This song has nothing to do with the chapter but I really like the song, so here you go!

You cut me down a tree
And brought it back to me
And that's what made me see
Where I was going wrong
You put me on a shelf
And kept me for yourself
I can only blame myself
You can only blame me

-"Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay

D12- 18- (Krumr Strongthews)

The announcement is easily blown over by Carlyn and me. We'll be there, no doubt. And even if we don't make it, I'll singlehandedly take on whatever stupidities thrown at us because we're not at the feast. Of course, Carlyn will help, but I could do it singlehandedly. I could slice open any mutt and decapitate their dying bodies because they can let out their sick cries of pain and fear from my mutilation. Surely it won't be as satisfying as taking a human's life, but it'll be like…like practice.

She points to something out in the grass. "Look."

I frown and look in the direction. "Grass," I mutter. "How fascinating."

"No, dipshit, look up a bit," she tells me, and I look down at her harshly. She smiles at me and kisses my cheek, to which I glare more intensely. "Oh, sweetie, you know you love it when I annoy you! You only seem idiotic when you pretend not to." She seems to find this amusing and lets out a girlish giggle that I know is not like her real laugh. She nudges me playfully and then points away from us again.

"The woods?"

She nods and then points far, far behind us. "And look back there too," she says. "Woods."

I frown. "Yeah…? So…what's that mean?"

She rolled her eyes. "God, it's really good you're strong and handsome because you're not bright. At all."

I glared at her and she smirks and lets out the too-fake girly giggle. "Just tell me what you're thinking."

"Oh, so you care?" She grins at me and lets out a content sigh. "I care about something too. I'm going to wait a bit to tell you."

It takes me a second, but I realize she means she wants me to kiss her. The look on her face—a wry half-smile/smirk—confirms this, and I glare at her. Whenever I glare at her, though, she just laughs or giggles or grins, and now she laughs her real life. It's a pretty sound, laced with a load of mischievous and impatience too. She smiles at me fully now and stands on the tips of her toes to reach me, kissing me lightly, knowing full well I'll kiss her back and deepen it to both of our satisfactions.

When we pull away after a few breathless, dizzy, but exhilarating moments too long of kissing with forceful passion and tense, fiery temper and fury, we both catch our breaths and she takes my hand. Everything in my screams for me to rip my hand away and cuss at her, but I just roll my eyes and continue walking with my long, quick strides, trying to get to the woods faster. She has to work to keep up with me.

"Anyway," she says, and I remember her thing about the woods around the arena. Carlyn looks up at me. "So the woods go all the way around the arena. The announcer said the feast would be in the woods. But there's…er…there are a lot of us. I don't remember how many."

"Nineteen," I tell her quickly. She can pay attention to the meaningless, miniscule details, and I'll pay attention to the important stuff: whom I have left to slaughter.

"Whatever. So, nineteen of us. We're not all going single-file to the woods, are we?" she asks me rhetorically, and grins at me, a glimmer of triumph in her eyes. "It's a trap!" she exclaims suddenly, and I raised an eyebrow. "Some people went the other way! All the way across the arena." She swings my hand delightedly, considering madly what lies ahead of us. She can think of what and I'll think of how to kill it. That's how we are: she thinks of stuff I don't care about and is Carlyn while she does it—and Carlyn and me, we're the only truly decent people left in this pitiful country, so being Carlyn is good—and I think about how to kill, who to kill, et cetera.

"There's no way they could find and travel to the right location," Carlyn continues. I'm actually somewhat interested in what she has to say; I don't want to be fooled by some stupid trick the Capitol has set up for us.

"What do we do about it?" I ask her.

She sighs and the giddiness fades from her as quickly as it had come. "Oh. That… That I don't know. But I'm working on it."

"How?"

"Well…" She shrugs. "Can we eat now? I'm hungry."

I shrug and stop walking, pulling my backpack off for her and handing her the gutted and cooked food I've hunted for. Who cares if someone comes for me? I'll kill them and make them beg for mercy. I want someone to be stupid enough to try to come to me and actually challenge me. Everyone in this arena, except Carlyn, is so far beneath me that it's rather sad how low he or she's gone, and how stupid or weak or both that they are.

We eat a little bit of food and find that we're starved. No matter how great we are, it's hard to find food out here. I have to force myself to tell her we can't eat anymore, that we have to save for later, and the resigned, defeated nod of the head she gives me makes me want her to be well fed. I know it won't help all that much, but I give her the rest of my dead bird anyway. There isn't much meat on birds, but we've been pretty desperate. Birds are gifts. And I like the taste of bird anyway. I'm used to it, at least, from hunting at home some.

"No, you should eat this," she tells me.

I shake my head and insist that she take the bird. She reluctantly, after a second, agrees, and eats the meat off the bone of the bird. I smile a little bit to see her eating and stop myself quickly, telling myself that this is stupid and that it'd be horrible if she saw. I'd never live that down. But she has seen, and I see the look in her eyes before she can extinguish it. Something like admiration fills them.

