After about a week of disorganization, my life settles into a routine again—although it's very different than my life before. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I go into the woods and meet Ash at our designated willow tree. Then one of us hunts, and the other collects branches (or whatever other chore my parents have given me). After that's finished, we sneak into the tree behind the Peacekeepers' house to watch the Games. About an hour before dinnertime, I head back to my house and give my parents an excuse for the food I bring home. "I found it dead already," or, "Some other animal must have killed it," and others like that.
Today is day four of the Hunger Games. While it is sweltering here in District Seven (maybe 85 degrees), the tributes look comfortably cool in the arena. The camera is on the Careers, who have camped out by a small river. They are just waking up.
Then the shot zooms out onto the entire arena. I can't see the Careers anymore, and the cornucopia is just a tiny, golden sparkle in the middle of a field. The arena is big. I can still see the river, though. It is a thin, blue line of water encircling most of the arena. From this angle, I can also understand the exact geography of the arena. The gigantic field with the cornucopia is at the center, and the Career's/cornucopia hill is at the center of that. The meadow is circular with a diameter of about 400 meters—it's very big. Ringing the meadow are the woods. As I had noticed earlier, the woods are light and only the tall grasses offer protection (but good protection). About 100 meters into the woods, is the river. It loops around the whole arena and ends in a lake at the edge of the field. The water seems to have come from a spring on the snow-capped mountain that looms up on the right side of the field, casting a shadow over a sizable portion of the arena.
Then I notice something strange: the ribbon of blue that is the river seems to be getting wider.
"The river's flooding!" I exclaim.
"Yeah, I expected that," says Ash. "There haven't been any fighting recently, so they're using that to drive the tributes closer together."
The camera switches back to the shot of the Careers. They don't look like the powerful, composed group that they were when they were dividing out supplies, or when they were killing the District Eleven boy. Emberlynn is frantically stuffing supplies into her small backpack, Bryant is cursing while trying to tie his shoes, Glint is stupidly trying to create a barrier of earth and rocks between them and the quickly rising water, and Ayden is patting the ground trying to find his thick glasses.
Bryant finishes tying his shoes. "Here're your stupid glasses," he yells at Ayden and shoves them onto his face.
Ayden blinks. "Thank you."
The water has spilled over the top of Glint's makeshift barrier.
"Move it! Move it!" yells Emberlynn. "Back to the hill!" The reassembled Careers start sprinting away from the churning river. But they have to run through the woods, and the tall grasses make it almost impossible to run at all. Numerous times, they fall, and the sharp grasses slice the skin off of their faces leaving patchworks of little red lines. The water has caught up to them, and wherever they step, water splashes up around them completely soaking their clothes. Somehow, the Careers make it to the edge of the meadow, where the water abruptly stops.
They are out of breath and exhausted, but not tired enough to thirst for blood. Glint is the one who spots the other tribute on the far side of the field.
"You stay and guard the stuff," he tells Ayden as he and the others drop their packs. Ayden nods, and Glint, Emberlynn, and Bryant take off across the meadow to kill their prey.