Yarrow Venus- District Three female (17)

The fighting was all right. Honestly, I could have done without it. I'd chosen Shep partly so he could get into all that and let me fade into the background. I was happy to learn about historical warfare and all, but it was really embarrassing to get up there and do it. I was on camera, after all. I really didn't need everyone in Panem watching me badly swing a shield.

What do Vikings eat, anyway? From the stories, I would have guessed probably potatoes and roasted meat. Then again, they were supposedly way stronger than everyone around them. That would imply they were eating lots of vegetables and healthy foods. I could smell something cooking, but I wasn't sure what it was. It didn't smell like it had any spices. Probably they didn't have many back then unless they raided a spice ship.

I was sitting on the grass at the edge of the demonstration field. Shep was still out there with the instructors, which hopefully gave the camera people enough footage they wouldn't nag me. I leaned forward in anticipation when a staff member came over with a long tray.

"You're not out there fighting?" she asked as she set the tray down. I was surprised to see there weren't any potatoes. There was what looked like a bowl of porridge, and a plate with some meat, and littler bowls of vegetables.

"I was, but I got tired," I didn't exactly lie. We were pretty much always just a little tired. "Oh, I thought Vikings ate lots of potatoes."

"Actually, potatoes weren't in the Old World until hundreds of years after the Vikings," the worker said.

"Oh, really?" I asked. All my life it had been universal knowledge that poor people in medieval times ate lots of potatoes.

"Back in those days, grain was the staple food," the worker said. She pointed at the bowl. "A Viking was likely to eat lots of barley porridge." She pointed at the plate with meat. "And most couldn't afford livestock, so they would hunt venison."

I'd never had venison before. It was cool how it tasted so… sharp? Vibrant? It tasted a lot more alive than most meat I'd had. Maybe it was because it was wild and not farmed.

I was surprised to feel almost lonely as I watched Shep from the sidelines. A lot of people would have said I was missing out by not joining in. It just didn't seem to do anything for me. It seemed like life in general didn't do much for me. I knew how to keep myself alive and stay safe, but I didn't know much about hobbies or friends or things like that. I couldn't think of anything in the world I was really passionate about. Shep didn't care if people were watching. He enjoyed the swordplay enough he went out there and enjoyed it anyway. It must be nice to enjoy things.

It must be nice to have friends. It wasn't that I was some monster who never tried. I just never connected. I never got to that point where I knew someone and they knew me and we knew we liked each other. Maybe the problem was that I didn't know myself well enough. I couldn't find someone like myself when I didn't know who I was, either. If you asked just about anyone at camp about me, most of them would say we were friends. I'd always known how to be polite and inoffensive enough that people thought of me as a bland acquaintance. I did very much want people to like me. That was one thing I knew about myself. Sometimes I thought I wanted to be approved of more than I really wanted to be liked. Approval was something you could earn. Friendship was personal. It was subjective. Subjective things were risky. I guess I'd always settled for the certainty of being a likeable person over the risk of trying to be a friend and getting rejected for something I couldn't argue about, like my personality.

It wouldn't be long before this was over. We kept talking about how we'd stay in touch and be friends forever, but we wouldn't. We'd write a few times and then we'd go on with our lives. People change and grow and do new things. We can't keep up friendships with people we never see. It's just not human nature. Now and then a memory would bubble up and we'd smile, but it would be the past. Even if I made friends here, it wouldn't be forever. It seemed stupid to take that risk and put in that effort when I knew it would be temporary. It must be nice to have friends, though.

Alara's interview, unedited: I got stung by a jellyfish. I was wading out to get a fish I caught and it got me. It was very pretty- bright blue with feathery tentacles. Hurt like a bee sting, though. Leo said to pee on it but that's not really a thing. I rinsed it off and it's not so bad.

Val's interview, unedited: Kallik won the ladies' section of the arm wrestling championship. Love me a big muscle momma. Dorian won the male section but that was obvious so no one cared.