We're far more than what I thought we were. We don't just kiss for the passion roaring between us, or for the pleasure. We care about each other. This realization startles me. I care deeply for her. I don't want to see her hurt. But I know she must be, if I am to live.

All the same, whoever kills her, whoever harms her, or even so much as touches her…well, even I pity them, though I will be the one to smother their useless face on the ground and spat in their face. I will be the one to slaughter them angrily, with fire.

"Krumr?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's go now."

D10- 17- (Nick diLaurnetis)

I clutch my spear and Astrid's hand. The announcement has frightened us all and we're rushing the final part of the journey, desperate to get there before the time is up. We have time; we'll make it. I have to tell myself this because I can't give up hope when I'm trying so hard to push it into Astrid. She clings to my hand and nods every time I say something encouraging, but I don't think she honestly believes my words.

"Nick," she says finally. I say, waiting for the words I know she's going to say. Or I think I know what she's going to say at least; we haven't known each other long enough for the other's actions to seem predictable. "It's okay. You don't have to tell me we'll make it anymore, really."

I look down at her. Her snow-white skin and her raven black hair are such a contrast that it's like her hair is the words on her skin, which is the pages of the book. Her long eyelashes flutter down as she blinks. "I'm sorry. I'm being…"

She smiles slightly. "I know." She stands tall on the tips of her toes to kiss my cheek, and I nearly blush.

It rains even in the desert area. We stick close to the river. It's freezing, and eventually we have to huddle together for warmth. Astrid and I watch in all of the amusement we can muster in the cold as Damien and Decon look at each other in alarm when they realize they need to huddle together too. With grouchy, irritated expressions, they extend their arms to each other and hug one another, but after a few moments both of them step away, shake their heads, and I hear Damien say, "I'd rather die."

If we're lucky enough to make it to the feast alive, we'll die from exhaustion and hunger. But judging by the weather and our good luck in finding a river, we won't die from dehydration. Still, the pull of hunger tugs hard and makes my stomach hurt. I've known hunger but not like this. The animals we've been managing to kill as they scurried along have so little meat on them, and divide that by four people…

Astrid's condition is bleak. She's wounded and has only eaten once since we've gotten in here, and being it day five I would say that that's not good. It wouldn't be so terrible if she didn't need energy from food for her body to fight off infection. She is so brave but so weak. I admire her and all I want to do is get her to safety and keep her safe there. Unfortunately, that would in the end result in my death.

If hunger and coldness and Astrid's impending death isn't enough to keep me worried sick, it looks like Decon and Damien are getting tense anytime they talk to Astrid and me. They look at us menacingly and they whisper together a lot. I fear the four of us will be splitting up soon, and I also fear that someone will die when that happens.

D3- 14- (Calypso Oswald)

"Speed up," Nelly told me earlier.

"Speed up," I tell her now.

Our stomachs growl, begging us to feed them, feed them, feed them. But we can't, because we ran out of food yesterday. And the fear of dehydration was strong yesterday as well, but now that our thirst is quenched, I fear we'll get hypothermia. There is no escaping the number of ways to die that are completely natural in the arena, because once one thing is resolved, the Gamemakers throw us another to make us scared for the Capitol.

As I think this, a parachute floats down from the sky, and my eyes widen. A sponsor gift! We've gotten a sponsor gift? This is my first one, and I'm so excited I go tearing into it as soon as I can reach it. Nelly watches from next to me, and we find a basket of two average-sized loaves of bread. One loaf of bread is tinted slightly green like the sea, and I give this to Nelly. The other is the sloppy crappy-looking bread of District Three. District Four's bread, while it must taste the same, at least looks nice.

And yet, the bread has never looked more beautiful. With all the self-control I have, I tear off a tiny chunk, throw the bread sopping wet in my backpack, and eat the little chunk. It in no way satisfies me, but instead, if it's possible, makes my hunger grow stronger. All the same, I keep going, fearing with intensity what will come after me if we don't get to the feast on time. I look over and see a big bite taken out of the bread as Nelly throws hers in my backpack.

Then, suddenly, she exclaims, "Okay, we're going to have to be very, very, very quiet now. And we're going to have to run…" She looks out, squinting through the rain. We're both shivering a lot. Too much. She points to some shrubbery and I wonder if it'll be warm under there as she tells me, "Let's run to that now and hide. We don't have very much time, okay? But we have time for you to just…turn around."

I do, and I see just enough to know we need to run. Tribute or mutt, something's over there, and I hope it didn't see us.

D6- 17- (Dante Kyanide)

The fools. The rich, arrogant fools with their "ingenious" ideas and their sponsors and their good looks. The idiots. They know nothing, absolutely nothing, and they will never understand what we need to do. They will never look to me either, the fools, when I know what must be done. We'll never make it to the woods. We should be readying ourselves for whatever is coming to punish us for not going to the feast.

I've faded to the background, doing their dirty work. I hardly think they know I exist. We continue to walk all day in the rain that does not cease. I'm soaked to the bone, shivering so bad that when I lean into our supplies and grab a bag of chips to snack in, hoping to keep my mind off of things, my fingers won't cooperate to get the bag open. I throw the bag at the wheelbarrow that Jackson is pulling, frustrated. Stone throws me a cold look.

