we can't return, we can only look
behind from where we came
and go 'round and 'round and 'round
in the circle game
- j. mitchell

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"Katniss?"

Her name registered distantly, as though echoing across forgotten fields of shifting wheat and drifting seeds, until eventually she forced uncooperative eyelids to blink languidly and rotated her head to focus on the source of the sound. She murmured something she hoped would provide an affirmation of her continued presence, and with a flush of mortification realized she had stopped cold to gawk at the strange boy for an indefinite period.

She crammed her hands into her pockets and attempted to appropriate some semblance of nonchalance, shrugging at Annie's inquisitive gaze and resolutely refusing to further acknowledge the peculiar figure in the distance.

"Haymitch is the main trainer," Annie explained as Katniss followed her into the training barn. The comfortingly pungent perfume of cedar shavings, hay and dander coiled through her nostrils and settled like a soothing aloe balm across her scalded nerves.

Her eyes immediately swiveled upward, where the roof of the barn met in a peak fashioned mostly of glass. The horses would absolutely adore the wide-open aspect, she mused, not to mention the additional sunlight. Stalls stretched along either side of a cement aisle, symmetrical bastions of gleaming black-coated metal and polished wood. The latter gave way to metal bars about halfway up, allowing for considerable air circulation and interaction between stall neighbors. The doors remained free of metal, however, and several heads appeared in the aisle to investigate the new arrivals, their ears swiveling toward the approaching footsteps. Engraved gold nameplates attached to the front of the stalls identified the inhabitants as they passed, signaling so many new creatures to befriend.

A little white head appeared just to her right, straining to clear the door with her tiny stature. Her soft gray muzzle thrust into the air as the struggled to force her chin over the door, her thick pony mane exploding onto both sides of her neck. Obviously having been distracted mid-chew by their appearance, a few sticks of hay still protruded from both sides of her mouth. Katniss immediately veered over to pat the inhabitant, POSY, producing a flat palm for the pony to sniff before reaching around to scratch her fuzzy cheek.

Beside her, Annie followed suit on the pony's other side, motioning down the hall as she continued talking. Posy's eyes fluttered shut at the influx of attention while she, too, seemed to listen, her ears flopping contentedly to the side. "Haymitch's office is just in the center to the left, across from the tack room opposite the grooming stalls-"

"You have designated grooming stalls?" she marveled aloud. At Everdeen Acres they had just cross-tied the horses down the center aisle, resulting in an impromptu game of limbo for anyone who wished to traverse the area.

"After Panem earned his gold medal at the Olympics, the stud fees started rolling in," Annie explaned, referencing Mellark Acres' most prestigious stallion. "The witch renovated the entire barn to install the grooming stalls and additional wash stalls on both ends, on top of installing the window roof."

"That is quite spectacular," Katniss glanced up again to admire the sunlight streaming in overhead. "Wait. Who's the witch?"

"That would be Mrs. Mellark!" A stall figure swooped in beside them, injecting himself into their conversation with a flourish and an obviously-forced British accent. Posy startled and retreated into her stall, drifting back to tear at the flake of hay in the corner of her stall. "You'd do best to avoid her. Annie, you look magnificent, as always." The beaming supermodel with copper-colored hair then rotated his attention to Katniss and openly eyed her from head to steel-toed paddock boot and back. She felt her face school into her customary scowl. "And who is this delightful specimen?"

"This is Katniss," Annie shoved the taller figure lightly in the chest as she stepped around him. "Don't freak her out, please."

"Katniss, I'm Finnick." The Adonis doppleganger produced a megawatt smile showcasing a march of perfect teeth, which annoyed her. She nodded and followed Annie's path further down the aisle.

"We'll continue this later, then, shall we?" Finnick's voice chased her, even as the girls offered him no encouragement beyond their retreating figures.

"I hope not," Katniss muttered.

A light spattering of male laughter ensued, and her head swiveled left to find Peeta mulling outside a stall just ahead, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched her… expectantly? Why'd he have to be so good-looking? How was she expected to produce coherent thoughts under these conditions?

The appearance of a tall, dark-haired and slightly disheveled figure siphoned her attention away. She faintly registered Annie introducing her to the man, Haymitch, as she focused on breathing and trying not to appear completely overwhelmed and socially inept around the new people.

The man's eyes raked quickly across the length of her form, not in the "carnal assessment" manner customary of barflies at watering holes, restaurants, bars, and essentially everywhere if she conceded to honesty, but in the way the gravelly-voiced woman at the tack shop gauged her before producing a pair of Tailored Sportsman* off the rack for her to try.

"You're the perfect size for the ponies. Be here at ten," he muttered with a nod before ambling off in the opposite direction.

"Good morning, Katniss. Nice to meet you. I look forward to working with you," Annie intoned to the retreating figure, seeming exasperated.

"It's alright," Katniss countered quietly. "I prefer the business approach."

"Then you two will get along like a house on fire," Annie smiled slightly. "Anyway. I hear you're familiar with one of our new arrivals."

Katniss raised her eyebrows at Annie, seeking additional information, but she just motioned toward the stall outside which the blonde distraction had positioned himself like a sentinel. A smattering of nerves freckled over her as she approached the stall, hesitantly, more reluctant to experience proximity to the blonde boy than anything.

Peering into the stall, she found a steel-gray mare nuzzling at a flake of hay in the corner, completely impervious to the human-based happenings beyond the confines of her stall as she tucked into her breakfast.