Lana Mason- District Six female (17)

It was kind of peaceful doing laundry. You felt like you were being productive and it was also serene sitting by the gurgling Creek and scrubbing dirt from shirts. If two people went, you could even have a chat. It seemed that the river interfered with capturing audio, since we never saw the camera crew nearby. Val had tested it out by conspicuously talking about a huge fight we'd all had. When Isabella never said anything at tribal council we knew we were in the clear. That gave Octavia the freedom to let loose a little. She was a really funny lady. It was too bad she had to be so buttoned-up all the time.

As so often happens when two girls our age get together, the conversation turned to romance. Octavia was married, but from what I'd heard, it was an arranged marriage or something. She hardly ever talked about it. We were just making idle conversation, though. What happens by the river stays by the river.

"I like girls with curly hair," I said. We'd already gone over eyes (Octavia liked hazel, I liked blue) and height (she wasn't picky, while I thought short girls were less intimidating).

"You wanna know something really funny?" Octavia glanced around like she wanted someone to stop her. "I think big noses are sexy."

"You know what they say," I joked. I really didn't know anything about sex, but there was definitely something about big noses, since people joked about that a lot.

Octavia laughed. It was so spontaneous that it made me laugh, too. "Naughty!"

"I've never even done anything," I admitted.

"Sometimes I think it's overrated," Octavia sighed. "But that's probably just my partner."

"You should leave him. Life's too short," I said. Easy for me to say, since I wasn't the one who had to do it, but it was true.

Octavia seemed to swallow back something she wasn't quite confident enough in our privacy to say. "Maybe things will change," she hedged. Then her eyes gave a mischievous flash. "So, if you had to hook up with someone from Havfrue, who would it be?"

"Gosh it would be so weird if I said your brother," I said

"Nooooo! He'll get an even bigger ego!" Octavia laughed.

"Kind of cheating since she wasn't on Havfrue, but it would have been Amberlynn," I said. "She was so fun and silly I think it would have been a fun sort of fling."

"Good choice," Octavia said. There was a pause.

"Well come on, you gotta go, too," I coaxed.

Octavia's lips curled up a little. "You're gonna laugh."

"I won't," I promised.

"You better not," Octavia said.

"What, is it Enzo?" I asked.

"God, no. It's Leo," Octavia confessed.

"What's silly about that?" I asked. "He's a great guy."

"I guess I just feel bad about thinking about that when I'm married," Octavia said.

"You can't help getting a little crush. You didn't do anything. Like you're not flirting with him or anything," I said.

"I guess," Octavia said. She looked almost wistfully at the shirt she was scrubbing. "He just seems like a nice, cool guy. But that's just a fantasy."

"I bet there are plenty of guys like him in Two," I hinted.

"You are a terrible influence. You're gonna break up my marriage," Octavia said, but she was smiling.

"Do something crazy now and then. You're always so prim," I said. I wasn't judging Octavia, but maybe this was why people said you shouldn't get married so young. I wanted to marry Evelyne someday, if we were still together then, but that was the thing. Seventeen is a lot different from twenty. I didn't want to get married until I was done growing up. I wouldn't even know who I was until I was in my twenties. I definitely wouldn't know someone else well enough to get married.

"Laundry really does make me a wild woman," Octavia said. "It's nice being silly sometimes."

"Silly, not silly, we all die eventually," I said. "Might as well be silly."

Shep's interview: Vikings fought using a wall of shields. Most of them couldn't afford swords so they had spears. Some of them did have axes but they were also expensive. They must have been really strong since they just annihilated everyone they could reach.

Kallik's interview: We found a pear tree. I didn't know pears grew in Denmark. It's not wild, tohugh. The fruits are really fat and juicy. They're definitely cultivated. Wild fruit is usually way sourer and smaller than people think.

Before I get 8000 comments, it's actually not clear if Vikings used shield walls. It's also likely the Capitol would have shoddy research, so I left it.

Be sure to get your votes in! Last I checked, I had NONE! Makes sense because of Christmas, but still.