we dream so long

prompt forty-eight: storm

"Fare Thee Well"
(Or how Annie sails her boat with sure hands and steady feet)

Let it first be said that Annie Odair (née Cresta) lived to a ripe old age, given everything. And let it be known that at 84 she was even steadier of body and mind than she had been at 24. Let us inform you that out of any of the Victors, or of the rebels (we're looking at you, Gale Hawthorne), crazy-ol' Annie settled into their new life the best.

She returned home to District Four, not to the Victor's village but instead moving into the small cerulean cottage she'd grown up in by the docks. With Baby Tel strapped to her back she set about tidying the small home. She tore down walls, redecorated, and repainted. Johanna came some months later to see her godson and helped Annie build a truly spectacular porch, overlooking the sea, facing away from the dock. Just pure, open ocean.

When Tel was no longer a baby she started talking about how she wanted to buy a boat. Johanna was against it and so was Haymitch but Peeta, sweet Peeta who wrote her letters each month, thought it was a great idea. A perfect distraction.

So just like her home, she set about restoring her father's old fishing boat. And when restored to its former glory, all it needed was a name.

Everyone, her son included, assumed she would name it for Finnick. What other name would do? But Annie, with sure hands, painted a different name of the side.

...

Let's not talk about ghosts, he'd told her, years ago before she went into the arena. She had been a career, confident and proud because what else could be? She may have been a girl from the docks, a scholarship career there to help her family, but she'd passed all the training. She thought it would be easy. So she asked: "Finnick, what's it like to kill someone?"

His face had darkened and he'd avoided her eyes: "Let's not talk about ghosts, Annie".

When she screamed as her district partner's head rolled at her feet, she understood.

...

So on the boat, in black paint against brilliant white she penned "The Odysseus". Mags had told her tales, passed down from the same dead language as the name of their country, about the man sent away to war for years. Who was seduced by witches and sirens, who suffered at the hands of angry god. And all while his wife and son waited on the edge of the sea, waiting to see his ship on the horizon.

It was her favorite.

...

Annie Odair, formerly Cresta sailed every day. Until he was in school, her son spent this time with her. He loved to watch his mother's hands spin the wheel. He loved to watch her throw the nets and then with firm arms and callused palms pull them back in. It never mattered if the net were full- it wasn't about the money, and Annie donated whatever she caught anyway- but his mother sang as she worked. Everything, from District 12 tunes she learned from Katniss to District 7 ditties to District 4 sea shanties. The last were his favorite. When the weather was bright and clear, they would belt out the bawdiest ones, or sometimes the silliest ones, they knew.

"Weigh heigh and up she rises."

...

The last time anyone saw Annie Odair was a bright blue morning, in the transition from summer to autumn, sailing out of the dock on The Odysseus. She wore a green dress and no shoes, her hair grey and long around her shoulders. Tel wished her well, his eldest daughter clutching at his leg and the youngest cradled in his arms. He'd grown into nearly the spitting image of his father, just like everyone said he would. But his smile, his smile was all Cresta and on that bright blue morning Annie saw her legacy in her son's grin.

She pulled away humming her own favorite shanty.

"And fare thee well my own true love
And farewell for a while.
I'm going away, but I'll be back
If I go ten thousand miles."

But as everyone knows, Annie Odair did not come back. Not that day, when the weather turned as it often does, to deep grays and dark blues. Not when the wind and rain broke a spindle on the porch of the cerulean house by the sea. Not the following day, when the weather cleared as the sun dipped below the surf.

The boat wasn't found for a week, nestled between the rocks of the islands off the shore of District Four.

And Annie's body wasn't either. But it was okay, everyone said, that the sea claimed her as its own. She was District Four through and through they said.

And the Odyssey is just a story, anyway.