"Careful," said Peeta. "There's a force field up ahead."
Katniss laughed through tears, keeping a tight grasp of Peeta's jumpsuit with one hand, while the other caressed his face and brushed his hair back. The couple had forgotten about their allies, who sat near them—Finnick out of breath and Olive trying her hardest not to touch her bruised neck.
"Must be a lot stronger than the one on the Training Centre roof," he added. "I'm all right, though. Just a little shaken."
"You were dead! Your heart stopped!" Katniss burst out, surprising Finnick and Olive, who turned their heads in their direction to check on the two of them.
"Well, it seems to be working now," Peeta replied. "It's all right, Katniss."
With a hand clapped over her mouth to muffle her innate desire to sob, Katniss answered Peeta with a nod, which only worried him further. Peeta focused his eyes on Katniss, taking in her tear-stained face along with her irritated eyes overflowing with tears. It was a rare sight that he would have preferred not to be the cause of, far less in the middle of the Hunger Games.
"Katniss?"
"It's okay. It's just her hormones," said Finnick between ragged breaths, receiving a judging look from Olive. "From the baby."
"No. It's not—" Katniss tried to retort, though her continued sobbing was not helping her prove her point.
Contrary to what Katniss expected, Finnick didn't show any bit of satisfaction to be proven correct. His eyes detached from her and Peeta to acknowledge Olive's quiet stare. Just like him, Olive showed no interest in the situation further than Peeta's well-being, which alone, in the Arena, was suspicious enough.
Finnick took a minute to remember Peeta, and, turning his head in the couple's direction, he asked. "How are you?" He gave the two no time to reply and added. "Do you think you can move on?"
"No, he has to rest," Katniss answered, sniffing to make an attempt at controlling her running nose.
With her hands on her knees to propel herself up, Olive got up to rip off some hanging moss from a tree limb. According to her somewhat well-kept memory, it would work as a handkerchief, which her ally needed. Katniss took it and blew her nose and wiped her tears without a question while her attention got pulled back to Peeta, or rather, something golden that rested on his chest.
The couples concentrated their attention back on each other, forgetting the others' existence for as long as they could delude themselves. Finnick kept his eyes on Olive as she sat down next to him, undoing her ponytail to put her hair up in a tight bun. Like that, it bothered her less, and no strands of hair would end up stuck to her neck or face, though it also attracted a lot of attention to her bruised neck.
"So you want to make camp here, then?" Finnick asked the young couple, dreading the idea of staying unprotected next to a force field.
"I don't think that's an option," Peeta answered. "Staying here. With no water. No protection. I feel all right, really. If we could just go slowly."
"Slowly would be better than not at all." Finnick helped Olive get up before moving over to the couple, letting Katniss go to Olive for more moss-handkerchief to finish pulling herself together while he helped Peeta to his feet.
Katniss checked her weapons in an attempt to regain some control over the situation, which could work sponsor-wise, but not on Olive. She had experienced the situation in the front row and had seen Katniss' desperation. No amount of control would ever distract her from her thoughts—Katniss loved Peeta, perhaps even more than what Katniss herself could acknowledge for the time being.
"I'll take the lead," Katniss said.
Peeta voiced his objections right away. However, Finnick didn't let him make a point as he cut him off. "No, let her do it." He glanced over at her, frowning slightly as he continued. "You knew that force field was there, didn't you? Right at the last second? You started to give a warning. How did you know?"
The response wasn't exactly expected since Katniss revealed after much consideration that she could hear the force field, while the rest couldn't hear a thing. She made them stay quiet a couple of times, listening for anything that wasn't insects or birds, but none ever heard anything out of the ordinary.
"I don't hear it," said Finnick. "Olive?" Olive shook her head. "Peeta?" Peeta copied the action. "Well, but if you do, by all means, Katniss, take the lead."
Olive had just regained her grip on her bow and quiver when Katniss voiced her thoughts once again. Apparently, she could only hear it from her left ear, which the Capitol doctors had reconstructed. It didn't seem impossible, but, in the case that Katniss was lying, Olive had to give her props for blaming the Capitol for their advantage.
