Disclaimer: I do not own anything Hunger Games-related. Just my characters.

Chapter Fifteen: A Blessing in Disguise

Whenever Capri and Marley had returned, night time had already fallen on the maze and Lani and I were already seated on the floor of the labyrinth, our supplies piled between the two of us as we sat, trying to chat as casually as we could under the circumstances. The sound of their voices initially caused Lani and myself to tense up and reach tentatively for our bags, just in case it was appropriate to flee. After we turned and saw that it was the two of them, a collective sigh of relief could have been heard between the two of us.

"Lani, you have any bandages?" The boy, who I presumed to be Marley, asked as soon as he came into sight.

Lani grabbed the pack she had been carrying and quickly unzipped it as he came, squatting down beside her. The light-haired boy appeared to wince as he sat himself down next to her, rolling up the leg of his pant as he did so.

"Lila took a nice chunk out of him," Capri commented as she sat herself down next to me, I could tell by the glisten still lingering on her skin that they had gotten quite the workout.

"It's not that bad," Marley defended while Lani unwrapped the bandage and examined the, rather sizeable wound.

"What did she do?" Lani asked, grabbing another tube from her pack, squeezing a very watered down medicine into the palm of her hand. Of course, the Capitol wouldn't be gracious enough to bless us with an actual medicine…

"She just-" Marley started, very laid back, but Capri cut in before he could finish.

"When Flux showed up, he distracted Marley. In that time, Lila pulled her own dagger from a pocket in her pants and went straight for his leg, the closest thing she could attack-"

Marley was the one interrupting this time.

"Before she could do too much damage though, Capri stepped in and took her to the ground. When Flux showed up, we were equally matched…we thought he might make things a little more difficult for us, but strangely enough…" The boy trailed off, looking to Capri to finish his statement.

She nodded, looking at him as she did so," He just wanted us to leave."

"What?" I asked incredulously, realizing that I was not directly involved in the conversation, but still shocked, never the less.

Both Marley and Capri looked at me, sharing my look of shock before Capri said," It was very strange to say the least. We thought we were dead, honestly. Or at least in for a bloody conflict."

Marley finished," He just wanted us gone and who were we to argue? As we left, I looked back over my shoulder to see Lila and Flux…hugging."

This kept on getting stranger and stranger. A soft, compassionate Flux was a Flux that didn't exist as far as I was concerned. Never, had I seen him as a kind and caring individual. The fact that he had allowed both Marley and Capri to walk away from him still living was…an accomplishment to say the least. Just when I thought I had that kid pegged, he went and did something to throw a wrench in my theory.

I was still trying to process this in my head as I stuttered," But-wh-how?"

The others chuckled at this before Lani answered with a chuckle, making fun of me," I don't think any of us have an answer to that one."

As the chuckling came to a cease, Capri said finally," I don't think any of us truly have an answer for it right now, but by discussing it, we may be doing precisely what he wants us to do. He could be playing some mind games and I think that since we have no obvious evidence…we let it go for the evening."

We all were able to come to a verbal agreement on this one, but that didn't mean I wasn't still contemplating it. As we arranged ourselves for sleep and discussed who would be taking patrol for the evening, I offered myself for the position and after some discussion was granted the role. As the others were situating themselves, Marley, whom I hadn't officially met approached me, sticking his hand out to me," I'm Marley, by the way."

"So I've been told," I answered, shaking his hand with a small smirk. "I'm Savera, nice to meet you, officially."

"Pleasure," He answered simply before maneuvering past me over to where both Lani and Capri were already laying down for sleep. Both Lani and Capri used the packs they had collected from the blood bath as a pillow while Marley stuck strictly to the solid ground. Before they fell asleep, Lani checked on Marley's bandages and applied another thin layer of medication to his wound.

I heard the three of them turn restless for a long time. It seemed to take forever to assure that all of them were asleep. The sound of silence in the labyrinth with moonlight shining down directly upon us with no shelter to block it out was rather haunting and caused me more paranoia than anything. Long after the others had forced themselves asleep (or at least done a fantastic job of disguising it), I pulled open my backpack once again, finding it would be better to at least briefly distract myself with something since I would be awake for quite a while before I was to wake Marley for his shift of the evening.

