They make Embelia try the papaya first. She's also the smallest by mass, so she's tasked with shimmying up the tree to grab two of the fruit. Once back on the ground, she takes a knife offered by Emerald, slices it open and cuts herself a chunk to pop it in her mouth.

It still tastes as awful as she remembers it tasting at the harvest festival last year, that awful creamy, musky taste spreading over her tongue. But she chews, swallows, and shows her allies her empty tongue.

"It's not my favourite," she admits. "But it's edible, healthy. And beggars can't be choosers."

Emerald reaches for a chunk eagerly, popping some in her mouth. "What?" She gasps as she chews. "Are you kidding? It's gorgeous!"

Embelia raises her eyebrows with thinly veiled amusement.

"Okay, we have food, let's grab a pack each and go," Cassius says, and Embelia doesn't miss the way that Venus scowls at him. She holds back the pleased smile pulling at her lips. "We'll find some place to rest, eat. See if we can't find some water. I'm certain they don't want a bunch of deaths by dehydration."

Plaid shakes his head as Cassius makes for a half full backpack in the mouth of the cornucopia. "And he told us he was observant," he whispers to Embelia, who looks up at him curiously. "Look up. What do you see, oh great plant master?"

"Plant master?"

"Just look." He points at the sky. Embelia follows his gesture up to look at the grey sky, and her eyes follow the swirling clouds. It doesn't rain nearly enough in Eleven, but when it does, it looks like that.

"Rain," she says.

"Uh huh." Plaid nods. "Soon, but also recently."

His hand moves to gesture toward the moss beneath their feet, parts of it still shining with dew from the last shower.

"We won't die of dehydration, they've made sure of that."

"Does it rain a lot in your district?" Embelia asks, surprising herself with her curiosity.

"No," he admits. "But I've watched enough of the games to know that deaths by dehydration are beyond boring. I mean, you can't even see what they're hallucinating!"

Embelia's curiosity is instantly squashed by the reminder of just how desensitised to this horror Plaid must be.

"And there's water in the papaya," she mumbles, glancing back toward Cassius.

"See? I knew we were keeping you around for good reason!"

Embelia nods, going to pick up a pack of her own and putting the unopened papaya inside, nestled between a bundle of rope and an empty water bottle. The one she's already sliced open sits precariously on top. She tries hard not to look at her surroundings as she secures it to her back, eyes on her booted feet. Still, she catches a glimpse of the bloodstains on her clothes. She falters, and her head shoots up to look at the cloudy sky, where she knows she won't see any of her mistakes. A small flock of birds, three, maybe four together but not in formation, fly overhead, and she envies them.

But she realises, then, that they're just as much a tool of the capitol as they all are. Created by them, no doubt, and placed in an arena to add to the immersion. At least they don't have to kill for it. Maybe they just get to die, to fill some desperate tribute's rumbling belly.

"This way!" Cassius calls, making for a small gap in the treeline. The others follow, but no one misses the soft grumbling under Venus' breath. Embelia thinks she catches something about him not being the leader.

As they step into the jungle, they're met with sprawling green, hanging vines and damp underbrush. Cassius pulls a slightly curved blade, about the length of his forearm, from his belt and holds it as they make their way further into the trees, occasionally using it to clear their path. Embelia stands in the middle of the group as they walk – she's certain they don't yet trust her enough to bring up the front or the rear – and can't stop herself from admiring their surroundings. The forest is green, greener than anything she's ever seen. The green is broken up with flecks of bright colour, flowers and birds and bugs brighter than anything she's imagined before.

A blue butterfly floats past and settles itself on a green flower, bright wings flitting softly as it rests. Embelia wants to stop and stare at it, but she keeps on with the group. The forest is alive with noise when they reach a small clearing, enough room for each of them to sit and rest.

"This seems as good a spot as any," Plaid says, wasting no time in plopping himself down and crossing his legs.

Embelia follows his lead, and as she shrugs her pack off the forest falls silent. Embelia looks up in confusion. She can hear the nearby flow of a river, but nothing else.

