Dreamers Live to Die
I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
Published 2020.01.11
I stood in the steel walled room, empty and alone. Haymitch and Effie didn't really believe in this year's batch of tributes, not really. All Effie really thought about was getting promoted to a better district or dreaming about making waves within the fashion industry. Haymitch hadn't really tried to pull through for either Yonnor or I, ending up drinking himself sick at the tense dinner last night after the interviews.
Perhaps Cinna cared enough about Katniss to see her go, but Potentia and Gregorius had friends in the city to watch the opening of the sixty ninth annual Hunger Games with.
Pacing around the room to distract myself from my poisonous thoughts, I ended up examining the material of the clothes for the games. They comprised of a nylon black tank top, dark grey skin tight pants, clunky leather boots strapped up with at least two feet's worth of lace strings, and a papery grey bomber jacket. My token was safely stuffed deep in the pants' side pockets, a comforting weight against my thigh for all the trials and tribulations to come.
"Tributes, please step inside the tube," a metallic voiced churned overhead on the speakers. Swallowing down the urge to vomit out of nerves, I stepped inside and locked my fate for the rest of my life.
The tube sealed shut with a hiss of steam before it shot straight up to the arena field.
At first, everything was so bright from the sudden shift in surroundings, but as my eyes calmed down and everything became less blurry, this year's arena was revealed. I wanted to cry.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let the sixty ninth Hunger Games begin!" Boomed Claudius Templesmith's announcement.
In the sixty seconds ticking by all too fast, I drank in my surroundings, hating more and more of it with each passing moment. A desert. A burning desert, with miles of large, sandy dunes and abnormally huge cactus plants every so often dotted my peripheries. The shining bronze cornucopia sat in the center of all twenty four tributes' metal platforms. I caught nearly everyone finally taking note of the sweltering heat of the desert and tugging off their jackets.
A bad idea, as these jackets were meant to protect our bare skin from blisters, sun rash, and burns. But I supposed not everyone knew that, not having had the extensive childhood education I had had all those years ago.
I squinted in the direction of the cornucopia's mouth, analyzing which were the most useful and if there were water supplies. There, off in the distance, some twenty feet to the left of the mouth and close to the boy from eleven's platform, was a single spool of especially conductive alloy metal wire that I knew the gamemakers this year put in for me.
And when Claudius Templesmith, the legendary announcer of the games (surprisingly not Caeser Flickerman, but I guessed the two of them worked on different projects), started counting down into the single digits, my mind sharpened to the clearest it had ever been.
The gong rang.
Faster than ever before, I darted to the boy from eleven's platform, glad that he and all the tributes surrounding him headed immediately to the center of the action. In ten seconds, I scooped up the spool of wire, stuffed it into my jacket, and ran to pick up a dark purple backpack off at the side. Someone else headed towards the same backpack, but it was securely fastened to my back by the time the first cannon was shot. The first cannon signaled to everyone that the Careers had reached the weapons at the cornucopia and it was very much time to leave. Not needing any other warning, I leaped out of crossfire from a boy throwing knives in my general vicinity and ran into the burning desert.
Once, a lifetime ago, I had a grandfather who stayed out too long on his boat during his weekly fishing trips. It had been the middle of a sweltering August, a record breaking high temperature showing all over national television. By the time a first responder team managed to booey his boat back to shore, he had suffered from heat stroke and died. Heat exhaustion set in before heat stroke, and I knew that water had to be a first priority, out here in the sands.
I must have ran for at least an hour straight because my lungs started to give out and my legs felt like jelly. In the desert, there were enough shadowy dunes and craven rock surfaces jutting out next to a bunch of cacti, but my brain was telling me to avoid the rocky platforms and stick with large, sandstone thick dunes. I didn't know what types of mutations of scorpions, snakes, or spiders lived in the cracks in the rocks, but any kind of desert cave was bound to be bad. My throat wasn't parched for water yet, but sweat dripped off my forehead by the gallon. Needless to say, I still kept the jacket on.
