Chapter Eighteen, Win or Die

Amongst a pile of massive rocks, a young woman was hiding, silently looking through what she had gotten at the Cornucopia; a set of bed sheets wrapped in a closable plastic bag, a small first-aid kit, which she had caught flying in mid air when people threw themselves at the supplies and… well that was pretty much it.

She tucked the bed sheets in the pocket at the back of her navy blue coat and then carefully looked around to see if there were any other tributes near. Sensing no dangers in the area close by, she walked towards the river that fed the arena's waterfalls and filled her plastic bag with cold water. She purified it with a few iodine drops she had found in her first-aid kit, mentally thanking whoever had thrown it towards her. She secured the kit around her belt and sat down, waiting by the river, watching the fast current flow into the arena's biggest waterfall. From where she was, she could see some of the tributes' launching platforms, as well as the hovercraft, which had just entered the arena to pick up the blood bath's victims. The girl heard six loud canons ringing in the air.

"Silyah?" a feminine voice came from behind the girl.

Silyah choked back a gasp and tried to calm her heartbeat as she turned around to face the girl tribute from District 5. "Oh, it's you!" Silyah was glad that Novia had been the one who scared her and not one of the Careers. "How's Silver?" she asked her.

The black haired girl smiled. "Good, I hope. If everything went according to plan, she'll be around soon."

Silyah nodded slowly. "Thank you for accepting my offer, by the way." She reached for the plastic bag beside her. "Do you want some water?"

"Yes," the petite girl sat down in front of her ally. "Nice," she said, nodding at the improvised bottle. "Though, mine might work better," she added with a wink.

The District 3 tribute offered the bag to Novia, letting her fill up her own water bottle. "You know, you do with what you can get here," she explained with a shrug.

"Yes, that I know. That's why I teamed up with Silver in training."

"I wonder how she did at the Cornucopia…"

"She most likely got some weapons… We agreed on her getting armory while you would find a safe place and I the rest of what we would need."

"Speaking of, do you have another one of these water bottles?" asked Silyah.

"Let me have a look," the girl browsed through one of her backpack, then tossed a bottle to Silyah. "Here it goes."

"Thanks," Silyah caught the bottle, filling it up. "That plastic bag can be used as our reservoir, we would waste less iodine by pouring a large amount of water inside of it and then putting it inside our bottles."

Novia nodded. "Yes, good idea."

"What's the good idea?" Silver came towards them, her blow cane strapped to her back along with a rather big number of weapons. "Hello girls. Seems like you found the Clockwork Angel before I did, Novia."

"Hey, Silver," Silyah waved at the heavily armed girl.

Silver sat down. "I hope this will be enough," she said, laying her weapons on the ground. "I grabbed whatever I could… And annoyed Caskar…" Novia gave the District 6 girl a look. "Oh, come on; it will be no fun if he won't be after me. Anyway, I think that he currently is more interested in our dear Ice Prince."

"He's still alive?" asked Silyah as soon as she heard the nickname.

Silver looked thoughtful. "Last time I saw him, he was." A grin crossed her lips. "Are you worried about your precious Prince, Angel?"

Silyah frowned. "He's not my precious prince, just so you know, but why shouldn't I be worried? I've nearly spent every hour of every day with him in the past week or so and he's a nice person."

Silver's grin got even wider. "Yes, very nice," she said. "We'll know about him later on when they will show the fallen," she added, her eyes on Silyah.

The girl tensed. "I wonder who is going to be up there… While I was climbing up here, I saw that you did not do much to protect your fellow tribute, am I right?"

The smile on Silver's lips was now gone. "As a matter of fact, I did," she said, her eyes going down as her hand went to her pocket. "Jehl had asked me to kill him."

Novia blinked. "Asked you?"

Silver nodded. "He knew from the beginning that his chances were small and he wanted me to end it for him… And I did."

Silyah's eyes went huge in disbelief.

"Are you shocked, Angel?" Silver asked her. "His father asked me the same favor when he came to visit me after the Reaping. I did as they requested." She took a small medallion from her pocket, Jehl's probably.

