Wren Humboldt, District Five female (17)
So gross. It's just so gross.
Like most of the other Tributes probably did as well, I'd had to make a very difficult choice. On my first day in the arena, I'd tried to just wait it out. Surely there would be clean water somewhere, right? NOPE. No clean water, anywhere. Just the big, slow-moving, dark brown river. Someone told me once that brown or green water means a lake is healthy and clear water only happens when everything in the lake is dead. I was happy for the river's health, but it didn't do me any favors. After the first day, I had to make a most unpleasant choice. Drink unclean water and risk waterborne illnesses, or don't drink at all and die for sure. I did what I had to do and I was currently paying the price. I just had to hope I could drink faster than it could come out.
So far it didn't seem too serious. I had a little spare weight from before the Games- not much, but I wasn't emaciated like some Tributes. I was probably losing weight but maybe I could make things work for as long as the Games would last. People can live a long time in the wilderness, right? Like a few weeks? That was usually how long the Games were. Surely every year the kids got... what I had. They made it, so I could too.
It was like Russian roulette, finding leaves. I didn't know which might be itchy or I might be allergic or maybe they were just poisonous. Wouldn't that just be the most mortifying death in the history of the Games? Getting a butt infection from poisonous toilet paper leaves? If that happened I'd have to go piss off a Career just so that was my cause of death instead.
Oh, what's that?
I'd been spending a lot of time looking up, since I was squatting and the view downwards was pretty ugly. I was in that position when I noticed the pink fruit in the tree up above me. I cleaned myself up as best I could and stood under the tree, hands on my hips.
Dragonfruit. I'd seen them in stores but of course I'd never bought one. I didn't even know anyone who had. Anyone who could afford a dragonfruit, or a pomegranate, or any of those fancy fruits that weren't apples or oranges, had to be impossibly wealthy. A dragonfruit was something I could buy if I won the Games. Or, it seemed, something I could have right now.
It was a no-brainer that I'd try to climb the tree. I wasn't known for my impulse control, and there was a pretty pink fruit on the line. Maybe I wasn't too well-versed in climbing trees, but how hard could it be? Humans came from monkeys, right? I was just embracing my nature.
Luckily, the tree wasn't very tall. It was more of a matter of wrapping myself around its trunk and using friction to scoot myself up the few feet it took the reach a fruit. I reached out and batted at it, hoping it would fall off- fruit falls when it's ripe, right? My fingers barely brushed it and it only wiggled a little. I leaned out farther, thinking about how if I fell I'd probably break my neck and it would be a little funny even if it was tragic. My second try knocked the fruit loose, and as the branch snapped upwards from the loss of weight, another fruit wiggled loose.
I slid down the trunk, bark chafing my arms, and picked up the spoils of my labor. A dragonfruit, I thought wonderingly as I held the pink oval. It really could be a dragon's egg, with its size and its scaly feel. I wasn't sure how to break it open, so I sort of just twisted it until the skin split. It must be so good, I thought as I twisted off a bit of flesh and popped it in my mouth.
It tasted like water. Just water that had some vague fruit dipped in it. All that work, that cool name, its skin that looked like phoenix feathers... all this time, it was just water. The richest people in the world were paying for cool-looking pink water. But, boring as it was, at least water was what I needed. I just hoped dirty water germs cleared out of your system if you stopped eating them.
Isabella Disney-Busattil, District Eleven female (18)
Our perfect little idyll. Our little refuge. Nothing would happen here. No one would die here. We'd just all be friends and hold hands. Until all but one of us died. Sky was already gone. One by one we'd all go the same way.
It was just like last year. We'd all watched as Irina lost her friends, one after another. I saw the lines etch onto her face as the personality slowly drained from her. By the end she was a ghost of herself. A revenant. That was the word- a shadow of her old self, drained of her life. She was doing better now, but in those last days in the arena, she was a scared, broken bird trying to do just one thing right. I'd thought about her a lot more since the Games began. I thought about her a lot because in this alliance, I was the one most likely to become her. Me or Beth, that was our destiny.
"It's not gonna last forever, is it?" I asked suddenly. Mike looked up in the darkness. He was the one officially on watch. I just couldn't sleep. Probably Beth wasn't, either. Once trained, always trained. Even at home I woke up some nights, thinking I needed to fight. Not that it was impossible. A Victor's kid? Someone might want money, or to make a point, or maybe something Mom or Dad said pissed someone high up off and I got hauled away to be avoxed or worse. It surprised me sometimes that Mom and Dad ever felt secure enough to have children. I guess some people just won't be intimidated.
"The alliance?" Mike asked. I could see he'd wanted to cover it up, to soften it and say 'the Games' instead, but he knew what I meant. Light from our little fire flickered on his face. I always teased him that he shouldn't get too close- you know what they say about moths. "No, I guess it won't."
"Someone's gonna be the last one standing," I said.
"I'm safe. Won't be me," Mike joked.
"What's that like, expecting to die?" I asked. I didn't think until I said it how morbid it was.
Mike didn't seem offended. "I think I won't really get it until it happens. I'm safe since I'm kind of dumb. I won't know it happened until I wake up in heaven."