Katniss heard rather than felt a sharp gasp tear into her chest. Her surroundings seemed to haze into nonexistence, a blur of ambient sensation completely disregarded. Somehow the stall door opened, and she found herself face-to-face with her beloved filly, the love of her life, the light in her universe, the only real point of happiness in her meager existence, and whom she had presumed lost to the hazy, unforgiving universe beyond the auction.

The mare snorted and abandoned her meal to greet Katniss at the doorway, recognizing her former charge and nosing her affectionately. As Katniss kneaded her hands into the familiar mane and looped her arms around the neck she had long memorized to initiate a horse hug, she wondered whether it was possible to spontaneously combust from joy.

Stepping back to pat her neck, she could feel the boy's gaze searing into the side of her head, but continued drinking in the glorious presence of her beloved filly. After their woeful separation, she doubted her eyes would even focus on anything else.

She stopped herself from inquiring as to why her beloved filly had wound up here, not wanting to pierce the reunion with reality. "No-Name?" Katniss motioned to the temporary nametag with a march of crisp black lettering positioned just outside the stall door. Beneath it, a chalkboard detailed in black block letters the mare's daily rations of hay, grain and beet pulp.

"I only knew her registered name," Peeta shrugged, looking slightly sheepish. "I figured you didn't refer to her as Obsidian around the barn, but I didn't want to confuse her, so I've just been calling her Gorgeous and Beautiful and all number of other platitudes." He reached up to weave his fingers through her mane, looping it gently. "She didn't seem to mind."

Katniss nodded lightly. "Probably not; she's a bit of a ham." As though to offer evidence of her point, the filly raised her head to rest her chin on Katniss' shoulder, whuffing air through her nose and causing the strands that had extricated themselves from her customary braid to swirl in protest. Unable to curtail a goofy smile, she reached up with one hand to stroke the filly's dark cheek. After a moment of nuzzling her neck, the filly dropped her head and flicked her ears forward, holding her head level with Katniss' shoulders as though to invite herself into the conversation. With her left hand she idly traced the almost perfectly-round star positioned in the middle of her forehead. "Her name's Pearl."

"Pearl," Peeta echoed, offering his hand palm-up for the filly's inspection. "I was close with 'pretty girl,' then." After a moment of sniffing the proferred hand, Pearl took a step forward and started nuzzling along Peeta's arm, obviously familiar with him and hopeful to secure some sort of treat. "You know me too well," he muttered, reaching in his back pocket to produce a piece of carrot. Pearl lipped it into her mouth quickly and retreated to chomp it noisily, quite content. Peeta hooked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans to watch her, eyes bright beneath his thick mop of straw-colored hair.

With his attention diverted, she studied him. She found the quasi-translucence of his determinedly-pale hair fascinating, such a contrast to both hers (so common as to be uninteresting) and the majority of the world's (artificially acquired from a bottle). Even his eyelashes only displayed the slightest suggestion of pigment, the light skittering and flickering across the golden march of strands. His nose had a strange little bump in it before protruding again at the end, and a sharp jawline made him seem almost regal.

Under duress, she might admit that he actually qualified as quite attractive. For a rich, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing cad, anyway.

"How'd you know she was mine, anyway?"

Peeta seemed slightly sheepish as he admitted he'd "seen her around."

"Around where?" She prompted, unable to think of a single place their paths would have crossed.

"Around," he repeated. After a beat of silence wherein Katniss fixed him with a gaze she hope conveyed her discontent with such a pitiful excuse of an explanation, his eyes met hers and he finally elaborated. "At shows, you know? You were always walking around with her, to get her used to things."

A sinking sense of dread threatened to quench the momentary jubilance inspired by the blissful reunion, and Katniss figured she would rather face the awful news as soon as possible. "So, uh..." she muttered, slipping her hand up under her braid to push at her neck. "What happens now?"

"What do you mean?" Peeta's gaze remained trained on the filly as she returned to the conversation, pushing her nose against Katniss in pursuit of a neck scratch.

"Well, I mean..." The blubbering certainly wouldn't help her cause, but she could not seem to curtail it. "You bought her, so... I... I don't want to be presumptious, obviously, but..." Jeez, spit it out already. "Do you think you would maybe let me ride her once in a while? And of course I'd love to be her groom, if you would let me, and-"

"Katniss, she's yours." Peeta interrupted. Mercifully, because her verbal diarhhea likely would have continued indefinitely.

"What do you mean, 'mine'?" She retorted, attempting to filter the hostility from her voice without any measurable success.

"Yours to ride, groom, show... whatever."

"Whatever?"

"Take bareback rides through the fields on... I don't know what you guys like to do."

"But you own her. Doesn't she have to follow the normal training routine like all the other horses?"

"That's just a technicality. I spoke to my father and he agreed that there's no reason to alter her training regimen when you've cared for her since birth and are perfectly capable to continuing to do so. He just requests that, when the time comes, you show her with the farm listed as the owners, for the publicity."

Her jaw shuttled a bit as she struggled to produce a coherent word or two. To her complete horror, she felt some strange liquid assembling in the corners of her eyes, slightly blurring her vision, and somehow managed to whisper a quiet thank you. Peeta seemed pleased with himself, oddly.

She glanced up to find Annie's soft green eyes on her, and cocked an eyebrow in question. Annie's gaze shifted from Katniss to Peeta and she smiled, but said nothing.

Tailored Sportsman - A popular brand of breeches (the tan pants riders wear with tall black boots).