Chapter Fifteen

I feel a cold cloth against my forehead. My eyes snap open, and my body lurches upwards to a sitting position. Someone found me last night, but whoever it was isn't around any longer. My body is no longer burning inside, and my hands and feet feel almost normal.

"Capri! You're awake!" At first, the voice frightens me. I fumble along the ground for my trident or my net, but I can find neither. I look up at the voice in fear and see Mason wearing a large smile and carrying a tray of food with a silver parachute hanging off the side. I sigh in a mixture of relief and gratitude. "Good, you need to eat. You've been out cold for the past day and a half."

He puts the tray in my lap and hands me a bottle of water. He sits next to me. I make him take a few bites of the beautifully cooked fish and bread, but he makes me eat the rest. That upsets me slightly, but my hunger overrides any thoughts of remorse, and I slowly eat the entire plate of bread and fish. When I finish, I set it to the side.

"What happened while I was out?" I begin knotting at the net Mason had returned to me. My trident is now by my side as well.

Mason takes a drink of water and then begins speaking, "Well, I found you two nights ago asleep against a tree. I got you to wake up long enough to move you over here where it was more sheltered, but then you just passed back out. When I woke up the next morning, there was a parachute for you. It was some kind of burn ointment from the Capitol. I put that anywhere I saw burns: your arms, your face, your hands, your feet. Later there was another parachute. It was some kind of liquid in a vile. I poured it down your throat. I recognized it as something to help with the smoke you inhaled from the fire."

In his long pause, I ask, "Has anyone else died?"

"Just the girl from Nine; it was yesterday afternoon." Evella. I give him a solemn nod, and I continue knotting my net.

We sit in silence for a long time. Mason is whittling a piece of wood with one of his knives, and I'm knotting my net. It should be big enough to catch someone the size of Ceaser and Birch now, but I continue knotting anyway.

"Mason," I grab his attention, but I can't seem to meet his eyes, "tell me about your life back in Four."

When I finish the knot I was working on, I put the net in my lap and turn my attention towards him. He continues whittling while he talks. "Well, my mother is a nurse at the hospital, and my father is a teacher. I'm the oldest of five. All sisters: Willow is the oldest at ten, Jane and Jenny are twins –they're eight-, and Nicole is the baby at five." He talks for hours it seems, telling me stories about the girls when they were younger and stories his mother had told him about himself and stories of when his parents were dating that he had been told by his parents.

It begins to grow dark when Mason grows quiet. The anthem plays, but no faces are displayed tonight. With Valarie and Evella gone, there are only five tributes still alive: Ceaser, Rory, Birch, Mason, and me. The Games will be ending in a few days.

"Go to sleep, Mason, I've been sleeping for too long anyway," I order him. Other than a quiet "wake me up if you get tired" there wasn't an argument to exit his mouth. I throw my net over my knees and rest against a tree, Mason's still form in plain view, with my trident in my right hand.

When I wake Mason the next morning, I don't tell him that I dozed off last night and then woke up as the sun was rising. We walk all morning until we find the clearing from the first night in the Arena. The pond with the fish is still there, so I tell Mason to start a fire while I catch us a fish.

It doesn't take me long to catch one. I leave my boots on because I'm worried someone will find us here, and I don't want to take any chances. We cook the fish over the fire, and eat it slowly. After eating, we refill our water bottles and sit against an extremely large tree.

"What about you, Capri? What was your life like back in Four?"

I'm silent for a moment. I'll give him the short version, the Capitol version, the version without Henry. "It's just me and my dad. He's a ship captain. My mother died when I was little." My hand goes to my necklace. I smile out of instinct. "She was a deckhand on a ship when it caught fire. She tried escaping, but she got tangled in some seaweed underwater and drowned."

I realize how dreary my story is compared to his, so I tell him stories of my mother and father and me. I tell him the story about the three of us on the beach that I told Finnick. I tell him the story about how she cried when she dressed me for my first day of school because she knew she wouldn't be there to walk me back home. I told him how I met the Ekkos. Henry is in the story, but I leave out his significance without a second thought. I tell him the story of Sara's attack and how we've become even more like sisters since then.

A canon sounds. I grab Mason's hand to ensure that he's still beside me. He is, and he's clutching my hand with the same amount of pressure I'm clutching his with.

It's not dark yet, but it will be soon.

"We should find somewhere more hidden to sleep since it's just the two of us," I voice my thoughts and get to my feet. I remember that when we entered the clearing, we were directly in front of the pond. I point my trident at the woods behind the pond, "We came that way," I rotate my arm to point in the opposite direction, "so we should probably go that way and walk until we find a good spot."

Mason and I walk side by side until he spots two nearly parallel fallen trees with a good five foot ditch between them. "Alright," he begins, "you need to sleep since you didn't last night." I don't protest and fall asleep almost immediately.

I wake a little while later to the sound of the anthem. Birch's face fills the sky. The shock on my face must be incredible, but I'm happy that I won't have to take him out myself to get home.

My chances of going home are becoming better and better. One in four. Twenty-five percent. I smile slightly and fall asleep against the cool dirt.

A/N: Once again, I hope you all are enjoying this story. Thank you to everyone who commented, favorite, and followed since the last update.

This is week three of the Saturday update, so let's see how far we can go. I'm currently writing Chapter Twenty, so get excited because we might be kind of almost done!

If you don't like something about my story, I would love to know what it is. Please leave a review about what you do and don't like about what I'm writing so that I can get better. Also, if you have any ideas about at what point I should end this story and start the sequel, that would be welcome. Or if I should just continue updating on this story. Thank you and have a splendid day!