Sorry for not updating in a while, I didn't think people were reading this version. But apparently I was wrong! Here's Chapter 8, hope you enjoy!

There were ruins in the arena.

Maze had been walking for a while in a vain search for a water source when she found them. She had tried to hunt as she walked, but her luck was awful. Every animal she encountered heard her and fled.

She was ready to give up for a while and try her hand at foraging when she came across a moss-covered stone. The stone was too angular to be natural, carved into a rectangular prism shape. It set off alarms in Maze's head.

Up ahead, in a small clearing, was what looked to be a small, abandoned amphitheater. Rows of weathered stone steps converged down into the ground, where there was a rectangular opening leading into the hillside. Plants grew between the cracks in the steps. Stones like the one Maze found were scattered around the ruins. Upon closer inspection, Maze saw that there were inscriptions carved into the stones in some ancient text she couldn't read. She recognized a lot of symbols from her math and science courses mixed into the text, but there were no numbers attached.

The entrance into the hillside was dark and foreboding. It appeared to open into a corridor of some sort, but Maze couldn't tell how long it went on for. For a few moments, she thought about exploring it, curious about what it was, but then decided against it. If it was in the arena, it was probably designed to kill her. Plus, she didn't have anything to light her path. The sun was out, but it didn't penetrate much past the entrance.

She decided to just walk on and leave it alone for now. If needed, she could circle back around to it.

She wasn't even a few minutes away when the noises started.

A rumbling, ferocious roar rang out through the pines, from the direction of the ruins. Birds flew from trees. Maze's blood turned to ice.

Nothing good that existed in the natural world could make a sound like that.

Whatever made the sound roared again. It sounded closer this time. A girl's shrill screams accompanied it.

Maze panicked. In an attempt to get away, she scrambled up a nearby tree. She was about six feet in the air when she lost her foothold and plummeted to the ground, landing right on her back. The fall knocked the wind out of her, and she gasped for it back.

More ferocious roaring. There was one last scream, before it abruptly cut off. A cannon sounded.

Seventeen tributes left.

The creature roared again, although this time, it was lower and longer, a warning rather than an attack cry.

Maze decided to play dead. She relaxed all her muscles and didn't move an inch. She still didn't have all her breath back, but she forced her chest to move as little as possible. Her body burned for more air, but she ignored it, as much as it hurt.

The warning cry ceased after a few moments. The forest had gone silent in its wake, fearing the thing that had made the roars. Maze waited until the birds started singing again to move again. Once she caught her breath, she stood up.

Leaning on her spear, she looked in the direction of the ruins, where the terrible noises had come from. From a distance, she could just barely make out one of the outlying stones through the trees.

A horrible idea came to her mind. Someone had died over there. Other tributes had supplies. Perhaps this dead tribute had supplies that Maze could use.

She didn't give herself any time to change her mind. She made her way back over to the ruins, every sense alert to any signs of the beast coming back.

The tribute there was in two pieces.

It was the girl from District 9 — the one who had worn the ugly dress to her Reaping. Her torso lay just outside the ruins, dark hair in a halo around her. There was a gaping wound in the middle of her chest, the fabric of her jacket torn into crimson-soaked ribbons. The girl's legs were sprawled on the steps of the ruins, blood seeping into the stone.

Whatever creature had made those sounds had torn the girl in half.

Maze swallowed down the nausea that appeared at the sight. She had never seen such destruction of a human body in person. Watching it on a screen was completely different than seeing it in real life.

She approached the girl's torso, eyes narrowing at the sight of the yellow backpack straps around her shoulders. There was her potential salvation.

She knelt down beside the torso and stuck her hands beneath it, rolling it to the side. The girl's torso was much lighter than she had expected, the weight of her legs not encumbering her.

To Maze's dismay, the backpack was tiny, hardly big enough to be called a backpack. She unhooked it from the girl's arms anyway, rolling her torso from one side to the other, and opened it up.

The backpack contained a small compass and a pair of bungee cords. Maze groaned as she pulled them out.

That's what I get for looting corpses, she thought bitterly to herself, shoving the compass and cords back in. As she did, her fingertips brushed something metallic.