While situated behind a monstrously large dune, under its sweet shade, I spilled out the contents of my backpack after pulling the spool of wire from my jacket. An empty leather water pouch, a thin maroon blanket small enough to count as one of those autumn scarves, a rubber band, and a pack of dried fruits and nuts. A pack of essentials, minus the water.
A scaly lizard zipped past my feet.
The animals of the desert needed their water, too. I followed the lizard, hoping that it would lead me to a clean source of hydration, but a cacophony of cannons fired through the arena, distracting my senses long enough to lose track of the lizard.
Gamemakers always caught the first death in the cornucopia, but waited until the Careers cleared the area for the hovercrafts to carry away and count the number of bodies. I could only hope that they didn't head in my direction. In the end, fifteen people had died in the initial bloodbath. This number was unusually high, bringing the remaining survivors to a single digit number on only the first day.
If there were only four Careers this year, this meant that five people had spread themselves out among the dunes. Due to the severity of the climate, at least one more would die by the end of the night.
I prayed that it wouldn't be me.
"What do you think of this year's batch of tributes, Claudius?"
Gale glued his eyes onto the screen, heart still hammering in his chest. Nine survivors. Only nine left on the first day. This year's Hunger Games arena had to be the most brutal in decades, and his sister was a participant.
The screen split between the live footage following the popular Careers as they headed east, the exact direction of Blaire, and the two legendary hosts.
"Ooh, I don't know, Caeser. Have you seen Rogley's abs? That district one boy is smoking hot!" The camera zoomed in on the blistering sands. "Literally!"
A laugh track commenced.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" Mom yelled from the outside, where she was hanging her customer's linens to dry.
Gale fumed over the forced nonchalance from everyone. Mom pretending everything was alright, Vick and Rory still too young to truly understand what being in the Hunger Games entailed, and little Posy who didn't even know what death meant. He tried going to school in the morning, but everyone, including his teacher, kept asking him awkward questions about his well being.
He had punched his (their!) bedroom wall earlier that morning and accidentally sprained his wrist in the process, making it unsuitable to lose himself in hunting. Thus, the television. Watching his one and only twin fight her way through the blood sports.
Blaire's cold grey eyes widened on camera as she circled around an eight foot tall cactus. Separate angles showed her lips moving. "Do cacti have water?" The audio picked up. To the side, the hosts cracked a joke, but all Gale could do was watch his sister intensely. He didn't know what the word "cacti" was, but he bet that it was the weird looking plant.
She pulled out a rubber band from her backpack, backed away a sizeable distance, then shot the rubber band straight at the lime green spike covered husk. Nothing happened. She pulled a scraggly rock half the size of her head from the base of a sand dune, then chucked it into the cactus. Still, nothing.
A cunning light glinted in the girl's eyes - a light Gale knew all too well. Blaire was about to do something incredibly genius or incredibly stupid. It varied day to day.
She pulled out a spool of wire, then tightened a noose around the midsection of the plant. With a harried yank, the upper trunk tumbled straight down with surprising intensity, kicking up a cloud of sand.
The screen split again to welcome back the hosts after a small break.
"Whoa, we can see here that Miss Blaire Hawthorne is the first to discover that this arena actually has the most amount of accessible drinkable water out of all the past arenas," Caesar mused, bringing Gale into shock.
"Yes, yes," Claudius said. "In this specially designed arena, the miles and miles of desert have quite a few cactus plants filled with water inside."
The other side of the screen zoomed in to see Blaire greedily filling up her waterskin with the liquid revealed.
"But the catch is, the mutations don't like people stealing their water."
Because the water might have been contaminated - or just might be pure poison, who knew - I made sure to fill the waterskin to the brim, then splashed a few drops at my feet, where a few lizards curiously nibbled my shoes. At first, I had thought them to be mutations, but if they were, I'd definitely be dead by now.