"The hovercrafts," Emerald explains as she takes a seat next to her. "Here to pick up the bodies."

"Oh," she mumbles, frowning and looking back down as she sets the pack in her lap, unzipping it. She takes out the first papaya as the group sits in a wonky circle, setting it down in the centre. "There's a river nearby."

"Could work as a water source," says Venus, reaching out to cut herself a piece of papaya. Though she tries to appear nonchalant, it's hard not to notice the curiosity on her face.

"Eh." Plaid shakes his head. "Rivers can be real dirty, there's a big one back home and we can't even really swim in it, let alone drink from it."

"Well we're not in District One," sneers Cassius. "Clearly."

"Oh, relax, Cass," says Plaid with a roll of his eyes. "I'm just saying. Depositing some wisdom."

"Are there clean rivers in Eleven?" asks Venus, surprising Embelia.

Embelia shrugs. "No rivers at all in my zone," she says. "Not my area of expertise, sorry."

"Alright," she mumbles, setting down the papaya. "This sucks, by the way. You were right."

"You guys are crazy!" Emerald says with a small laugh, seeming extremely at ease for a girl who has just killed a few people. "It's lovely! I can't believe you get to eat this kind of stuff, Embelia!"

"Oh, well, it's… actually not really readily available. Most of the more exotic stuff gets sent to the Capitol, but sometimes we get a bit of the excess at the harvest festival."

Emerald shifts closer, grinning as she takes another bite of the orange fruit. "Eleven must be really different," she says quietly as life returns to the forest. Birds caw, she can hear the faint click of insects, the hum of crickets. It's as alive as she feels, which is to say there's a sense of artificial-ness to it that makes it only half alive. "It's bigger, isn't it?"

"I think so," Embelia nods.

She's constantly surprised by Emerald and her mercurial nature. She swings so rapidly between murderous threats, cruel teasing, and genuine curiosity and kindness, it gives Embelia whiplash. She hates her quite deeply, but a part of her wants to embrace the blonde girl's strange attempts at friendship.

"One is kind of huge," Emerald hums, leaning back against a tree comfortably, chewing thoughtfully on her papaya. "But it's not crowded. A lot of the space is taken up by mines, or factories in the bigger cities. Aren't there loads of people in your district?"

Embelia nods. "I don't have an exact number, but it's definitely a lot. But it feels pretty spread out."

As an odd looking moth takes its rest on a nearby leaf, a sudden reminder occurs to Embelia. The moth, a little too big, stares right at them. It might not be a camera, but its steady attention slaps her in the face with the revelation that this is all being watched. Every single moment from the second she rose up into the sun has been broadcast to the masses.

She knew this, of course, she's not an idiot. But it had been stored away in the back of her mind because it didn't seem more important than surviving the bloodbath. Now, sitting in quiet respite, she's confronted by it. Maybe not right now, but later when the recap is shown in the districts, Embelia's mother will watch her impale a tiny little boy. How can she ever be forgiven for forcing her mother to watch that?

And how, if she's really to get home, will she top it in the time between now and then?

She looks at Emerald, her curious face and her pretty brown eyes. Someone, herself or otherwise, will have to ensure that those eyes are leached of the life that lights them up. Unless Emerald wins, which she has a decent chance of doing, someone or something will do something horrific to her.

"What's it like?" Venus' voice cuts through her pondering. Embelia's gaze snaps to the statuesque girl, polishing the surface of one of her axes. "Eleven."

Embelia looks down at the loose underbrush, thinking.

There are a million horrible things she could say about it. But she's ever so conscious of the cameras on them now. The Capitol will be tuned in closely, eager to learn about the homes of the people they so rely on, the people they so love to torment. And watching, eagle-eyed, for any sort of insolence that could put them in trouble. Sure, they'll edit it out in the districts, but how will Embelia's family fare if she airs out the Capitol's evils on national television?

"Big," she says. A decidedly neutral statement. "Old."

"Old?" says Emerald.

Emebelia nods. "Everything is old. The houses, yeah, but the land. You stand there, and it feels old. Like those same fields had been ploughed for eons."