Curious, she stuck her hand back in and dug around, before pulling out two long, thin batteries. She smiled for the first time since entering the arena.

"Yes!"

She held them up, examining them. She recognized the type — they were some of the mid-sized, high voltage ones. They had enough power in them to easily kill someone. It made sense that the Gamemakers would put such powerful batteries in the arena. Sometimes they intentionally threw the electronically-gifted tributes a bone to make things more interesting.

She flipped them over in her hand, trying to figure out a good use for them. She only had them and the spool of wire. The arena so far only had natural components. No dilapidated machines she could strip. No large bodies of water to conduct electricity, like the 37tharena. The only other metal things she had were the compass, her ring, and the tip of her spear.

The tip of her spear.

She could use a battery to electrify the tip of her spear. Then, she wouldn't have to stab something — or someone — to do damage to it.

Maze picked up her spear from the ground and went over to the stone steps, going down a few and using the top one as a workspace. She set the batteries aside and took off her backpack, pulling out the wire and roll of bandages and placing them on the top step.

She darted to a pine tree at the edge of the clearing and pulled off a sharp piece of bark to use as a knife. She went back to her workspace and used the piece of bark to cut off two sections of wire. Using the bandages as tape, she attached a battery and the two wires to her spear and the spear tip, creating a circuit.

She nudged the tip of the second wire onto one of the battery terminals, and the circuit hummed to life.

Maze couldn't stop the delighted cry that emitted from her mouth. "Yes!"

The wire heated up beneath Maze's fingers, and she quickly fashioned a handle using more bandages. Once she was done, she surveyed her handiwork with a proud grin.

She now had the most advanced weapon in the arena.

She swung it around, testing it out. The battery added a bit of weight to it, and the wires shifted slightly where they weren't bandaged down, but the circuit stayed intact. The Capitol probably got some cool action shots of her swinging it around. Her grin widened at the thought.

Though now, she had to test the tip.

There was only one thing nearby she could test it on.

Maze looked at the girl's torso at the edge of the ruins. It was still oozing blood. The girl's previously brown skin had started to turn gray from the blood loss.

Maze shivered. Testing it on the girl's torso seemed wrong. She snapped her head in the opposite direction, to where the girl's legs lay.

She approached the legs, and with a rapid movement, touched the legs with the spear tip. The material of the pants melted away almost immediately, an acrid scent filling the air. When she pressed the tip into the flesh, the legs seized and flailed, almost as if dancing.

Apparently, legs could still experience muscle contractions after being severed.

Maze pulled the tip of the spear away, and the legs went limp once more. At the sight of the dancing legs, an indescribable emotion had trickled down Maze's back — something that felt like horror, but a lot stronger. She swallowed it down, forcing herself to look away from the girl's corpse parts.

"Sorry," she mumbled, not sure to who or why she was apologizing. She went back over to her temporary workspace and, after gathering everything up into her backpack, including the compass and bungee cords from the girl's backpack, she trekked on.

Nothing else eventful happened for the rest of the day. Maze looked for water to no avail. By now, her mouth had the texture of cotton, and a dull headache had materialized. Her stomach also growled and groaned, and she looked for any animal she could hunt. However, every animal in the forest seemed to have disappeared in the wake of the ferocious beast from earlier. Either that, or Maze was sorely unlucky. The plants she passed were all definitely inedible. She even remembered for certain that a few of them were poisonous. By the time darkness fell, Maze was starting to feel shaky from the lack of food. She made another nest like the one she had made the previous night and did her best to ignore her achy stomach as she curled up for the night.

The girl from District 9's face was the only one who appeared in the sky that night. The dancing legs came right back to mind, along with the guilt from making them dance and the indescribable feeling from before.

Maze woke up the next morning feeling worse than she had the previous night. The hunger shakes had gotten stronger, and all thoughts moved sluggishly through her famished and dehydrated body. Upon standing, she nearly blacked out, but managed to recover by leaning on her spear.

Beetee's words repeated in her mind like a mantra.

