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Bathed in the powder blue light of pre-dawn, I walk up a hill. I on one end, Noah on the other as we keep Wren in the middle. Everything looks different this time of day, the greens of the grass or the trees in the jungle are washed out by the blue all around me.
We had taken the most direct route, while circumventing the deepest, darkest portions of the jungle. This did make us trek out of our way, but even then we'd been assaulted by some squawking birds. They had hissed and screeched at us, and eventually took to dive-bombing us. Wren had gotten her shoulder tore up a little, the material of the shirt she wore had been torn a bit.
I had felt the wings flush past me, but I'd ran. We all had. Wren had tripped and fortunately Noah and I seemed to be firing on all pistons. As more winged things screeched and descended upon us, we'd snatched the female member of our coalition right up, and veered her forward. Smart and pretty though she may be, Wren was lacking when it came to pure athleticism. I'd never thought of myself as an athlete, but I was active. Noah and I seemed to be in better shape than Wren.
Both of my allies had been here before, but it was all new landscape to me. The slope of the hill is very gradual, and with our nervousness we move steadily, quickly. I don't realize that my legs are burning a bit, until we come around from a few stand-alone trees, and I see the distinct shape of the Cornucopia.
It looks like the husk of some long-dead arthropod, without being able to make out the finer details from this distance. It is even further up the hill from our current position, but I already feel as though everyone was watching me both in the arena, and back in their homes. The former was far more bothersome than the latter.
"There was stuff all in through here…" Noah says, and I see him squint down through the open grasses before us. "I got my rock hammer just over there."
Wren and he both have split off a bit, and go foraging. As I realize I am standing alone, Wren a good 10 yards or so ahead of me, Noah a bit further, I almost have an instantaneous panic attack. I feel like a mouse flushed from it's den. There's got to be a snake around, if not several, following that analogy. Why did I agreed to do this? Wren and Noah are making me soft, and stupid. All it takes in one miscalculation, one definite error, and you're dead.
"Nothing yet." Wren whispers loudly as her voice harkens over the hill and I flinch.
I am not even looking at the ground, as my internal alarms are buzzing like mad. This is an ideal place to get ambushed. Behind us, and also ahead of us and to the sides, are patchy remnants of bushes and trees. Especially in this light, I can't tell what the fuck might be hiding within the foliage. I move quickly, surprising even myself, as I zigzag up the incline, seeing some dark shadows upon the ground as I go. It isn't dark, and yet the entire landscape is bathed in shades of blue. I'd almost prefer that we would come at nighttime. Like a watercolor painting, everything around me bleeds into itself and my eyes are having the most difficult time discerning anything specific. The fact that I want to bolt for the tree line, can't help matters.
I inhale deeply through my nose as I drop to all fours, reaching for a bag that was left on the ground. Twisting it inside out, I fish around inside with my hands, but keep my head level, looking around me at all times. It's empty, and I toss the useless thing back to the earth. My chest tightens as I see a shape lollop from the blue-toned background. My knife is in it's holder, down on my leg. There's really no other way to carry the thing, but I relax just a little when I realize the shape is Noah.
"I found a net…" he says disappointedly, eyes moving away from me, to where Wren stands. "Can we even use a net?"
"I don't think so." Wren offers. Both of their voices are low, but sound travels very well on this hillside.
I see an arrow's shaft, it's feather I think might be orange or red…but the front half with the head of it, is nowhere to be found. Yeah…I think with total apprehension, because it's still in somebody. Though my eyes are preoccupied with the shape of the Cornucopia, perhaps a hundred yards or so ahead of me, I can tell the landscape drops down away from it on the other side. The grass here is short, and much of it is trampled down. The air is heavy, sticky even. I attempt to determine just what substance is on the ground, until I realize it's blood.
Lurie Sampson from District Five had talked to me about animals in the wild, quite at length. I can't tell if all of these tracks belong to animals, or people. The only animal I am worried about right now, is Man. On rare occasion, animals can be unpredictable, but as a species, we always are.