Silyah shook her head and stopped staring at Silver. "I guess that I'm not used to speaking about death so lightly…"

"Guess not, but this is the Hunger Games," shrugged Novia. "It's kill or be killed."

"No, it's win or die. Only one of us will remain at the end. Sad thing to die for, really…" said Silver with a shrug similar to Novia's.

Silyah took a deep breath. "Do you think that we should go in the forest for the night?" she wondered, eyeing the sun, which would eventually slowly make its way down the brilliant blue sky. "We will need to find a place to settle and to build a shelter before the sun sets."

"Yes, I think that we should. Gather as much water as possible first," replied Silver. "And we should also reorganize our things so that each bag of ours hold certain useful items."

Silyah raised her water-filled plastic bag. It was large enough to contain at least ten full bottles of water. "I think that we can last for a little while with that."

Silver nodded. "Yes, we will."

The three tributes organized their supplies quickly. Even though they were practically safe now, none of them were promised to even see the faces of the day's fallen tributes…

"Before you arrived, I walked around this area," Silyah pointed to the sector around the river. "Relatively close by, I saw what I think might be a suspended bridge. It seems to be the only way to go in the forest from here… Hope none of you are afraid of creaky planks of wood."

"Not really, not," said Silver.

Novia made a face betraying her aversion to this way of transportation, but she shrugged. "As long as it holds us."

On that semi-positive note, the girls followed the watercourse, being as silent as possible.

Eventually, they reached the suspended bridge Silyah had seen from afar… Truth to be told, it looked quite pathetic. The planks were growing moss and strange bugs were crawling all over it, not to mention that some of the bugs were actually eating parts of the structure.

"Who wants to go first?" asked Silyah reluctantly, wrinkling her nose at the heap of wood.

"It was your idea," answered Silver, waiting for Silyah to take the first step. "Let's just get over it."

"Okay…" Silyah breathed and mentally recited a three seconds countdown. She grabbed the two ropes on each side of the bridge and placed her foot on the first plank, which loudly complained. She shook it slightly. "Seems secure enough," she told the others.

The small group progressed step-by-step on the long, narrow and slippery bridge. About halfway through, Silyah stopped abruptly.

"Why are you stopping?" asked Silver.

With one quick movement, Silyah ducked, dragging Silver and Novia with her. A shiny arrow suddenly flew by, just where the girl had previously been standing.

"Is that reason good enough?" whispered Silyah. The two other girls looked up quickly, searching for the source of the attack. More arrows went by, but Silyah, Silver and Novia were now out of sight, crawling on the bridge along with the colorful and suspicious bugs.

The girl who had fun teasing and fighting with Caskar was now in a very uncomfortable state. She did not like insects. She tried to shake them off of her, but on the unstable suspended bridge, that was not exactly the safest of practices. As she did so, Novia gasped and Silyah held on to the sides of the bridge with a double strength, really hoping not to fall in the water.

After a really long and frankly disgusting time crawling on the old planks, the three allies finally got to the other side of the river.

As soon as she got up, Silver made it clear that she would refuse to take another step before having thoroughly removed every filthy bug from her curls. She started out by picking out those she could see and then just furiously shook her head to exterminate the rest. "Urg, I hate bugs," she murmured, displeased.

"And yet you are not even afraid of one of the deadliest and stupidest tribute in the Games?" Silyah was incredulous, but she was not really the one to talk; she really hated insects too and was also in the process ridding her hair from them, however, she smirked at the fact that she might have found one of Silver's weaknesses…

"Of course not. Caskar doesn't have six legs, antennae and wings. He is big and dumb; easier to deal with."

"Just when I thought Caskar could not be anymore repulsive, you had to send me this mental image," laughed Novia. "Where do we go now?"

The girls collectively decided to go to the right, away from the arrows that had been shot at them when they had been on the bridge. They walked in the forest, careful, silent and unseen. They went on until the sky turned orange and their stomachs began to growl.