Prioritize finding food and water. They don't call them the Hunger Games for no reason.

Beetee. Maze hadn't thought of him for a while. She wondered what he was doing. She imagined him sitting in Mentor Central in Games Headquarters, which they showed sometimes during live coverage, his morning mug of coffee in his hands, watching the screen and shaking his head disapprovingly at her performance so far.

Mentors could see and hear everything happening in the arena. Maze, starting to run out of options, decided to take advantage of this.

She looked up at the pale blue morning sky, giving what she hoped was a cute, pleading face. A few clouds drifted across it.

"Hey, Beetee," she said in her most polite voice. "May I please have some food and water?"

She waited a few minutes for a response. Nothing fell out of the sky.

She tried again.

"Please? There's no food around, and I can't find any water. I'm miserable, Beetee. Help me out."

Nothing. She now imagined him frowning and bringing his hand to his forehead in shame.

Maze pushed on. "Do I not have enough sponsor money?" She switched tactics. "Hey, Capitol! It's me, Maze! I'm really hungry and thirsty right now. You should sponsor me so my mentor can send me food and water! Wouldn't want to see your favorite tribute die so early in the Games because of something so preventable!"

She smiled, winked, and made some cute poses like the ones she did on the chariot. She kept her gaze on the sky, however, nothing fell from it.

Maze gave up. "Dammit."

Leaning on her spear, she walked on.

A couple hours later, she found her salvation.

A meadow stretched in front of her through the trees. Thickets of bushes grew among the wildflowers, with purplish branches and cone-like protrusions brimming with black, spherical berries. A few birds flitted from bush to bush, feasting on the berries. The mountains in the background gave an idyllic feel to the scene.

Energy surged through Maze's shaky body.

"Yes!"

She hobbled into the meadow, heading to the nearest berry bush. She picked a few berries off, examining them closer.

During training, she had learned that some black berries were fine to eat. She had also learned that some were poisonous. She couldn't remember which black berries were edible and which were not. Maze was too hungry to remember.

The birds were eating them, so she concluded they must be edible. To be safe, she decided to start with a few berries. She cautiously popped one in her mouth and chewed. It had a juicy texture, with a vaguely sweet taste. There was a seed in it, which she dug out of her mouth, staining her fingers purple, before swallowing. She repeated the process with two other berries before deciding to wait, despite her stomach's protests.

She had a feeling she fucked up when the purple-stained skin started to sting.

She definitely knew she fucked up when the stomach cramping started ten minutes later. Nausea — the strong kind — followed not even five minutes after.

Maze barely managed to stumble to the edge of the meadow, holding her stomach, before the vomiting started.

She vomited up the berries and what bile there was in her stomach. Once she saw the remnants of the berries on the grass, she thought she was in the clear. They were out of her. But whatever toxins were in the berries must have remained in her system because her stomach continued to cramp.

The cramping was so intense that Maze could no longer move. She curled up in a ball on the ground, whimpering as the pain kneaded its way with clawed hands through her stomach and intestines.

After a while, the nausea returned, and Maze vomited more bile into the grass. This cycle continued for a long time — hours, it had to be. Every twenty minutes, she'd vomit. When she ran out of bile to vomit, she just dry heaved instead until the nausea subsided. Somehow, that was even worse than the vomiting.

Maze wanted to walk around and do things, like find water and preferably non-poisonous food, but the stomach cramps were too intense. She couldn't do anything but writhe on the ground and moan in pain in between periods of gagging and dry heaving. The only other movement she was capable of was unzipping herself from her jacket when she grew too hot. Somehow, her body had dredged up enough water to create a sweaty sheen on her skin.

Sometime in the afternoon, a cannon went off. Maze was surprised it wasn't hers from just how awful she felt.

Delirium eventually crept in, Maze's mind so desperate to disconnect her from her pain. The only thing in her mind for the rest of the afternoon was the buzzing of the insects in the meadow and the chirping of the birds. Maze lost herself in the noises while the pain gnawed away at her innards.

Around late afternoon, she began drifting in and out of consciousness. She was just lucid enough to zip herself back into her jacket as the arena started getting cold again and to see the face of the boy from District 8 in the sky when it appeared.