"You'll definitely go to heaven," I said, smiling in spite of my worries. Tears pricked at my eyes as I thought of it. Of course Mike would get into heaven. It was just, he wouldn't be with me then. He'd be up there and almost certainly I'd still be down here on the ground, waiting for more of my friends to die. I was dreading the moment I lost Mike but I was trying with all my self-control not to be selfish about it. I wanted him to go last, but I knew it was better for him if he went first.
"Someone has to bring this home for us," Mike said, looking at me with both sadness and warmth. "You. Beth. Maybe Zeb. Whoever it is, they stand on the podium for all of us."
"But what does it take to get there?" I asked.
"Glad I don't have that problem," Mike said.
"It's just..." I took in a suddenly shaky breath. "It's not even just about me. I wish it was. I wish I could just be selfish. But it's my family, too. I'm the only one here with Capitol ties. If I don't win, I know what they're gonna do. Like anyone thinks it was a coincidence I got Reaped. They want their blood and if I don't win." I breathed in slowly again. "They're gonna take Anders."
Mike sighed deeply. "It isn't fair," he said. Nothing to do. Nothing to make it better. Only his sincere sadness that none of this was fair.
"What can I do? How can I tell my mom she has to lose Anders too, because I didn't do everything I could? Do you know what she looked like when I left? God, I watched my mother cry for seven straight days in the Capitol. Every day I was there, I saw her cry. When you're little you think your parents can do anything. I knew mine could. Mine won the Games. But they can't keep our family alive. That's all on me." I looked into the fire, pretending I could go somewhere else and not be here. Anywhere else, or nowhere at all. I'd never felt so frail.
"So get home," Mike said. "You can do it. We all know it."
"But what will it take?" I asked again. "Outlasting everyone." I looked Mike in the eyes. "Everyone."
"I won't be there to see it," Mike said. He knew exactly what I was saying and didn't break my gaze, his eyes old and soft and accepting even in their resignation. "Whatever you have to do, don't worry about me seeing it. I think I'll have better things to look at in heaven. I hear there's a lot of light there."
Elias "Smiles" Cutthrow, District Eleven male (18)
It was pretty embarrassing how I was tracking the Tribute. Even I wasn't mean enough to tell whoever it was when I killed them. No one had to know I was tracking a Tribute by the smell.
Not that I was much better-off in that regard. Maybe it was a bad decision to go after Theta in the Bloodbath. After that I hadn't wanted to risk getting caught in the Career-Isabella crossfire, so I'd taken off with only a single fanny pack. It had a knife and a change of socks, but water it had none. I was stuck slumming with the gross river water, drinking who-knows-what along with it. So far I'd been able to outpace the output with input. Whoever I killed next, hopefully they had some iodine tablets on them. Of course they'd be harder to track, since they wouldn't leave a smelly trail.
It is kind of funny, I have to admit. Here I am tramping through mud in some godforsaken forest trying to kill someone and tracking them down by them smell of their diarrhea. When I get to my Victor interview, I'm telling them I'm just ridiculously good at tracking. You know, from all the fighting and stuff back home. I got good at tracking. I didn't need to follow a brown trail.
At this point, I was just ticking off boxes. Whoever I was hunting wasn't one of the big fish. Laken knew how to purify water and Charm was almost certainly lurking by the Cornucopia trying to think of a way to steal the supplies she'd die without. I was just on the trail of some everyday Tribute who was going to die anyway. Really I was doing them a favor. Better to die quickly at my hands than trying to sit up one last time in a puddle of my own filth.
I heard the Tribute before I saw them. But not, of course, after I smelled them. It sounded like rustling paper. I dove behind a tree and peeked out. It was the girl from Five- some bird name, I thought. She was standing under a tree trying to shake some fruit loose. At her feet there were a few other fruits, some just piles of peel.
Slowly, I took my knife from my waist pack. It was one of the folding ones, and I'd left it folded- it was in a plastic case that would keep it from getting damp. I clicked the blade into place and turned it in my hand, watching it shine a little in the overcast light. I ran out from behind the tree and the girl vanished like a ghost.
Damn. She was fast. I hadn't expected it, looking at her. The girl barely saw me before she shot off like a deer. She quickly disappeared into the foliage as I ran after her, following the noise and the still-shaking vegetation. Thin leaves sliced at my face and I wondered briefly if they'd blind me if they hit me in the eye. I squinted as I ran after my target.
I paused for a minute when the greenery ahead of me wasn't disturbed. I cursed at the seconds I wasted before realizing she'd pivoted. I strained my ears and picked up the faint sounds of crashing to my left. I wasn't out of this yet.
There she is. Beyond me I could see the girl's dirty blonde hair streaming out behind her as she ran. I had to give her credit- she didn't seem like she'd even slowed down. My lungs were burning just keeping up. I looked down for a rock to throw and came up empty- nothing but mud and fallen sticks that would deflect off all the tree trunks. When I looked back up, she was almost back out of sight. I panted as I spurred myself after her.
The girl's hair, and the rest of her, pivoted again. I reached where she'd been, and nothing. I thought I heard something in the distance, but I wasn't even sure. And with the way my legs ached and my head was light from my heaving breath, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I saw that girl again, I'd have to catch her by surprise. As it was, she was so far away that next time she popped a squat, I wouldn't even smell it.
