A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Glasses

Imagine...

Imagine Kula, shifting among the tombstones. He has been running; his face is flushed behind the strands of ashy hair and his breath comes quickly. At every noise he is looking over his shoulder and once or twice he dodges behind a stone and waits, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

It is mid-afternoon, approaching evening, on the first day in the arena. Since Rat's cannon over ten hours ago there has been nothing. There is no indication of where anybody is. He could be all alone, except he knows he's not because if he was then a) there would have been more cannons and b) he would have been airlifted out of here by now. There must be others. He doesn't know where. Any twitch or rustle could be the wind, or it could be another tribute creeping along behind him. There is nothing to do except walk and panic and overthink things. He is caught in a precarious balance between boredom and paranoia.

He thinks he might go crazy with it.

He has a plan, because he's had a long time to think of a plan. At what he guessed was midday he sat down and ate some of the protein-paste packets that he'd found in Antonio's pack, but his stomach growled anyway and so he ate some more. Now he feels strong. Protein is supposed to be good for strength, isn't it? The Quartz tributes ought to know. At least one of them is still alive because neither of them were in the pictures last night and there's only been one cannon since. If he had to put any pecunia on it, he would say it was the girl. The boy looked big and strong but clumsy. He would be able to hear him coming from miles away.

The girl could be following him right now.

He ducks behind another gravestone and counts to ten, listening. By now he has managed to work out which noises are normal: the whistle of the breeze through the stones, the crunch and crackle of leaves, the maddening sound of his own breathing. Nothing sounds out of place. He thinks that he can hear shouting, a distant cry that hovers right on the base of his hearing but which could just be his imagination because the normal sounds are so boring. Kula has always had a vivid imagination for a boy from Gold. When he was younger he made up friends and managed to convince himself that they were real, so imagining a distant argument is not out of the question. Even if it is real, it is too far away to be of any threat. For now.

Satisfied that Melonie is not creeping up behind him, he grabs the jagged edges of the tombstone and uses it to haul himself upright. He really should have got fitter. Trained a bit, just in case, like it's obvious that some of the others have. But he didn't think he'd need to. His parents had assured him that they had a plan, that he'd be safe. He should have known. He should have realised from the look on the Guide's face, sneering at his mother's attempts to fake tears, that she had no intention of removing his name from the list.

Kula has thought all this through at least ten or eleven times since the cannon woke him this morning. He is getting bored of it. But he can't think of anything else to think about, really, not with the Games all around him.

So, his plan. It is a simple one; survive until nightfall. If he can make it to the dark he can hide himself, and he's always been good at not being seen when he doesn't want to be. As long as he keeps his eyes closed. Some of the other tributes might be spooked by a pair of glowing orange eyes. Some of them - Melonie included - would just attack. He would. He hopes that some of the others saw him kill Antonio.

Except the boy isn't actually dead, not really. Yes, there was blood, and yes, he saw him go down and stop moving and he saw the picture in the sky, but he's not dead. How can he be dead? He was alive and moving and stumbling over his own feet just yesterday. Kula saw him trying and failing to start a fire, before his sector partner, that girl with the sharp eyes, came along and helped him. He was scared but well then. It takes longer than a few seconds to die.