Kaulan Kippton- District Six male
I couldn't find my allies. Well, Bronze was dead, so I couldn't find Kio and Falcon. When we were running from the elephant snake, I must have taken a different direction, and I hadn't stopped until I heard the cannon. That had taken at least ten minutes, and in the tall grass, that was a long way to find my allies.
Perhaps more pressing, I was out of water. I only had one bottle in my pack, and it was empty. I had to take care of that first, so I headed in any direction that seemed to slope downwards. I expected to find a watering hole, but instead I found a river. A girl was by it. She was trying to hide, but the grass wasn't thick enough. She was small and didn't seem armed, so I announced my presence by waving.
"Excuse me. I just want water," I called. When she didn't run or attack, I moved closer.
"Wait," she said when I was in easy hearing range. "Don't go near the water. There's a crocodile."
"What?" I asked, leaping back. "Thanks! Have you been here a long time?"
"About two days," she said. "I'm Dina. I was here with my ally, but she got eaten." She started to cry, and it smeared the mud on her face.
"I'm sorry. Oh, I'm Kaulan. I'm sorry…" I said.
Dina wiped her cheek and smiled sadly. "It's okay. And we can still get water. You just have to climb this tree and lower the bottle in with something. I've been using a strip of my shirt," she said.
"Neat. Thanks," I said. I filled my bottle the same way. Or rather Dina did, after I couldn't climb the tree. "You mind if I stick around a while?" I asked.
"It's okay. I was hoping someone would come by. It's scary on my own," Dina said.
"All right. Let's take this together."
Adira Baelyn- District Six female
"Another day gone. Nine children dead," Theo remarked.
"Hope they're having fun watching," Hlenn said darkly.
"It's not so bad," I said, and everyone looked at me. I hadn't said much since the Games began, or before that, really. I just didn't like hearing them talk about the Capitol that way.
"I suppose it could be worse. They could kill forty-eight kids every year," Theo jeered.
"They do a lot of good, too," I said.
"Like what?" Hlenn asked.
"They helped me," I said.
"They didn't help me," Hlenn said.
"They didn't help my sister," Theo said.
"Would you still like them if they hadn't helped you one time?" Hlenn asked. "I think maybe your standards are too low."
The Capitol changed my life, and for the better. All my life, I'd ignored the Games. It didn't match up with what I knew about the Capitol. I couldn't believe the fairylike angels who did so much for me could be the same people who sent children to die. I didn't understand it, and I didn't think I wanted to. Being here was making me face things I hoped I could keep looking away from. I saw them as benefactors, but Theo knew them as the ones who took her sister. Hlenn only knew backbreaking labor and near-starvation. Why did things have to be complex? Why did the one good thing I ever had turn into this? I just wanted something good to hold on to. Maybe my standards were actually too high.
Joella Krame- District Nine female
We had a good thing going. There were a few scattered puddles in between the termite mounds, and we had purification tablets to spare. The mounds gave us shade from the hot sun, and they hid us from the Careers. We had almost everything we could need.
There was just one more thing that would make it perfect, and I was on the lookout. There were a few different options I would have taken, but I lucked out. Set partway inside a crevice in a fat tree, there was a beehive. A little furry animal had found it first. I let him eat for a while, then threw a rock at it. The striped animal whirled around, spitting and snarling. It saw me and ran right at me, even though it was the size of a raccoon.
Maybe that's not something to mess with, I thought, backing up. I let it be until it got done eating and stomped away. There was still plenty of honey left, and the animal had killed half the bees for me. I got the rest to scatter by throwing more rocks until the hive was in pieces. I must have killed the queen, because the bees moved away quickly.
Melinda loved bees. She said they were real-life fairies, spreading springtime and spinning gold in their little nests. I was sure happy for the goopy mess I scooped up into the empty tortilla package.
"Hey, I got honey," I said when I returned to our camp. Isabelline was getting more water, while Hlenn was scaling a termite mound.
"Honey? Heck yeah!" Hlenn jumped down and scooped some honey onto her finger. "That's good stuff," she said.
"And I think it might be even better," I said. After the tortillas ran out, we'd taken to popping the fat little termites like popcorn. Unfortunately, they preferred to stay underground when it was hot out, and it was a pain to snatch them one at a time.
I took a stick and stuck it into the honey. Then I snaked it down into a crack in the side of one of the mounds. After a minute I pulled it out. It was covered in termites. I held my catch to the light and examined it.
"No worries," I said.