Recommended Listening: Abacab by Genesis

Turk Adnan, District 7

"Hey. Sun's up a little more if you want to wake up today."

Groggy, I shift a bit, and something prods my stomach from underneath. It takes me a minute to realise it's the sword handle. I went ahead and slept on top of it last night, so Romania couldn't get to it. It's not that I don't trust her, it's just... I don't trust her. If that makes any sense.

I push myself up to a seated position and start to fasten the sheath back around my waist. Looking down like this, I notice that my jacket zipper is missing.

Er... What?

I feel over the middle of the fabric, and there's no zipper anywhere. Um... This did have a zipper, right?

"Uh, Turk?"

I look up at Romania, who's giving me a weird look. Her jacket has a zipper. So mine definitely has one. Or had?

"What happened to my zipper?" I start, pointing at her torso.

She looks down to examine the front of her coat and looks back at me before snickering. "Your jacket's on backwards, dork."

"Wha..." I stretch and feel at my back. Sure enough, the zipper's back there. "Hold on. I know my stylist did not put this on me backwards. And I sure don't remember flipping it myself." I give her a look. "Did you...?"

"Wasn't me." Romania crosses her arms. "It was normal yesterday. Maybe you were sleepwalking and messed with it."

"What? I don't sleepwalk," I say, struggling to pull at the zipper handle that's barely within reach. "If I even went as far as my brother's room, he would have punched me awake."

I undo the zipper and start to shuffle the jacket back round. The process is uncomfortably cold, so I try to hurry. If nothing else, the freeze wakes me up a bit more.

After watching me for a minute, Romania starts, "Maybe you're one of those stress sleepwalkers, then."

"One of what?"

Romania tilts her head a bit. "You know, a stress sleepwalker. It's what it sounds like. I hear it happens in the Games a lot, actually."

I frown. "I haven't seen much of that."

"Well, they don't show it live when anything else is going on. You think a random tribute wandering asleep is much fun to watch?"

"Guess not." I finally get the coat zipped up the right way. "So I'm a... stress sleepwalker? Huh..."

We sit for a minute, contemplating, before Romania looks at me and bursts out laughing.

I start. "What?"

"Of course I did it, you moron!" She doubles over in stitches while I just sort of stare.

" 'Stress sleepwalker...' I can't believe you fell for that..." She makes an effort to start stifling her laughter before I realise I've been had.

"Sh-shut up!" I say, crossing my arms. "It's too early in the morning for me to think!"

Just when she gets it under control, she looks back up at me and breaks down laughing again.

"I need coffee, okay?" I defend before sighing and putting my hand to my face. Definitely ended up with an interesting ally...

How asleep was I for her to do that? She would have had to pretty much pick me up, and...

Wait. If she did that... she could have taken the sword without a hitch. But she didn't touch the thing.

I try to laugh with her as I paw through the supply pile for breakfast.

Nada Ott, District 11

There really isn't anything wrong with these supplies. The sleeping bags were fine, nothing has anything that might explode or something, and one of the boxes even had perfectly good knives. And Cuba's still fine after testing a little bit of the food.

Basically, something's going to go horribly wrong because of this, but I have no idea what.

I sigh. Nothing I can do about that. This is probably the only food we'll find in a while—if not at all—so I'll have to break down and eat some eventually. And I am awfully hungry. But I still can't be sure...

Cuba rolls up his sleeping bag and tries to shove it back in its cover. "Are you sure you don't want breakfast before we head out again? It's going to be a long day."

"I'm all right," I say, rearranging some wood so I can fit knives in the same box. "It hasn't been long since you ate, and you could still get sick. We should wait a bit before we try to eat any more."

"Okay." He finally manages to get most of the sleeping bag in its case and proceeds to tie the case closed. "Did you want to wait here instead of running off on an empty stomach?"

"No, no, we should get going." I close the lid on this box and look through another one. "Staying here is making me paranoid."

Cuba puts his bag on his back and gets started packing mine. "You know nothing happened while either of us was asleep, right?"

"Yes, and we're pushing it by sticking around," I respond, pausing to look him in the eye. "I'll be fine if we get going now. I promise."

"All right."

We return to our work, and we have as much as we're comfortable with packed up. Each of us will carry a sleeping bag, I'll carry a few bags of food and the tote bag, and Cuba will carry another bag of food and the crate of wood and knives. We're still leaving a lot behind. Maybe I won't blot out our footprints from here. Though that seems kind of careless... But altogether abandoning so many supplies would be kind of careless, too...

I hold the food to my torso and look at the snow, wondering what I should do.

"Nada?"

"Hm?" I turn towards Cuba to see him looking elsewhere. Starting to get nervous, I follow his gaze until I see the fuzzy blob. It's hard to make out from the snow, but its fur is a little yellowish. It's slowly ambling towards us, but it's not that far away.

I catch Cuba carefully pulling out one of the knives.

"Oh, don't attack it!" I start, keeping my voice hushed.

He takes a second to figure out what I said and nods. "I won't hit first." I sort of cringe at his regular volume of speech. "Don't know what kind of bear it is, but I bet its mama wouldn't be happy to find it hurt."

I nod, keeping an eye on the bear. It doesn't look like Cuba's voice irritated him. He's coming in our direction, but more slowly. He's awfully cute... If I didn't know he was out to kill me, I'd want to pet him.

The cub comes within a few metres before sitting down and watching us. I feel trapped. He doesn't look that harmful, but he's probably here because of the pile of supplies. I don't want to provoke him, and moving might do that. But I don't want to stay so close to him, either. We don't have much of a choice but to wait...

After a minute of looking at us, the bear shuffles and flops onto his side. It isn't long before he looks asleep. Cuba and I stay in place for a moment, but he doesn't wake up again.

"Maybe it's been walking for a while," Cuba says.

I glance at the tuckered out little cub and put a hand over my mouth, giggling.

Cuba chuckles and takes an experimental step away. It doesn't rouse the bear.

We tiptoe away until the sleeping cub disappears behind the snow.

Holland Mogens, District 7

I feel like I slept in. Or at least slept well, besides getting up from the cold. Unusual for the Hunger Games, but no one appears to have killed me in my sleep, so I have no problem with it.

A bit unusual for me, too, but there's no garden to tend and no breakfast to cook. And without a way to keep precise track of time, there's not much of a point in worrying about it.

I take a look round and shuffle out of my sleeping bag. Tucking the used hand warmers into the bottom of the bag—I burnt through three of them in the night—I straighten things out for a minute and get my canteen. I down the last swig of water and head back to the stream to refill it.

I think the lake's risen a bit. There's still some indent left, and my camp is uphill, so it's not of much concern. As long as the tree at its end holds—or doesn't; it still wouldn't affect me—it doesn't make much of a difference. The stream's of the most concern to me. If it's still flowing, I might as well stay near by.

There's still the issue of food, but I don't think moving increases my chances much. My best bet is scoring a kill, and I'll have better luck in battle if the other tribute is the one wearing himself out.

But first things first. Let's get my water.