Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

The arena is covered in a large amount of tall grasses, they come up to my thigh and are swaying gently in the artificial breeze. I recognize several of them from the edible plants section at the training center and nod to myself, allowing a small smile to form on my face.

The smile disappears as soon as I remember where I am.

My breathing quickens as I look around, it is only now that I am in the arena that I notice how dreadfully short I am. The grasses reach to my thigh, and on most other tributes only reach their upper calf.

Every single tribute has more muscle tone on their arms than me- even the rats from District Twelve!

I chew my lip and look at the timer, forty three seconds.

I look to the tributes surrounding me, the physically imposing boy who gained a seven in the training scores from District Ten is on my left. His tanned skin almost seems to blend in with the beige colour of the grasses and his strong jaw is set, looking towards the cornucopia at the section with the rope. His chocolate brown eyes briefly catch mine and I look down nervously, hoping that this doesn't make me a bigger target and look to the tribute on the right.

District Eleven. His face is twisted into a grin, his eyes dark brown eyes sparkling with glee as he surveys the arena.

My heart sinks. District Eleven have an unfair advantage, they do every year. They are able to just flee from the cornucopia and hide out, securing them a place in the final eight. Almost every tribute from Eleven has done that, living off the land and securing them a few more days. Just enough time for the people in their District to get hopeful and then being promptly slaughtered in some of the most gruesome ways I have ever seen in the whole three years of the games.

I recoil at the memories and tear my eyes back to the countdown.

Thirty three seconds.

I look around, attempting to see if there are any less valuable goods nearer to me but the grasses hide them.

I let out a shaky breath I will have to go into the bloodbath. The one thing my escort told me not to do. Normally the middle districts can avoid this dilemma from taking some of the items closest to us and fleeing. Me and the rest of the District Five's tributes cannot survive off the land, we work in offices and power plants and not in the fields.

Sorry Minerva.

I look over the rest of the tributes and three to my left is Mizar, the boy from District Nine, looking like it's parcel day which I would do too because District Nine manufactures grains. The outlying districts have the advantage this year, despite the group of 'careers' as they are now known.

I turn my gaze towards the cornucopia, figuring out my best course of action.

My best bet is to hide in the undergrowth and wait for the other tributes to be occupied then running in and grabbing what I can before fleeing the way I came and hiding in the undergrowth.

I take another look at the countdown and let out a deep breath I didn't know I had been holding.

Twelve seconds.

The spoken countdown starts, and I listen to it with one ear as I crouch myself into a running position.

As soon as the gong sounds, I am off and running, only to be considerably slowed.

There was one variable I forgot to think of: the height of the grass affecting my sprinting speed.

The rest of the tributes seem to be able to move at a moderate pace and are over halfway towards the cornucopia whereas I have to put a lot of effort into moving, pushing the grasses out of my way as I trudge my way towards them.

I am only halfway towards the cornucopia when the first screams start, I force myself to move a few feet closer and then dive into the undergrowth, crawling my way towards the sound of the screams.

It takes me around two minutes to reach a break in the grass where the cornucopia stands in a lush green meadow filled with wildflowers of different hues. What detracts from its beauty however, is the dashes of crimson red that stain the ground.

Looking around, I can already see a couple of tributes on the floor and unmoving, while others still battle on.

My eyes settle upon a bright red backpack with a water canteen situated a few feet left of it, and a few feet beyond that is a bag of shiny red apples.

I look to my left and see the District Eight boy, Dan and the District One girl, Radiance attacking each other fiercely with tomahawks. To my right there is the small underweight girl from District Twelve being brutally slashed with a sword by the girl with curly blonde hair from District Six.

I wait for the District Six girl to move away from my general location and check to see that Dan and Radiance are still fighting before dashing into the middle of the cornucopia, hurriedly grabbing the backpack and swinging it onto my shoulders.

I run towards the canteen and snatch it up hurriedly and then twist my direction to sprint in the direction of the apples. I reach them at the same time the boy from District Three does and stretch my arms out to grab them. He does at the same time and a bitter game of tug-of-war begins, his superior strength eventually winning out as he shoves me towards the ground.

I slam to the ground, creating an audible 'thwack!'.

The force with which I had fallen winds me, and I lay in the meadow for a few seconds attempting to catch my breath before getting to my feet and running blindly towards the nearest item.

It is a torch.

I reach out to grab it, not noticing Radiance, having killed Dan coming up behind me.

As I duck down to snatch it, a tomahawk flies through the air and embeds itself into a patch of purple wildflowers which are positioned dangerously close to where my head was.

I make a quick decision and twist around, forgetting for the moment about the torch and see Radiance racing towards me with yet another tomahawk in hand.

I let out a gasp and run towards the other side of the cornucopia, strands of my caramel hair whipping my face painfully as I move to dash into the undergrowth.

I am within several meters of the grass when I am shoved to the right by what feels like a solid concrete wall.

It is not a wall, however: it's the boy from District One, who before I can think is on me.

I barely have time to let out a tortured, 'No!' before he roughly forces his spear into my chest cavity.

He grins viciously at me and lets out a 'whoop' of victory before pulling his spear out of me and returning to the bloodbath.

I let out a breathy screech, as I pant in an attempt to breathe more air in.

It is in vain however, I can feel my eyes closing and my already shallow breaths becoming more laboured.

I just want to go home.

If I concentrate really hard I can almost smell my mother's homemade apple pie which we sometimes on special occasions pour cream on. I can almost taste it on my lips, I can feel tears leaving my eyes and running down my face but I forget about that.

I forget where I am, even if it's just for a little while. I fill my mind with memories, almost like my life is flashing before my eyes.

I focus on picturing my little nine year old sister, Tyra. Her wide, bright amber eyes and tawny coloured hair. I remember how she used to jump on me in the morning to get me to wake up so I could work get to my job on time at the solar panels field. I used to call her my little alarm clock.

Her favourite fruit is apples. Her favourite colour is red. No, green.

I can't rememb-...

I...