Chapter 29:

My legs feel heavy hanging over the edge of the island. The water is maybe fifty feet below me and I can feel the cool mist spraying me. The setting sun makes the sky burst with oranges, reds, pinks and yellow that blend together to create a picturesque arena. The water reflects the sunset but somewhat, to me, looks like a large sea of blood.

"Jump! The waters warm," Silverest shouts from below, his voice barely a whisper. I turn to Pravala, who is on my right, and ask her if she is ready. She gives me a weak nod. I continue to look at her and study her new look. She is missing part of her left eyelid, small chunks of her hair is gone and her skin looks she's broken out in large scabs. She looks completely uncomfortable in her own skin, every time she blinks, her eyelid stutters in pain. Anytime she moves a limb, blood leaks from one of her countless scabs that she received from the large black birds.

"Okay, we can jump together," I say looking Pravala in the eyes.

"This is going to sting like a bitch if it's real salt water," She whines and looks up at the sky. I sniff the air to see if I sense salt, but I can only detect the dull scent of water.

"I think it'll be fine," I finally retort back. She looks at me and nods again. I look down at the water, back to her and scoot closer to the edge.

"Ready?" I wait for her to scoot to the edge and say, "On the count of three. One.. Two.." I pause to look down at the water. "Three!" We both push off the cliff and drop into a free fall. I close my eyes and let out a girly shriek. The wind whips through my hair and claws smoothly against my skin. I take a quick gulp of air and plunge into the water feet first. Instantly all noise is muffled and I can feel my speed getting slower and quickly start to swim towards the surface.

I burst through the surface and suck in a breath. Pulling the hair to the back of my head, I open my eyes. I bob in the water and look around me and spot Silverest about 10 feet to my left, swimming at me. My backpack bobs behind me making it somewhat hard to swim; I notice Silverest's backpack seems to be slowing him down too. Pravala erupts out of the water right in front of Silverest and violently coughs and spits out a mouthful of water. I swim towards her, not really knowing how well of a swimmer she is, since the current is strong even for me and she's weaker than me. She puppy paddles to stay afloat and by the time I get to her she has stopped coughing and finally is brushing she hair away from her face.

"You okay?" I ask, panting.

"This water feels amazing! Look at all my cuts!" She retorts excitedly. Her cuts are instantly healing!

"Pravala! This is awesome!" I practically shout. She beams a smile and starts plunging under the water like a fish. It only takes about five minutes and her cuts are all almost completely gone, minus her missing eyelid chunk.

"Okay, so do you know which island is ours?" I ask Silverest.

"Well I think it's this island that is slowly moving towards us, I could be wrong but it looks familiar."

I watch the island he pointed out as it moves towards us and say, "How are we going to get on?"

"We'll have to climb I guess.." He says unsure.

"That's at least 50 feet!" Pravala cuts it.

"But it's easy climbing, look at those rocks." I retort. The rocks appear to be made up of limestone or something similar and has many foot holes in the side.

"Ready? Let's get going, I don't feel like drowning out here." Silverest says. We start swimming to this island in the distance, which is coming towards us . After a couple minutes of swimming we are about 50 feet from the island and stop.

"Okay, let's try finding the shortest side to climb." I say, trying to problem solve.

"This is fucking crazy." Pravala mutters. Together we swim to the right of the island and start looking for the shortest side.

"Whoa! Look!" Pravala shouts. The island is like a one sided hill and slopes downward at the back.

"How are we this lucky?" Silverest says, shaking his head. We continue our swim to the back of the island and once we reach our destination, we all latch onto the rock wall. It's a bit slippery, but not enough to make me fall off.

"This is only like twenty feet tall, right?" Pravala asks us.

"Roughly.. Yeah." Silverest asks. I watch them catch each other's eyes and smile. At that I turn around and start to climb the wall. Finding foot holes isn't hard. I can feel the rough rock shaking as the island moves through the water. My backpack pulls me back slightly making the climb a little harder. I still don't get why they are moving around, but it's made it hard to find any other tributes. The cannon hasn't even played yet today since Imperial. I don't know if that's good or not.

Focusing on the rock, I notice weird little bugs crawling around that are a flaming red. These bugs are no bigger than a dot made by a pencil. I stop climbing and smash one of the tiny bugs, it makes a blood red stain on the stone.

"Kliss, what are you doing?" Pravala yells up at me.

"Nothing, sorry!" I shout down and continue my climb. Finally reaching the top, I pull myself over the edge by swinging my leg up and over and pulling. I roll over the side, laying on my back and pant like a dog in the summer. I stay in this position for at least a solid minute before I hear a hand slap down next to me and watch Silverest pull himself up and over the edge the same way I did. I sit up and wait for Pravala. She finally reaches the top and heaves her body over the edge.

"We made it." Pravala says exhaustedly. We stay on the ground, panting, for a couple minutes and finally I stand up to observe the surroundings.