One brave brown lizard scurried over to the drops and sucked it up. It scurried back. When the lizard didn't drop dead after a full minute after sucking up the water droplets, I deemed it safe enough to drink.
A shrill screech made me whirl around, back at the cactus stump. A giant bird resembling the lovechild of a bald eagle and a vulture crouched accusingly on top of the plant stump's rim, its narrow black eyes piercing straight into my soul. Judging by its size, its wingspan had to be at least thirteen feet wide.
With a creature of flight, running away, back turned, had to be useless. I wouldn't be able to spot any attacks. The creature cawed accusingly, its claws crunching the green barrel-like rim. And then it darted forward.
I jumped to the side, but a wing beat me back straight into a craggy dune. Sand sloped into my eyes and they burned from the contact as the bird changed directions and leaped towards me again. While dodging much more nimbly this time, I noted how it didn't bother using flight to attack. Perhaps the bird was too heavy to fly?
It screeched again, this time louder and more high pitched than before. My ears felt like they were bleeding as it jumped to attack again, its beak shining fiercely underneath the blazing hot sun. I didn't have any weapons. No knives, no spears, no nothing. The blanket could be used to momentarily distract the bird, but it was too quick to let me tie it up in wire.
"Oh hey, it's the girl from twelve!" Clamored someone from behind, and I risked a quick look back to see that the two Careers from district one had caught up. In the distraction, the bird had darted forward, ripping a large gash through the meat of my left shoulder. I howled from the pain just as the bird careened back into the two tributes.
"Rogley, hel - !" The female tribute screamed, and I heard the gruesome snap of bones and tearing of flesh before turning around with a hand clutched over my bloody mess of a shoulder. Rania Gnaeus, the female district one Career known for her deft skill with a javelin, was little more than a sack of sticky, wet meat. The bird had ripped a hole with its beak straight through her pelvis, leaving behind a pair of detached legs and a broken upper body. The bird mutation clawed through her remains, tugging apart slippery meat of her exposed trachea in a godawful squishing noise.
I ran. I ran and ran and ran, until the sun pounded behind my eyes in dry white spots and the noises of terror that girl from one had made cemented itself into the rhythm of my feet beating down on the dry grains of sand.
My head swarmed with flashing neon colors, splashes of blood, and a deep ache that felt a millennium old. Finally, as the sun receded into the horizon and a cool rush of wind breezed through my hair, the mild sting of sunburn pulled me back into reality. In a clockwork motion, not really thinking about my actions, I settled down behind a tall and unmoving sandstone craggy dune, drinking half my waterskin in a blur of motion. Hidden cameras undoubtedly had caught the terror worn cravenly on my expressions throughout the mindless journey out, carelessly tumbling this way and that, allowing the dry heat to fester into the gaping wound oozing viscous yellow pus.
Taking out the long thin blanket from my pack, I ripped it in half using strength I didn't realize I had and wrapped the cloth around my head in a middle eastern manner. Why I hadn't thought to do this for head protection, I didn't know. Using the remaining water from the waterskin, I poured out in dribbles onto the aching flesh of the shoulder, biting the inside of my cheek to stop from bawling.
Sponsors. Some sponsors would definitely do some good right now.
"I don't know if you can hear me, Haymitch," I mumbled into the ground, finally allowing myself to try to rest. "But I forgive you."
What did I forgive him for? I couldn't reply in just one answer, as he had done a lot of bad in his life. But I still forgave him for being a drunkard of a mentor, probably less coherent than district six's morphling mentors from all his strong brandy. I wanted to tell him all this and more, but the haze of fatigue caught up to me soon after finishing tying up my shoulder with the remaining part of the blanket, and I collapsed into the darkness.
The sound of the national anthem startled me awake. It was very much night time by then, so I had gotten a few hours of sleep in. Last night, I had slept terribly, tossing and turning in anxiety, so I couldn't imagine very much was keeping me awake at the moment other than the blaring noise of song.
However, the winds had shifted the shape of the land though the night, and I had to shake off several gallons of sand off my legs to sit up properly and view the projected hologram screen.
