Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
While she had been gone, Bunny and Heaven had torn open a sponsor box and Bunny was now holding a long, serrated dagger.
"You were gone a long time. Everything alright?"
Luciente grunted.
"I think she was trying to hunt something else at the stream," Nathaniel supplied.
"Ah. Well, never mind. I'm sure there'll be other chances."
Luciente leant against the doorframe, gazing out into the woods.
Far, far in the distance she could see pale smoke rising up towards the sky. It was the wrong direction for Hyperion, which meant someone else.
At least they were far, far from them.
Luciente.
Where are you?
Talk to me.
Luciente.
Luciente!
Hyperion sighed and stared downstream.
He was still getting no reply.
She must have left the stream for whatever reason.
But he knew where she was.
He knew where she was!
And she would stay by the stream until he reached her, he knew that, which meant all he had to do was reach her.
He almost laughed with relief, if not for the presence of the others.
He, Shelley, and Wylie were fishing, while Arielle dug out worms and bugs to use as lure and Azrayk built up a fire. They had a healthy catch of fish by now, enough that they would be able to eat well when they cooked it.
He wondered if she had food.
Then he cast the thought aside.
She was more than capable of finding it if she needed to.
Come to me, she had said, find me, come to me, find me. A call, a cry, a need.
The lone coyote dies, they had always noted. Coyotes cast aside from their pack never lasted long.
She was his pack.
But he didn't know if she was alone.
At the bloodbath she had been close behind two others, and Nathaniel's face hadn't been in the sky – which meant she could be with him.
She had a thing about Nathaniel, so it would make sense. It was like she was fascinated by him, drawn to him the moment she saw his face and those large, pale eyes of his.
It was one of her things he supposed. Just like she knew things, like she saw things and spoke to people that weren't there sometimes, she saw something in Nathaniel she wanted.
And holy fuck did she want it!
She was… interested by Arielle, but she was fixated on Nathaniel.
Hyperion hadn't seen her so focused on anything in all their years of being together and apart.
She hadn't even seemed that fixated on little Ariel, with her own big pale eyes, and she was their half-sister, but then again maybe he hadn't seen them together enough to gage it. He'd only met Ariel the once, in the goodbye room, and yet once had been enough for him to know what he was seeing, recognise the otherness in her big pale eyes.
Nathaniel held no otherness.
He was human.
Hyperion climbed from the water with his latest fish, tossing it onto the pile of smaller fish.
"Reckon we've got enough for a decent meal," Azrayk said. Hyperion had warily leant him the knife so he could clumsily descale several of the fish under Shelley's called instructions and skewer them on thin branches which they now pinned over the fire.
Roasted fish, not something he'd tried, but it would be food in his belly.
He paced their little camp as they waited for it to cook, still barefoot.
Shelley and Wylie were drying their feet on the leaves and pulling their socks and boots back on, but he didn't mind going barefoot.
Besides.
Something out here was making his skin prickle and itch.
He had never had a drop of what Luciente had, but something out here was wrong. The hair at the back of his neck prickled and something itched and burned deep in his chest.
"Something wrong?" Azrayk called, getting to his feet. He had formed a crude spear of his own from a sturdy tree branch, and Shelley had found a large rock slightly bigger than her fist to use as a weapon.
"Something's… off."
"The Careers you think?"
"I don't know."
They were equal numbers with the Careers at least, five on five, and near equal sizes as well, though the Career tributes would be better armed.
"Could be mutts," Arielle suggested.
Azrayk shook his head. "Listen. Too much birdsong for mutts – big ones anyhow."
"Don't have to be big," Shelley countered.
"Weren't there squirrels mutts a few years back?" Arielle asked.
Someone was in trouble.
He knew it.
Not here, and not them – not Luciente either, he suspected he'd feel that, more than he felt this, more than anything – but someone.
And they were in trouble.
And then it passed.
"Someone ran into trouble," he grunted, lowering his spear and moving away from the trees.
Not Luciente, he decided, couldn't be Luciente. He'd have felt it more. The Careers then, or Azrayk's District partner and her ally. The pair from Twelve were both still around as well, quite possibly the only ones about without any allies.
No cannons though, which meant no one had been killed.
"Man," Shelley whined after a tense moment. "You and your sister are fucking weird."