Maze figured she must have slept during the night, but it didn't feel that way. She remembered moaning and dry heaving into the darkness, stomach still contracting and rolling, and the sting of the cold as it numbed her exposed skin. The night lasted both an eternity and the blink of an eye in Maze's tortured fugue state. All she knew that night was misery.

She awoke from uneasy slumber to raindrops falling on her face. She cracked open her eyes to a slate gray sky above her.

Finally, water.

Her entire body trembling from the effort, she opened her backpack and withdrew her water bottle, before opening it and setting it in the grass next to her to catch rain. The rain itself grew stronger, plastering Maze's greasy hair to her forehead and providing a soothing sensation to her face. She opened her mouth, letting stray raindrops fall into it. They rehydrated her tongue some, but not enough to quench her thirst. The rain washed the remnants of the berry juice off her fingers.

Her stomach, unfortunately, kept her in misery. The toxins from the berries were not through with her. Her entire body ached and shook like a leaf. She no longer had an appetite, but the effects of hunger and dehydration still did a number on her body.

The stomach cramps intensified, and Maze continued to roll in and out of a stupor. The cramps and nausea came and went like the waves on the large lake Central City was built on the shore of.

Occasionally, thoughts bubbled to the surface of her delirium.

What a slow, painful death this is. I think I'd rather have someone put a sword through my stomach and end me quickly than this torture.

I'm surprised no one's come along and tried to kill me with all the noise I've been making. If the Careers ever come by, I'm screwed. Though maybe they could put an end to my misery. Maybe if I ask politely.

The rain continued to pour down.

Maze thought of Beetee, far away in Mentor Central. He was probably even more embarrassed by her than he was when she was begging him for food.

Ugh, look at this mess of a girl, he was probably thinking. I told her to think rationally, and she goes and eats random berries and gets herself poisoned. What a disappointment. I have the funds to send her medicine or food, but I won't because she's an embarrassment.

"Sorry, Beetee," Maze groaned. Her voice was hoarse from all the gagging she had been doing. Each word trembled as it left her lips. "I get it. I lost my head. I made a stupid decision. I won't do it again. Feel free to send me food or water or medicine now. I've learned my lesson."

She ended her one-sided conversation with a gag. Once she was done, her delirium took hold once more and she never noticed if there was a response to her petition.

Her thoughts remained on the Capitol for a while longer. I just know they're laughing at my suffering. Laughing at the poor, stupid female District 3 tribute did some stupid poses with her weapon, begged them for money, and then promptly ate poisonous berries. My sponsors probably took away their money. I bet they've given me some stupid nickname, too. I bet they're calling me Maze Dona-Puke. Because I won't stop puking.

Sometime during her fugue state, another cannon fired. Maze wasn't lucid enough that evening to see who had died.

Her scattered thoughts turned towards the past. How ironic that I played Singing Berry Bush Number Five in the musical about Beetee's Games as a child, Maze thought. I sang about the dangers of the arena. And then I ended up getting Reaped for a Hunger Games, with Beetee as my mentor, and then I get taken out by a berry bush, which is a danger in the arena. How cruel. I think the universe saved its ultimate hijinks just for me.

Sometime that night, Maze finally fell into a solid slumber, one uninterrupted by any twists of pain or nausea. When she awoke the next morning, the rain had stopped. Her stabbing stomach pains were gone, replaced by little aches of hunger. She could think and exist in the present moment again.

Maze breathed a huge sigh of relief. She sat up for the first time in two days, her body aching from the time it spent laying on the hard ground. Grass did not make for a good mattress.

Her water bottle now had an inch, maybe two, of rainwater in it. Not a lot, but it was enough. Maze took a little sip, the cap filtering it. Just the tiny bit of water provided relief from her dehydration, energizing her.

She stood up with shaking legs. The toxins had worked their way out of her body, but the effects of hunger and dehydration still lingered. Her limbs felt heavy and stuffed with lead. Her brain especially felt stuffed with lead.

She had to find food and more water. She wouldn't last much longer otherwise.