"Don't," she snaps. "We may need those."

And the worst part is, it's true. The chips slide off the protective covering over the wheelbarrow and I sigh, wanting something to eat. I continue to walk until Adelina comes up to me and narrows her eyes as if this is the first time she's noticed me. The look gets my blood boiling, and in the anger of the rain and being so alone while surrounded by the Careers, I have to resist the urge to take my knife and shove it down her throat. She will be the first District One bitch I kill, and I will kill her slowly. I will injure Daphne and tie her down and make each other watch as I slowly kill the both of them, and then I will hunt Gleam down and shove a knife down her throat…

"Hey, Six," Adelina snarls. "Why the hell aren't you wheeling the cart?"

"'Cause it's not my turn," I mutter simply.

"What, idiot?" she spits at me.

Red-hot, dangerous, fist-clenching anger surges through me with such force I just want to kill anyone, anywhere, and torture them so they feel the anger and neglect I feel plus so, so much more. Everything I can think of to hurt them.

I clench my jaw, but the words come from me anyway: "You listen here, bitch! Everyone but your fucking idiot sister is sick of you and your…your…stupidity! I'm not wheeling your stupid cart."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel the anger seep away and know what I've done. I've condemned myself to death. I can see it perfectly in her fiery eyes. She gives me a warning glance that tells me she's going to kill me tonight, and oh, she's going to love it. I swallow hard and resolve to leave before them. I'm fast. I just need knives and poison. Knives and poison will be my salvation. I will outrun them, make it to the feast, and kill the girls there—

It thunders and I quake. I hate thunder and lightning. I hear Adelina laugh as she walks away. She calls to all the others cruelly, "Our mule back there's scared of thunder!"

Where there is thunder, there is lightning, and lightning can— boo-oo-oom! The thunder rumbles the ground and I shiver more. Lightning streaks through the sky and I make sure no one is looking while I force myself to go to the cart and pretend to examine some knives. They know I'll catch up quickly. I grab a couple and search as fast as I can for poison, but I only come up with what I think is poison before throwing it in my backpack because Gleam is calling back, "Six! Get up here! You're holding us back."

Maybe I'll kill her first.

D9- 16- (Aeris Lockhart)

When I open my eyes, I find that I don't remember falling asleep. I find that it's hard to remember anything. Things are wobbly, and facts swirl around in my head, mixing up with each other and confusing me. I continue to remind myself things as I see Asher is asleep. What's weird is, this all feels normal, like I've always had to think repeatedly, I am Aeris Lockhart, I am Aeris Lockhart, I am Aeris Lockhart…

Eventually the boy on the floor of the cave, whose name has slipped from me, wakes up, and he seems just as confused as me, but he snaps out of it quickly. He's very handsome and I want to kiss him. I stop saying my name in my head and walk over to him, kissing him lightly on the lips. He pushes me away and I frown at him, wondering why he didn't want to kiss me. Am I not as pretty as he is handsome?

"Aeris," the boy says, looking at me funnily. "What's up with you?"

"That's my name!" I exclaim with a giggle. I lean against him and wrap my arms around him. "What's your name? I want to kiss you after I learn your name."

"Aeris Lockhart, stop it right now," he snaps, and I scoot back slightly, afraid of the angry look in his eyes. I don't know why he's mad at me, I don't know what I've done, and I just want to kiss him. That's all, that's all I wanted to do, so did he think I wanted to do something else? I wasn't trying to bite his lips off or something. That would be disgusting. So why is he holding me at arm's length and yelling things I can hardly even hear at me?

"What's your name?" I persist, and I feel tears going down my cheeks in my fear. "Please don't hurt me, nameless."

I don't know where I am. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am. I don't know why I am. I don't know how I am. But that's okay. It's a little confusing but that's okay too.

"Aeris, please," the boy says softly, and now he's hugging me and rocking me and I find that I can't move but that's okay. I don't mind. Maybe the handsome boy wants to kiss me now. I let him rock me and feel wetness plop on my cheeks, but I know it's not my tears; it's his. I don't understand and I'm starting to get scared again. What's wrong? Why is nameless crying? I don't get it. What's going on?

"I'm Asher Lightwood, Aeris, and you're Aeris Lockhart and no, please don't go to slee—" But it's too late, because my eyes are already closing, and I find myself hoping that if he's not going to be normal next time I wake up and just kiss me, I don't want him to be there. Blackness swarms around me, and I can't move, and I don't really know a lot…but that's all okay. I don't know why, but it's all okay.

And off in the Capitol, the head Gamemaker said to one of the other Gamemakers, "Natalina, have you got a cannon ready?"

"Yes, I have," Natalina responded to her boss.

"Okay. Put it over...there." The Gamemaker pointed to where the death just occurred. "And let it go."

...

I've put many tributes in some life-threatening situations and I'm not going to say who the death(s) was until the next chapter! So no tribute list. Hehehe.