I can't see Wren nor Noah, until I swing back around and spot my ally from District Twelve picking his way up further, getting even nearer to the Cornucopia. It reminds me of a slumbering beast, ready to strike at a moment's notice. It casts a shadow, frighteningly close and I realize I couldn't see if someone was watching us from there, and it was maybe 50 yards away? I envision Roman on the edge of his seat in some control room, his hands back through his white head of hair. My mind is focused, like a laser.
Lets get out of here, lets get out of here, lets get out of here.
"Find anything?" Wren's voice finds mine, stalling my thoughts. I see her pop up, not far away at all.
"Just some blood. I don't think there's anything here." I say pointedly.
Noah's voice chirps up, "Yes there is. Stupid to leave now, we may as well make it worth our while."
Wren glances at me, and then she too continues her ascent, and I throw my gaze back down the way we've come. Quite a distance in a short while. The hill to the west slopes down and thins out. To the direct east is another rush of dense forest. The southeast winds the way I'd escaped from my platform on the first day, toward the slopes that decline into that basin with the pond at the bottom.
Before I even know what I am doing, I am standing before the Cornucopia. It looks demented, and intimidating in the current light. Maybe that wouldn't change, even if it were broad daylight. How did I even get up here? Now I was 'here', whether I wanted to be or not. With the utmost of trepidation, I eclipse the opening, and peer inside.
The darkness yawns back at me. I am relatively sure nothing lurks within, but even knowing this, I feel like there is something in it's depths. I hear Noah shout, and at first I am scrambling for my knife, until I realize that he sounds excited. I hear Wren too—they must've found something decent.
What on earth possesses me, I have no idea, but I shuffle further inside, now in the maw of the Cornucopia, and there is some odd shape, just beyond my reach. My eyes all but steam through the pitch black recesses, feeling like I was in the mouth of a beast, about to swallow me whole. I got it! Turning it over oddly in my hands, I believe it was made of burlap, or jute…so I step back into the pre-dawn light and see it was once a carrying bag, but it had been slashed.
"Excellent!" I hear Wren squeal from outside, and I decide that perhaps coming here wasn't the wrong move at all. Just as I am about to toss down the ripped open thing, I feel something cylindrical and tiny, within. I withdraw it, and as I depress the end, and a sharp line of light emits from the front, I hear a horrific scream that makes my blood seem to dry.
I all but fall back out of the Cornucopia, bashing my arm jarringly, to see Wren standing about 10 feet away, looking to the northeast, stock still. Noah is a bit further back, who now casts a weary gaze to me. I notice he is holding something wooden, and that a new backpack has been slipped around his shoulders.
"Something down there…it just went back behind the bushes." Wren said slowly, pretty features white as a sheet. "It was big, I don't know what it was."
Wren sounds scared to death. I don't know why this surprises me, but perhaps I'd given her too much credit already. As I am doing this, due east, I see someone slip into and under the tree line. Motherfucker.
"Let's hurry and get what we need then, and get out of here." Noah is saying uselessly, as my lips bend and stutter about as I try to come out with my words.
"What kind of sense does that make? Let's hide in the Cornucopia!" Wren whispers, and I am once again concerned if maybe I haven't aligned myself with two of the stupider people in this fucking Arena!
I speak, almost sounding like I'm on the verge of crying, but I'm not…I am simply scared shitless. "Someone's over there. Right east." Teeth are gritted, its hurting my jaw. I breathe one more word to them. "Run." My eyes are frantic as I see Noah's entire expression change, and I dash straight past him and, vaulting over some discarded item on the ground, start running my ass off. The muscles in my legs seem to enjoy me stretching them out, and this only urges me on further.
Everything is flooding past me, I don't stop to look behind me until I have entered some new area, where it looks like the jungle has been hewn apart and cut off at the roots of some gigantic trees. In this deforested zone, there is little to no cover, except for perhaps a couple of truly impressive tree stumps. Someone is chasing down after me, and it takes me a second or two to recognize Wren, for who she is.
We rejoin one another down near where this deforested area bottoms out, and made especially bright in the coming dawn, something that looks like a flooded forest.