"That doesn't make any sense," says Emerald, but Embelia sees the quiet understanding in Venus' gaze. "Is it pretty?"

Embelia tries very hard not to think of the girl beside her as shallow and vapid, but she makes it incredibly difficult. "It can be."

She remembers the sunrise she watched from her doorstep the day of the reaping. The way the sky had painted itself into an array of warmth, sending long shadows over the orchards. If she'd known that it would be her last, she would have let it linger a little bit longer.

"I can see the sunrise from my doorstep. It's so big, because the sky feels so big out there. And the orchards, in the spring… when the blossoms bloom it's like a sunrise on the ground." Despite herself, she smiles, looking up at the sky between the trees. "There's an added beauty in the blossoms, too. Means shorter hours, less to harvest. The quotas go down just a little."

She's surprised when she hears Venus laugh, not a snorting scoff, or anything malicious at all. "If only quarries ran with the seasons," she says. Embelia's gaze turns back down toward her, and she meets the girl with a smile. An understanding blooms between them.

She doesn't know how to kill her anymore.

Cassius cuts through after a moment of quiet. "I think we oughta check out that river."

Venus examines the incline of their clearing and determines which way is downhill. She says that rivers flow downhill, so they're not likely to find it going the way they had been. It comes down to where they heard the water flowing earlier. There's no consensus, but then they don't exactly ask Embelia's opinion.

She exists on the fringes of an expert alliance, threatening to be dead weight the longer the games will go on. It had been her to point out the river's existence, and she knows that she heard it to the east. They land on going east anyway, but a simple question put to Embelia could have saved them maybe ten minutes of squabbling.

They trek east with Embelia stationed right in the middle again, her shiny silver spear tucked between her backpack and her body. The further they walk, the louder the river grows. Plaid lets out a cheer when he spots it in the distance.

It's awfully humid in the forest, Embelia hopes it isn't the ravages of heat and the dryness of their tongues playing a trick on him. But the rest of them see it too, confirming Plaid's sanity. But the cheers quickly subside when they catch sight of the river's ugly brown colouring. It's surely not pollution, but mud and an array of other natural bacteria that makes it less than appealing to quench their thirst.

"We could purify it," Emerald suggests after the group stares at the muddy banks in silence for a long moment. "My pack has a filter."

"It'd take a while," mumbles Plaid.

"Not so long we'd die of dehydration," she defends. "It's better than dying."

Plaid exchanges a look with Embelia before glancing back up at the sky, likely wondering the same as she. Had he been wrong about the rain?

"Look, I'll just grab some and see how long it takes to filter," says Emerald, trudging through the mud toward the water and rummaging through her pack.

"Wait," Embelia stops her, placing an arm across the shorter girl's front as she tries to venture past her. "Something isn't right."

Venus hums in agreement. "It's too easy."

Embelia brings her pack around to the front, grabbing a chunk of the quickly depleting papaya. She turns it over in her hand, the orange meat of the fruit leaving a juicy residue on her hands. Almost sorry to waste the piece, she throws it forward into the river, waiting.

It floats, and after a few seconds a school of fish seems to leap up all at once. About five of the shiny gold-ish creatures attack the chunk in a swarm, vicious little teeth snapping at the thing and reducing it to nothing in mere seconds before their very eyes.

The tributes are left in stunned silence, watching the monstrous little fish, each no bigger than a mango, disappear back into the murky water and leave no trace of the papaya behind.

"Well," says Emerald, a little pale. "Thank you for that, Embelia. I guess the river is out."

"Fuck," Cassius curses, a scowl on his face. "Now what?"

"If we can't get pure water, we have the fruit to keep us hydrated," says Venus, taking a few steps back from the river. "We'll be fine. Let's head back to the cornucopia, maybe we can climb up a tree and search for any other bodies, a pond or something."

"Keep an eye out for any more edible fruit, Embelia," says Cassius, sounding grumpy. "Something that tastes better, if you can manage."

Embelia nods, tucking the remaining papaya back into her bag. The group sets off back the way they'd come, retracing their steps with the damaged branches that Cassius had cut through. When they're about halfway, the humidity heavy on their skin and thirst dry on their tongues, a soft drizzle begins.