Her spear was gone. She had dropped it when she made her initial mad dash to vomit. Thankfully, it didn't take Maze long to locate it. It was laying in the grass at the base of the accursed bush she had taken the berries from. The grass near the tip was singed. A dead sparrow lay near the tip — the spear's first official victim. It was too small to make for much sustenance, so Maze let it rest.

Hobbling along using her spear for support, Maze picked her way through the rest of the meadow, heading to the forest on the opposite side. She passed several more thickets of the poisonous berry bushes. The birds feasted on them without a care in the world.

"Idiot birds," Maze mumbled as she passed a particularly eager mockingjay picking a berry off a bush.

She walked into the woods, alert for any sign of potential prey animals, danger, or water.

What she didn't account for was the sound of a human voice.

"Maze!"

The voice, female, knew her name. Grasping her spear defensively, Maze snapped her head to the source of the voice.

It was Willow. She stood among the trees, a hatchet in her hands. Her jacket and pants — a deep green, trimmed with a lighter shade — made her nearly blend in with the surrounding trees. Only her flame-orange hair gave her away.

Maze's grip tightened on her spear. "You're not about to kill me, are you?"

"No." Willow shook her head. "Sorb and I have been wondering about you. We wanted to ally with you."

Maze's eyebrows shot up. "Ally? With me?"

Alliances had been the furthest thing from her mind the entire Games and even before. All thoughts of alliance had died when Alt rejected the notion. Maze had barely thought of it since.

Willow nodded again. "Yeah. We tried to hint at it during training, but I don't think either of us did a good job."

"I didn't pick up on that," Maze said.

"Yeah. We should have been more direct." Willow frowned. "We also thought that girl from 12 — Camille or whatever her name is — beat us to it. She kept on staring at you."

"Her name's Camilee," Maze supplied. "I never figured out what her deal was. She never talked to me. Just stared and smiled like once. I guess if we encounter her, we'll ask. Unless she's trying to kill me."

"She was a few pedestals down from me at the start," Willow said. "She was looking around all intently. I didn't see her after that."

"I haven't seen her at all." With everything that had been happening the past few days, Maze had forgotten all about Camilee. She had been the least of her priorities.

"Yeah." Willow looked at Maze. "So anyways, alliance — do you want to ally with us? Feel free to say no. We won't kill you if you do."

Maze's stomach rumbled, and a wave of lightheadedness washed over her, causing her to lean heavily on her spear. Her head pounded.

"Do you have food and water?" She croaked.

Willow nodded. "Oh yeah. We have plenty. This arena has been a dream come true for Sorb and me. It's just like home."

"I'll ally with you if I can get food and water," Maze said.

Willow smiled. "Deal."

She held out her hand for Maze to shake. Maze shook it, hand trembling in her grasp. If she noticed it, Willow didn't say anything.

"I'll show you our camp," Willow said, beckoning for Maze to follow her. "Sorb and I have pretty much claimed this piece of the woods, from the meadow to the river, as our territory. You're the first person that's entered it. I think this arena's a bit bigger than usual."

"That would make sense," Maze rasped. "Apparently the Gamemakers are dragging this one out since the last one was so quick."

The two of them made their way through the forest. Maze barely had the energy to walk, but the thought of food and water pushed her to keep going. She walked slower than usual. Willow walked in front of her, occasionally stopping to let Maze catch up.

Maze smelled their camp before she saw it. The divine scent of something cooking — something meaty and herbaceous — wafted through the air. She nearly moaned in delight just at the thought of actual food.

"Sorb!" Willow called out. "I found Maze!"

The camp came into view. It consisted of a lean-to structure made of sticks and rope braided together from various plant fibers. A plastic tarp covered the entrance to the structure. A campfire crackled just outside the structure's entrance. Sorb sat at the campfire, tending to what looked like a soup cooking in a metal pot. He smiled and stood up when he saw Willow and Maze heading his way.

"Maze!" He gave a friendly wave, before frowning. "Timbers and sticks, you look awful."

