Song Suggestion: Hozier- "Arsonist's Lullaby"

A Leap of Faith

Prim stopped in an area she thought was safe. Multiple trees surrounded her, giving camouflage on all sides. She zipped open her backpack and took inventory of the contents: a coiled rope, a bottle of strong painkillers, another bottle of sleeping pills, a small case of jerky, and a canteen filled with water. Each item would ensure her survival, though she wasn't quite sure how she would utilize the sleeping pills. She uncapped the canteen and gave a couple sips of precious water. She'd have to ration it. It was the most important thing she could have received. A person could last without food for several weeks but only a few days without water.

She placed them back in the backpack and zipped it up as quietly as she could, continuing her journey. Every sound seemed amplified, every movement thundered in the distance. It unnerved her enough that she stopped in her tracks, realizing she heard no other noises. Complete silence. Not a bird or a squirrel. It made her feel as if she walked under spikes that could release at any moment.

She didn't like the other implication either. No animals meant no food source. She remembered watching a game where they didn't give the tributes any water at all, except at a table near the cornucopia. It was the shortest game in history, a whole thirty-two hours. Tributes came out of hiding and tore into each other for mere drips of liquid. If she remembered correctly, no one even paired up as allies. Brutal, bloody, and fast. She imagined a lack of food would induce similar mania.

Was that what they wanted this time? For the call of survival to be so strong the tributes would forget their relationships and slice each other up?

Maybe.

Probably.

For now, she had to keep walking. The sun began to sag in the sky, a firework of colors trailing it. She had to find a place to sleep before dark. Who knew what beasties roamed the forest and the wastelands.

Prim finally stopped at a big round tree with a healthy obscurity of leaves. She swallowed her fear and climbed up high enough to keep her from predators, but close enough to the ground, she could scramble down. It was easier this time to make herself climb. Pulling out her rope, she looped it around the trunk and tied herself so tight the frays in the rope bit into her skin.

She doubted there would be much sleeping tonight. Nausea already roiled her stomach. She glanced upwards just in time for the announcement. Faces flashed in the darkness, faces who were already at different stages of decomposition. The girl from district 3 came first. She had wild hair and brown eyes that looked kind, but what Prim remembered about her the most was the way the light faded from them after Cato snapped her neck. From there it progressed quickly: both the tributes from district 4, the girl from district 6, the boy from district 7, Both tributes from 8, and the boy from 11 who blew up in the air. Eight tributes in all. In just a few short hours, they went from twenty-four tributes to sixteen.

She released a breath: Gale still lived, Cato breathed, and Theodora still towered. Their lights still shone like a beacon, and for now that was enough to leave her with a measure of peace.

She sat with her thoughts as the faux stars twinkled above her, only interrupted when a cannon blasted and nearly startled her out of the tree.

Another death, she thought, hand to heart. I may need to get used to it. Though, if she was being honest with herself, she knew she never would.

Three Hours Later

She woke up when a loud gong sounded. By the time she got her bearings, she was surrounded by a haze of thick smoke. The only light to see by was the full moon, bloated in the sky.

Prim coughed, and the smoke burned her eyes. She couldn't tell where it was coming from.

Her sister's voice in her memories reminded her, smoke rises.

She had to get down. She saw flames licking some trees near her, their orange bodies doing acrobats, flinging from leaf to leaf, treetop to treetop. It was coming her way and fast. She scrambled with knots she made earlier.

She cut her fingers on the rough material as she tugged. It came loose, and she nearly fell down the tree in her instinctual panic. Her brain screamed for oxygen as she accidently wheezed in another mouthful of smoke. She berated herself, knowing smoke killed faster than flames. The going down was slower than coming up. Her skin sizzled. It was getting very close. Her legs buckled as she jumped the last bit, her ankle twisting just enough to twinge. But the pain was engulfed by the fear, and it drove her forward. In desperation, she bundled the rope in her hand and reached down to her belt where she clipped the canteen, pulling out the water. She dosed the front of her shirt and flipped it above her face, uncaring the whole world just got a glimpse of her stomach and bra.