"I think this is definitely our island." I come to as a conclusion. Silverest stands slowly, looks around for a couple seconds and nods. "Yeah."

"Well lets go then!" Pravala says impatiently. I didn't notice that she stood up and was already walking away. Silverest and I walk behind her as she leads the pack, we form a small triangle.

"Everyone has their stuff right?" I ask the group, looking around I notice they all still have their packs.

"I lost one of my spears when I jumped into the water, but I have more." Silverest answers quietly.

"I have everything." Pravala proclaims.

"Okay," I say quietly, I stop and take my backpack off, unzip it and dig around for a knife. Taking my cue, Silverest does the same. Pravala doesn't even notice we stopped. I grab two knives, one larger one and a small one.

"Pravala!" I quietly snapped. She turns around to face me. "What?"

"Take this." I warned and handed her the large knife. "We can't really trust Zinnia or Galerie."

"Look, Kliss," She hisses the s in my name, "You don't know them, they wouldn't betray their own district members. " She dictated.

"I know, I'm just being sa-" She cuts me off.

"Well stop. You're not the leader of this group."

"Pravala! Shut your mouth. She's more a member of this group than you are. Quit being a brat." Silverest defends me.

"I'm not! She doesn't even know them, she shouldn't just trash them like that." She objects.

"You didn't notice how they were before we left? You really need to be more observant." Silverest once again protects me. "The only thing Kliss is doing is keeping you safe, you should be grateful."

"Well I didn't know! I'm sorry!" She say defensively. We walk in silence for quite awhile. We trek uphill, the same hill we went down this morning.

After finally reaching the top Silverest breaks the silence with a whisper, "Our tree is like 100 feet away, just get ready for whatever, okay? I don't want either of you dying." I feel a sudden twitch of trust for Silverest. He doesn't want me to die, probably the only one in this arena.

We slowly creep closer to the tree and survey the area. My dress is still up in the tree along with some other random things we left.

"Where are they?" Pravala asks dumbfounded.

"I told you they might leave!" I say to her matter-of-factly.

"Galerie! " Silverest yells and waits for a response. After about 5 seconds of no response he yells, "Zinnia?"

Suddenly I see a flash of red and glittering green crashing through the trees. Instantly I pose my knife, ready to throw it into something. I lower my pose as I realize who it is. Zinnia walks out into the opening smiling, followed by Galerie who is pulling leaves out of her hair.

"We thought you guys left us!" Zinnia says relieved.

"We were scared you left us.." Galerie says quietly. We all laugh awkwardly.

"You guys have to see what we found!" Galerie pipes up.

"What would that be?" Silverest asks smirking.

"Watson's house. That boy Kliss killed the yesterday, the one who killed.." She bit her lip and stopped talking.

"He literally lives in a shack." Zinnia chimes in.

"Well let's see this thing," I say excitedly.

After walking through the woods, across the island, we walk into an opening that has a dingy tin shed in the middle. It's only eight feet tall and each side is about twenty feet, almost completely covered in rust. A wooden stake with the same picture of Watson from the sky sticks into the ground next to the door. The door is made of warped wood, hanging on makeshift hinges.

"This is a depressing site.. He must of grew up hard," Pravala says in a sad tone. Her voice almost waves like she is about to break down and cry, but her eyes don't water.

"Yeah," Silverest replies, panting. The setting sun is roasting the island causing sweat bullets to fire out of all of us.

"I don't want to go in." I bluntly say.

"You aren't missing much, we already checked it out, looks like it was already ransacked," Galerie says unsure. She tosses a look to me with her forest green eyes, a really concerned look.

"Well this is a bigger island, I'm sure no one is close." Silverest reassures the group.

"Yeah, too bad." Zinnia says, examining her axe's blade. I suddenly notice the odd design on her axe's blade. There is a carved dragon, I think, along the sharpest edge. The handle is wooden with grips for her hands. The look in her emerald eyes flickers with anger.

The sun finally sets. I huddle next to our fire with Pravala on my right and Silverest on my left. We silently eat a small meal and listen to the crackling and snapping of the fire.

The anthem begins to blare, making me jump slightly. I cock my head upward and watch as Imperial appears. She smiles down with her light blue eyes. Her long blonde hair waves past her elbows. Her photo only stay there for 10 seconds and then she disappears, forever.

I look back down at the fire and take a sip of my water. No one says anything. I feel a weird empty feeling in my chest and Imperials sweet, childish face is burned in my brain. I get up and walk to the trunk of the tree, slowly climb to my nook. Laying down, I pose myself so I face the fire. Only Pravala, Silverest and Galerie are still huddled. No one is talking, they all just stare deeply into the fire. I can see Pravala's face, she is slightly frowning and her brows are creased together in concentration. Silverest has his back to me, but I can see half of Galerie's face. It's completely blank, not an emotion to be read. I roll onto my back and look straight up at the stars, the sky is perfectly clear, too perfect. I let out a small sigh and close my eyes.