Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Stars - Cleo

Cleo

It worked. I still can't believe that it worked. A whole day has gone by, the stars are twinkling in the sky, and I still can't believe it. None of this seems real. Surely I died in the bloodbath? I definitely never lived to know that Massey did, or to see Cyrus' hand bloody and imagine the noise that must have made, or to abandon Volt at the feast, or to kill a Career. I must be dead by now.

I pinch myself, and I'm not.

"I don't understand," I begin, "Why we can't wait for them to come to us." There's a lot of things I don't understand, but that's the main one. Ginger insisted we move, that we go and face the others now and get it over and done with, in his words. And I trust his judgement on that; if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be alive. But life has never seemed so amazing before now. Every breath clouding up in the sky is beautiful. I can almost feel the blood coursing through my veins.

Ginger looks up. Not Enzo; the name Enzo sounds like it belongs to some flash, oily haired rich kid, not the thin shape in front of me with the fuzzy hair. He's still Ginger. He's sat cross-legged on the floors, curving over the paper from inside the box. Two of the berries sit in the middle of the folds, eerie in the dark. He's got that mask on again, the rebel mask.

Again I wonder; in my last moments, would I have the courage to shout out?

"They're Careers," Ginger explains, "We're going to need every advantage we get. And right now our biggest advantage is the fact that they won't expect us to go to them."

That's the biggest advantage we're going to get. We're already in a better position than we were at the feast, because we're armed. Once the cannon had gone we went back - Ginger's unerring sense of direction took us straight there - and found their weapons. They'd already moved the bodies. There were a few packets of food, too, that both of us devoured, even Ginger. They tasted of nothing. Two empty, crumpled bottles had been strewn about and the whole scene felt abandoned and I shiver a little just remembering it.

Ginger has a few knives tucked into his belt. They're not really knives, not for cutting or cooking but for no other purpose than killing, but I can't think of any other word for them. They at least look easy to handle. I've got a sort of curved sword thing, shorter than a sword and very light in my hand. I keep almost forgetting that I'm holding it. And I have absolutely no idea how you're supposed to use it. Though this is the Hunger Games and there are no rules.

Don't die. May the odds be ever in your favour.

Basically, get lucky.

Well, I've been lucky. Even I can't deny that. It doesn't feel like it. I didn't feel lucky when my name was called out, or when I was watching the pictures that first night, or when I was running away with Volt's screams fading into the background and eventually the cannon, though the screams kept in my ears. But I'm one of the luckiest of the unlucky sacrifices. Luck runs out...

So we're armed. Some knives, my blade and the berries. Ginger's right; we need to go soon. Already I can feel the pangs of hunger, abated slightly by the bread and meat, getting stronger and I seem to be yawning every five minutes. The longer we wait, the weaker we get.

"The berries. Daisy-Eyes-"

"Daisy-Fruits," he corrects. Like it even matters, really. They're berries and their poisonous and the name means nothing.

"What sort of...how do they...?" The words stick in my throat, though they're fully formed in my head; how do they kill? What kind of death did the ones from Two suffer?

Very carefully, Ginger rips the papers in half, laying them on the floor with the berries perched on them, looking up at me. He sighs and folds his hands in his lap. "My mother told me, before...she told me that this is one where it's better to take too much than too little. A small amount can kill you in minutes. They're really bitter and the taste sticks because it starts being absorbed from the moment it hits your tongue. But it's not nice...it's painful. Eat the whole berry and you'll be dead in five seconds."