All five of them look up in delight. Embelia meets Plaid's eyes once more, and he mouths a couple words to her, 'Told you.'

The drizzle quickly opens up into a hefty downpour, and Emerald hurries to pull her bottle from her bag, holding it up to the sky.

"Wait until we get back to the clearing, Emerald," says Cassius, and the blonde meets him with an indignant gaze.

"How many times do we have to tell you? You're not the leader, Cass. This is a flat team structure."

"Last I checked, my score was higher than yours," he sneers right back.

"In that case, Venus should be in charge," says Embelia suddenly. Cassius glares openly at her, but she doesn't flinch this time. "The rain could stop before we reach a clearing. Let's not waste this."

"She's right!" Emerald says, a playful lilt in her tone. "Fill your bottles as much as you can and by the time we get back to the cornucopia they'll be purified enough to drink!"

Embelia reaches around into her own bag and rummages for her bottle. The others follow suit, though Cassius only does so begrudgingly. The rain continues, swaying between a gentle drizzle and a downpour that slams down on the group even under the cover of the forest. When they reach the clearing around the cornucopia once more, the rain lets up. They're drenched, but all of them are feeling some hope for a death that doesn't involve so much thirst.

The humidity isn't so all-encompassing out in the open. Embelia feels as though the air around her opens, giving her room to breathe in something other than the heavy wet air that feels as though it's lining her lungs.

She wanders over to the cornucopia. The rain has washed the moss clean of its red bloodstains, and it looks as though they were never there. She looks around, a lump in her throat. Other than the supplies being depleted, it looks as it did when they first rose up from the catacombs below. Her eyes fall onto the stacks of crates inside the golden horn when Plaid begins rummaging for shelter.

Those have been depleted too. She hasn't taken a thorough inventory, of course, but she's spent enough time meticulously going over baskets of oranges, ensuring that her work meets the ever climbing quotas before she ends each work day. Someone has skimmed off the top. Someone was here while they were gone. Not enough for an untrained eye to notice, explaining Plaid's contented humming as he pulls free a nylon tarp.

She'd wager it was the pair from Four, but part of her hopes it was Korren. She knows that he ran right for the forest, but what are the chances he was brave enough to stay at the jungle's edge, waiting for his opportunity to sneak in and get supplies. She looks away, eyes finding the papaya tree. Will what she taught him in training be enough to sustain him until she finds him?

Will she find him?

Is he even there to be found?

"Embelia!" Emerald calls, beckoning her back over to the group, a bundle of poles in her arms. "Hold this! We're gonna make some shelter!"

Embelia steps around the spot where the little boy from Three had fallen, and goes over to help. They build a decent lean-to, big enough for four to sleep and one to keep watch. By the time they're done, the sun is sinking over the horizon.

"Well, today was kind of a bust," Plaid sighs as the five of them sit back beneath their shelter, sipping at the lukewarm water in his bottle.

"It's day one, Plaid," Emerald says, laid back and propped up on her elbow. "Take a deep breath, we have loads of time!"

"By this time last year, Braun was already the clear frontrunner!" Plaid's voice is almost a whine. "We're moving way too slow!"

"It's not all about speed," Venus says, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the tent. She's watching the sky darken, likely waiting for the anthem. "Enobaria's games took over half a month."

Embelia notices the pride with which she speaks of her mentor. Venus straightens up, gets a faraway look in her eyes.

"Or brute strength."

Embelia remembers Enobaria well. She especially remembers how thankful she was to be spared of being reaped that year. It had been her first time in the reaping pool, and seeing the girl from two tear her opponents throat out had given her nightmares for weeks. In hindsight, and now that she knows the feeling of being in the arena, she doesn't think she fears Enobaria so much. She thinks as time goes on, she'll even grow to understand her. She just hopes she doesn't have to take the same actions as she had.

"Why be someone else?" says Emerald. "I'm going to win as me."

Three of the group look to her with scornful glares, the other looks away, shifting in discomfort.

