17

It's nighttime in Appalachia. The crickets are loud, as are all the night noises. It's dark. Nocturnal creatures dart from here to there, hoping against hope to avoid predation, competition, or whatever applies.

Owls hoot. Alas, their noise is about to get dimmer.

From the dense undergrowth, a mouse mutt wanders out into the open. He stops, and looks around. He twitches his whiskers, and his ears. He blinks. He shivers. He stands up on his back legs, and sniffs the air.

You won't believe what he's looking for. Or rather, who.

He crawls across the ground, sniffing it out. His tail is erect. He's like a beagle-only smaller, and whiter, and with longer incisors. Alas, the scent he hopes to find isn't popping up on his nose's radar.

He crawls on something, and hesitates. It feels like a tree branch...but he isn't sure. He hops on it, and crawls up it. At its zenith, he stands on his hind legs, and sniffs the air.

He hesitates. He thinks he's heard a branch get rustled.

Something big lands on the branch. And the branch comes to life. The mouse squeals, and runs back into the undergrowth. As he runs, he hears an owl shriek.

The mouse has a scary memory of bared owl talons, falling towards him like dual scary asteroids. He also has a less-scary-yet-sadder memory of a snake's venomous fangs bared.

As the owl flies away, it flaps its wings harder. It isn't attempting stealth...or health, for that matter.

Dawn breaks. The humidity spreads out. The crepuscular creatures come out, sing soft tunes, and forage for food in the dim light. The mouse mutt is long gone.

Peeta wanders through the undergrowth. The androids' cabin is not far. Or rather, from his POV, it is very far. But for Johanna, it can't be more than fifty paces.

And the androids can fly. They'd be there in just a jiffy.

Do they still say "just a jiffy" in Panem? Younger generations sure defy old ways a lot.

Peeta knows he shouldn't be out here. But he's worried that another spider's going to attack him if he stays in the cabin.

A fly flies low over him. To him, it sounds like a biplane. Another flies low-only slightly higher. Another flies low from another direction.

Peeta smells something. It stinks. It almost makes him faint. Once he's used to it, though, he follows it to its source.

At his size, the fallen leaves are like old lumber...if old lumber was wider and flatter. And the straw is like old ropes.

Peeta passes through a tree-sized bunch of grass. The first thing he sees is a giant eye.

He screams, and leaps back. He lies in the grass, petrified. He prays it didn't see him. He waits in dread.

Nothing happens. He hears a lot of flies buzzing-as if there's a massive dogfight going on up there-but nothing attacks him. Confused, he stands, and peers through the grass. As scary as it is, they eye's still there-as is its late owner.

An owl has died. And high on top of its carcass-from Peeta's POV-there's a power struggle going on between every fly in District 12.

Not that power matters in fly world; all flies are destined to become power themselves-for a spider. And one would think that if Peeta realized that, he'd do a quick about-face and race right back to the cabin.

Peeta isn't sure, but he doesn't think a solitary hunter like a spider would risk attacking a fly as it was surrounded by a vast number of its kin. If the spider tried to pounce on it, all of the other flies would fly away, reducing the spider's enthusiasm, if not his ambition.

The owl's carcass has long been sterilized. And in the absence of owl gonads, a new and different community has been planted.

Peeta isn't sure what draws him there. But if he was thinking about having children with Katniss-or Johanna, even-this next experience WOULDN'T encourage him to.

Within this rock shelter-which was once an owl's gonads, again-eggs have been lain. Many have already hatched. Up here, the ashes have been lain. And the phoenixes are rising.

Alas, they're not phoenixes. They're maggots. But to Peeta, they're the size of human infants. They consume everything around them. They might as well; it's all edible. And babies don't rise to power on their own.

Food, Peeta's own father used to tell him, isn't the source of a man's power. It's merely a tool to teach him how to use it. It'll be the same with these flies. And sadly, like many fine youths from other districts Peeta and Katniss once knew for a short time, most of them will be destined to end up in a predator's stomach before they ever master the art of flying.

Peeta allows some of the maggots to get close to him. He even handles some of them, as if they were real babies. But naturally, since they can't tell him from anything else up here, he exerts caution. As soon as they start to sting as he's handling them, or letting them crawl on them, he shuns them.

These babies are perfect; they don't make much noise. They also don't take nine months to be born. The only noise to be heard is the sounds of the natural gases and juices of the owl's carcass that occasionally erupt from the rotting tissue whenever their respective vessels get compromised. And as much as this is starting to sting, and as many maggots that seem to be piling on top of him, mistaking him for food, Peeta commences his exit.

While leaving, he circles the owl's other flank. He looks around. He stops when he notices the owl's ruffled feathers near its flank. Peeta narrows his eyes in confusion.

The owl's molting feathers are hardly a stable climb. To Peeta, it's like trying to climb multiple tapestries, hanging from their rods, as they keep falling off the wall he's trying to climb on. But some of these "tapestries" still hang from stable-enough "rods." By the wills of enough of these, Peeta gets to the spot on the owl's flank he saw from the ground.

To him, they're like pits. There's a pair of them. They run deep. And they get narrower as they get deeper.

Peeta dares touch the inside of one of them. It stings his finger-and takes much less time to do so than the maggots' acids did.

Now Peeta knows what killed his host-not that Peeta's not grateful his host is dead. If it weren't it'd surely eat him. Or rather, at this time of day, it'd be asleep. It's an owl, after all.

Peeta's had enough. He gets back to the cabin ASAP. And he doesn't collect any of the grub for himself. For some reason, he respects flies a lot more than he did before his first Hunger Games...