SONG: All my Days by Alexi Murdoch
It was a while before her breathing returned to a semi-normal pace, and even then Iris felt like she wasn't getting enough air. She tried to forget about just how high up they were, but that was hard to do, considering she'd nearly just fallen to her death. At least there was enough room on the ledge to sit and stretch out. It was about two metres across, and seemed to hug the canyon wall for a fair distance - hopefully enough for them to get past the Careers and climb down.
"I think I'm okay now," Iris said. She wasn't - would she ever be again? - but she knew that had to get a move on if they wanted to catch up to the Careers.
Agata looked at her, examined her face as if she knew Iris was lying. If her eyes weren't so expressive, Iris knew she would find Agata hard to read, considering her mouth was burnt and the skin around it tight - she couldn't seem to make facial expressions anymore, although Iris could somehow tell when she smirked. Maybe the cheeky glint in her eyes gave it away, or the slight twitch in her eyebrow. "Iris?" Agata said, and Iris realised that she had been staring.
Jesus, Iris, she thought to herself, feeling her face heating up. What was she doing, pondering the gives and takes of Agata's changed face, when she was sixteen metres in the air and had far more important things to worry about? "Nothing," she said, tearing her eyes away from Agata's. "Sorry. I was just thinking. We should get a move on."
"Yeah," Agata said. "Alright. Eyes always in front. Don't even think about looking down. When we hear them, we slow down a bit until we know we're past."
"What if the ledge thins? Or disappears? What if we get stuck here?"
"I think we just have to hope it doesn't."
Great, Iris wanted to say sarcastically, but stopped herself. She knew her own fear was making her want to lash out, and she didn't need to stir the pot with her only ally. "Alright," she agreed. "Sounds like a plan."
"You go in front, so I can keep an eye on you."
"What, afraid I'll stab you in the back, One? Thought we were past this," Iris teased.
Agata rolled her eyes. "I'm more afraid you'll freeze in fear and I won't notice."
A pang of embarrassment flooded Iris' system, but she ignored it. "Whatever. Just don't impale me from behind."
Agata smirked. "You wish." Iris remembered, only a few days ago, how tense it had been between them. The venomous remarks, the tension simmering under the surface of polite conversation. It was hard to believe that this Agata was the same one who had pinned her against a wall and told her how she would die. Iris never would have thought she would trust Agata, and yet here they were.
Night fell, but they kept going. Every second counted if they wanted to get ahead. They kept a good speed, and although Iris' legs ached, she didn't complain. As it got darker, however, they slowed down - it was getting harder to see, and Iris didn't want to accidentally fall off the ledge if it ran out. They couldn't risk using a flashlight, at least not until they'd gotten past the Careers.
After an hour or so of walking, voices began to bounce off the walls of the canyon, as they had before they climbed. Iris stopped and looked back at Agata, who nodded. The canyon walls flickered with orange light, and the smell of something meaty and warm drifted towards them.
Iris' stomach grumbled, and she licked her lips. Hopefully her stomach wouldn't give them away - if it got much louder, it wouldn't matter how quiet she and Agata were being. The food they had seemed unappetising - she wasn't quite hungry enough to work through a bag of salty jerky, or one of those dry protein bars, without any water to help choke it down. They'd run out of water hours ago, and her mouth already felt dry.
As they got closer, Iris began to distinguish words from what had previously just been noise. She strained her ears, trying to make out more than a few random words, but couldn't put together any distinct sentences. She felt Agata's hand on her shoulder, and she nearly gasped, turning around.
"Do you want to stop and listen?" Agata whispered,
Iris bit her lip. Part of her wanted nothing more than to just put the Careers behind them. To stop and listen would feel like tempting fate. But the curiosity in her won - what if they mentioned something crucial? Some plan, some weakness, something that could be used against them? She knew that Agata wanted to know if they still talked about her. What they thought of her chances, of her still being alive though they had abandoned her. Or had she abandoned them? Perhaps it was a bit of both. They were planning to kill her, anyway, so maybe it didn't really matter who abandoned who. She saw the same curiosity she felt burning in Agata's eyes, and so she nodded.