Saving their group from falling into certain chaos, the anthem blares throughout the arena. The tension quells itself as the tributes look to the sky.

The first face to appear is the boy from Three. Embelia's heart sinks.

She'd known, of course, that it would likely be him first. All but one of the tributes that might have come before him are sitting right beside her. But it doesn't make it any easier to see his little face in the sky. His red hair looks so vibrant, his brown eyes so bright. Nothing like the image that burned into her memory. She doesn't even know his name.

The next to appear is the girl from Five, and Embelia holds her breath as the pictures cycle through. When the boy from Ten's visage is immediately replaced with the girl from Twelve, Embelia releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding. She leans back, the tiniest sense of relief sinking into her bones.

Korren is alive.

He survived the horrible carnage of the first day, and he's somewhere in this jungle, watching the sky with her. She wonders if he feels the same relief that her face hadn't been up there either. She knows, deep down, how foolish it is to be relieved that he's alive. But she can't seem to stop herself– she tries to tell herself that it's only because if she doesn't win, it would be nice for it to be him.

But that's not why she's glad. Not really.

The anthem ends, and the face of the boy from Twelve shimmers away to give way to twinkling stars.

"I was kind of hoping one of those faces would be from Four," says Plaid, breaking the tense silence. "That we missed a cannon in the rain."

Cassius snorts in amusement, and it's the first happy sound Embelia has heard from him all day. "I'll take first watch," he says. "You guys rest."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Emerald says, stretching with a small groan and shifting to lay down, using her pack as a lumpy pillow. Embelia sinks down silently beside her, folding her hands over her stomach and staring up at the tarp over her head. She's thankful for the arena's humidity, at least. Even if it'll make sleeping somewhat uncomfortable, it beats freezing to death.

"Hey," whispers Emerald after a little while. "You asleep?"

Embelia shakes her head, shifting onto her side so she faces Emerald, hand cradling her head. They're inches apart, and even in the dull light Embelia can see the freckles dotted over her pretty face.

"No," she says. "Are you?"

A grin splits her face and a gentle laugh tumbles from her lips. "Nope. Too much energy."

"I'm too worried to sleep," Embelia admits. "I know Cassius is watching, but I can't help but… worry someone might sneak up on us."

"No one's stupid enough to take us all on," she dismisses her worries easily. "We'll be fine."

"Even Four?"

"Especially them. They're both stupid smart. It was actually so annoying."

Embelia can't stop her small grin of amusement.

"Do you have anyone back home, Embelia?"

She blinks, taken aback by her question. She hesitates a moment, but figures it can't hurt to tell her. It may even humanise her enough for Emerald to spare her with the time comes.

"My mom," she says softly. "And my friend, Bay."

"Oh, your friend?" Emerald wiggles her eyebrows, snickering softly when Embelia scrunches her face up in disgust.

"No, not like that! He's my mom's age! We just work together… he's a good man. What about you?"

"Well, my mom and dad, of course," she says, a small, fond smile growing on her face. "My girlfriend, Silk."

Oh, no.

The very last thing Embelia needs is for the careers to start opening up to her, and acting like actual people rather than bloodthirsty killing machines.

"Emerald and Silk," Embelia mumbles, giving the girl before her a small smile. None of the worry in her bones manages to seep into her voice. "You sound like a good pair."

Emerald sighs wistfully, rolling over onto her back. "Yeah, she's a knockout. She's gonna be real proud of me. Anyway, we better try to get some sleep."

"Yeah," Embelia agrees, sighing. "Night."

She rolls over so she faces away from Emerald, her gaze falling on Plaid's sleeping form. Her plans are cracking before her eyes, and so much of it is her own fault.

Her plan relies on their trust. Only, the more they begin to trust her, the more she comes to know them. Emerald has a girlfriend. A mom, a dad. She's someone. Someone who continues to reveal herself as sweet, and funny– if a little vapid. Just as the little boy from Three had been, she's more than just an obstacle in the way of returning home.

Embelia feels a frustrated tear slip from her eye, and she hurriedly wipes it away. She knows she won't sleep a wink tonight. Perhaps she never will again.