"You go, then," Olive whispered, which diminished the pain, but still added fuel to the fire that ran rampant in her throat.
They continued moving in the new formation—Katniss leading the way while Finnick stayed at the rear—the force field to their left as they moved forward. With a handful of nuts, Katniss decided to make her prediction more accurate by tossing them ahead, which every few minutes found the force-field and got thrown back, blackened and with cracked shells.
Olive fell back from Peeta's side as she stared at one of them. The nuts were somewhat familiar, though she couldn't quite place them anywhere in her memory. Had she read it in the book on poisonous plants in the training centre?
"Is something wrong?" asked Finnick, keeping an eye on Katniss and Peeta, who hadn't realised yet of their allies' distraction.
"The nuts," mumbled Olive, picking one from the ground before resuming her walk, this time staying by Finnick's side.
"Do you recognise them?" he asked, to which Olive could only shrug. "Poisonous, maybe?"
She stared at the nut in her hand with a frown, trying to go over years' worth of survival tips, in which her mother's advice was the least present, yet somehow the most important. "I don't think so."
"Alright," Finnick said, taking the nut from her hand, peeling it, and eating it.
"Finnick!" Katniss cried, surprising both Olive and Finnick. "Spit that out. It could be poisonous."
"I guess we'll find out," he replied with a shrug.
Perplexed, Katniss glanced at Olive, as if she had now become the rational one in Katniss's eyes. Olive didn't say anything, nor did she gesture anything. Her eyes trailed back to her husband, who at least seemed to be completely fine for the time being.
"You trust me way too much," she whispered.
"Not really, I trust you like I should," he replied, omitting "like a husband should," despite implying it.
Around an hour passed by with not much luck regarding their search for water, nor their attempt at finding a spot in the force field to get further away from the Cornucopia. It almost seemed as if they were walking in a large circle, which would only lead them back to the start.
"Let's take a break," Katniss said after seeing Peeta's sweat-drenched state. "I need to get another look from above."
Peeta and Olive took a seat on the opposite tree, watching Katniss disappear as she climbed up. Olive felt tempted to follow, but one person to check their surroundings was enough. Not to mention her great lack of strength, and the extreme exhaustion that had appeared with the hour-long walk after being flung back to the ground by Peeta's temporary dead body.
Minutes passed by in the relative silence of the jungle. No threats, tributes, or Gamemakers' interventions of any kind appeared—a peaceful time that would only last the first few days, or until the Capitol got over their sadness and demanded to see blood being spilt.
"The force field has us trapped in a circle." Katniss was back, missing an arrow, and running her hair through her loose strands of hair to keep them from sticking to her face. "A dome, really. I don't know how high it goes. There's the Cornucopia, the sea, and then the jungle all around. Very exact. Very symmetrical. And not very large."
"Did you see any water?" asked Finnick.
"Only the saltwater where we started the Games," she replied.
"There must be some other source." Peeta became the voice of reason, though his frown didn't quite get his message across as he would like. "Or we'll all be dead in a matter of days."
"Well, the foliage is thick. Maybe there are ponds or springs somewhere," said Katniss. "At any rate, there's no point in trying to find out what's over the edge of this hill, because the answer is nothing."
"There must be drinkable water between the force field and the wheel," Peeta insisted, which only meant one thing, going back down.
Instead of going far too low, they put enough distance between them and the force field to not worry about that threat for some time, and continued circling. Occasionally, Katniss would toss nuts up front, assuring herself that they were out of the force field's range. At least, until the sun shined down on them, playing tricks on their eyes and making moving forward impossible.
By mid-afternoon, Finnick chose a campsite about ten metres below the force field, claiming that it could be used as a weapon in case of any enemy attack. It was good enough for Katniss, who appreciated the chance to let Peeta rest before whatever the Gamemakers had planned for them could arrive.
Olive sat down, glancing at the sharp grass growing around them. In their condition, and taking into account where they were, making something like mats out of blades of grass would be a nice distraction that would last a while. She got on with it right away, getting lost in the weaving and the surrounding silence.
