In my earliest memory, I am drowning. The bitter ocean is consuming me, dragging me in to its unruly rhythm and nipping at my nostrils. I can no longer scream, as my mouth has long been demolished by this disordered sea. In that moment, I am sure it will only be a matter of time until I am forced to surrender myself, am forced to let this monster swallow me whole and emerge victorious.

But then I feel them.

Two arms, radiating oh so glorious heat on to my own. Before I can anticipate who these arms belong to, I am being swung by them onto someone's naked back. I mould myself into the strangers spine and allow my wrists and hands to secure themselves in to my saviours neck. I know he must be male. And relatively young, for he is not much taller than I and has not yet matured enough to be coated with any significant body hair. This, however, is all I know about the boy who came to my rescue, untangling me from the clutch of that savage beast and wrapping me in his own. That is, until we finally reached the strip of sand, often referred to as the 'strip' among the residents of district four.

The boy lays me on to the warm sand and leaves me to consume the blissful oxygen my lungs are so hungry for. Once my lungs full and my breaths steady, I manage to hurl myself upright, and I notice that the boy is still on the strip, sitting a couple of paces away from me and staring out at that horrible sea. Even though I was only a child at this point, six I think, perhaps approaching seven, I had always been sceptical of the sea. When I was an infant, my father had died at the hands of the ocean. He had been a fisherman, like many of the men in our district were, and the boat he was aboard collapsed under the pressure of the boisterous waves. Ever since my mother had told me that story when I was a toddler, determined not to be the sort of parent who kept such significant details from her child, I had felt nothing but anger and hate towards that stretch of blue that had taken my father from me before I had even gotten the chance to know him. I vowed to never let myself be fooled by its beauty, its magnificence, that day being no exception. The only reason that I had waded into it in the first place was to recapture my most precious belonging.

It was a stuffed toy that was meant to be recognised as something known as a mermaid. The myth of the mermaids has been around for centuries according to my mother, and had a reputation for being the most stunning, kind creatures who had a particular talent in anything musical. My father had apparently brought me my mermaid, who I had named Coral, when he and my mother found out my mother was expecting me. Coral was made from the hands of one the wives of my father's fishing buddies, who was a very talented seamstress, even more so than my mother, who has had a reputation of being a genius at needlework for as long as anyone in district four can recall. My father had brought her, for a discounted but still very dear price, and tucked her into my cradle with me every night when he came to bid me goodnight. Even though I was coming up for seven, and I was more than aware that I was fast approaching becoming too old for toys, I could not bear to part with Coral. She came everywhere with me. To the bathroom, to school, and most often, to the strip with me, where I would prop her up against my sewing basket as I worked on stitching together an array of fishing nets to be sold in my mother and step father's store.

Coral's hair was made of thick ivory silk, her skin made of soft, colourless cotton. She fashioned a salmon crop top and the scales on her tail a selection of precious sea shells. Although the shells were beginning to shed by this point, and streaks of dark dust had been added to her blonde mane, I still loved her more than anything, because having her close felt as though I always had a part of my deceased father near to me, so you can imagine why I forced myself to run in to the ocean after her that day. It was so unexpected, that clean sweep that shook her off of my sewing basket and in to the wild waves, and considering leaving a piece of my father to be demolished by that monstrosity once again, at the time, seemed ridiculous.

"Coral" I cry, unable to contain my devastation. I had failed my father, and I would never again run my hands over the jagged rocks that blanketed her bottom half, would never be able to stroke her silken hair to calm me in times of anxiety once more.

"Is that your name?" The boy has turned to face me now, his face sympathetic and kind. I immediately noticed his eyes were an exquisite aquamarine and his voice as clear as a bell. Waves of flaxen lapped his sun kissed forehead and a path of freckles lingered from here to his muscular jaw line. Nobody could reject that he was extraordinarily attractive, but the thing is, it was as if he hadn't been informed of this, as he was behaving as though he was just an usual boy, nothing at all extraordinary. This immediately triggered a sense of sadness to run through me, as I knew if I had been blessed with such superior looks, I'd be more than filled with vanity about them.

"No." I respond, a little coyly now I had seen his face. "That's the name of my doll. The tide took her out to sea and…" I can't help but choke out my next words. "I tried to save her." A sombre expression replaces the boy's curious one, and he moves back towards where I am stood in the centre of the strip. He slings an arm around me, and pulls my trembling body in to his firm one.

"I'd go try find her, but I don't think there's much hope now."He says helplessly. "I could always give it a go though…"

"No!" I interrupt, speaking a lot more boldly than I had meant to. "I mean, it's just a silly toy, I should of grown out of it ages ago." I force a casual shrug, eager to convince him I wasn't the stupid kid he probably had me down for.