"It's been days since I last ate," Maze croaked, hobbling towards the fire. Her knees threatened to buckle. "I had a squirrel on the first day and then I had some of the berries growing in the meadow. Terrible idea."

Willow gasped, sounding scandalized. "Maze! You ate pokeweed berries?"

"Oh, is that what they're called?"

"We have them in District 7. We're taught from a young age to not eat them, or else you'll get all types of nasty symptoms. Vomiting, horrible stomach cramps, and bloody diarrhea, namely."

A cold chill went down Maze's spine at that. She couldn't imagine how utterly humiliating it would be to suffer from bloody diarrhea on live television that the entire nation watched. She probably wouldn't live it down even in death. Forever known as the tribute who suffered bloody diarrhea in the arena and died from it. Maze was blessed beyond belief to evade that fate.

"How many berries did you eat?" Willow asked.

"Three." Maze held up three fingers and groaned. "Three too many."

"If you ate many more, you probably would have died," Willow remarked.

Maze groaned. "It sure felt like I was dying."

"I'll bet. You're lucky."

The scent of the soup hit Maze again, and this time, she did moan. "Is that soup almost ready?"

"Yep." Sorb gave the soup a stir with a stick. "Rabbit stew, with some herbs Willow gathered this morning."

"This arena's full of so many edible plants if you know where to look," Willow said.

Maze groaned again. She really should have paid more attention to plants in training. "You don't say."

Sorb stirred the soup some more. "I think it's ready now."

Willow slipped into the structure for a few seconds, then came back out with silver spoons in hand. She handed two to Sorb and Maze, keeping one for herself. Maze stared at the spoon, amazed.

"You all got some good supplies."

"It helped having two people to gather them," Willow responded. "We got out of there in the nick of time. That girl from One — Saphira, I think her name was — noticed us and it looked like she was about to charge us."

Sorb, using the bottom of his unzipped jacket as impromptu oven mitts, took the pot of soup from the fire and placed it on the ground. "Speaking of supplies, what did you get? We still have to wait for the soup to cool down."

Maze sat down next to the soup, set her spear aside, and showed Willow and Sorb what she had in her backpack.

Sorb's eyes lit up when he saw the bungee cords. "Oh, nice! We could use those to secure a proper door for our little shelter. Or to secure supplies. Or something."

"Feel free to take them," Maze said, tossing them in Sorb's direction. "They were useless to me."

"I can go fill up your water bottle," Willow volunteered. "There's a river not too far from here."

The thought of water — as well as the soup — filled Maze with delight. "Please do."

Maze handed Willow the water bottle, and she scampered off. A few minutes later, Willow returned with the water bottle full, Sorb declared the soup ready to eat, and Maze finally got to fill her stomach.

No soup has ever tasted as good as the one Sorb and Willow made. Not even the soups Maze had in the Capitol. If this would be the last meal Maze ever ate, she would die satisfied. She devoured spoonful after spoonful, swallowing the thin yet flavorful broth down. The rabbit meat tasted great, too. It reminded Maze of chicken.

On both sides of her, Willow and Sorb ate at a normal pace.

"You might want to slow down," Willow chided, an amused expression on her face as she watched Maze feast. "You'll get sick if you eat too fast."

Sick. After the berries, Maze never wanted to get sick again. She heeded Willow's warning.

While they were eating, a cannon fired. Maze put her spoon down, appetite suddenly lost. Sorb counted on his fingers.

"Fourteen left."

Willow raised her brows. "Damn."

"Do you know who died yesterday?" Maze asked. "I was out of it and didn't see who died."

"It was the boy from District 11," Willow replied.

"The death rate's been pretty slow," Sorb commented. "They're keeping the Games nice and boring this year."

"Don't jinx it!" Willow exclaimed, shooting Sorb a sharp look. "They could be listening, you know, and release a ton of mutts into the arena or something."

"Don't you jinx it." Sorb playfully smirked. Willow rolled her eyes, but the ghost of a smile played on her lips.

"I think there's already mutts in the arena," Maze said. Sorb and Willow looked up from the soup at her, faces going serious.

"What? Really?"

