Wassup homies?! Just playin', I promise I don't really talk like that. ANYWAYS. Thanks for reading my story. Don't hate too hard! I'm nothing close to an English major, this is my first ever story, and, oh yeah, I do not own The Hunger Games!
So where were we…? Oh yeah!
The night drags on so slowly. The heat and adrenaline pumping through our bodies from the hectic day that played out before us is now subsiding. The chill sets in. Luckily we won't have to deal with these freezing temperatures very much longer, unless the Gamemakers decide to be cruel and set us in a frozen tundra next.
Fortunately, Dani did an amazing job on Vi's wound. She really does her magic when it comes to stitching. There is still some leakage from the wound since the stitches she was using weren't the proper equipment she's been used to working with, but no blood appears to be escaping any more.
We don't dare set a fire to stay warm, we don't need to draw forth any more craziness for the day, especially for Vi's sake. We stay huddled together for warmth.
We're still sitting in silence when the sounds of beeping begin ringing through our ears.
We all jump from where we were sitting and draw our weapons. No need. To our pleasant surprise we find our second parachute….
Night vision glasses? They have a note attached to them. Ryann opens the note, looks confused, and reads it aloud: "Broken down sea shells…" I realize that notes can't have too much advice or big give-aways, but c'mon Monikka, throw us a bone here.
I try on the glasses. Nothing. I can't see any differently. I try searching for a switch on the side of them, but I don't come across anything.
"Wait a minute!" Dani shouts. "I remember seeing some Capitol citizens wearing these things. They would wear them during the day when it was bright outside. I think Conrad might have called them … sungoggles?"
"No, I'm pretty sure he said 'sunglasses'," Vi corrected.
"Alright, so this obviously must be a hint for the next arena change," I continue. " So we're looking forward to something bright and sunny apparently by the sound of this object's name. Now about the broken sea shells. The only other thing when I think about sea shells that comes to my mind is sand. So bright and sunny with sand…."
Ryann then says what's on all of our minds, "Desert." Great… from one extreme to the other.
We begin preparing for the dry, scorching conditions that tomorrow will bring. We stuff all of our canteens to the top with snow so that it can melt for us to drink.
After we think we've prepared enough and with Ryann keeping the first watch, I slowly drift off to sleep. Thinking about today's events and our friends from 11 the entire time….
Must have been a quiet night. The next thing I know I'm being awoken by Dani (must have missed the watch-shift change) informing me that the scenery is about to change.
The whiteness of the ground and sky is beginning to fade and is replaced by the empty nothingness like before. The green lines begin to connect all around us and then the first of the sandy dunes begin to appear next to us. A blast of hot air smacks against my face and we immediately begin to strip out of our winter clothes down to our original arena uniform. We shove them into our backpacks just as the blue sky finishes forming in the arena.
We must be on the highest dune in the arena because we see the rolling hills of sand stretch out for miles. A few palm trees can be seen at random points in the desert. YES. Thankfully there are small bodies of water splashed at random parts in the arena.
The mirage-like vision makes the distance seem faded and blurry, but it still looks beautiful. Then I spot a group of people a few miles away. There appears to be seven or so of them and they are traveling in a staggered pack. Huh… seems familiar. I look farther to the left and see two more people at least a mile away from them. I wonder if that's Harper and Mallow. We turn to face the other direction and see two more tributes relatively far from our positioning. We have a loner remaining still in the distance to our left and a group of three, has to be District 1, behind us to the right.
All of the tributes are too far from us for confrontation so we don't get too antsy. We calmly gather our things and head in the direction for our least dangerous threat, the lone tribute. We're not hunting or anything, it's just if we do have another confrontation, we'd rather it be with the loner than with the pack of seven or the lovely District 1ers.
After about five minutes of walking in a straight line, Dani speaks up and says what is clearly on the rest of our minds: "Yeah… I feel like we haven't gotten any closer to sea level. We haven't come across any noticeable slopes, AND I feel just as high up as before."
"Let's just keep walking. Maybe we'll come across something eventually," Vi replies.
I'm a little weary. I keep looking far into the distance ahead of us and don't notice any change in elevation.
We decide to take a break, refuel, and rest our legs. I'm careful with how much water I take in. Although the sun is beating down on us and my mouth is dry, I'm not sure how easy water will be to come across. Especially when all the visible bodies of water we can see up here are miles away.