The female Career from one. A boy from three. Both tributes from four, five, and six. The girls from seven and eight. Both tributes from nine and eleven. The boy from ten. And when Yonnor's name and profile popped up on the screen, I could barely dig up an ounce of remorse.
That left three Careers, a girl from three, a boy from seven, a boy from eight, a girl from ten, and me.
Four girls, four boys.
May the odds ever be in your favor.
I woke up just as the sun began to rise, vibrant purples, pinks, and reds shooting across the blurry skies. Due to the undying winds of the night, I had to dig half my body out from underneath a pile of sand and shake off all the itchy grains that had somehow burrowed their way into my headscarf. A need for water parched my throat and cracked my lips, but I was hesitant to cut open a cactus again, especially after yesterday.
My skin blanched at the thought of yesterday. The girl from one. Her detached limbs strewn across the ground, staining the sands red. The fowl smell of her innards. An expression of horror forever memorialized on her features.
What was her name? Who was she? Did she have a family who cared for her? Little brothers? A baby sister?
Ignoring those haunting thoughts, I snacked on a few nuts and pieces of dried fruit in attempts to avoid the eventual battle of thirst.
Due to the extra few pounds of fat gained from eating lavishly in the Capitol, I didn't need to eat as much as I had feared. There were enough lizards around to catch, and the heat waves wafting from all sides of the desert would do well to hide any smoke signal. My pack of nuts and dried fruits didn't seem to be getting any lighter - another good sign. But dehydration was an issue, especially in a burning desert.
Because it was useless to walk underneath the blistering sun all day, I stayed under my shadowy dune, humming a raw melody from memory. A children's song. Something about roses and death. How morbid.
With only eight tributes left, only a third remaining, this would be when the hosts started interviewing friends and families of each victor to add to the screen time. It had been maybe twenty years since a tribute from district twelve had made the top eight, so I imagined the shock of any of the television program hosts traveling to the Seam just to get a glimpse of Gale's put-out choice words about my situation. That made me giggle, but I forced myself to choke down the rest of the giggles and smiles to not seem unhinged to the entirety of Panem.
So I thought about my family again, to create a somber mood. How were they doing? How many animals had Gale caught in the past week? Did Rory and Vick get over their little argument the morning of my reaping ceremony? How was mom? Had she requested a break from work to alleviate her stress levels? And then I thought about how Gale would be forced into the spotlight for interviews again, in just five years, for Katniss' Hunger Games.
He would hate that. He hated any kind of attention. His good-natured, selfless little butt couldn't help but do everything in his power to stay out of the homing beacons. The girls at school lapped it up and more than five of my students had come up to me proclaiming a crush on my brother.
Finally, when the dryness in my throat became unbearable, I crept out of my hidey hole and peeked over the top of the dune, observing the seemingly eternal stretch of land. I counted five cacti before deciding enough was enough and the best chance of sneaking water was going back to my well, a day's journey from my position. There couldn't be contaminations in the water, or at least not any notable ones, because there was a resounding lack of insects in the arena for vector travel, and the air sucked out all the humidity anyway. I'd be lucky to scrape off the inside goopy flesh.
That was how my day was spent, traveling back in the same direction, humming old show tunes and pop verses as my tongue dried and throat crackled with blood. Soon enough, not quite there yet, the pounding in my head retched on as painfully as the rot in my shoulder and just a rough breeze was enough to lay me flat on my back. When it becomes clear that travelling back to find water the same way was going to be impossible, I pull myself upright with wobbly legs and drag on south towards a plane of rocky crevices. I had been avoiding them for the past day and a half due to the implication that crevices and caves had something stored up inside, like a gargantuan spider, but I doubted the gamemakers wanted to kill off everyone in less than three days. Being down to final eight on the first day had to have been some sort of record, as it usually took until the fifth day of the games for that to happen. Instead of creating more deaths, there had to be drama. A new mutation that wouldn't kill, but cause intense nightmares. The field shifting to reveal a hidden dungeon. Finding an oasis. The fan favorite receiving a present from a sponsor. Those kinds of things had been lacking from this hellish arena so far.
