(every fire is a lesson learned)

She finds herself singing lately, more often than not, and Katniss doesn't really know why. It feels as if suddenly, everything comes rushing back to her. All of the songs her father taught her; old ballads and the songs coal miners used to sing. Love songs and those that tell stories alike. She sits and sings, hands busy with the knot of a snare or the sharpened point of an arrow while she does. And if asked, Katniss could honestly not say why this was. She'd shunned music entirely after her father's death, dismissing it to the point where she was half-convinced that she'd never loved it at all.

But some things always come back, even if they're not entirely welcome.

Katniss sits there for hours, running through songs - she likes the ones that tell stories the most.

There was a youth, a cruel youth,
Who lived beside the sea,
Six little maidens he drowned there
By the lonely willow tree.

The morbid ones remind her of 'The Hanging Tree', and how oddly she was drawn to it, and not only because it was forbidden. This story, at least, has a happier ending than the others she'd sung that morning with the backdrop of the waves accompanying her. The good thing about the beach was that it was so vast, and it wasn't hard to find a secluded area here or there.

He turned around, that false young man,
And faced the the willow tree,
And seizing him boldly in both her arms,
She threw him into the sea.

Lie there, lie there, you false young man,
Lie there, lie there, cried she,
Six little maidens you've drowned here,
Now keep them company.

He sank beneath the icy waves,
He sank down into the sea,
And no living thing wept a tear for him,
Save the lonely willow tree.

When she'd first arrived, her voice had been raspy and terrible. Destroyed from inhaling too much smoke, from screaming too loudly and too often. But like the redness of the burn scars, even that's faded.

There's a metaphor to be found there, she supposes, but she never liked those anyways.