Not saying a word to anybody, Peeta got up to collect nuts and fry them with the force field. Apparently, Finnick's lack of ill effects was a turning factor for his choice. Since they were sure that the nuts were most likely not poisonous, having them as a meal would be better than remaining thirsty and hungry.
"Finnick," Katniss called, making all heads turn in her direction, "why don't you stand guard and I'll hunt around some more for water." There was an effort from the three to deny her suggestion, but the thirst weighed more than their worries. "Don't worry, I won't go far," She promised Peeta.
"I'll go, too," Peeta suggested.
"No, I'm going to do some hunting if I can," she replied. "I won't be long."
With Katniss gone, Olive and Peeta continued with what they were doing, Peeta staring back at where his lover had disappeared every minute or so. Finnick watched from the side at first, his trident ready in case anything happened, but as time passed, and the Cornucopia's cannons played, he joined in Olive's task.
"Eight," she mumbled, her eyes and fingers losing their prior focus.
"Mm-hmm," that was all Finnick could answer.
He knew what Olive would be going through. After all, he had lived the same ten years ago. Perhaps it wasn't her first official games, but it was just as if they were. She had no memory of her time in the Arena, and some weeks ago, it had been left clear that she couldn't remember most of her time during the interviews that followed her victory. She was the same as a brand-new tribute.
"You think that Johanna…" she began, but couldn't find the strength to finish her sentence.
"No," he said. "She's fine. Somewhere in this jungle."
Olive nodded, taking Finnick's words like the ultimate truth. Not doing so would bring a wave of feelings that she could in no way process at the moment, so, as her mats of grass were done, she quickly found something else to do. In the end, by the time Katniss got back, she had created a simple hut with Finnick's help, and some bowls for Peeta to place the nuts in.
"No water." Those were Katniss's first words after coming back. "It's out there, though. He knew where it was," she added, hoisting a skinned rodent up for them to see. "He'd been drinking recently when I shot him out of a tree, but I couldn't find his source. I swear, I covered every inch of ground in a thirty-metre radius."
"Can we eat him?" Peeta asked.
"I don't know for sure," she said. "But his meat doesn't look that different from a squirrel's. He ought to be cooked…"
To their surprise, Peeta came up with an idea that would save them from creating fire in such a tiny Arena, where the smoke could not be hidden. He took the rodent meat with Katniss's permission, skewered it on the tip of a pointed stick and let it fall into the force field. Just like the nuts, it got bounced back blacked, but perfectly cooked on the inside. The rest gave him a round of applause, which they had to stop at the realisation of where they were.
Inside the hut, the four watched the sun sink until it disappeared from the sky as a simple chatter began, mostly about the nuts and the rodent. Katniss was wary about the nuts, though Finnick's trust in Olive's judgement and his lack of ill reaction pushed her to try some from the closest bowl to her. Meanwhile, Finnick couldn't stop coming up with questions about the rodent, which they ended up naming 'tree rat'.
With the moon's appearance, the conversation trailed off to sit at the entrance of the hut, awaiting the list of deaths. As the sky brightened to show the seal of the Capitol, Olive slipped her hand into Finnick's, hoping for the night to be dark enough to hide it. However, he didn't seem to mind. His hand grabbed a hold of hers, intertwining their fingers as the first death appeared in the sky with the anthem—the male tribute from District 5.
Olive held her breath as the male tribute from District 6 disappeared in the sky, which she immediately regretted as she found herself being relieved at seeing Cecelia's face in the sky. It wasn't Johanna. That relieved her. But someone had still died. A woman with three kids had died and her only thought at seeing her image in the sky was how glad she was that it wasn't Johanna.
"It's OK," Finnick whispered, caressing the back of her hand with his thumb.
Seeder's face disappeared from the sky, and with it, the Capitol's seal made a brief appearance to put an end to their first night in the Arena. The sky was back to normal, ridden of all light that didn't come from the moon, and no sound other than the insects and the breeze, and metallic hit against the ground.
A silver parachute had landed right in front of their eyes, snapping the four's attention away from the sky and back into reality. Still, no one moved to retrieve it. They only stared with blank expressions, as if it would open by itself at any moment.