Her face is red, blue eyes wide, and she latches onto me, which makes me want to yank away, but I search her eyes in anxious quiet. We are hiding behind a tree stump, and my body now feels warm, as if it's anxious for more running. In fact if Wren were not there, I would have kept on running, perhaps right into the aquatic forest.
"Where's Noah?" she whispers at me with a pinched, anxious look that might be a whisper away from terror. Our voices are very soft, our expressions enough to freak one another out, even without the help of seeing things moving in the trees. I know I need to calm down, but I can't seem to.
"I saw something in the bushes." she tells me.
"I saw someone in the trees."
An odd noise ripples up and fires down through the newly tilled area we stand in. It isn't a yell, it isn't quite a growl, a low, hefty sound with plenty of meat on it.
The hair on the back of my neck is already standing up, but Wren's face contorts into a mask of not only identification, but of fear, as she claps a hand over her own mouth. This is bad, because looking into those horribly blue, maddeningly terrified eyes of hers with nowhere else to look, I almost feel my teeth clench reflexively.
"Come on Noah…" I exhale, turning away from Wren and managing a peek around the stump. He's got to be coming after us, bounding down the hill with whatever new crap he'd found. The dead stumps cast long shadows at me in the sunlight that's just beginning to crest on the horizon, and I can't make out much of anything. My breath is coming fast and short, but I hold my eyes there, willing Noah to pop up at the top of the hill and follow us.
Aaaaarrrrrroooowwwwww.
The sound paralyzes me down to bottoms of my feet, and I don't know why; I have no earthly idea what it is. The sound is horribly loud, much too loud to be emanating from a single creature. Surely a person couldn't make such a noise?
I hear a small squeak, only to see Wren running away from me. Her braids flailing behind her as she tears ass away from me and where I am still gawking at her, managing to be surprised, rather than just to follow.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrroooowwwwww.
The throaty sound reverberates off the dead tree stumps, and seizes my heart. This call is louder than the last. I feel like my insides have turned into worms. It takes a third howl, if that's what it is, followed by a shorter one, and I am running at full speed.
Somewhere in a very neat, clean, air-conditioned room, a perfectly average looking man named Thurio Malfelas who looks close to ten years younger than the forty his bones have experienced, cracks his knuckles. Last year he was touted as good, excellent even, except that some of his traps and designs were too well-executed. He'd not allowed the tributes to find their way into trouble, the people who'd wish to supplant him had said.
Thurio had been smart, he'd always been smart. The word genius might not even be out of his league, but he had never been a patient man. It was positively killing him that this year, he'd forced himself to be so horribly hands off. Once President Snow had signed off on his sophomoric effort, the turbines in his mind were already churning…but that had been silenced quickly by the President's subtle demand for a longer, more drawn out Hunger Games.
Snow had said that he wanted to see the tributes bleed; that Panem needed to see them bleed. Thurio, being clever as he was, knew precisely what this entailed. Snow wanted the games to last longer, this year. The 62nd Games had been touted as amazing by most everyone. Thurio was certain that the people who didn't enjoy them, weren't necessarily the citizens of Panem, but certain key individuals in and around the Capitol.
Enobaria had been a terrific victor…a real paragon, she was barbarous and fierce. She'd ripped peoples throats out with her teeth, for heaven's sake! One couldn't have asked for a better icon in which to be associated. Thurio's detractors had claimed that he'd been handed a magnificent victor, and that his traps, while well-conceived, were too deadly. It was beyond him as to how that can be, when the whole idea is to kill the tributes and hold the entire nation's attentions. Miscreant worms, all of them, he preaches to himself.
He had always suspected that Snow simply had not liked him, but then, Snow didn't like a great deal of Head Gamemakers. Thurio had been asked to reprise his role, but they…idiots like Snow, were already trying to tamper with his genius! He'd only had one year to show them what he could do! What he had wanted for the 63rd Games, and what had actually come to pass, were very different indeed.
What choice did he have? You cannot refuse such a request, so he simply had to live with the new set of circumstances that President Snow had required of him. He'd scrapped his entire notion and gone back to the drawing board. They wanted something simple, something primal, something untouched.
