Yet you may spy the Fawn at play / the Hare upon the Green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray / will never more be seen.

Often they sang songs about how "it never rains; it pours," and they laughed and laughed because the weather in 12 hardly knew how to do anything except be hot and humid. They never thought twice about what the saying meant. She, especially, had a bad habit of skimming over the meaning behind the words she sang, and never understood that words had power, either.

Then she sang a song about desperation and death — one song different, one song with a tone of despair rather than of glee, one song out of so many — and, almost as though it were an aftershock, Haymitch was Reaped, Lenore Dove lost her life, and the Covey had nothing more to sing about.

Tam Amber kept spirits up as much as he could, but it was difficult, and nobody wanted to do much other than think about how the gravestones hidden in the meadow outnumbered the living Covey. Lucy Gray, Maude Ivory, Lenore Dove, Barb Azure, even Billy Taupe — too many names and memories gone for good. Tam Amber wasn't any good at pretending like those gravestones didn't exist.

When he died, Clerk Carmine stopped playing the fiddle. There were only three Covey left in all. Claribel Rose tried to ask CC why he'd give up playing, when Tam Amber was the one who'd want him to keep playing more than anything, but she never got a reply. And Sam Hickory took too much after CC, in everything from looks to talent, so Claribel Rose wasn't much surprised when he put his mandolin down and walked off the stage, too.

Claribel Rose was the last one left who hadn't yet stopped singing. She didn't have much to sing about, of course, and often she'd find that there was nobody left to listen to her, but she didn't mind. She would keep singing for as long as she could.

The Covey used to have a saying — Claribel Rose hadn't heard it much after Lenore Dove died, but it persisted in her head like a rhythm she couldn't lose — "nothing they can take was ever worth keeping."

Nobody had warned her that they would take everything from her. Then, she wondered, what was there left to be worth keeping?

✺ Salvation, 2025

Courtney Eaton     ☥ Claribel  Rose  Baird

Kevin Alves      ☥      Sam Hickory  Clade

Avantika Vandanapu      ☥      Daylily   Cartwright

✺ Also with:

Ian Bohen . . . Clerk Carmine Clade
Bridget Regan . . . Barb Azure Baird ♱
Dennis Haysbert . . . Tam Amber ♱
Lola Tung . . . Lenore Dove Baird ♱
Rachel Zegler . . . Lucy Gray Baird ♱
Freya Mavor . . . Maude Ivory Baird ♱
Garret Hedland . . . Haymitch Abernathy
Elle Fanning . . . Effie Trinket
Ralph Fiennes . . . Coriolanus Snow
&& the rest of the cast as imagined

Salvation is yours; 25
The salvation of mankind lies only in
making everything the concern of all.

✷ Warning
Blood, gore, trauma, torture, murder, harsh language, etc... shit gets crazy in Panem yall know that

✷ Dedication
Percy Jason Leo Zhang Hazel Nico Poopy

✷ Author's Note
Barb Azure confirmed DEAD by author Aquamcnti

Welcome to the 61st Hunger Games with some familiar faces and some unfamiliar. A few notes on names:
1. Claribel as derived from Claribel: A Melody by Alfred Tennyson; rose as in the shade of pink
2. Sam as derived from The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service; hickory as in the shade of brown
3. Each Daylily flower blooms for one day and then falls off
4. Clerk as derived from the folk song Clerk Saunders; carmine as in the shade of red

Whatever I thought that was interesting. Hope you guys enjoy this fic (sadness ahead) and have fun reading it (good luck wit that) and nothing bad will happen (so many bad things will happen)