It would filter the smoke just enough to let her think with a clearer mind.

The flames came from the east and that meant she'd inevitably head west. Her feet stumbled forward, pushing branches out of her path. The Gamemakers were herding her somewhere. She had to be ready for what was to come. If she was jumping ship like a drowned rat, then others were sure to follow.

Prim continued to stumble for what seemed like hours, but she lost sense of time. At times, she'd walk ahead of the heat or flames in smoke. At others, she waded through thick clouds of burning air, sucking the water from her shirt in desperation. She knew nothing but pain and fear and heat.

The cannons blasted two times. She didn't even let it rattle her, too focused on her own survival.

After an indeterminable amount of time, the foliage thinned out enough to see that she was reaching the end of the forest. Ahead of her loomed a bright sheet of ice glowing under the moonlight.

The wasteland. A land of barren nothingness and certain death. But an even quicker death lay behind her and she made up her mind that it was where she had to go.

As soon as she neared the ice, she saw it: a wide chasm between the forest and the ice with a sheer drop to a river snaking far below, maybe fifty feet. It was too wide to jump and too far to fall. If she attempted a panicked leap, her guts would splatter against the rocks below.

The smoke twisted around her feet as she stood there contemplating, unsure of what to do next. She tightened her grip and remembered: the rope.

A plan formed in her mind. A half-baked insane plan, but her only option. She'd burn up if she stayed any longer and die if she jumped. To try and find another route would lead to certain death.

With that in mind, she made a quick knot taught to her by Gale often enough it was rote memory to her fingertips. It was frequently used in Gale's traps for small animals and worked as a lasso. After finishing, she tested its strength. It could be better, but it would have to do.

She surveyed the other side of the chasm. Most of the land was flat and barren. Snowdrifts piled up. Accompanied by a wind she assumed was bitter cold but could not be imagined with the flames licking the trees behind her back.

Off to the side, a gnarled old tree grew from the side of the gorge. Its empty branches reached out like skeleton hands praying to a god that deserted it. Her plan: fling the lasso around the branches and create something to swing her across. She hoped it would hold her weight.

One two three, she counted swinging it around her head and flinging it.

It missed.

Of course, it missed.

It missed three times before she began to worry.

"Come on," she said out loud, attempting to cauterize the fear spilling from her body.

She had done this before. She calmed herself, concentrated, and swung once more.

It made it! She wished Gale was there to see her. See, I did learn from you after all. Those lessons in the woods weren't for nothing.

The rope lay haphazardly on a branch. She tugged gently down so the loop slid on the branch, as carefully as a surgeon's scalpel near an artery, until it was more secure towards the base. Then she pulled until it became taunt, securing the other end around her waist in the tightest knot she had ever attempted.

Now that that was done, she swallowed hard. It wasn't until now that she came face to face with the real problem: she'd have to jump.

Fuck you Snow, she thought.

It was the first twenty-four hours of the games and already she had to face her fear of heights four times. It wasn't something that she ever cared to confront in her past, never having much of an impact on her life. But now she stared down twenty feet of free fall, and she wished she had pushed herself harder like Gale wanted.

She gripped the rope tight, suddenly understanding that she wouldn't be able to do it. This wasn't happening against her will like the discs, and it wasn't a mere tree to climb. This was a conscious leap into space and something she couldn't overcome.

Did Snow plan this part on purpose? Did he lead the flames a certain way, knowing it would leave her stranded with a lifeline but with an inability to pursue it?

In the end the choice was made for her. A body slammed hard into her back, accompanied by its own scream. Two arms wrapped around her as the taunt rope slackened. The freefall happened in slow motion, and then it ended with lightning speed as she smacked into the face of the cliff. The arms around her body dislodged. She heard another crack and a scream, but she was unable to focus on it with her own pain.

