A/N: Bad news: I have bronchitis.
Good news: I'm not going to school/playing sports for a couple days. More time to write.
Also, I'd like to give a biiiiig thank you to everyone who's been reviewing! Getting a review is like finding a twenty dollar bill in your pocket that you never knew was in there. Actually, it's better. So thanks(:
Oh, and I wrote a one shot-type thing on Johanna Mason. If you have time, read it maybe? (:
Violet's POV
Trafford's face pops up in the sky first. Then comes Ebony. And then Trawny. And then the sky is dark.
I sit in my tree and remember dimly waking up to a cannon, looking over at Trawny's peaceful, still body and instinctively checking his pulse, his heartbeat, and, finding nothing, leaving for the hovercraft to come and take his body away, wiping tears. And, naturally, I got a migraine after all that that's lasted until now. Until now—when I'm up high, safe—for the most part—in a tree propped against my backpack as a pillow, eyes closed but not tired in the least.
Oh, fuck it. I'm not getting to sleep. I may as well make the most of tonight; it may be the last peaceful night I have in a while, bearing in mind there is only eight of us left.
I leave my backpack up high in the tree but hop down, branch to branch, and land silently on the balls of my feet. It's only once I'm down here that I realize I've left that long branch I used to kill Zed with up along with my backpack in the tree, but I just decide that I'll get a new one for the walk and let it keep the remainder of my water and food and burn medicine company, and then start to walk.
It is a nice night. Dark, but nice. The moon is full, barely visible because of the thick treetops, but it's full nevertheless, and what stars I can see are shining. I think I see a constellation, somewhere up there… the Big Dipper, did my father call it once? It was after a long Reaping day four years ago, and it was night and the two of us were lying in one of the fields they usually use to make carrots. It was shut down, though, because of the frost layer, and since it was in our own backyard we took a break back there every so often.
He pointed at a group of stars shaped like a pot. The handle was crooked, and it was at a slight angle in the sky. "The Big Dipper," was all he said. But that's about everything I can really remember. He named a few others, too, some having to do with old myths about a strong man and an even smaller pot, but that was when I was, like, twelve.
Two years after my sister died.
I move subjects, building up everything about my sister behind a dam in my mind. Nothing could, nothing would, cross that dam. Thinking about her was one of the worst things I can possibly think about right now, because I need to keep going. Keep going, keep going. That's all I need to do. One thing. Keep on surviving. I can do one, simple little task, can't I?
After I walk for another half hour with no disturbances I circle back to my tree, climb up, and settle down against my backpack, retying myself to the branch I'm resting on. Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to the Cornucopia and get some more supplies. I'm almost out of food; those beef strips didn't last me too long and the roots I dug up got me through the day, but not enough for my taste buds to be satisfied. Yes, I think. Tomorrow I'll go back to the Cornucopia. Having a short-term mission set up in my mind helps me get to sleep, because my stomach is growling and I want morning to come faster.
—
Morning does come fast. I shut my eyes, open them, and then there's sun on me.
Yawning, I roll off to the side of my branch and stretch, when the vine fastening me in breaks. My heart skips about ten beats as I fall and crash through the branches, reaching out for something to grab onto but my hands coming back empty. I don't scream, though. I'm making enough noise already.
I hit the ground, hoping to land on my feet, but instead on my side, on my one arm. Now I have to bite my other hand to keep from screaming, the pain is so intense. Oh god, that was quite the fall. How high up was I, anyways? Must've been pretty high, because my arm is crying out in hardcore pain. I think I broke it. And perhaps my wrist. Dammit, I broke my arm. And it's probably the most pathetic way someone could break their arm. No, not in a fight with Ariel. No, not fending off a carnivorous wolf. But falling out of a tree. Shit.
I see if I can move it, but it feels numb. It hangs limply at my side. My good arm, too. The arm I hold my martial arts stick with. Getting to and from the Cornucopia seems like a much bigger challenge than it did before, with one mildly good arm and one that doesn't appear to want to do anything to help me out.
But I have to survive. I know that. So I start looking around for that waterfall again.
Bambi's POV
Final eight. This is how it feels to be in the final eight. I feel… great. Fantastic. Invincible Like I could go and walk through the desert without any water.