"We can stop here and build a small camp for the night," Silyah kept her voice low as a precaution.

"How do we divide the tasks?" asked Novia.

"I will go try to hunt something down, Novia you can look for berries and plants and Angel; you can make us a cozy shelter," Silver quickly gave everyone different chores.

"Sounds good to me," agreed Silyah.

Novia also nodded, then went off to her duty. Silver picked up a knife, gave Silyah a wink and ran off into the woods.

Silyah raised an eyebrow and undertook that task of tying one of her large bed sheet to nearby trees and roots, making a small tent. She gathered some branches and plants to camouflage the shelter. When she was done with the basic structure, she sat down in it, placing the other bed sheets here and there to make the place somewhat comfortable.

Silyah was putting her hair into a bun, securing it in place with small branches when Novia came back. The District 3 girl peeked out of the tent, inviting the other girl in.

Novia's backpack was filled with various types of plants.

"Do you know if they are safe to eat?" wondered Silyah when Novia stepped into the homemade tent.

"I only took what I could recognize from training," she nodded.

The two girls sorted the plants Novia had gotten and placed them in one of the pillowcases from Silyah's bed sheet set. Who would need a pillowcase in an arena where there are no pillows? Briefly wondered the brown-haired girl.

When the sorting was over, Silyah and Novia sat back in the tent, concealed from the rest of the forest. The District 3 girl made a let a small opening in the wall of the shelter in order to see if anyone was to come their way. Through that hole, Silyah and Novia watched the sky darken and waited for Silver as they each ate one of the roots Novia had picked up.

"Where is she?" Novia was starting to be concerned about Silver.

"Don't worry, no canons were fired so she is alive, that's for sure," Silyah reassured her.

Their conversation was broken off by a sound. Silver came through the trees with three freshly trapped rabbits.

Silyah opened her tent's "official entrance" to the District 6 tribute and motioned her to come and join them.

"The girl stepped inside the shelter. "Nicely done, Angel."

"Thanks," Silyah eyed the rabbits, her stomach making a funny noise. "Good catch, Silv."

"Thank you."

"Do we start a fire to cook them?" asked Novia.

"We might have to… Though we should try to limit the smoke."

"I know what could work," said Silyah.

"Oh?" Novia looked at her.

"We can filter some of the smoke with a damp bed sheet." She grabbed one from the small pile she had made. "We can suspend it to low tree branches and build our fire in a hole under it. We can also find some rocks to encircle the flames so that they won't go wild."

"Sounds like a good idea," said the black haired girl from 5.

Silver peeked outside of the tent, spotting a good spot for the fire. The three girls left the tent to go under the darkening sky and got to work on their improvised oven.

Slowly but surely, the team ended up by making a small fire, just big enough to cook their supper.

Halfway through her rabbit, Silver raised her gaze, looking up at the sky. "Looks like they're about to show the fallen," she said.

The anthem of Panem resonated in the whole arena. Silyah watched the sky, clearly worried.

Silver noticed it. "You are thinking of the Ice Prince, aren't you?" she asked as the eagle-shaped seal of the Capitol appeared in the sky.

She would not give Silver the pleasure of admitting it once again, but Artemis had been in Silyah's thoughts during most of the day.

The faces and names of the fallen appeared one by one where shining stars could have previously been seen.

Lynick Reah, District 5. Jehl Amnel, District 6. Cylan Actraz, District 8. Mareillie Trabrett, District 9. Trinicia Jestov, District 10. Jethro Mellrit, District 10.

"Seems that he was lucky," whispered Silver. "And you're now the only one of us who's District still has both of its tributes. Ours are dead."

Silyah sighed, going back to her supper. Artemis was safe… At least for now…

Today, Febuary 13th is a very special day; my co-author's 20th birthday! So to celebrate it (as well as Valentines day, which will be tomorrow) we will post 3 chapters this week, therefore releasing the 20th chapter (see what I did there).

Happy birthday, Alva!

-Mary