"Tragic, indeed," Coryo breathed out. "But beautiful all the same," he said, repeating Lucy Gray's words from behind.

She finished the rest of the song, each line correlating with a part of the story and Coryo listened intently.