BLEEDING ⭒ the hunger games¹ [DISCONTINUED]

twenty ⭒ jungle

TWENTY _ JUNGLE

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WASHING MACHINE HEART _ MITSKI

❝toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart, baby bang it up inside.❞

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THE NEXT DAY, we are no longer joking about sponsors.

We have enough fish to last us a lifetime, but by the time they are cooked, there isn't a drop of moisture left in them. Our tongues are dry, too dry to speak, so all we can do is lie, baking in the sun, wishing for a sponsor gift to come ringing down from the sky. 

After a couple of hours of waiting, I decide I can't take it anymore. 

"Fuck you!" I scream at the sky. It glares back at me, blue and unchanging, smugly high above my problems. I grit my teeth as tears threaten to sting my cheeks. At least then I might have something to drink.

Alexei and Scarlett aren't doing anything to help me, and neither are Radia and Jax's mentors. 

Anger is blinding me, pounding my head, curling my hands into white-knuckled fists and sending violent tremors through my spine. For a second I think I might faint.

"Will you shut up? The careers are going to hear you-" I push Jax away from him as a wave crashes onto my feet.

"Fuck this." I grunt, pacing back to our small camp. I grab my sword from the sand and loop a backpack over my shoulder.

"Where the hell are you going?" Radia says accusingly, and I turn to her.

"I'm not going to die of dehydration out here. There's a better chance of finding water in the jungle, and at least if we're-if I'm in there, I won't die of heat stroke. Bye." And I begin to stalk off in the direction of the dark jungle ahead, regret stewing in my stomach, guilt bleeding into my anger.

"Wait! I'm coming too." Radia's voice pipes behind me, and I turn to find her eagerly picking up her stuff.

"Me too." Jax grunts eventually, pulling his axe from the floor and spitting on the shiny metal before rubbing it with his sleeve.

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My first impression of the jungle is that it is humid. Not hot, just humid.

The air on the beach was burning, but here it's just relentlessly damp and still. There is no breeze, no cool ocean to wash the beads of sweat from my forehead.

We trample through endless patches of large green leaf and vines and hard packed soil buried underneath the wilderness. My legs are aching, groaning like metal in desperate need of oil.

The sky soon turns orange, then pink, then a light indigo. My vision begins to haze as the jungle blurs together in a mess of twilight filtered emerald. I stop walking, holding the back of my sword to my forehead. It's still relatively cool, which does little to stop the burning sensation on my skin, but it's worth a shot.

"Ready to camp out?" I ask, panting between each word. All I can hear is strained breathing behind me, but just that tells me that they are.

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I'm scouting for a tree to climb when I hear a soft snuffling somewhere around me.

My breaths slow to a stop as tension rises in the thick air around us. I can tell that Jax and Radia feel it too, because I'm accompanied by silence.