Many of his muttation ideas had been scraped. Thurio was livid, naturally, having believed that Head Gamemakers could place whatever they wished in their Arena. What made this 63rd Games so different? Why were they babying him, and impeding upon his ideas? Two of his chief planners chatter back and forth.
"They're about to enter the Sundarbands area. Should I cue the macaques?"
"I think the crocs might give a better show, right now…"
"Good point. Can't believe they escaped the—"
"Shut up, both of you!" Thurio bellows, face red, making his already watery eyes seem more strained and weak. "I want the Homing Bats released from the spire. Leave everything else as it is." His tongue licked up over one of his canines. "Be ready with the weather system. I don't want too much sunlight."
His subordinates hopped to, as they should. Like cogs in a machine, they could only do one thing. Thurio believed himself beyond such foolery. Even if his hands were unfairly tied, he could accomplish anything.
It killed him to do so, but Thurio could follow orders. His thoughts were straightforward. Snow had asked for hands-off. Fine. Once the ratings came in, and all was said and done, surely he would come around to his way of thinking. It was annoying that these Games seemed to have just as high of viewer ship thus far, though that was just bad luck. This crop of brats was far less interesting than last year's. Make them bleed, make them bleed.
When I find Wren, she is all but cowering by a bush, not far off from where a multitude of streams, all branching off, begin to meet with the large flooded area, forming a dense shady delta. Spindly looking trees with bright green leaves thrust their heads up from the brackish water, their roots well submerged from the look of it, but their canopy well above the water line. All of this is making me think of something I'd seen pictures of on television, or read in a book. The sunlight brings out steam that rises off the water and licks at the sides of the vegetation that abounds. Mangroves? Is that the word? Mangrove trees…yeah, I think to myself, isn't that right? Given my tropical surroundings, seems like they ought to have a fancier, more undulating name to them. I feel like all these keys to my surroundings ought to be adding up to something, but I'm too frightened to try and figure it out now.
Upon seeing me, the brunette squeals even more, and I can see she's crying. No, that isn't even the word for it, sobbing is closer to the truth. Some part of me wants to just run from her, but this is quickly overlapped by my protective feelings and I kneel down before her, trying not to get too startled to how fantastically she's fallen apart.
I reach out to her, snagging for her hands, but she claws at me, blue eyes turning red as she lets out a string of hopeless, pitiful sounds that bite at me. "N-no-oo.." she wails at me, unsure of where to put her hands, whether to cover her face, smooth back her hair, or swat at me like the demented person she's becoming. "Run…run away!" she screams at me, somewhere between fury and fear, strings of saliva, and some snot ladling from her nose making her look nuts. "We're all gonna die, no! Don't touch me!" she screeches and claws at me. I have just enough time to snag my arms back before she'd have dug into them.
Now the girl from District Six buries her face in her hands, and sobs. She's beyond hysterical now, her shoulders shaking, all her beauty hacked apart by her spurting emotions. Amidst her tantrum, those eyes of hers lock on me, needing my help. I could make it all end for her, couldn't I? The racket she's raising is sure to bring unwanted attention. It would be so easy.
I smack her full across her face. Wren's sobs, grunts, shrieks, and whimpers silence, and I see her swallow and with a expunged little gasp, she settles back onto her haunches.
"Stop that shit." I say, and though I need to bring her back from the brink, some small part of me wishes that I could collapse like that and have someone there to smack some sense into me. I'm always getting screwed out of my opportunities to fall apart. Son of a bitch.
"Listen to me." I say. Even though she looks like absolute hell, and is making pathetic attempts to wipe her face off, I have her attention.
"Get up, shut up, and help me look for a better escape route, or for Noah. Whatever the hell you and I saw, they aren't going to stand still. Quit crying." I'm sure there were people all around Panem, in District Six especially, who might have thought me crass to speak to a girl in such a way. They ought to be thanking me, for bringing Wren back from the oblivion she had seemed to so entirely been heading toward.
