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Plop. Plop. PluuuuuuuuunNNNNNNNNNK.

I woke with a jolt as something cold and wet fell on my face. I grimaced and brushed the half-melted snow out of my eyes, glancing up at the branches above me. The snow was melting fast, dropping off the trees and hitting the ground with a sound like rain. The sun filtered through the rapidly baring branches, and I wondered how long I had been asleep.

I looked down at the ground and saw that the snow on the ground was turning into a muddy slush, and the footprints from the night before were almost impossible to see. I cursed loudly and jumped down from the tree, grimacing at the impact. I looked at the faint trail and started jogging along it, desperate to get as much use out of it as I could before it was gone entirely. I got maybe a half a mile before the trail veered off to the left, and into the spring section of the arena. The spring section was far closer to me than I remembered, but I didn't pay any attention to it. I was far more distracted by the complete lack of tracks for me to follow.

I groaned internally. How was I ever going to find them and catch up?

I walked a few hundred yards into the spring section, looking for any hint of where they might have gone, but there wasn't one. I closed my eyes and listened; aside from the chirping of birds, the singing of mockingjays, and a few noises I couldn't identify, there was nothing.

Okay, calm down, think. Where would Ash have gone? Why would they have come over here, what would they have wanted?

I looked over my shoulder at the rapidly melting snow in the distance.

Well, they wanted to get somewhere where people couldn't track them. And then they would have tried to lose any pursuers, presumably by going at a weird angle or by zigzagging. And, most importantly, they would need water.

The thought of water made my throat close up. I was so, so thirsty; the only water I had had in twenty-four hours was a mouthful of snow. I closed my eyes again and listened, searching for the sound of water, but I didn't hear any. I groaned, and looked around again. The ground sloped slightly downwards, and I knew that if there was any water around here it would be at the bottom of the hill in a valley of sorts.

I walked downhill. Sometimes it was so flat I wondered if I was still going downhill, other times it was so steep that I had to use my hands to navigate the terrain. The sickly-sweet smell of honey blossoms filled the air and flower petals drifted through the warm breeze. The sun was golden and split bright-green leaves, casting the ground in a million colors from bronze to sea-green, almost as though I was walking on stained glass. It was, for all intents and purposes, the embodiment of spring.

I finally heard the clear sound of a creek and followed it until I saw a tiny little rivulet flowing between the stones. It was no more than three inches wide and one inch deep, but I knew it must flow to something bigger.

I knelt and cupped my hands, getting as much water into them as I could manage, and swallowed it in a single gulp. I repeated the process until my throat no longer screamed for water, and I sat back on my heels.

I looked at the soft dirt around the tiny trickle of water and noticed a few scattered footprints. Some of them were small enough that they could belong to my friends. I stood up, crossed my fingers, and walked downstream. A small stream wound in to my right, combining with the other stream and creating something closer to a foot wide. I figured the other stream was created by the melting snow in the winter sector.

I kept following that stream and more and more little rivulets met it until it was several feet wide, and then several meters wide. The area grew rockier and rockier until huge boulders lined the river, with huge dark gashes between them.

I don't know why, but I stopped walking. Something hard and cold rested in the pit of my stomach, and the hair on the back of my neck bristled. Something hard and cold brushed against the nape of my neck and my heart fluttered.

"Stay where you are," a familiar voice said from behind me. I stiffened, and tried to even my breathing. "Turn around – very slowly."

I put my hands out to my sides and turned as slowly as I could, turning to look behind me. The first thing I saw was a very sharp steel arrow-head, attached to a long silver rod and knocked in a elegan recurve bow. The bow was held by...

"Ty!" I breathed out, relieved. He stared at me and quickly released the tension in the bow, dropping it so that the arrow pointed to the dirt. The bow clattered to the ground and he embraced me, his arms wrapping around me and holding me close.

"Rosa," he breathed into my hair. "I didn't think we'd see you again. We thought you were dead, but we didn't see your name last night..."

"I worried the same about you," I said, pulling back and looking up into his eyes. "Is everyone alright? Are they together?"

"Yes, now," he said, but then his smile faltered. "Well, except for one..."

"Fillie," I said quietly. "I saw his name on the stones. What happened?"

