Chapter 3
Sagittarius Marion- District 2
I feel so elated to discover the full extent of these people's talents. The only person I feel even slightly threatened by is that Sienna girl and she seems too deranged to be a real threat. I can only imagine the immense riches that I will be showered with as soon as I get home. My hands might be a little bloody by the time I get back but I can't imagine I'll have anything more than a few scratches.
But even my assurance doesn't stop the nerves because there is the smallest part of me deep, deep down that knows that someone like that filthy District 12 boy from last year's games could overthrow someone like me. And I'm scared because that small part of me knows that I don't know how to build a fire and that I don't know which plants to eat and which to stay away from and I don't know almost anything else to do with surviving in the wild. So when Blaze suggest we go to the survival stations I silently thank him. I fumble over tying knots and camouflaging myself but I make it seem as though I'm joking so none of them think I'm weak. Because being perceived as weak in the games can be just as deadly as being weak.
The day goes by fast and although I don't show it by the end of training a deep-seated terror has settled within me and there is a lump in my throat. During dinner I push my food around my plate and try to block out Legacy's chatter which seems even more annoying than usual. I can't believe that only a few hours ago that I was as self assured as the peacocks that strut around the gardens in the Victors Village back home. And now. Now I am terrified.
Janko Baldonotti- District 4
I feel evermore anxious for the Games to begin as the days go by. I need to get my hands bloodied before I start to doubt myself. And the things is I already do. Every second that is not spent doing something is tense is spent worrying and I lie awake every night thinking about the days to come. What the arena will be, what I will manage to salvage from the cornucopia, what the game makers will throw at us. Thousands of questions haunt my mind and every single one remains unanswered.
I almost fall asleep during training the next day and I can barely concentrate on what the instructor or anyone else is saying. I fall asleep with my head on my empty plate at lunchtime and it is the first sleep I've had since the opening ceremony and it only lasts a minute or so before Legacy and Sagittarius' laughter wakes me. Ceto looks unimpressed but the corners of her mouth twitch upward. She looks damn pretty when she does that.
It's such a shame that I'll eventually have to watch her die, kill her or...die myself. But I guess that's just the way it is. Kill or be killed and nothing else. I have never felt more helpless in my life. When Ultan's sister came back from the Games she seemed so happy, nothing to show that she might have been stressed during the Games. So either she's as good an actor as my friend (and her younger brother) or I don't have what it takes to win the Games, and as soon as I get in there I will crash and burn.