Tarras bent on one knee to examine a bush whose branches were bent and broken, presumably from a tribute walking right through it. She swatted at the insects buzzing around her head with her free hand. Moving around the bush, she saw another boot print. She didn't need to compare it to her sketch to know whose it was. She moved forward, scanning for another trace of the girl from District 8.

Absentmindedly, she slapped at a mosquito that had landed on the bare skin of her left arm. Immediately, she felt another near her elbow and slapped it, too. She was just learning how useful the jacket sleeves were for keeping insects off her arms. Earlier, while cooking some jaguar meat for lunch, she had laid down her jacket so she could better stand the heat of the fire. After filling her belly and storing the rest in her pack, she'd gone to retrieve her jacket, only for something bright and colorful to catch her eye. There, on the left sleeve of her jacket, had sat a poison dart frog. The bright purple skin on its head and torso was covered in black dots of various sizes; its electric blue limbs had no spots. Tarras knew that its skin was coated in a deadly poison, and that even touching it with bare skin could induce a coma or kill her. She had briefly considered using it to poison her throwing knives before deciding that the extra lethality wasn't worth such substantial risk. She had decided instead to carefully cut off the sleeve and go without it. After a careful inspection of the rest of her jacket, she had determined that none of it had been touched by the frog's poison. After setting out again, it hadn't taken her long to locate the trail of the girl from District 8 once more.

She was lucky that she had found the trail again so soon after the rain had come and gone. The soft mud underfoot held boot prints effectively, making it much easier to identify tracks. Tarras could have followed this trail by her tenth birthday. With an additional seven years of training and practice, tracking her quarry was extremely easy.

So easy, in fact, that Tarras allowed her mind to wander while her body followed the trail. Even with the rain, it was odd that the trail was this obvious. After all, there were a number of signs of the girl apart from boot prints – a bent shrub branch, a patch of disturbed leaf litter, a snapped stick on the ground. The last time Tarras had tracked the same tribute, the trail hadn't been nearly so apparent. She couldn't account for the difference. Perhaps before, the girl from District 8 had been careful to conceal her trail to the best of her ability; but with hunger, thirst, fatigue, and mental distress taking their toll, she was no longer thinking straight. The explanation was satisfactory, but Tarras couldn't help but feel a nagging doubt in the back of her mind.

She examined another boot print, then stood up and looked around to make sure no tributes had crept up without her realizing it. Up ahead, something strange caught her eye. Something long and very thin, with a wider bottom, was leaned up against a tree trunk. Tarras moved forward cautiously, mindful of the locations of all the cover between her and the object. When she was close enough to identify it, confusion spread through her features. She stepped into the open and walked quickly toward it.

Sure enough, the object was a tree branch. It had evidently been smashed off the very tree that it was leaned against; Tarras could see the jagged stump of the branch not far off the ground. She wondered for a moment what had caused it. It wasn't necessarily the work of a tribute; maybe the branch had already been weak, and finally broke under the weight of rainwater. Or maybe an animal had broken it by mistake. But… something felt odd. Tarras was struck with a strange sense of déjà vu, as if the branch was something she'd encountered before.

An image floated to the surface of her consciousness. Her spear stuck in the ground, point first, her pack nearby, as the boy from District 7 approached it cautiously.

By the time she realized her mistake, it was too late.