They crept forward, hand in hand. Iris couldn't remember when they had started holding hands, or why, but neither of them pulled away. She could feel the smooth metal of Agata's ring. It felt good, in Iris' fear, to have something solid to hold onto. Something more tangible than a hand on her shoulder or soft footsteps behind her. It was harder to feel alone when she had Agata's hand in hers. The voices of their enemies got louder and louder, and Iris stopped walking when she was sure they were right above them.
They leaned against the cool stone of the canyon, breathing quietly. Iris gently slipped her hand out of Agata's, seeing no reason to keep holding it. Agata didn't say anything, just leaned forward slightly.
"When we get back to the Cornucopia, I want to get some new clothes. These ones feel gross." Iris recognised the voice of the girl from Four. "All covered in scorpion blood."
"I just want to sleep in a tent again." This voice was male, but she couldn't figure out if it was the boy from Two or from Four. She looked at Agata and frowned, holding up two fingers and raising an eyebrow. Agata shook her head and held up four fingers. River, she mouthed.
"Don't you like looking at the stars as you go to sleep?" The girl from Four asked.
River sighed. "Yeah, it's nice, but it's warmer in a tent. I didn't expect the desert to get so cold at night."
"Well, I'm going to miss watching the stars. The sky is just as clear here as it is at home."
"Shut up, you two, and get some sleep. We've got three rats to hunt down tomorrow." A different female voice - the girl from Two. What was her name? Minerva, if Iris remembered correctly.
"I still think we should be sleeping during the day," River said, his voice arrogant. "It's so much cooler, we'd be able to make a lot more distance."
"Haven't I already told you to shut up today?" Minerva snapped. "I'll tell you again. Shut the fuck up."
"Don't talk to me like that."
"I'll talk to you however I fucking want."
"That's enough," came another male voice, which Iris supposed belonged to the boy from Two. "River, mind your goddamn business. Minerva, stop picking fights."
"Fine," Minerva snapped. There was a thud - had she thrown something, maybe?
"Let's all just get some rest. Minerva's right, we've got a big day tomorrow," said the girl from Four.
Iris wasn't sure if they said anything else, but there was some rustling and then quiet after that. She glanced at Agata, who shrugged. She jerked her head, eager to keep moving - she felt anxious, being this close to the Careers, even though there wasn't much they could do to them from down there. If they heard anything, by the time they climbed up, she and Agata would be long gone. Still, she wanted to move.
Agata nodded, and, still close to the wall, they began to walk again, no longer hand in hand.
/
It was about an hour before they felt safe enough to talk again, and even then only in hushed whispers. The canyon was pitch dark, and, miraculously, the ledge hadn't run out - it had gotten narrower at some points, to Iris' dismay, but there was always at least a metre of ground for them to walk on. "I hope we don't need to get down anytime soon, because there's no way we'll make it down in the dark."
"I mean, worst case scenario, we just wait until we can see. We're ahead of the others now, it should be fine."
"Is it easier climbing down or climbing up, do you think?"
"To be honest, I hadn't actually thought this through much… without rope, we won't be able to get back down."
Iris felt her stomach drop. "What do you mean, we won't be able to get back down?"
"Well, climbing up is easier than climbing down… and for an inexperienced climber like yourself, it'll be near impossible, especially considering how vertical the climb will be. Oh, goddammit!" Agata said, stomping her foot. "We should have thought it through."
A pang of annoyance shot through Iris. She hadn't been the one who wanted to climb, after all. "I'm sorry, 'we'?" Iris said. She clenched her fists. "You're the one who knows how to climb, how was I supposed to know we'd need more rope getting down?"
"Don't get all angry at me, it's not my fault."
"Well it's definitely not mine."
"Just because you don't know what you're doing doesn't mean I have to take responsibility for every little thing that goes wrong!"
"Every little thing?" Iris hissed. "You're acting like we've had this conversation before, and this isn't a little thing! I would go so far as to say this is quite a big thing!" Iris took deep, steadying breaths, knowing she was getting too loud. She wasn't even that angry - she was more tired, and had been hoping that Agata knew enough about what she was doing to make up for what Iris didn't know. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just scared. But can you at least admit you made a mistake?"
Agata took a deep breath. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry. I fucked up, and you didn't know any better. I think we're both tired and we need to calm down."
