It takes me several days to find the perfect spot for our new home. I lead the others to a large clearing surrounded by towering pines. There's a pond in the middle of it that is overflowing with lilies, and the grass is soft and smooth against my fingers. The river is only a few miles away from here. Prim finds some blackberry bushes growing just outside the clearing, near the river.
"Katniss, look." She carefully picks one and holds it up for me to see. "Blackberries."
Haymitch lifts a stick off the ground. "We can make shelters out of sticks, vines, and leaves"
"It's settled, then. The first thing we need to do is build shelters," Peeta says. "Haymitch, Katniss, Mrs. Everdeen, and I will start collecting the necessary materials. Prim and Lavash can gather berries."
I head off with my assigned group to find materials. Fallen branches are easy to come by in the forest, and I have collected a large pile of them in less than an hour. I take my sticks back to the clearing and leave them there while I go to find more. My mother is collecting vines and leaves. I wave to her as I pass by, but she doesn't seem to notice me. As I bend down to pick up a branch I see Peeta dragging one behind him.
"You'll never guess what just happened," he says. "This thing fell from a tree and landed next to me. It's a good thing I wasn't standing a little more to the left."
"You should be careful," I tell him. "A branch that size can easily kill someone."
He offers me a smile. "I will."
It takes us until nightfall to collect enough wood to build a few shelters. We decide to start working on them in the morning. I wonder how many we will need to build. Prim, Mom, and I can share one. Peeta and Lavash can also share a shelter. Haymitch will have his own, of course. That means that we will only have to construct three of them. I also want us to build an infirmary for the sick and a pantry for our food.
Everyone wakes up bright and early to begin building what will be our new homes. Haymitch demonstrates how to set them up. We need to stand the sticks up and secure them with the vines. Then we use mud to cover the spaces between them with leaves. The remaining leaves will serve as our beds.
It takes us awhile to get the hang of it. Lavash is holding his shelter together while he waits for Peeta to finish tying it with a vine. It's not long before Peeta's prosthetic leg slips on the grass and he falls into a heap on the sticks, taking his brother down with him. My family isn't doing much better. Prim can't seem to get a firm grip on the larger sticks, and they end up falling right out of her hands. Haymitch has to help us tie them together.
We build two adequate shelters on one side of the pond for my family and Peeta's and one shelter on the other side for Haymitch. We decide that the pantry will be built an equal distance between our houses and Haymitch's house. The infirmary will be the farthest building away from us, near the edge of the clearing.
We spend the rest of the day gathering more materials to build the other two facilities. The construction of the infirmary begins at dawn the next morning. It needs to be large and safe for my mother to house the sick and injured. We spend hours working on it until she is satisfied with it. The pantry takes us only twenty minutes to set up. We put a divider in the middle to separate meat and edible plants.
Haymitch crafts us a table and some chairs so we can play cards. I'm a little surprised that he brought a deck of cards with him, but that's nothing compared to what Peeta brought. Peeta sets up a chess board and asks Haymitch if he would like to play the game with him. It's not long before the two are completely immersed in the strategy game.
Prim and I build a bench near the pond. It's a great place to relax and gaze at the lilies. We sit there for hours while the beautiful scenery washes away our worries.
As the days pass by, everyone falls into a steady routine. We wake up at dawn, collect food and water, eat, relax, and go to bed at dusk. Haymitch scouts the area twice a day for dangerous animals or peacekeepers. My mother goes out into the forest every once in awhile to collect medicinal herbs. Her head injury healed pretty quickly once she was able to rest. Lavash's broken arm has also healed, and he is now the person we call on to patch up a damaged building.
Our lives are peaceful for about a month, and then our little group is hit with a strange virus. I was the first one to catch it. It starts out acting like the flu, but it eventually causes violent outbursts and strange hallucinations that remind me of when I was stung by tracker jackers. I can't help wondering if it was created by the Capitol in an attempt to wipe us out.
"I brought you some food," Peeta says as he hands me what looks like a handful of flies.
"Blackberries?" I asks, tentatively taking one. It feels like a berry.
"Yeah." He sits down and begins feeding them to me.
Peeta has been caring for me ever since I fell ill two days ago. He stops by in the morning and evening to bring me food. I often wake up from a nap to see him lying beside me, a worried look on his face. It's lonely sleeping in the infirmary, so Peeta has moved in with me. I fear that he will catch whatever it is I have.
"Has anyone else gotten sick?"
He frowns. "Well... Prim has a persistent cough, but your mother said it could just be a cold."
He's just saying that to calm me down, but it isn't working. This disease starts out as a cough and then gets much worse over time. Prim could be my roommate in a matter of days. "Keep an eye on her, okay?"
"Lavash is watching out for her. Don't worry." He slowly leans down to kiss my forehead. "Katniss, Haymitch thinks we might need to go back to District 12..."
"No," I say decisively. "It's too dangerous."
"Your mother agrees with him." His fingers trail down my back, making me feel a bit relaxed. "You could die without the proper medicine, and Haymitch seems to think we'll find it back home."
I look up at him, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. "Who else is going on this suicide mission?"
Peeta doesn't answer me for a long time. There is a fearful look in his eyes, almost like he is afraid to tell me. "Just Haymitch... and me."
Hello! I hope you all are enjoying the story. Don't be surprised if the point of view changes from Katniss' to Peeta's for a chapter or two. I'll give you another heads up when it happens. Thanks for reading!