And we run

It is still murder

Taura, Lua, Hawberry, Tiberius, me. 

Me, Tiberius, Hawberry, Lua, Taura. 

A day has passed since the cannon I heard last night, since the unexplained death of Wyatt, and I have seen his face shine in the sky, seen it disappear. A day has passed, and still it is the five of us, running around in this arena with full intent to win. 

I will admit that I'm no different. Although most of me is still sure that I am fundamentally not built to win the Hunger Games, a small bit, in the very back of my mind, assures me that if I made it this far, how hard could it be to make it just a little bit farther? I could hide out in the trees, and maybe, just maybe, everyone would kill each other off before I had to move an inch. 

It's a fruitless dream, though, because already my skin is burnt and my bones ache, and it has only been a little more than a day. My food and water supplies are holding strong but I am starving because of it, and I do not see a healthy future for myself if this is how I am to stay. 

I haven't been in the arena for long, but my clothes are loose. When I feel my face, my cheeks are hollow, lips chapped, and dirt comes back on my fingertips, small grains of the life I have been living here. 

To pass the time, I have been analyzing my competition. 

Taura is one I know well. She is calculated, yet nowhere near calm. She has a short fuse, easy to temper, and loves to have the upper hand--needs it, almost. I don't want to imagine a Taura that is losing, because I know she'd be doing absolutely anything to get her winning streak back.

Lua is more of a mystery. She's quiet, obviously, and so young. Earlier, she seemed as if she was simply following in the footsteps of Taura and Wyatt, but with her sudden disappearance, I wonder if that was an accurate perception. Really, she's a wild card--but, admittedly, not a dangerous one. However confident she may be, Lua is five years younger than me, and it shows. 

Hawberry I truly know nothing about. He's from Eleven--and that's it. I have my assumptions about the District, stigma that maybe I should've dispensed with a long time ago, and still, it lingers. He's probably good with a scythe, but then again, maybe he's not. I don't know what happens in Eleven. I probably never will, with the distance it carries from Four. 

Tiberius is almost the same, just a tad closer than Hawberry. He's from Six, and older than me, which could very well be a threat. But he, himself, does not seem too particularly dangerous, only vain. Similar to Apollo, actually. 

I don't want to think about Apollo. I'm already trying to expunge him from my mind, to wipe away all traces of his existence the same way you would clean a glass window. He is dirt on the glass, stubborn but washable all the same. 

Terra is a scratch. She dug her claws into the window of my mind and dragged, leaving a long tear in my brain matter, one that can never be wiped away. I don't even mind. Terra is a tiger, and so she has always been, and so she will stay. 

I haven't dreamed since... that. It's another thing I'm trying not to let cross my mind, because it's awful to know that my subconscious dreams of murder. Even if it's of Taura, the girl closest to my turning point, it is still murder, and it is still fundamentally wrong, and it still needs to stay far away from me. 

It's midday when another cannon sounds, accompanied by a loud, bloodcurdling, masculine scream that almost knocks me out of my tree. Thankfully, I am only startled back into my senses, sitting straight up, feet locked around the two branches I'm straddling. It takes a little bit to catch my breath, to realize that I am okay, that I am not dead. That someone else is. That either Hawberry or Tiberius has just breathed their last breaths moments ago.