Iris wanted to argue with that, but she wasn't actually angry. She knew, logically, that her anxiety was making her react, and that it wasn't Agata's fault, at least not completely. "I guess I could have thought about it too. We're in this together, after all."
"Yeah," Agata breathed. "Time for a little rest, I think. We've been walking for hours."
Gratefully, Iris slid down the wall, resting her head on the cool stone. "Sorry for getting mad." She began rustling through her bag for something to eat.
"Sorry for forgetting we'd need to climb back down."
Iris handed Agata a protein bar, and hoped she knew she was forgiven. Agata took it, and smiled.
They munched in silence for a bit. Iris was finding it hard to swallow - her mouth was so dry she had to force the food down despite her hunger. They needed water desperately, but how were they meant to find any when they were surrounded by stone? She almost wished the Gamemakers would create a flood. At least then there would be something to drink. She could almost imagine it, the unstoppable force of water washing through the canyon, washing her away and Agata and the Careers down below. Shuddering, she tried not to think about it, and raised her gaze to the sky.
The night was clear and the moon was bright - bright enough that they could still see where they were going even though it was so late.
It was in quiet moments like this, when she was sitting with nothing to do, when the box in her head started to open. Kasia and Christopher and the boys she'd killed started to knock, knock, knock on the box, so loudly Iris could feel it as though it were the pulse pounding in her temples. She couldn't stand it and so she closed the box up tight and jumped to her feet and didn't look at Agata when she said "Let's get going, while we know they're not moving."
"Okay," Agata said, sounding surprised at Iris' newfound energy. "You don't want to rest any longer?"
"Do you?"
"Not really."
"Good. Let's go. We need to take advantage of the time we have while they're asleep."
And so they walked. Iris hadn't expected the Games to be mostly walking. She'd expected a lot more fighting, a lot more running for her life, but ironically there hadn't been much of that. I guess there's more of that to come, she thought.It was hard to enjoy the endless, sweaty walking, but when comparing that to the chaos of the Bloodbath, for example, walking sounded like the best thing in the world. The boy from Nine crept into her mind again - she remembered how easy it had been to kill him, how quickly he had dropped - and she shoved him out of her mind. "Go away," she mumbled.
"What?"
"Oh. Nothing." She hadn't meant to speak out loud. God, I'm losing it. The sky was beginning to get lighter, and Iris could already feel the heat of the day. The canyon still stretched in front of them, and she wondered just how long it went on - did it stretch across the whole arena? "Do you know how much longer it is to the Cornucopia?" Iris asked.
"Well, I've been looking for my landmark, and when I see it, I'll know where we need to climb."
"Landmark? What landmark? I'll keep an eye out, too."
"There's some sort of rock formation that looks like a cone. We saw it after an hour or so down here. If we climb back up when we see it, it'll be a few hours back to the Cornucopia."
"We haven't discussed what we'll do then."
"Well, there's a forest, so I was thinking we could sleep there. Maybe find some water."
"Water," Iris repeated, imagining a river she could jump into. It would wash the dirt and blood and sweat from her aching body… soothe her dry throat. "Water sounds good."
"It really does," Agata replied. Her voice sounded crackly.
Iris' head pounded, and she was reminded, again, of that horrible, dehydrated march through the desert. It had felt like she'd eaten sand, like an army of fire ants had crept down her throat and stung wherever they could. She didn't ever want to feel like that again. "You know we're fucked if we don't get some water soon, right?"
"Yeah. But it's only a few hours," Agata said. "Just a few hours, and then we'll find some."
Iris' legs ached, and she wondered if she would even last a few more hours. She hadn't realised just how tired she was, but they must have gone at least three hours since their last rest. More than anything, though, she wanted to keep going. She couldn't spend much longer in the canyon without going crazy. It already felt like the walls were closing in on her, and she would be trapped between tonnes of stone for the rest of time.
Hi! I'm alive. I haven't been writing much because I was travelling, which was pretty cool. If you ever go to Prague, get some hot chocolate - it's the best shit ever over there. Oh, and Berlin is awesome, try a brezel. I'm beginning to realise that most of my highlights are food related. That's fine.
Anyways, sorry not sorry for not updating. Hope you enjoyed!