recurve
There is prey and there are predators. The mindset makes all the difference.
District Seven is surrounded by forest.
The difference between the pine plantations and the forest is marked. Even inside the boundaries, she sees more animals in the first five metres than she's seen coming through the rows and rows of trees.
Her worker's pass got her past the Peacekeeper on the way in, along with every other person coming in for the early morning shift. The sun's only just coming up, and as she gets further from where work is going on, the sounds dim, and the forest swallows her.
The bow is under the fallen log, the way it always is.
Just another day.
The wind blows the loose strands of hair back from her face.
Upwind, she may as well be invisible to her prey. The arrow is nocked and ready.
The bow is part of her.
With the bow, she is one unit.
The hunter.
The reaping comes, her sixth.
And the world turns because they draw her name.
And the crowd is resigned as usual because this is how it is every year, with only slight variation in hysteria, in weeping parents, in fainting.
She stands on the stage, receiving meagre applause, and they say her name again, and she's so out of place in a dress and fancy shoes.
The look of the crowd is one who knows that she'll be dead in a month's time.
Her parents come to the visitor's room, and her mother is weeping openly, but her father tells her to get to a knife, to a bow, and she won't starve if she can get those.
But in the back of her mind, she remembers the year when it was caves, when the tributes murdered eachother in the dark and the only food came from the Cornucopia. She remembers the year where the rocky wasteland had no plants on it.
No place for the hunter there.
Her district partner is big, older than her.
But he's clumsy, unprepared, well-fed.
Across the dining car table, she watches him pick apart a luridly orange cake, and hopes like anything that someone kills him before she has to.
The chariot rides are hideous, both her and the boy looking horrid in painted-on bark, with leaves scattered through her hair. One scratches the back of her neck the whole way to the City Circle.
She only wishes that they'd get it over with and quit pretending this was anything but what it is.
But of course, to them it's a pantomime, a show.
To her it's a hunt.
There are bows in the training centre, different to hers at home in so many ways.
She shoots for a while, but drifts between survival skills and edible plants tables, watching the kids from the wealthy districts massacre training dummies.
But she is a hunter. They rely on brute strength, on the fear of others, on the love of the audience.
All she needs is a bow.
She walks into her private session head held high, alone and unafraid.
She picks up the bow, measuring it against her height, stringing it, nocking the arrow.
She takes her time.
Breathe in, breathe out, and -
She shoots. And shoots.
She never says a word. She stands at different points around the gym
and
never
misses.
They allow her to leave and they give her an eight for her trouble, because she's small and ordinary and she doesn't say anything.
More fool them, she thinks.
The interviews are as bad as the chariots, lurid, over-the top.
The Careers flaunt their nines, their tens to the crowd. The younger kids look ready to cry. The girl from five is a vision, tall and beautiful, silver and red fabric draped over impossibly dark skin. The boy from ten is stocky and muscled, and yet charismatic in his district accent.
And she is so average that her interview passes without a single distinguishing feature.
They'll see, she tells herself.
When they see her hunt, they'll know.
As she rises into open air, into daylight, the smell instantly tells her that here, finally, she can be strong. She can outshine the others. Because they're perched on the side of a mountain, rocky and covered in trees, the smell of pines strong in the air.
This is her home ground.
And oh, how they run. They run away, like rabbits, like prey. They are the hunted. She is the hunter.
The bow may as well fall into her hands.
She dirties an arrow that afternoon, shooting down a large, noisy bird.
As she's cooking it, by the river, in the dusk, the cannons start to fire.
Fourteen in all.
There's been bloodshed. The Career pack, no doubt.
She counts out her arrows. Twelve, including the one that's already bloodied.
Two for food, she decides. And one left for each of her prey.
She eats as she walks downstream. There are sure to be tributes all along its length, seeking food and water.
Perfect.
Her first kill is only hours later.
In the twilight, the woods are dark. Patches of soft light show her the way. The sounds of splashing come from in front of her.
A tribute, a girl.
Prey.
She's injured, dirtying the water with blood, trying to clean her wounds. She'll attract predators.
She already has.
The arrow is in her neck before she even sees her killer.
The next one is more difficult. He fights back.
She struggles with him, trying to gain the advantage, but he's strong. He's older than her, taller, but hungrier. He's not had food.
Her knee ends up across his throat.
"See this?" she says, drawing an arrow out of the quiver. "This is for you, special-like. One arrow just for you."
She laughs. "It's funny, though, arrows ain't just for shootin' - "
She drives the arrow down into his face.
There's a sucking sound, a sickening squish, and he opens his mouth to scream and then the point enters his brain.
His scream dies with him.
She leaves him on the ground with an arrow through his eye.
The third comes more easily. A little girl. She shoots from a tree, and the girl falls, just like that. Not blood sprays, no guts spill. No screaming.
Tidy.
She takes the meagre supplies from the girl's pockets, and leaves the arrow where it is.
She's ambushed on the eighth day.
It's not right, it's not right, she's the hunter, she hunts them, not the other way around.
The boy from four pins her to a tree with one hand, tears the bow away from her.
"You're a tiny thing. Pity. Not as much blood in you~!"
She struggles against his grip. He's practically choking her. "I've got an arrow for you, too!" she gets out. "That girl from nine? The one from three? I killed the boy from five! I'll kill you!"
The boy laughs. "Did you now. Well, that's just lovely. But I think we're done here -"
Her neck breaks in half a heartbeat.
The boy lets her fall to the ground, turns to his friends. "That was a great line, I swear. Did anyone else see that? 'We're done here.' What was it you said, Gem, when you killed that little shit from six? Bet it wasn't as good as that."
"It so was, Brenn," she smirks. "C'mon, she doesn't have any supplies or anything. Let's get a move on."
They leave her there, slumped against a tree, bow lying a metre from her outstretched arms.
The arrows have fallen to the ground, and they lie there, watching, waiting for the hovercraft to bring her home.
A/N:
This piece was written for the Starvation September Prompt "arrows". It was a bit of fun, I guess.
~Madeleine