"Whose is it, do you think?" Katniss was the first to talk.
"No telling," said Finnick. "Why don't we let Peeta claim it, since he died today?"
"Good idea," mumbled Olive, her hand detaching itself from Finnick's as Peeta got up.
He got back with the content of the parachute, a metallic object that he, Olive, and Katniss couldn't recognise. It was small and cylindrical, with a hole that traversed from one end to another; something none of the three had ever seen, or rather, they didn't remember.
"It's a spile," said Finnick once the metallic object ended up in his hands.
"A what?" Peeta asked.
"A spile," Finnick repeated. "Olive used it in her Games to get water from a cacti field."
The words landed on the alliance oddly. Their desire for water couldn't wash away the surprise and worry from their faces. For Katniss and Peeta, that was the first time to come to actual terms with Olive's amnesia. Somebody else was talking about her Games, probably the worst days of her life, while she couldn't even remember anything about them. She was just as baffled by the news, and utterly just as helpless as them, maybe even more, in the Arena.
Her lips pressed together into a thin line, refraining herself from asking, "How does it work?" out loud. Judging from Peeta's reaction, Finnick would explain in no time, and, even if he didn't, she would see it in action soon enough.
"Sort of like a tap." Katniss nodded at her own thoughts. "Well, for the right sort of tree." Before Finnick could drill the spile into a tree, she stopped him. "Wait. You might damage it. We need to drill a hole first."
Katniss gave a shawl that she had kept on her belt to Peeta, who drove it straight into the bark, burying the spike two centimetres deep. Alongside Finnick, the two took turns opening up the hole with the awl and the knives until it could hold the spile. Not missing a second, Katniss wedged it in carefully and we all stood back, as if water would spurt out of nowhere.
Nothing happened for a second, driving the four's attention closer to the open end of the spile. Olive was the first to notice a drop of water rolling down the lip, which landed on the palm of her hand. She examined it before liking it. Although she could only taste the accumulated dirt and sweat, there was no doubt that it was water. Not particularly fresh, but better than nothing at all in the middle of a waterless jungle.
Some wiggling and adjusting later, Katniss and Finnick managed to get a thin stream running out. Not exchanging a word, they took turns to drink from it—Peeta being the first fortunate. Although, as his turn ended, and Katniss was about to suggest for Olive to take her turn for her damaged throat, Olive walked away.
"Where's she going?" asked Katniss to Finnick in a whisper.
"I don't know," he replied, forgetting about the spile and the stream completely to watch as Olive brought some tightly woven baskets over. "Don't walk off like that again."
"I only went to the hut. Don't be dramatic," she said in a tiny whisper, though it was clear her throat was not yet prepared to talk that long.
They filled baskets Olive had brought; two for drinking, which they passed around slowly, and another to clean their faces that moved along considerably quicker. Soon, the thirst was no longer a distraction from their exhaustion, forcing them to make preparations for the night. Katniss retrieved the spile and strapped it to her belt with leaves that Olive weaved together to form a strong rope.
"I'll take the first watch," Finnick announced, which Katniss and Peeta accepted surprisingly fast.
"Wake me up when you're tired," was all Katniss said before lying down next to Peeta inside the hut.
At the entrance of the hut, Olive and Finnick sat together, watching the outside as they took advantage of the night's discretion to hold hands. It was a perplexing feeling. They were in the Hunger Games, inside an Arena that promised horrors that could kill them the moment they left their backs unprotected, and yet they couldn't make their relationship obvious. The sponsors were something to keep in mind, and in such an Arena, the sponsors' gifts would keep being an important part of their survival. It all forced them to keep up the appearances.
"So you remember my Games, huh?" Olive said, leaning her head on the grass wall as her eyes drifted anywhere except Finnick's direction.
"I can't forget them," he replied truthfully, surprising Olive at the lack of his expected Capitol behaviour. "Even if I tried." He turned his head to look at her, driving her attention to him. Particularly, his eyes, which seemed to shine just as brightly as the moonlight. "And I tried."