With the last of my strength, I blearily stumbled down a little wave of sand, where it hardened into a nook. And then just barely caught myself before dropping face first into the deepest crevice ever seen. A gust of musty air breathed outwards, brushing my hair upwards to the sky. Whatever was down there felt older than the gods.
This led to an insane idea trickling into my head.
My undershirt, being the least useful clothing article at the moment, was the prime ingredient. Aware that possibly the entirety of Panem could be watching me at this moment, I made sure to take off the shirt from underneath the jacket as gracefully as possible. I ripped up the cloth into little strips, where I began knotting a perfect contraption against the dry yet sturdy mangled weed roots creeping up the sides of the crevice. Gripping my wires, I trotted off to the nearest cactus and started the cycle all over again. After refilling my waterskin and wiping off as much dirt, blood, and dust from my body, a single caw flitted from above. It was by miracle alone that I was able to dodge the mutation's first strike. It slammed straight into the ground where I had just been, so I took my chance immediately and dashed back to the crevice. Just the slightest whirring noise ticked my ears and I immediately swerved to the side, avoiding yet another attack.
"Come and get me, you stupid bird!" I rasped out, waving my arms maniacally. Said bird screeched powerfully and kicked off once again, shining beak honing in. I hooked one foot into a noose laying strategically just at the edge of the cliff, then fell backwards into the great beyond, the mutation following.
Because of the bird's wing structure and aerodynamic body, it plummeted all the way down the deep blackness. An unearthly growl shuddered from below, and that was when I swung myself to my side, grabbing onto the rocky walls and climbing back up. Heart still pounding and ultimately relieved that my handmade rope had held up (guess those Capitol cloths are made of sturdier stuff), I untied the noose from my ankle and gathered up all my supplies back into my pack.
Now that I had a fresh source of water for the rest of the day, or however long cactus water held, everything seemed bearable again.
I drank so much water I could hear it sloshing in my belly, and then cleaned every last nick of skin on my person. When I felt squeaky clean and refreshed and the barrel of cactus water was almost empty, it was finally time to reinspect my ever growing wound.
It didn't smell yet, which was a good sign that rot hadn't set it or anything too damaging. But there must have been some sort of nasty bacteria under the mutation's claws, as the barely clotting gash was surely infected. Its scabs were less of a hard shell and more of a protective layer of red-brown ooze.
"Wow, it'd sure be great for a few sponsors right now," I muttered under my breath, then cursing myself for drawling in sarcastic tones. While I disapproved of Haymitch's abundant drinking, it wasn't like he'd ever get right in the head to suddenly snap into sanity and pay attention.
Except for the girl on fire.
Katniss was a bit of a socially awkward and distant kid, from what I had seen, but the slight stammer whenever Gale mentioned her name or the sneaky expressions the twins wore whenever Gale and Katniss hung out on the recess field together meant that there was something more to her than what I cared to investigate. The trauma from losing your father to having to take care of your entire family alone probably had something to do with her distant attitude. Yeah, that was it.
A sharp metallic chirp echoed against the aggravating desert heat. A white box no larger than my head floated down from wherever, landing at my feet.
Oh god.
I grabbed the gift and scurried to a hidey spot behind a miniature mountain range of dunes. Inside, a small pot of white goo. There was only as much ointment as a matchstick box, so I made sure to conservatively apply the medicine to the worst of the wound. Instantly, the majority of the pain was relieved and a stress I hadn't known was there lifted from my mind. This medicine, the chemically innovative type, had to cost a pretty penny. I wondered if having a sponsor to afford this much spelled out certain trouble for my future, or an ignorable dread.
"Thank you," I rose my voice to the invisible cameras. "It is much appreciated."
No matter what it took, I was going to win the games.