As Vi is touching up her bandages, Ryann and I start trying to make Dani feel more comfortable. I can't help but feel that the guilt is still very much within her from what she did to Rayven, but moreso the accidental death of Mack.
How could she have foreseen any of that, though? Rayven's slowly developing insanity. Mack's leap for protecting his deranged friend. I wouldn't have guessed any of those occurrences in a million years. But maybe I'm being naïve… This is the Hunger Games after all. I need to stop thinking about it, it's making me sick, and it's just rekindling my growing hatred for the Capitol and how they change us all into monsters here.
So anyways, Ryann and I begin to tell Dani the most embarrassing things that have happened to us to lighten the mood and her avert her mind off things.
Then, in my peripherals, I see a sudden dark mass in the distance….
The Gamemakers have whipped up their first sandstorm.
It's right next to (well at least it looks like it from my distance) the pair of tributes that were relatively close to the group of seven. That's when I realize that they're trying to bring them together. Wow… some "fair" fight. I'm suddenly hoping that the two aren't Mallow and Harper. I don't know why, because they'll need to die eventually, but we just left them last night, and I feel as if it would be too soon to see them go. If it's not them, then I'm betting it's the two Careers from 4. Please be them… please be them…
We see the two ant-like shapes break out into a sprint to avoid being engulfed by the storm.
It takes a few seconds for us to feel the side effects from the storm. The wind starts picking up and blowing all of our things over. We soon pack everything and figure we need to find a big boulder or something to hide under for shelter because the residue sand will come blowing in soon.
Too late… right when we start walking, the sand comes billowing in. Luckily, we are only getting the minor affects of the storm whereas the 9 tributes in the area we were looking out on are getting the full blast. It's still painful though. The sand is pelting against our faces. I can still see the three others however, but just their outlines due to the very unclear visibility.
We trudge straight through this for a good three minutes and it's still not letting up. Dani is leading the pack and I can faintly see her outline a couple of feet in front of me.
Next thing I know, I don't see it. Her disappearance is accompanied by a scream. Her scream.
The three of us begin panicking. We can barely see each other. Let alone see where Dani went.
We start screaming her name: "Dani! Dani! DANI!"
Then… through the whistling wind we can hear a faint cry for help. She's alive. But the voice is coming below…
How could I be so stupid? How did I not think of this before? I feel like one of the brainless Careers now. We're on the highest mountain in the desert….
What were we thinking? Ha… being on high land? The largest dune in the arena… Wow…
I have no clue why this didn't cross our minds before. But no matter now, what we need to focus on is how we are going to blindly save Dani.
I call out to her again…"Dani, are you alright?!"
It takes a second, but she responds is a winded voice, "Yeah… I just got the wind knocked out of me… Nothing is broken though… I just got cut up a little by the rocks. I'm on some kind of ledge I think. Maybe a 15 foot fall… thank goodness just that. I can't really tell though. I'll be fine here until the storm subsides. After that… well… please get me the hell up."
We can't help but laugh at this. Out of relief that she's still alive. That nothing serious is wrong with her. That she's only an extended reach away.
A few more minutes pass and the storm starts clearing up. I can clearly see the edge of the cliff now where she must've slipped off. I get on my hands and knees and slowly crawl over and peak over the edge. Dizziness and fear set in. We have to be 1000s of feet in the air. The drop is straight down. I mean… District 10 isn't that hilly or mountainous… at least in my area, but I can now safely say that I'm afraid of heights. And this isn't helping any…
I look around more and see Dani pressed up against the wall of the mountain on her tiny ledge. One false movement could send her tumbling over to her certain death. She must have picked the right spot to fall… there isn't a ledge like that for another 500 something feet.
"Good to see you!" She calls up. "Now, if you don't mind, could someone please lend a hand to this damsel in distress?"
Ryann agrees to be the bottom of our human chain because apparently the tough guy isn't afraid of heights! Please... Vi and I anchor his legs at the top as we slowly lower him down. As disastrous as this could potentially be, it turns out to be far from it. We are able to hoist Dani up pretty easily. She does have a few scratches, but she still has all her things and appears to be in one piece.
We scatter away from the ledge and begin brainstorming on how we are going to approach being 1000s of feet in the air and away from every body of water. "We could try finding a cave up here. Maybe some moisture has collected inside of it and formed puddles…" Vi offers.