Maze nodded, before telling them about the ruins and what she heard and saw with the girl from District 9. She omitted the part where she stole the girl's supplies and used her legs to test out her weapon. Her allies didn't need to know that. The memory of the girl's seizing severed legs still haunted her.

Willow had a pensive frown on her face. "There might be more than one sites of ruins in this arena. Sorb and I spent the night in some our first night. It was in a different location, though. By a ravine. We didn't hear or see anything, though."

"The entrance led into some sort of passage," Sorb added. "I went down it a bit. It gave me the creeps, though, so I turned around pretty quickly. Anything weird like that in an arena is definitely designed to kill us."

"Do you think the passages in the ruins are connected somehow?" Maze asked. "Like, could they all link up or something?"

"Maybe," Sorb replied. "I don't plan on finding out, though. Especially not if I have a chance of encountering that creature. Maybe it hangs out in the passageways or something. Eugh." He cringed.

Willow's frown deepened, and she brought her finger up to her lips as she thought further. "A beast that lives in interconnected passages underground…I feel like I've read this in a story somewhere."

"You've read everything in a story somewhere," Sorb teased.

Willow blinked. "Yeah. I guess. Metaphorically, all of human knowledge could be contained in a story somehow."

"I was kidding," Sorb said. "That's kind of cool to think about, though." He leaned forward, leaning his jaw on his hands. "If I were in a story, what story would it be?"

A mischievous smirk appeared on Willow's face. "Well, I read this one once about a troll that lived in the woods..."

"Hey!"

Maze burst out laughing. Willow and Sorb joined in, and for the first time since entering the arena, Maze felt something resembling comfort.

The three finished off the soup, and Maze downed the water in her water bottle. It soothed her dry mouth and throat, still raw from the pokeweed berry poisoning, and it quenched all thirst she had almost immediately.

Once the water bottle was nearly empty, a sense of fatigue overwhelmed Maze, much like the first day in the arena on the rock.

"Can I rest for a while?" She asked Willow and Sorb, who were gathering the pot and utensils to go clean in the river. "I'll help you two do stuff once I take a nap. I'm still really tired."

Willow squinted at Maze. "Yeah. You look a bit better than before, but you still don't look very good. You probably need to digest, too."

"Go for it." Sorb gestured with his head to the structure. "You can nap in there."

Maze got up and crawled past the plastic tarp hanging in front of the structure. She was met with a small, square-shaped space. Two backpacks sat lumped in the corner, and a blue blanket covered the ground.

Maze took off her own backpack and laid it on the ground, before laying her head on it to use as a pillow. She curled up and drifted off to sleep for a while. When she woke up, she felt refreshed. Her headache had cleared and her body had stopped trembling for the first time in a few days.

Nothing much happened for the rest of the day. Willow and Maze ventured down the hill to the river to gather clay. When it had rained the previous day, the rain slipped through the cracks of the structure's roof and gotten things damp, so Willow wanted to reinforce it. Willow and Maze took their boots and socks off and stood in the shallows of the river, gathering handfuls of clay and putting it in the pot they had used for soup.

Shortly after they got back, Sorb went out to hunt for dinner, an ax slung over his broad shoulder. Maze went with him, bringing her spool of wire and a small dagger the pair from District 7 had. While Sorb hunted, Maze set up some snares in the forest. Sorb eventually killed some type of large bird, and the three had that bird for their dinner, roasted over the campfire. The evening sky displayed the picture of the girl from District 10 — the one who had worn the cow udder during the chariot parade — as the one who had died.

That night, the three of them went into the structure to sleep. They pushed the backpacks together to use as pillows, and the three of them slept in a pile, huddling for warmth in the cold night. Maze slept in the middle while Willow and Sorb slept at her sides, arms wrapped around her and each other.

Maze had never slept so close to another human being before, and while it was uncomfortable in some senses — both Sorb and Willow reeked from days in the woods without bathing (Maze herself didn't smell so good either), and Willow seemed determined to use her elbows to bruise Maze in the ribcage — Maze had never felt so safe and protected in her life. Safe and protected and warm.

Sensations that never lasted long in the Hunger Games.