Maybe I ought to be thanking Wren. Since she was such a coward, it didn't allow me time to be. I look at the girl who'd hugged me last night, and decide that she is going to be alright. Not only this, but that she may be appreciative of me yanking her out of her hopelessness.
"The tiger…" she says helplessly, looking frightened but at least now Wren seems to be listening to reason.
I swallow my own fear, and shake my head. "We're sure to die if we just stay here." I look around at my options. The flooded tidal forest area might be harder for tributes to find us, but, and I try not to pee my pants acknowledging this, because if there is a tiger in the area, it would have the upper hand in there.
I was all but certain the Careers weren't hiding out in the tidal forest either—but there was a reason. It looked like a death maze, plain and simple. My brain connects the sound I heard earlier to the roar of a tiger. No, I can't panic. I will myself against the pull.
We could cross the streams here, where they begin to branch and web out and follow them southwest to where I was sure the massive lake we'd come across yesterday lay.
It might seem like we had several options, but we really didn't. Wren follows me a bit south. The cut back and away from the stream we were following, but I'm almost sure I see a new branch of it spreading off a bit further ahead. I don't hear the tiger, if in fact that's what it was to begin with. Was that a good thing? Wren is very quiet but it's better than her crying. It isn't that I can blame her for feeling like she does, but somewhere I do blame her for having a breakdown. Where is Noah? I hadn't heard any cannons, so hopefully he was still alive somewhere.
"Found some duct tape." She tells me, sounding as though she has a cold, but it's probably due to her outburst. "And a straight razor. Noah got a backpack with lots of stuff inside…" Wren tells me.
A straight razor. Great, my sarcastic thought, maybe she can scratch the tiger with it, before it eats us. No, I cannot think like that. It's a marginally better weapon than her tiny pair of scissors, and it's lightweight and easily concealed. Too bad they'd not found a sword, given that Wren apparently knew how to fence. That really was too much to hope for. Anything truly good, the Careers would've taken. Though I had a compact flashlight now. I can't believe my good fortune. Were the Careers too stupid to see what it was? Or perhaps due to its size, they hadn't seen it at all?
I cannot hear the chatter of the birds in the flooded area we'd left, it's quiet in the sweltering morning sun.
We are walking further toward the stream as I perceive someone standing off to the side. Just as I turn my head, I see they are holding something in the morning mist, and I move reflexively. "Duck!" I scream and as I kick my legs out from under me, I sense something whistling past me.
I lay stunned upon the moist earth, brain a bit slushy as I hear Wren whisper harshly to me, "They're shooting at us!"
She yanks out her straight razor and looks ready to start crawling. The grasses around us aren't exceptionally tall, but if we worm our way on our stomachs, we might be able to stay below the grass line. My all-purpose knife is wrenched from it's holder and I try to listen over my anxious heartbeat. I can't see exactly where Wren is, but I believe I know her location. Far more important, and information I'm not privy to, is where our assailant is.
She said shooting at us. The Careers found a gun! Holy shit. There's no fucking way I'm going to survive this. Helplessness doesn't lend itself to any new ideas, but as I try and swallow my thoughts, I remember to be keep quiet.
"Who is that!" yells a voice, splitting the silence. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't tell from where.
I am quiet as I freeze, holding my knife and hoping maybe if they come close enough, I can thrash for their Achilles tendon; what else can I hope for?
"God damnit, I said, who is'at!" The voice slides down on the word 'God' and they don't enunciate the 'is' and 'that' as separate terms.
"Wren." I hear my companion state clearly. I notice of course that she doesn't announce my name, and I am proud of her. This means I'm the one who has to ambush whoever it might be, which is just as well.
"It's Haw." He says as I now connect the voice; it's definitely the kid from Ten, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I watch Wren wriggle up to a standing position and my heart catches in my throat. I fully expect her to be mowed down by Haw. Good guy or not, if he's on his own he's probably using our agreement to let us put our guard down. It had almost worked for Arko, after all.
Arko wasn't Haw, however. Not even close.
