“You might want to close your mouth Clover. You’ll attract flies,” he says teasingly. She pouts back, folding her arms across her chest. “Flies know better than to mess with me,” she mutters causing Peeta to chuckle.
Peeta walks over to the body noticing that three of the stars hit the male tribute in the chest while the fourth star hit him in the neck. Sadly they were too deeply imbedded in the body to remove. He goes back to the group empty handed.
“Peeta, that was amazing! You’re almost as good as Clove and her knives,” Marvel exclaims. “Sorry you lost your stars though.” Peeta gives him a shrug before turning to Katniss.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you a moment ago. What were you saying?” he asks.
“J-just that we th-thought we should try g-going to another part of the arena,” she replies still in shock at how fast Peeta moved, at how fast everything had happened.
“That sounds good to me. Shall we?” he asks gesturing towards the jungle as he puts his backpack back on.
As they walk along, Peeta begins asking questions about what they saw. They tell him about the pride of lions on the rocks, the pack of wild dogs, and the ‘floating logs’. While the descriptions were less than ideal, he still tried to imagine what they saw. He was kind of regretting staying behind to draw. Madge could see that he was a little disappointed and promised that they would sit down and give him better descriptions for him to draw. He smiled and thanked her.
Clove walks up to Peeta a short time later, bumping him with her hip, “Hey Peeta, Marvel was right when he said that you were amazing with those stars. Sorry you lost them. I was hoping that you’d give me lessons if you get anymore.”
Peeta looks over at her, “Thanks Clove. I would love to teach you.”
There was something in his voice that made her look up at him and sees he is upset. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head, “I was just thinking about that boy I killed. I can’t figure out why he was trying to sneak up on us. He wasn’t even armed. Maybe I should have waited a minute to see what he wanted,” Peeta says, the guilt seeping into his voice.
“You did the right thing Peeta. These are the Hunger Games,” Thresh says from behind him. “It’s kill or be killed. Besides, we don’t need another person to worry about.” Peeta just nods, knowing Thresh is right. There were 13 of them already in the group as it was.
The six group members quickly go through the jungle and once the reach the beach, continue down the beach to their right heading away from the seven others in their team. They jog along the edge of the jungle, aware of the threat of landmines along the beach keeping an eye out for hidden tributes. They pick a point in which to re-enter the jungle and jog to a small clearing. They stop long enough to eat something quickly and drink some water.
“We’re going to have to find some water and soon, I’m getting a little low,” Madge comments. The others nod in agreement. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and this new area we’re headed into will have water.”
As they pack up their stuff and get ready to move on, they hear two cannon blasts. They share a look of hope for their friends before jogging deeper into the forest. When they reach the edge of the jungle, they are shocked to see what lies before them.
“This is where Rie found Rue,” Thresh says quietly.
“Should we stay and explore or try again in another area?” asks Madge, a little shocked that they were in an area that one of them had already been.
“We could just go back to the group,” Katniss suggests. The two blasts rattled her more than she cared to admit aloud. She was most worried about little Rue. Marvel could see the worry flash across her face and takes her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
Chapter 9: Day 2: Tribute Hunting
Start from the beginning