We realize that this might be our best and only option we have… I mean let's face it… we're pretty desperate and vulnerable up here. Vulnerability. It's scary to think about. The Gamemakers could easily cause a sand avalanche (a sandalanche?) with one swoop of their fingers, sending all four of us to our deaths. They could put a sandstorm directly on top of us leaving us nowhere to escape. Heck… we are already almost killing ourselves without their intervention.
Well… it's best not to think about this right now. Fear doesn't help you in the Games. Showing it will clear out your sponsors… feeling it will make you even more vulnerable.
I decide to survey the field of tributes again. Hoooooooold up… well the sandstorm sure as hell worked. The two groups of tributes appear to be face to face from my field of vision.
I motion the other three over to watch what's about to unfold… the group of two may be Harper and Mallow…
Suddenly, one of the dots in the group of two dashes forward… he/she must have seen the big group. A very faint object goes flying from the sprinting dot and seems to make contact with one member of the group of seven because I'm pretty sure I see the ground get darker with blood. The BOOM of the cannon reassures my suspicions. The group of… six now… take a second to react, then begin charging toward their assailants.
My gut twists into a knot thinking that it may be Harper and Mallow being outnumbered by the group of six tributes. No matter how strong those two are, there's no way that they could come out alive.
Sure enough three dots from the group of six surround one dot from the other group, and the three others surround the other. Let the battle begin.
A good two minutes pass and they are still at it strong. Vi and Dani must have better vision than Ryann and I because they keep gasping at random moments. They can't tell who the tributes are or what they look like, but they are pretty sure that the group of two includes a boy and a girl. That doesn't say much since both groups of two we were considering has a boy and girl.
They do however say that the tribute fighting the group of three on the right is the girl and the one on the left is the boy.
They are giving us their best play by play of what the girl is doing to defend herself when we are surprised by the BOOM of the cannon. Sure enough to the left, the group of three is encircling the dead tribute on the ground before them.
The girl fighting the other group of three escapes their confinement and runs over to the other three. Suddenly the ground is getting darker once more and another cannon fires. Holy cow… what did she do? The remaining five tributes from the group surround the girl and we soon hear the final cannon of the battle.
The four of us don't say much after what we just saw. We sit there in silence for awhile watching the group of five clear out from the scene. Out of nowhere, the wind starts picking up and a low rumbling sound echoes above us. GREAT. Another sandstorm.
Thankfully I'm wrong. It's the hovercraft flying directly over our heads. When I say directly… I mean directly. Conflabbit… it's huge. The sand is swirling around us as the propellers are rapidly spinning to keep the thing airborne. It finally reaches its destination and drops its claw one, two, three, four times. I keep picturing Mallow and Harper going up in that claw, but we'll only be able to tell for sure at the anthem tonight.
Now that they cleared out, the aftermath scene looks pretty gruesome. Even from here. Most of the surviving five had to have gotten injured too because it's way too messy for only four deaths.
Enough of this… we gather our stuff and go back to our original search for water.
We must have not been looking too hard before we were looking for caves, because after 5 minutes of searching, I find a dark hole in the side of a wall of rock and sand.
I enter first and, within the first few steps, find myself splashing in a puddle. Jackpot!
"Come on in, guys! The water is plenty!" I call.
We drink all the water in our canisters, refill them in the puddles, drink them again, and refill them all once more. Halle-freaking-lujah. My tongue is actually wet now.
We begin splashing our faces and bodies with the cold, refreshing water. Who would've thought we would find paradise in a desert cave?!
I'm back in District 10. The hot summers brought us little rain, so when it did, we made good use of it while we enjoyed it on our time off of work. I mainly jumped in puddles to annoy Damien, Dani, or Vi, but splashing around in them was equally as satisfying.
Ouch!… my happy thoughts are broken when Dani backs up onto me and steps on my fingers. The light from the cave entrance reflects on her face and shows complete terror and fear. I shoot my gaze into the direction she's looking.
There staring at the four of us is the biggest pair of yellow eyes I've ever seen. The eyes belong to something much larger than any of us. Much larger than the four of us put together. The horror… as if it couldn't get any bigger… grows when I see that they aren't just a normal mammalian-like eyes.
They're snake eyes.