"He was the last child up. I was following them to bring up the rear, and I got distracted fighting one of the District 7 boys. While I was distracted, the other boy from District 7 followed them up the rope and cut Fillie down. I shot the lad on the rope and he fell to the ground. I thought he was dead, but the gravestones say he didn't die for hours..." A pained expression flashed across Ty's face, and for a moment I worried he would be sick. He quickly covered his expression with a poker face.

Images filled my mind. I pictured the boy on the ground, an arrow through his stomach, gurgling in his own blood... Just enough blood in his windpipe to make him feel like he's drowning, but not enough to actually drown him. The stabbing pain of his shredded internal organs quivering around the shaft of the arrow, the strength leaching out of his body. He couldn't move, he didn't have the strength to end his own life, all he could do was lay there staring at the sky.

"Where are the others?" I asked, trying to get away from the subject of the boy's slow and painful death.

"There's a cave a few hundred yards downstream," Ty said. "I went out scouting and collecting water and food." He shrugged a sack off his shoulder and showed me a half-dozen full water bottles and fruits. He also had a dead rabbit flung over his shoulder, which he showed me.

"I'm guessing you guys got plenty of stuff from the cornucopia then?" I asked, looking up at him.

"Yeah, we got two bows, throwing knives, three swords, basic supplies, and stuff to lay traps," Ty said, ticking off the items they had managed to get.

"Excellent. Do we have enough weapons to keep everyone armed?" I asked. Ty shook his head.

"Most of the little ones don't have weapons. Thomas has both a sword and a bow because he's second -best with a bow, but he doesn't really know how to use it well... It's a good thing you're here." He smiled wryly. "So you can have that bow and he'll just use the sword."

"Sounds like a plan," I said with a grin. "Let's go see the others." Ty nodded and picked up his bow, then slipped around me and continued downstream. After a couple hundred meters he walked directly into the middle of the river and cut around a stone jutting out of the water, then disappeared. I followed him tentatively and around the stone I saw a tiny crack in the rock no more than a foot wide, and it was only about three feet deep. It was the only thing I saw, so I slipped into the crack.

The crack curved off to the right and opened into a tunnel that you couldn't see from the outside. It twisted a little bit and then opened into a huge cavern with a sandy floor. I stared around the cavern, awe-struck. Cracks in the top let sunlight filter in and it let smoke from various camp-fires float out. The cracks separated the columns of smoke and dispersed them, so they would hardly be noticeable from the surface.

"How did you guys find this place?" I asked, in awe.

"Rosa!" Ash's voice filled my ears and he barreled into my stomach. I staggered a foot or two trying to catch my balance and wrapped my arms around him, holding him close. "I thought you were dead."

"It takes more than some rocks to kill me," I said, and smiled down at him. "Besides, I haven't gotten you to the finish line yet, have I?"

"It's good to see you," Dianna said with a gentle smile, and she clasped my hand.

"We found it yesterday," Thomas chipped in, and tossed me the bow he had slung over his shoulder. "Yesterday morning this was the fall section, but by that evening it was the winter section. It was snowing hard and the river was frozen, and some of the kids weren't doing too well. We were worried they would die of frost-bite. So we tucked Kiki and Hawk into this crevice to get them out of the snow, and we were looking for another one to hide Ash and the girls in, but then Kiki called out to tell us that there was a tunnel. So we investigated and... well, here we are."

"The seasons are changing?" I asked, frowning.

"Yeah. Within a couple hours, it'll be summer here," Ty said, collecting a few stray arrows and tucking them into a quiver to hand to me.

"Oh well, no harm's ever been done by summer's hand," Thray said. "Let's roast that rabbit, shall we?" Ty tossed Dianna the rabbit, who then set about skinning it and cleaning it. Ty then passed around some of the things he had in his bag; wild strawberries and a few not-quite-ripe apples, with wild blueberries and blackberries thrown into the mix.

Everyone ate hungrily, and the only sound was our chewing and the river.

"Hey! I smell something," a voice said. I looked around to find the speaker, but no one had spoken. A cold chill crept down my spine and I looked up. Through the cracks above, I could see something moving.

"Yeah! Me too. Smoke... and cooking meat? Where's it coming from?" another voice said, belonging to a girl. I recognized the voice... Maroon.

I swallowed hard.

The careers were right outside.

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