I remember the symbols I had seen on the bottom of water bottle as Flux held it, just hours before. Unzipping the bag, I pulled out the water bottle and turned it upside down before I pulled out the pad of paper and pencil, as well. I sat them down in two separate piles and looked at the both of them. I picked up the water bottle and turned it over to see the symbols from before.

Initially, I couldn't make out any of the symbols in the four rows, but it was at this moment that I felt I could use the pad of paper and pencil. Still holding the bottle, I grabbed a piece of paper from the pad and draped it over the symbols before running the tip of the pencil over the symbols to make them appear more clearly onto a piece of paper. After I had finished my sketching, I put down the pencil and tried to adjust my angle at the moonlight so that I could more precisely see the numbers.

After some creative moving and angles, I found that I could read the symbols perfectly clear:

N L2

E R5

W R4

S L1

I furrowed my brow, interested as to just what this meant. I focused on the first column…the letters "N", "E", "W", and "S" definitely sounded familiar. A little more thinking caused me to flashback to the Cornucopia when I saw the same letters and presumed them to be directions. Safely, I could assume that these letters were referencing the letters on the stones at the center Cornucopia.

Taking the piece of paper, I wrote out beside each of the corresponding letters," North, East, West, and South".

At this moment, I could hear slight beep coming from above. Curious, I looked up to see a small parcel falling from the sky. This must have been a package from one our sponsors. Seeing this package sent my heart on a leap, it was a sliver of hope from the Capitol. A sign that we were actual being watched and must have been pleasing to someone out there. The package fell and gracefully landed right next to me, the white parachute draping itself over the box as it landed.

Putting aside my puzzle, I picked up the parcel and unclamped it. I must have been a little too rough because as I opened the container, I drenched my leg in water. Excited at the sight of water, but slightly taken aback by the feel of it on my leg, I looked into the container to see that it was filled to the brim with not a clean, pristine water, but a rather grimy and filthy source.

I furrowed my brow as I examined the container in which the water came from. In the lid, a note was attached and I carefully took it off, seeing a message typed out on the front.

Took you long enough.

-Enobaria

I chuckled, setting the note aside as I still tried to decipher what her sending me filthy, grimy water meant. For several minutes, probably close to an hour, I sat there, swishing the water about, sticking my finger in it tentatively and finally deciding that there was no use of it for me in its current state. It would have been very risky for me to drink that liquid; I didn't want to risk ailing myself in any way…or killing myself unintentionally. I would be the joke of the Capitol, not that it would matter since I would be…well, dead, but still.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that Enobaria was mocking me. So what if I figured out what the first set of letters meant? It didn't mean much to me…at least, not yet. Her little note seemed to be staring a hole through me as I focused my eyes on the piece of paper with all of the symbols, trying to make the connection.

As a last resort, I simply put the materials aside and laid on my back, staring up at the stars above as I racked my brain of nearly every possible thing those symbols could mean. Somehow, my thoughts shifted back to my days at home and sitting on our back porch, peacefully observing nature and working at a puzzle. Periodically, mother would step outside to make sure I was still alright…or if I wanted anything to eat. Most of my time was spent on that porch or down in the basement, trying to craft something useful.

It was almost as if I were back home in District Two. The mountains in the background, the shops on the town square…yes, even the academy. Though I may not have had a plethora of fond memories of my home, it was still my home and, quite honestly, anywhere would have been better than sitting in an arena with several other teenagers waiting for them to hunt you down.

Knowing I needed to appear more alert, I eventually sat up and looked around to…absolutely nothing. Just the bodies of my "friends" around me and silence. It was great company.

Letting out a frustrated groan, I put my hands on my head before pulling out my hair tie and shaking my hair loose. Already, it felt like a greasy and tangled mess, but I made due with it as much as I could. While running my fingers through my knotted hair, I thought back, once again, to my back porch. I remembered a puzzle that had taken me a particularly long time to figure out.