Perhaps stupidly, I rise up as well. I see Haw lowering what I am positive is a crossbow. He's at least 100 feet to our south, toward where the grasses triple in size. Haw is just an inch or two taller than me, he's no giant. I suspect that he is stronger than me however. He has that muscled, more compact look to him, more than I do anyway, like wrestling with him might not be a good idea at all. I see his blonde head in the sun, and I get the feeling he is alone.
Wren is walking toward him, but I linger back, with far more measured steps. Now that i've decided that Haw is by himself and isn't about to attack us, I breathe a sigh of relief and almost have to catch my breath. Such luck. I don't know where Noah is, but here's Haw, sounding healthy and wielding a crossbow! Now we might actually have a fighting chance against those Career bastards.
"Good 'ta see you alive." Haw says to us.
"Likewise," she laughs, "where'd you get that?"
"Jessamine dropped it durin' the bloodbath. I snagged it."
"Well aren't you just something else." Wren says with an friendly intonation, though it isn't an expression I'd ever heard her use before. Apparently everyone had been talking more to each other before these Games than I realized. Right then and there I appreciated how I'd just lucked into this coalition against the Careers.
I stand still, almost wanting to throw up from all these intense moments the day has already brought. I worry about the whereabouts of Noah Lind. Jessamine? Who the hell is Jessamine? Oh right, beautiful girl with icy features, District One.
It is so quiet here, it can't help but stimulate my mind from going in a hundred directions at once.
Haw laughs at Wren's comment, "Just what mama always said." His words die on the still air around us.
Haw's startled choke is sliced in half as I watch him be crushed to the ground by impossibly large forelegs. The tall grass had concealed it, until now. Paws are gargantuan, the claws concealed behind white-covered digits. I open my mouth to scream, but literally, I can't squeeze a sound out.
Death looks at me with wild eyes, wearing a striped coat.
The tiger's maw opens and I see the pink of it's tongue, the white of it's teeth as it's low rumbling growl assaults me from every direction. I cannot move, or breathe. I vaguely recall Lurie telling me not to run, in the recessed gray matter of my mind which has turned to complete mush. I feel my entire body vibrate.
On all fours, the great tiger widens it's mouth and calls out another roar, the look of it's massive head branded and seared into my mind as it takes a half-step forward.
I find myself praying for the first time in my life as I take a wobbly step backward. Wren is frozen ahead of me, a couple of paces nearer the King of the Jungle.
I will every inch of my body to back off more, equally forcing my thoughts to travel to Wren. She was so overcome at the mere idea of a tiger before, I am sure that she will run.
Watching her take a fractured step backward as well, I am witness to Wren as she falls. The tiger moves to the side, and then as it advances very slowly at us, it stalls once again and lets out another crippling growl.
My jaw shakes, but I cannot take my eyes off the tiger's, as I slowly lower myself to help Wren up. She scrambles and thrashes, but I manage to pull her back to her feet. The smell of urine dashes my sluggish thoughts. Placing my hands on her shoulders with more force than I mean to exert, we take a few more dragged steps away.
"Don't…run…" I gasp, almost impossibly soft.
I hear a galvanized whimper echoes my warning, but Wren has become like putty. I continue to bring her away from the tiger, fighting every urge to turn and run. It's like my body is tearing in half, the instinct is so difficult to fight against. In my mind I remember my conversation about predators, and see cute little Lurie shaking her head.
A cannon blasts off and I see the tiger's gaze move through us, not at us. The noise makes me all but shit my pants, but I realize it's more of a hiss. An annoyed sound as it guards it's kill. I see it's tail swish now as it battles us with it's gaze, unwilling to take it's eyes off of us.
I play the same game…as we back away. I could be backing into quicksand, but I don't care. We are moving, feet by feet, northeasterly, back toward the Cornucopia. This is not by design, it is simply by necessity. The tiger seems to have not shrunk in size, and I am worried that it is following us. The landscape is cut low here, so I can still see all four of it's mighty legs, its tremendous body and trunk, its striped tail.
