I decided to take this chapter away from Katniss because you guys liked the idea of madge chappies and I love Madge whoops
)o(
Madge
We continue trotting through the jungle and I make sure to stay between Katniss and Olive. We've had quite the terrible start to this all and I really don't want a fight to break out, especially not this early into the Games. I'm very hazy on the details but I know that there's some kind of plan and it's apparently important for us to stick with Olive. Amphitrite, too, but the girl from Two is the priority from what Haymitch told me. Which isn't much at all, really.
"D'you think they're still fighting or already hunting us?"Amphitrite asks suddenly and we all stop, looking towards the Cornucopia, which of course we can't see from here.
"Easy way to find out,"Katniss replies and just like that, she starts scaling a tree. The rest of us wait, the damp warmth already making even breathing uncomfortable. My hair sticks to the back of my neck with sweat and I can't stop touching the wound on my arm. It's not a bad wound, really, that girl just blindly lashed out as soon as she got a knife in her hands. My retaliation was much more precise. Bile rises in my throat at the thought and I quickly push it away. We'll either get out of here and I'll deal with the guilt then or I'll die in the arena and it won't matter. And she attacked me first - a justification I have been repeating to myself over and over again since we ran from the Cornucopia.
"You okay?"Olive pulls me out of my thoughts, nodding at the wound on my arm. I quickly force a smile."Yeah, I'm fine. It's not that bad a cut, really."
Katniss slides back down to the ground and Amphitrite immidiately asks,"So, how many dead?"
"I think about seven,"Katniss replies,"Hard to tell, though. Especially those in the water. Could be dead or not, really. And they're still fighting."
"Right, let's keep moving, then,"I say,"We've got to find water. And soon, too."
So far there's been no sign whatsoever of a freshwater stream or a pond, and the seawater is of course undrinkable. And the elements kill at least two tributes each year, often times more.
We trek up the hill further and further, until Olive finally groans in annoyance."There has to be an end to this somewhere, we've been walking for ages."
Her words trigger a memory in my head almost instantly. I secretly watched Haymitch's games as soon as I was old enough to understand why my mum sometimes calls me Maysille. It has to end somewhere. The forcefield. There must be one here, too. I voice that thought to the others and we decide not to risk running into it.
Katniss cuts down a bunch of hard nuts that hand from a nearby tree like grapes and starts tossing them ahead of us as we walk. It only takes us about another ten minutes before one of the nuts hits the forcefield. It's thrown back to us smoking and blackend.
"Holy crap,"Olive says and that about sums it up."Imagine if we'd walked into that thing. We'd be toast."
We keep walking along with the forcefield to our left, Katniss in the lead, tossing the nuts. We all almost jump out of our skins as the cannons start booming, announcing that the bloodbath is over. Olive and Amphitrite count along in a cheery chant as each death is boomed across the arena. One. Two. All the way to eight. One third of our number has already been eliminated.
"I need to get a better look at the arena,"Katniss decides then, looking around for a suitable tree and climbing it quickly. Olive whistles in approval."She's like a squirrel or something."
It's not long before Katniss drops back to the ground, looking annoyed.
"The force field has us trapped in a circle. A dome, really. I don't know how high it goes. There's the Cornucopia, the sea, and then the jungle all around. Very exact. Very symmetrical. And not very large," she says.
"Did you see any water?" asks Amphitrite.
"Only the saltwater where we started the Games," Katniss says.
"There must be some other source," says Olive, frowning. "Or we'll all be dead in a matter of days. And that would be boring to watch, wouldn't it?"
"Well, the foliage is thick. Maybe there are ponds or springs somewhere," I say doubtfully."And Katniss just couldn't see them."
"There must be drinkable water between the force field and the wheel," Olive insists. We all know what this means. Heading back down. Heading back to the Careers and the bloodshed. And I don't like that. As few death as possible means as few victors lost to the rebell cause as possible. I can't see them all continuing to get along while their daughters, nieces and cousins slaughter eachother.
We decide to move down the slope a few hundred yards and continue circling. See if maybe there's some water at that level. Katniss stays in the lead, occasionally chucking a nut to her left, but we're well out of range of the force field now. The sun beats down on us, turning the air to steam, playing tricks on our eyes.
"Can we just stop a bit and try to find a sensible plan?"Olive says around midday, sweat practically pouring down her face. Two is one of the cooler districts, this heat must be even harder on her. We agree, all glad for the break. We make camp only about a dozen yards from the force field, so we can deflect possible attackers into it.
Olive and I use the sharp grass that grows in five-foot-high tufts to weave crude matts out of while Amphitrite and Katniss go off in search of water and possibly game. I hate splitting u, but it's our best bet at getting things done, really.