It was….a maze of sorts, as I preferred, and revolved entirely around direction and having a sense of direction. The page prior to the actual maze consisted of a bunch of conglomerated letters. The instructions were simple enough:

There are two letters that are of value to you hidden in the bank below.

If you seek to find such aid,

Search from top to low.

The word bank was not the most simple of things I had ever seen, essentially, it was nearly all of the letters of the alphabet melted into one large, geometric pattern. After many tries and much brainpower, I had narrowed the list down to L, R, H, and T. Looking ahead to the maze, I saw that the four I had deduced were the four being used in the maze. Trial and error was the one way that I would discover the secret; therefore, I began with H and T, following every path in the maze that contained either of these letters. My hopes were built high as my pencil skimmed along for a long time, but when the two separate paths of H and T collided into one another, I knew that my options were down to L and R.

As soon as I remember the maze from home, I made the connection to the maze at the present.

At home, the L and R distinguished one direction from the other, left and right. Though this choice may seem obvious, in some mazes prior to the one I remembered, Left and Right may have been disguised with a use of a different letter of phrase, that being the reasoning why H and T were even logical to be used in a maze dealing with direction.

Enlightened, I grabbed the pad of paper and began to write out left and right next to their individual letters. I also felt a ping of stupidity for not making the connection earlier, but discovering what the numbers stood for could have been a whole different puzzle entirely. The Capitol had been rather simple in this thus far, but the numbers…nothing came to my mind as I stared at the list.

A yawn escaped my lips, and over my shoulder, I heard one of them tossing in their sleep. I looked up at the moon overhead, seeing it full and bright. Shortly, it would be time for me to awake Marley so that he could take over the patrol. I began to compile all of my materials and place them back into my backpack. Before putting the container from Enobaria in my bag, I wanted to find the lid to it.

I looked all around, knowing I had placed it just beside me.

But it was no where to be found.

I even unzipped my backpack, searched through all of the zippered parts, to find absolutely nothing.

With a look of disgust on my face, I stared down at the mucky water, slightly despising my lovely mentor who had sent it to me. I hadn't known where the lid had disappeared to, but it hardly mattered since the truth of the matter was that it was gone and all I had was a gross liquid, of no use to anyone.

I glared at the water for several seconds. Truly, I solely wished to dump it on the ground, but I knew that since it was a gift from a sponsor, it must have been important for something. To my demise, I pulled the water bottle from my backpack and stared at it for a while longer, wondering why in the world I was about to do what I was going to do. I unscrewed the top of the bottle before pressing the lid of the container from Enobaria to the lip of the water bottle, pouring the thick, disgusting water into the bottle.

I carelessly tossed the container it came in into my backpack (a compartment by itself) before zipping it up, putting the bag over my shoulder as I forced myself to stand up before it was time to wake Marley, who was already stirring restlessly in his sleep. Perhaps it was the fatigue that prevented me from noticing it earlier, but my eyes happened to glance down to see that the murky water from before had disappeared from the bottle and had been replaced with crystal clear, normal water.

My eyes must have been deceiving me for I instantly tossed off the cap and stuck my finger in the water.

It was real…it was not…thick and disgusting. It was pure and clean.

It was needless to say that I was very confused, but also just as grateful. In the back of my head, I thought that I was still dreaming, but feeling the cool, perfect water on my lips and sliding down my throat told me that this liquid was certainly real and just what I would need in order to survive. With that being said, I knew that there was not much of the water…that grimy water I once had…seemed to have magically turned into a blessing. I would have to ration it as well as I could.

The thought of sharing the water hadn't come to my head.

However, just as I put the bottle down from my lips, I was staring into the eyes of an already-awake Marley.

A/N: Sorry for the delay! I have been extremely busy this week, but thank you for reading and please, please let me know what you think :D I really have enjoyed writing this so far. Hope the puzzle part makes sense so far...I want to keep it simple right now. Progressively, it will become a little more complex.