"I still play with toys, and I'm almost nine!" The boy states brashly. I suddenly feel very foolish.

"I…I'm sorry I didn't mean to…" The boy lets out a sunny laugh.

"Don't worry about it! I was just saying, you don't have to embarrassed." He pauses. "I'm Finnick, by the way."

"Annie." I reply.

"Pretty name." Finnick charms.

"Thank you." I pause. "And thank you for saving me." He scoffs at this.

"It's no big deal, honestly, I do this kind of thing every day!" It takes a mischievous wink for my childlike self to notice the sarcasm in his tone. "Where about do you live, Annie?"

"Why?" I ask cautiously, remembering what my mother had always told me about giving out such information to strangers.

"So I can walk you to your door, of course!" Finnick replies, not at all put out by my suspicion.

"I live in town, my mother owns the store that sells handmade fishing equipment." I answer. I know that he'll know what shop I'm talking about because we are the only family to actually have a warehouse for the equipment we make.

"I know the place, my father buy's fishhooks from there often. He say's no-one makes them better than at your mother's store!" I blush at that comment, because in fact it is me who makes a lot of the fishhooks nowadays seeing as mother is so tied down with weaving all the nets and baskets. I enjoyed crafting the hooks and constantly glowed with pride every time they were complimented by anyone.

"Yeah, well, that's the place." I give an awkward shrug. "You don't have to take me there though, really, I'm alright now."

"What kind of person would that make me if I was to leave you to hobble home on your own after a near death experience, hmm?" Finnick throws a wink in my direction. "Can't have you ruining my gentlemanly reputation now, can we?" I can't help but release a titter, which causes a brilliant beam to spread across his face. "There, it's settled! I'm taking you home!"

And he did. He helped hoist me up from my sitting position and steadied my still slightly shaken body with his own, and lead me across the strip and past the bustling swamp where I later learnt he lived in the depth of. This makes me a merchant child in comparison to him, as my family lived above the pleasant little apartment that is upstairs from the store, whereas he and his father lived in a damp little shack that was to moist to radiate even the tiniest molecule of heat. I feel guilty when he tells me this, and informs me of how fortunate I am to have such a comfortable home, so I impulsively burst out the story of my father to regain some of his sympathy.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry Annie…that must have been terrible." He exclaims when I tell him, his face a picture of bewilderment. I shrug.

"I barely remember him, so it's not too bad. Except…" I feel the tears welling in my throat. "Coral was all I had left of him."

"Oh…"

I blink back the tears threatening to roll from my eyes and force a slight smile to play on my lips. "It's okay, really."

"No." Finnick sighs. "It's not. It's a terrible thing to happen to anyone. My mother died whilst she was giving birth to me and I've never quite gotten over it, so I know what you're going through." The secure hand he has stopped to press against my upper arm is comforting and warm. I feel as though my insides are melting.

"I'm sorry, I…" By this point, the store securely in my line of sight and with a couple more paces, I'll be stood in front of the front door. I turn to Finnick, and notice the tears swimming in his sockets. I can't help but wrap him in to a tight embrace, before turning away from him and beginning to make my way inside.

"Annie?" I turn to look at him, his face now streaked with tears and his hair blown astray by both the hug and the autumn breeze.

"Yeah?"

"You coming down to the strip again tomorrow?" He asks sheepishly.

"Uh-huh" I reply without thinking about it. I was planning on staying inside after school tomorrow, helping out in the shop and catching up on some reading, but from that day, wherever Finnick Odair was, that is exactly where I wanted to be.

Fast forward five and a half years and Finnick and I are inseparable. We quickly fell in to a routine of spending almost every evening together at the strip, and after a violent ship crash killed several of his closest school friends, which occurred when Finnick was ten and I eight, I abandoned my group of girlfriends and the two of us began to spend school hours in each other's company as well.

It wasn't long until I met Finnick's father, a wise, quiet sort of man who had dedicated his life to accommodating his son after the loss of his wife. Mr Odair worked of course, very hard for that matter, but his son always seemed to come first in addition to his job, and that is something I envied Finnick for. My mother was good to me, but if she was not working, she was spending time with her new husband, my arrogant and in my opinion, frankly rather overrated, step father, who spent the majority of his life downing liquor with his fishing buddies. After several visits to Finnick and his father's shack in the swap, I reluctantly gave in to his numerous requests to spend the evening at my house, where he met my mother and step father with an embarrassing amount of charm. My mother lapped it up though, and my step father found it ever so amusing, so there was no problems at all, and by the time summer came, everybody in district four were well informed of Finnick and I's admiration of each other. Of course, there'd been a few sly remarks about us becoming a couple, but for the most of the time we just shrugged these silly comments off. That is until the summer that Finnick was reaped for the 65th Hunger Games, that is.