I got over Trafford's death by nightfall—watching him kill that Five gave me a horrible pang inside. Ugh. And I thought I was prepared for these Games.
But now, since the three of us abandoned Alexander and Ariel earlier, I'm alone. I sleep alone in that hollow tree, set up a few traps that Trafford taught me to make to catch food, and catch some animal I've never seen in my life. It's the size of my forearm, long and skinny like a snake but with four legs. Its teeth are pointy. I'm glad I caught it before it caught me.
It's made of bright colors, but I eat it anyways. I'm starved.
And then in the morning, I find a stream that harbors fresh water. How did we not catch this before? My throat dry, I lunge in to scoop up some of the water with my palms, savoring the cool sensation in my hands, but then pouring it straight into my mouth.
Which I promptly spit out. What in the world? I stare down at my hands. They're covered in mud. I touch around my mouth, coming back with more mud. I look down at the fresh water stream and find mud, mud mud, no water.
I shake my head and use leaves to wipe the rest of the mud off my face and hands. It suddenly seems like I'm dreaming, like none of this is real. Am I dreaming? Or is it reality? I distinctly taste the mud in my mouth, and poke myself. No, it isn't a dream. Well I don't think it is, at least.
I need to get a hold of myself, of my thoughts, so I take some deep breaths. But I can't get that feeling out of my head. Like this all isn't real.
It's frustrating. So frustrating, I have the urge to pull my hair out and kick and scream and punch the air, but I just rake my fingers through my hair, realizing that my forehead has gotten very hot. I tie my hair up off my neck with a vine. What's happening? I feel nauseous. And the mud has turned into water again, and now it's a moving sea of… spiders.
Oh my god, oh my god. I back up, trying to get away from these spiders. Spiders. Oh my god, spiders. I hate spiders, I really do. Eight legs and hairy and the creepiest eyes—and, and they're after me. Every single one of them. I hear myself screaming and thrashing as they pin me down to the ground; they crawl into my ears and my mouth and up my legs and through my hair; there's too many to count. One is on my nose, staring straight into my eyes, the size of my hand, with those tiny hairs on its body sticking up. I scream more.
The spiders cover my eyes, and my vision is blinded. They go into my ears, and I can't hear any more. They're down my throat, the lot of 'em, so I can't breathe.
Suffocating, I black out.
Alexander's POV
Cheyenne is completely healed. Her burns have faded into a tan, and she's capable of moving like she did before. I don't know what this means for me now. Now that she doesn't need someone catching her food and someone to take care of her and apply aloe Vera plant. But when I wake up in the morning after the eventful day of Trawny, Ebony and Trafford dying, she's standing above me triumphantly.
"What?" I say, blinking. I rub sleep from my eyes and give a quick fix to my hair—have to look decent.
"I caught something," she says, pushing some of her own hair behind an ear.
"What?" I repeat.
"Come see, then!" She helps me up out of my bed of leaves—we may be getting a little too confident by sleeping right on the ground in the open, but oh well—and over behind some trees where a gorilla's carcass is lying. It looks exactly like those ones that we ran into with the bananas, where Nicole died. It's freaking huge. How did Cheyenne catch this?
"How the fuck?" I mutter. I'm still half-asleep, hungry and thirsty, and apparently Cheyenne has caught a monkey two times my size.
"Its hand got caught in one of our traps, so I threw a knife at its head and it fell and I killed it!" She sounds so excited I don't tell her that I have no idea how we're going to cook and eat it. If we're going to cook and eat it, for that matter. I just nod and reach over, draw the knife out of the thing's head; wipe it off on my pant leg. The knife was a gift from a sponsor. Small, yeah, but skinning animals to eat without one is extremely difficult.
"We need to do something with it," I tell her. "Before scavengers come and draw attention to us. Or…" I think of how Nicole got ripped to shreds because she refused to give the monkey her bananas. Out of all the ways to die, that has to probably be the stupidest dying move in the history of the Games. Or close to it. "Or before its family comes."
Cheyenne nods. "What are you suggesting we do?"
"I don't have a—fudging clue." I resist swearing. Cheyenne doesn't seem to like it when people full-out cuss in front of her. And the word fudge has always been a great replacement for the other word. "Either we cut it up into tiny pieces, eat some of that, and then leave, or we can just leave and cover our tracks."