"It isn't chasing us." Wren says, though she sounds nothing like herself in doing so. She's already peed herself, and I'm not at all sure that I haven't as well. Now isn't the time for vanity. I realize she is right, and it's just my own perception that has kept the tiger so close.
This thought is reinforced as finally the tiger is whittling down in size as we continue our slow egress, but I still find my eyes locked onto it. I still remember Lurie telling me about animals in the wild. It is only brainless luck, that this tiger wasn't engineered by the Capitol. It wasn't like those awful tree sloth-like things that Noah and I had battled. Lurie had told me, 'No animal kills for sport, except Man.'
I almost cry at recalling these words, for they bubble up all around me in this Arena.
Precisely, Lurie. Precisely.
Now that we have put as much distance between ourselves and the tiger as we can, Wren and I look at each other. Remarkably, she doesn't cry until right now, and even then, it's nothing like the hysterics from earlier. I catch myself in her beautiful blue eyes, and though I don't think she wants me to, I hug her. I need one.
"Haw…" she whispers against me, and I feel my heart drop like a stone. I cannot believe the circumstances in which we found him, and then how he was taken from us. Only now do I remind myself how quiet that grass valley had been. That isn't natural. All of our talking, crying, then Haw shouting at us. The tiger had been there, waiting for us, for him…for someone. It forces me to close my eyes and take a deep breath through my nose.
"He didn't suffer." I say. I don't know if it's callous or sensitive, as I do so, but I know it's the truth. The horrifying part is that we could've just as easily been picked off. Maybe there is a God. I don't know anymore.
This acknowledgement ought to shake me to my foundations, but I accept this new not knowing, so easily, like putting on a clean shirt. I don't know much of anything anymore.
What if that cannon had been for Noah, dying somewhere else, and Haw was still alive, being eaten by the tiger? No, please no. It isn't as though I was in any position to sort something like that out, but I hope that it wasn't the case. Right now, my yearning for Noah to be alive and well, is surprisingly equal to my wish that Haw had died almost instantly. One doesn't weigh more than the other, in my mind, and even this is a peculiar thing to realize.
"Thank you." Wren whispers to me, her eyes on mine and I feel myself slipping away with her. I'm barely taller than her, but she is looking up at me like I am her savior. It prickles my ego, but touches me deeply at the same time. Did I save her life? I guess. I don't know anymore, that seems to become my mantra now. I don't know.
I disentangle myself from Wren, and I realize that my knife has gotten back into the sheath around my leg, but I have no recollection of putting it there. I am bathed in sweat, both from our unforgiving muggy terrain, and from the fear from the tiger's encounter. I don't think I have peed my pants, it doesn't seem so, but I will never look a judgmental eye at Wren, who can't say the same.
When Noah shows his face, I am appalled at myself for how easy we were to sneak up on. Naturally I would not want to draw weapons with Noah, but the fact that Wren and I are caught so fantastically off guard, is worrisome. As a light rain starts to fall, we have to tell him what happened. He seems concerned that the tiger might be coming back for more, but strangely, I don't think so. It had behaved exactly like a tiger might in the wild, not a tiger muttation, some twisted product of the Capitol, might.
"How are we even still alive?" Noah says.
"I don't know." I reply. It's my phrase of the day, and I'm sticking with it. The rain does some to help wash away the feelings associated with that sun-lit field where Haw had lost his life. I am anxious to get rid of them, though I will never forget District Ten. Cynthia and Haw. They were both amazing people, who died under bad circumstances. Did anyone in the Arena die under good circumstances?
Maybe I ought to be jealous of them? Cynthia and Haw died quickly, and I'd imagine, painlessly. You can't suffer when you're unconscious or crushed instantaenously by a tiger. Would I die without pain? Didn't seem too likely.
"Well…" Noah says shakily, his gray eyes switching from Wren back to me, "I found some stuff for us. Come on, we'll sort it out over there."
I obey him, happy to not have to lead them. Both Wren and Noah might disappoint me from time to time, but just as often, they impress me. I would feel honored to get killed by either of them, and that is the truth. In such a scenario, that might require us to be the final three tributes. Can we do it?
I don't know.