The rope sutured tight under her armpits now, and she hung slack like a doll against the cliff face, rasping in several ragged breaths. Her front felt sliced open and her head rung.

It took the sound of cracking branches to pull her from her internal distress. The branch holding her weight could hold it no longer and bowed. Prim used all her strength and brushed aside her pain just long enough to grab fistfuls of pebbles and snow and, almost losing her grip a few times, slid her arms around the trunk of the dead tree. It gave her just enough leverage to pull herself onto the ice.

She did it just in time. The whole forest across the chasm burned, trying to leap across the chasm toward her in a bout of anger that its sacrifice of human flesh had been denied. The smoke stopped halfway across the river as if someone divided it into with a glass wall.

Replacing the heat was a slicing, bitter cold. In the end, they felt much the same. Her skin felt flayed and raw.

Prim leaned over the edge of the cliff and looked down, expecting to find the person that grabbed and pushed her in a mangled heap on the riverbed. Instead, ten feet below her a young boy was crouching, entirely conscious on a rock that jutted out below. His face was bloody, but otherwise he was very much alive. He perched precariously against the mountainside. One little gust of wind would topple him. He was lucky he wasn't already dashed on the ground.

His entire face was covered in acne, the inflamed skin standing out even more with exertion and sweat. He was the boy Cato taunted during the training. She thought he belonged to district 6 but did not know his name.

Turn around and forget him, the survival side of her mind begged. And she should. What would saving him do but endear her to another person intended to die? Or put her in danger should he betray her?

But he glanced up, and the voice was quickly silenced.

"Please," he whispered, so low she saw only saw his lips move, "Please help me."

Her soul could not fight the urge that welled up in her, an overabundance of empathy that she was sure would kill her sometime in the next several days.

She untied the rope from her waist and lowered it until it brushed his fingertips.

"I don't think I have the strength to pull myself up," he said

"You must."

He eyed her for a moment, sliding a hand under his nose. It ran like a spigot with fresh blood.

"Can I trust you?" He asked.

"Why would I hand you a rope if I planned on killing you?"

He shrugged, something in his face vulnerable before it shuttered.

The game rarely showed mercy. There were allies, but as soon as the web wore thin, the killing began. She could only remember a few times in the games, including how her sister took care of and buried Rue, when a contestant showed true empathy, except to their own district mate.

He was right to consider, but his options were limited. And he must have understood that if she wanted him dead, she'd have just left him. It would be easier. There would be no advantage to pulling him up. It only put herself at a disadvantage, since even though he was thin-looking, he could still most likely overpower her. He gripped the rope and made his decision.

"Here, I'll try to tug up." The snow made the rope slippery, but eventually between them, he tugged himself up just enough to swing his leg over the ledge. From there, she reached out and pulled under his arms until he wiggled next to her, safe from the edge.

He sat there panting, staring out across the gorge for a moment as if trying to take in what just happened in the last ten minutes.

"I don't understand why you did that, but thanks."

"I'm not going to kill anyone."

In that moment, she made a pact with herself: she would not fall into Snow's game. Saying it out loud was nearly treasonous. She knew this, but something flared in her stronger and brighter than anything ever had. She refused to bloody herself for him, even if it meant death. She'd be the martyr Cato accused her of being, if it came down to it. But while she was still alive, she'd help people.

Prim did not know what her actions would cause: whether it would inflame the people or give them hope, or whether they would not care at all, but it was in this moment, Prim decided that she would not cross Snow's line in the sand.

"Won't kill... like anybody?"

She shook her head. He looked at her like she was a creature from space.

"But we have to… it's the games. If you don't, you'll die."

"Probably, but I refuse to, so go on and end my life now if you must. I won't even fight back."

The boy's eyes opened wide and his face went redder, eventually his eyes went down. He thought for a moment before looking up and meeting her eyes.

"My name is Brighton."

"Hello, Brighton. My name is Prim."

She stuck her hand out, and he took it.