A Light Summer Rain of Tears (Day One): Kildaire Kalitlin, District 7 Female Tribute
"Why'd you have to drag us in to this stupid rainforest, Kyler?"
He didn't answer, just kept walking farther and farther in to the arena section that seemed to never end.
"It's broiling and it's raining! Raining saltwater, nonetheless!"
We had long since discovered, in our thirst, that the rain wasn't good to drink. It was so, so taunting: we were surrounded by pouring rain-and we couldn't drink a single drop of it.
"Shut up for a minute, will you?" Kyler suggested. "You're going to get the attention of every single tribute in this arena." His voice wasn't exactly angry, but it still seemed uncharacteristic of him.
"Could we at least stop for a few minutes?" Charity pleaded. "It's not like we're going to find a camp anytime soon." She seemed to be forgetting the little detail that Kyler had saved her life about an hour ago, and that she was the one who had gotten herself in to that situation in the first place-going against what he had told us to do. Then again, I had done the same thing...
"Sure." We all stopped walking. "Let's check out some of the supplies." We all dropped whatever supplies we had with us in to a pile underneath a tree with leaves so thick it seemed to give some shelter from the rain, and then crowded under it ourselves. "Sword and sheath. Matches-"
"Oh, right," Charity cut in. "Because those'll just do so much for us in the rain."
"And three blankets."
"Too hot to use them, anyways."
I pointed to the sun and tried to make a gesture that would show it setting, then shivered as clearly as I could. Kyler got what I was trying to say. "It's cold at night," he said, and I nodded. Charity just scowled.
"Well, we've been keeping whatever supplies we've got in there," Charity argued. "Even if it's just the matches right now. What'll we keep them in while we're using them?"
"Like you said, it's just matches for now; so we'll figure the rest out when we get there," he pointed out gently. Charity didn't answer. "The blankets seem to be waterproof as well, in case you haven't noticed."
"And what's with that? Since when are there waterproof blankets? I've never heard of 'em."
"They're like, coated in plastic or something. I don't know," Kyler shrugs. "Let's just get everything packed up again and keep moving."
"Why can't we just stay here?" Charity asked. "It's dry enough. There's enough room going around the tree for us all to probably sleep. You'd have to be careful with the fire, and we might have to go out again to look for water, but... that would be fine."
"Alright," Kyler sighed. "We'll stay here, then."
I nodded. It seemed like a reasonable idea, to me. But that fire could be dangerous, and we would most definitely need food as well. We were in a rainforest, so there just had to be something edible out there. I held out my palm, making sure that I stuck it out of the cover of the tree, and caught some water in it. Then I tried to act out something like "exploring" or "searching".
"Water... finding... do you want to go find water?" Kyler again.
I nodded.
"Alright, then. Just try to come back soon, okay?"
I nodded again and set out in to the rain. I didn't really mind-the water, even though it was warm, helped to cool me off some. But if only there was some that we could drink...
I closed my eyes and just thought for a minute. And I listened for any signs of water. It was a bit hard to do in the middle of a rain shower. It didn't take me too long to hear it, though-not the steady plop, plop, plop of raindrops drumming against the earth-but a much slower, more steady and consistent flow of water.
It was coming from what seemed to be just a few yards off. We had been so close to it and had never even seen it! I moved forwards slowly, a little too wary of the fact that another tribute could've easily found this same water source-if that was, in fact, what was here. I had no weapons; the only one our alliance had was the sword, which I had left with Kyler and Charity.
I stooped over and picked up a small handful of pebbles from the ground. They were scattered in with the grass. I threw them at the collection of boulders in front of me to see if anyone would emerge at the sound. Nothing moved. I kept going forwards.
Flowing over the rocks was a thin, yet strong stream of water. I looked for the source and found nothing, just the small little puddle collecting at the bottom. It wasn't even pouring in to a pond or anything. I started to climb up the rocks as carefully as I could, not wanting to slip on the water. I could peek over the edge of the pile and the sort of very steep hill once I was just on top of one of the smaller boulders-that's how low it was. But I still couldn't see any potential water source, where this would be coming from. Was it just the rain?
I cupped my hand and put it in the water flow, and then drank some of it, hesitantly. I didn't think that it would be poisonous, since the rain wasn't. It was perfectly fresh water. It seemed odd, how I couldn't find a source. It was just like there was just some sort of tap that the Gamemakers put in. Whatever-now wasn't the time to be picky. I kept scooping water and drinking it hurriedly. After a long day without water, I felt like I'd been wandering in a desert for years.
Finally, I pulled it together enough to hop down and run back to where I'd left the other two. I pointed back to where I'd found the water, and, feeling uncharacteristically excited, practically dragged them back to the source with me.
"How do you figure we should contain it?" Kyler asked.
"Easy," Charity said. "Have you seen the size of some of these leaves? We can just roll them up a bit and fill them like water bottles. We'll need something to tie them with, though... the grass is long in some spots, but it might not be strong enough..."
"It's worth a shot," Kyler said, already gathering up some of the grass and leaves. They seemed difficult to get off of the tree, but not for him. Sure enough, though, the grass snapped like twigs the second you tried to tie it.
"Well, that's that. Let's just fill these leaves up anyway, see how much water they can hold..."
Apparently, they couldn't hold much. We found out later that when they were rolled like we had planned for them to be, you could only fill up the available space about halfway-and even that was pushing it. Charity insisted that we keep them at that level, though. "What about a jacket string or something?" she asked. "Those tie well, and it's easy to take them out of the hood. You don't really need them, either."
I nodded. I'd taken out the strings before, mostly just because I was bored, or I hadn't had anything else to keep my hair out of my face.
"Fine," Kyler said.
Charity took of her jacket, which had just been tied around her waist, and removed the hood-strings, and then attempted to tie them around the leaf. They tied, but I thought that the leaf seemed like it might have cracked. But it was so almost... rubbery, that it didn't. "Excellent. We'll have to be careful opening it up, and then you could probably just scoop the water out with your hands from there. And we'll have to keep refilling this one leaf, since we only have the one string. Why didn't you two get jackets?"
Kyler and I just sort of shrugged, and Charity seemed annoyed, but she was still smiling because of our discovery.
Kyler coughed. "Wouldn't it just be easier to move our camp here? It wouldn't be raining all the time, and we could probably use the blankets as some sort of shelter-"
"Because it'll be easier if we stay where we already are," Charity interrupted. "There's probably food nearby, too. Any other questions?"
I shook my head, and I'm sure that Kyler did, too.
"Good."
And with that, we all headed back to camp.
