Break The Rules But Be Smart About It: The Second Quarter quell

chapter ten

Penelope attempts to smack my stomach, and she pushes me around, but she is small. I grab her by the shoulders, lifting her off the ground. I throw her frail body into the air and smack her. She lands hard on the floor. Her head makes a crack sound. She looks at me with pain in her eyes. Soon enough, she gives me a final look, and she falls asleep... I think...

No canon is fired because I didn't kill her. I couldn't; I just gave her a push so that the thought of killing me could teach her a lesson to not mess with that. She wouldn't, but she had the idea.

I look at her, her curls become drenched in the snow, her lips have turned purple... like grapes, but I leave her be.

I leave our hut area and head straight ahead. Not knowing what to expect, I do the only thing I could do in these games. Walk. Walking seems to calm everyone in fun, or just we have nothing to do, walk, run, jog, kill, think, occasionally eat. We aren't granted many options.. oh, I forgot to mention dying, but we try not to keep that on the list.

There are evergreens all over the arena, covered with snow. I kick him now under and almost sink into it several times. The snow is laid out like a blanket of icing, covering the arena so entirely. To perfect to be true. I whisper to myself countless times, "wow," at just the sight. Maybe the capitol thought, "well since we are tortuing them, and killing them! Why don't we make it pretty" something the capitol would do, making it look fun and fashionable. Somewhere capitol citizens would want to vacation. Pathetic but smart. I zone myself out of everything around me and pay attention to the little sounds, the sounds of birds chirping, wet snow dripping/falling from the trees and onto the —something I had never experienced before. At twelve, snow is considered harmful. For the most part, it is. Kids cant go o school, some can't work because of the weather. Everything becomes chaotic and stressful, but here, a place where my job is to kill, but anyway, here it seems, pretty. Not a word I say much, but it is stunning. I wonder if the snow is chlorine? Like all other water sources here. I have a thermos, so bend down a put some inside. The thermos' inside is warm, so it should melt it, and I can press it against my body for the body heat. i have a couple of salt packets given to me by the capital, but I don't use salt or like it. But you can melt snow with salt, so I pop the two together and shake them in the thermos like what the bar lady would do to arrange the prep team's drinks.

I shake the thermos, but the snow is un-meltable. It seems like this arena is always snow, snow everlasting. Weird but once again, smart. I leave the mixture inside for no reason what so ever and walk some more. The light dims some, and sunset is happening, with colors, I have ever seen before. A mixture of Burgundy, pink and green. I walk some more, kicking the ground, and I a howl in the distance.

Oh, god, no. Wolves, but knowing the capital, these wolves will be genetically altered and diced to kill me this time. I can't tell where they are or how they will look, but all I do is walk. I hear a step in back of me, the sound of snow sinking, and a small animal approaching me. Soon a miniature, seven-pound sits in front of me. The dog looks at me with its wet nose and tilts his or her head and stick their tongue out. I stop looking right back at it. Well, what am I supposed to do? Pet it? It's not like I have food to spare or anything. I walk upward, and it takes a step back, I walk backward, and it takes an effort forward. An odd connection It makes with me as we do things in sync. I chuckle at the sight and walk on.

The dog stops. They look at me and bark. "RUF" the dog doesn't bark. The wolf in the back of me does with its pack of Wolfs of all sizes at the end of me. Big small, they all stay at me with their white coats ad bright blue eyes surrounded by a black outline. The little dog in the back of me makes a small sound, and they all do it. They look at me, turn their heads, and look at me. I walk back, and the pack of wolves looks at me. A second passes, and a tiny one in the front lifts their upper lip and makes a growing noise. The others do as well. And, of course, the capitol couldn't think of anything more creative, but they do what they were made to do. Attack me.