She pauses. "Well… a gorilla is kind of like us, biologically or whatever, isn't it? Like, human? Almost?"
"You think I pay attention in that class?" I ask. "That's where I catch up on sleep."
"I think it is." She skims her fingers on its soft, grey fur. "I wouldn't feel right eating it."
She wouldn't feel right eating it. The girls at home who train for the Games—some like Ariel—those ones that hit on me all the time—say that if they have to, they'll resort to cannibalism. I went on this date with this one chick, Marcy Greene, to dinner at her place with her parents. And, just for any future reference, she was the one to ask me out.
All night her mother talked to me about Finnick, but then again everyone does, and her father talked to me about how Marcy was going to go out and win the Games. Marcy volunteered for the Hunger Games last year. She ate a girl's arm, bit off a guy's ear and ate his eyeball, and cut out a finger bone from the buff eighteen-year old from Eleven and kept it in her backpack as a good luck charm. In the end some twelve year old from District Two took her out in hand-to-hand combat. Pretty fucking humiliating if you ask me.
But Cheyenne's the total opposite of Marcy. She's the opposite of all the girls back home, too, that I would even consider dating. Not that Cheyenne and I are dating or anything, I'm just saying. While they're harsh and have no actual emotion for the guys they go out with until they come back as victors, she's gentle and, once you gain her trust, caring. And we've talked a little more. About why we're here, in the Games, and I've discovered that she volunteered for her brother's pregnant fiancé, and that a few of her family members have died because of the Games. Including her sister.
She's not only the opposite of the girls back home—she's the opposite of me. I have Finnick; she has her sister, who hardly made it past the first few days in the arena. I have a mother and father who own the biggest fishing boat company in all of District Four; she has a brother that helps the rest of her family scrape by by manufacturing plastic all week. She likes oranges; I like apples.
Sometimes I wonder how we're starting to get along so well.
Ariel's POV
Where in the goddamned world is everyone? I've wandered for days, just to find out that I missed out on three kills. The District Eleven squirt, the District Two guy who left the stronger career pack the first day, and the puny girl from Five. Doesn't surprise me. Weakest go first.
As I chop down a tree for fun with my sword, I smell it. Blood. Fresh blood. Not wasting a minute, I dash in the direction of the smell. It wafts into my nose and I breathe it in like one of the other tributes would breathe in the smell of maple syrup and pancakes after eating edible plants for days, when I break through the trees and see the source of the blood. It's accompanied with the smell of dead, decaying tissue. I swear.
It's a gorilla. It's lying on the ground while a wolf nibbles on its hand. Damn thing, this gorilla's mine. Before it can notice me I walk over and chop its head clean off with one strike of my sword, blood gushing from the decapitated neck and making the ground crimson. I breathe this in, too, while skinning the pelt off the wolf—I'm still thinking about what to do with the gorilla, so I'll put him aside for later.
Once all the fur is off, I wipe the blood away with mud and my hands and leaves and wrap my fingers around the edges, measuring it compared to me. I then carve two holes in the far side, cut off the excess meat, and, although it's heavy I'm stronger, so I tug it up and pull the vest around me. It may be not the most stylish piece of clothing in the world, but the raw skin underneath the fur tells anyone who sees me I did this myself. That I can do it to them, too, if they dare me to.
I head back over to the gorilla. What to do with this bastard? I want to make it good.
I don't know where to start so I just decapitate him like the wolf and lift his head off the ground. Then I carefully put it back down. As I'm standing up again, I see a wound on the roof of the head. It's human-made, a straight line, thin and deep. Could be what caused the death. But, that doesn't matter. What does is that it's human-made. With a knife, I'm guessing. It was thrown, not directly stabbed.
The smell of blood, seconds ago, because of this gorilla was fresh. Fresh. Whoever killed it must have immediately left. Couldn't have been more than an hour ago.
My mouth thirsts. My hands clench. I can still catch whoever it was.
Quickly, I cut off one of the gorilla's remaining fingers and carve until I get to the bone. I saw the girl from District Four do this last year, but with a human. If I ever get the chance I will do the same, but for now this beast will have to do.
I cut a hole through the bone and put it on a vine. I tie this around my neck.
I am ready to kill.
