Lizbeth
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.
Another cannon went off early in the morning, when she was already on the move.
Hey, look at me! Made it to the final five. Didn't expect that to happen.
Lizbeth might have had the advantage of being eighteen...Almost nineteen, if the Reaping were just two weeks later...but she didn't have much else going for her in the Arena. She was small; she was good-looking enough but not drop-dead gorgeous like other tributes she could mention; she was smart enough, but not a genius in anything useful. She could sing, but outside of the interview with Caesar where it did gain some positive attention, that skill didn't help much.
At least I know my way around a coniferous forest.
The Capitolites sure didn't, judging by the way her and Ben's stylists had put them in "pine tree" outfits with fake conifer needles that far more closely resembled spruce...Ha, Ben's last name...or fir. They hadn't appreciated Liz's correcting them.
Ben did, though.
But he'd been gone since Day Eight, and today was Day Eleven. They'd split up and what was left of the Careers had got him; Liz had heard them. Cheering. Roaring.
Up until then, the Sevens had been doing okay. The Arena's landscape was similar to a lot of District Seven in winter, with lots of spruce and fir and hemlock trees. And yes, some pines.
Wonder if our stylists had got some kind of hint. Or they just tossed darts at a board covered in tree names, one or the other. Then got it wrong anyway.
She kind of wished the Arena had cedars, too. The smell of cedar was the best.
Ben knew how to trap rabbits, and they were both familiar with the edible plants of the Arena even before the training center. They'd both spent their fair share of time in the woods.
"And you've spent your fair share of time in bars," Ben had joked when Liz had pointed the thing about the woods out.
"Hey! You try living in an orphanage, you'll do a lot of things to earn some extra coins! People like to hear me sing!"
"Oh, I know, I've heard your voice! But how did you even get into bars back when you were , what, fifteen?"
"I've looked older than I am for a while, so people let it slide. So long as the Peacekeepers don't care, the owners don't, either."
She'd been happy to sing a few lines during her interview, when Caesar had asked her if she had any talents. The Capitolites had liked it, not that she cared about that. It had just felt kind of great to perform all dolled up in a sparkly green slip dress and emeralds instead of a faded purple hand-me-down. And she just liked to sing, period.
Pity I can't just belt it out in the Arena. Stealth is important when you're a tiny human like me.
She'd taken to soft humming and singing along in her head instead. Back home, she'd memorize every song she could, from old folk songs from other people in Seven, to practically ancient recordings the orphanage staff would sometimes play, and even to the often silly music the Capitol would sometimes play on the television and radio. She cycled through them all when she sang for others.
Usually she stuck to her favorites... the beautiful ones, the meaningful ones, even the fun trashy ones... when she was singing for herself. Or humming for herself, rather. She went through a lot of them as the day wore on.
" Hear the axes sing, hey, down the valley a way…"
Motorized saws were actually best for cutting down trees. But the Capitol didn't want to waste the extra resources on giving out expensive equipment. So unless a saw was deemed necessary by the foremen, the loggers used axes.
"I can hear the wind in the mountain trees, calling out, calling me home…"
Outsiders seemed to assume District Seven was all trees. But there were mountains, too. Towering, gorgeous mountains with peaks too high for any but the toughest tiniest trees to grow on. Mountains worth writing songs about.
" Ocean waves, like music loud, rattling rocks like a cannon shot…"
Capitol songwriters were terrible at lyrics. But they had catchy melodies, Liz would give them that.
" Call the loggers in now boy, call them in quick as rain…"
Sometimes the Capitol was so greedy that they forced district workers out into the woods in storms. The rain rarely killed, the wind often did. A massive falling tree was no joke. Lizbeth had lost both her parents that way. She had remembered that whenever she found herself enjoying the Capitol luxuries a bit too much.
"I'm taking a ride with my best friend, I hope he never lets me down again…"
She hadn't even admitted it to Ben, but she kind of missed the orphanage. Sure, there was almost never enough food to go around and there were too many rules and the headmistress always took half her pay from the bar gigs, but hey, it could've been worse . She had been excited to turn nineteen and leave, to make her own way , but still. It had been some kind of home. And the staff all had pretty good tastes in music.
So did Ben. They'd never been friends, but had grown up in the same part of Seven. She could remember tutoring him alongside some of the other kids in his grade, the one beneath hers. He'd been a hell of a lot smarter than his lazy then-teacher gave him credit for; letters just showed up backwards for him. They did for her, too, but less so, she thought.
Guess we were both lucky the district schools aren't supposed to teach us too much. That's what the orphanage headmistress had always said.
Not that any of that mattered in the end.
" You're in the final five, Liz; you're doing good . Just keep your knife handy, keep moving, keep alert, keep an eye out for potential food…" Maybe she could find another hollow full of squirrels and acorn stashes. Those oak trees must have been modified; there are barely any around, not enough for that amount of acorns.
Then again, this was an Arena. Everything was fake or false in some way.
Like her sense of almost-security, apparently. Because in the early afternoon, she rounded a thick grove of firs and found herself staring across a small clearing directly at the two remaining Careers.
Before she could even think of running and hiding, they saw her. Their weapons glinted in the weak sunlight as they charged through the snow.
Lizbeth shoved off her backpack and pulled out her short knife, her only weapon since Ben had had their ax when he died. But she'd make do, as long as she could. Sevens rarely went down without a fight.
Hey, at least I survived longer than a lot of kids in Panem.