All We Need: Carolina Rowan, District 12 Female Tribute

You know that "first day of school! first day of school!" feeling? That was my first day of training in a nutshell. I was up early, getting dressed in sensible clothes and washing up, taking a bit longer than usual on brushing out my tangled black hair. I put on my district token-the leather cord with the silver key on it from York-with particular care, letting my fingertips linger on the leather for just a few moments before I let my hand slide back down to my side. Already, I was missing home. Not all of it-certainly not my father, who hadn't even bothered to visit me after the Reaping, or the solid gray of District Twelve-but York and even his family, my mother, the familiarity...

I shook my head to rid myself of the thoughts and went to breakfast. The table was filled with all sorts of breakfast foods, and I sat down, gathering up the first few food items that I got my hands on. It was all unbelievably good, but I finally made myself leave the District Twelve floor. Mist seemed to be in good hands with his mentor.

My first stop, before I went to training, was the District Nine floor. I figured out the elevator enough to get it to stop in the right place and got off. The first thing I heard was a lot of screaming, which, let me tell you, was not a wonderful way to start off your morning. It was clearly Cala, and it couldn't have been anyone else. I was, almost sadly, a bit used to dealing with younger kids, (though Cala could hardly be considered a child), since I spent so much time at York's house, with him and his five younger sisters.

"Cala! Please!" There was also some begging from Ondrew. "Oh, where's Lina when you need 'er?"

"Right here," I answered quietly, stepping forwards in to the District Nine dining room, out of the shadows. Ondrew spun around so fast that he almost fell over, and it really would've been quite funny if it had been under different circumstances.

"Lina!" he exclaimed. "How in-oh, never mind! Just, please, help! Everything was going great until I tried to get her to come with me to training, and then it all just collapsed!"

"Let me try," I said, as calmly as I could. Ondrew stepped back to where I'd been just moments before and I approached a terrified Cala. "Good morning, Cala, Kane," I greeted, throwing in Kane's name just to see if it would calm her down any. She quieted slightly, but still jumped back at the sound of my voice. "Are you all ready for training?"

"Kane...? Should...?"

"Yes," I said. "Kane wants you to go to training. He says that it'll be fun." Honestly, from what I'd heard about "Kane", it seemed like he actually would, but then again, who was I to judge the voice in her head?

"Really?"

"Yup," I assured her. "That's what he said, alright."

Ondrew just sort of nodded when she glanced at him for confirmation. "Alright then," Cala said pleasantly, practically skipping off towards the elevator. "Let's go, Kane!"

I half-sighed, half-laughed. Ondrew just seemed relieved. And we both followed Cala to the elevator.

The people who were waiting for us at training agreed to let Ondrew and I help Cala with her tribute outfit form before filling out our own forms. I didn't pay too much attention to the forms, just put down what I thought was reasonable, and tried to not give Cala anything that she could use as a weapon. Ondrew and I had silently come to the conclusion that any weapons our alliance had would be better off in our hands rather than Cala's.

After the stations were all explained, we headed out to our first spot of the day, which was water purifying, the least dangerous station I could think of. Ondrew and I would need to practice with some weapons and go to other potentially hazardous stations eventually, but we still needed to think of a way to keep Cala out of immediate danger, or a situation where Kane could tell her to kill or challenge someone, so we started off small.

The station wasn't really my specialty, nor was it Ondrew's or Cala's, so we moved on quickly, this time to the main camouflage station. Ondrew seemed to have a knack for it, and Cala did too, when she focused. I seemed to be okay at it, too, as York had to use odd forms of camouflage sometimes when he was trying to steal something, and had taught me some things.

Finally, I officially voiced my concerns about Cala to Ondrew. "We need to get to some, well, realstations eventually," I said, as quietly as I could where he could still hear me. "But I don't think that handing Cala a weapon is really such a good idea."

"You're right," he whispered back, letting Cala walk ahead of us towards the next station we were planning on going to-swimming. "But how?"

"I don't know; that's the problem," I said. "Just tell her to go on to swimming while we go somewhere else and then check on her at lunch?"

"Why don't we take her back to the camouflage? She seemed to like that."

"We'll take her to the other camouflage station, the one with the butterflies," I decided. "The instructor there seemed to be really nice." We hadn't been to that station, but we'd overheard him talking to some of the other tributes.

"Alright, then."

"Cala!" I called ahead of us. She was ignoring us. "Cala, it's Kane!" I tried that, and it seemed to work. She turned around to face both of us. "You should follow me," I said, loud enough that she could hear. Cala nodded. "Come on." I led her in to the butterfly room, and while Cala wandered around the room, Ondrew and I explained the situation to the instructor, who, even to my surprise, agreed that he'd made sure that Cala stayed there and was safe while we were at another station. "Thank you so, so much," I said.

"Ah, no problem," he said. "She'll be fine here with me."

"Let's go," I said, turning to Ondrew. We did a few stations, moving quickly-fire starting, archery, knife throwing, and climbing. It ended up going until after lunch, where we got Cala to go back to the butterfly station. She really seemed to like it there.

After day one, we mostly stuck together as a group, though day two seemed like a bit of a waste, because it took the whole day to get us all through the swimming station that we'd wanted to go to originally. The instructor was a bit stubborn and impatient when it came to working with us, particularly Cala.

On the last day, we tried to help Cala practice some things that she could do during her private session with the Gamemakers, mostly things that we'd already done. Ondrew said that he was going to show off some of his hunting skills, and none of us could really tell what Cala was going to do.

During my session, however, I decided to try something that might be a bit odd, combining the stations I'd been to-I painted myself with water-proof camouflage dyes that would hopefully disguise me once I got out of the water and on to the obstacle course (I'd already changed my clothes to be as appropriate as possible), swam across the pool, got out and practically flew through the obstacle course and then tried out some of the knives, throwing them at dummies that were at close range and hitting most of them.

Once I was dismissed, I went back to my room in the Training Center and took a rather long shower to get all of the dyes and such off of me, and then I dried off and changed in to warm clothes. Dinner flew by, and Mist said that during his training session, he'd tried out some of the weapons. When we got our scores, however, I wasn't sure how well that had gone for him. He got a four, Ondrew and I both got fives, and Cala got a two, and I wondered what she'd done to get that score. Depending on what it was, the Gamemakers were probably being oddly generous.

I supposed that my score could've been better, but overall, it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

It was never as bad as it could've been.