Dear Diary,
I wake up, and rub my eyes. My eyes! It doesn't hurt to touch my eyes! I feel my shoulder, and instead of a bloody mess, I feel a small gash that is covered with bandages. My ribs don't hurt, and my face feels normal. Wow!
"Good morning sleeping beauty," a voice booms, ringing through my ears. And for a second, I think it's Finnick. Instead, I find myself looking into the dark eyes of Cicero. I smile sheepishly, a small blush coming over my face. "This is what helped heal you," he hands me a small bottle that must have come from a parachute. Inside, there were two pills left. And there was a note on top.
A LITTLE goes a long way, my LOVE - F
F. Finnick. He helped me to get better, he sent me the medicine I so desperately needed. I'm not dead! And why did he bold certain letters? Oh! A little love. He's referencing the last words I said to him before I came in to the games. So many thoughts are running through my head, so much I'm thinking about and feeling. But Finnick. How hard must he have worked to gotten me that magic medicine? I feel a blush creeping over my face, and I smile as I look up at Cicero.
"How long was I asleep?" I ask, my voice sore. I guess that's what happens when you don't talk for a few days, when you're passed out for a few days. It doesn't help that I was basically dead before I got any medicine, with an infection spread far on my body.
"Not too long," Cicero begins, before Desdemona shakes her head.
"Two days. While you were out, the girl from three died. That was about it. We could've killed more if we weren't busy sitting here and taking shifts watching you," she rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her face. Desdemona had a typically angry face, and she was very buff. She had strong muscles and dark skin, her curly hair pulled into a tight bun on top of her head. Her eyebrows seemed to fit her face, and personality, well. They looked beautiful, yet cold, unforgiving, and willing to murder you in a minute.
"Oh hey, you're up!" Sparkle says excitedly, crouching down beside me and helping me to sit up. "Do you want some food? Gunner and I just got back from hunting," she motions to Gunner who was carrying a large deer over his shoulders. Despite the fact that I hadn't eaten in days, the thought of eating any sort of meat repulsed me.
"Um, do you guys have anything else, maybe just an apple or something small? Well, I'm a vegetarian," I mumble, rubbing my neck sheepishly, my face lighting up in a soft pink color.
"Oh come on, she's so much more trouble than she's worth. I think we should just kill her," Desdemona huffs. Sparkle instantly wraps her arms around me protectively, pulling me close, into almost a hug, if I had been facing her. Cicero likewise sits down beside me, throwing his arm around my shoulder in a way that makes me think about Finnick.
"It's so cute that you're a vegetarian," he whispers in my ear, pushing some hair aside so that he can whisper properly. While he speaks, his tone seems different than the whispered conversations between Finnick and I. Instead of sensing a little love, I feel something else.
Lust.
After he set down the deer, Gunner tossed me an apple, and that was the first time I really got to look at his face. One of his eyes was green, like mine, like Finnick's, and his other was brown, as dark of a brown as the bark of a black birch tree. Suppressing a gasp, I take the apple that was just thrown to me, noticing that this one was deep red like the ones Marietta gave me. I hope that Percy is doing okay with the food, and the drink I left him. He had the rope and the sleeping bag, the matches, the extra jacket. I left him with practically everything, so I just hope that Percy is doing alright.
As the careers cook their deer, I eat my apple and make small talk with Sparkle about everything from the games to her hair to her life back home. Turns out she has a boyfriend back home that she's hoping to return to, and a twin sister named Shimmer that wants to volunteer next year, when she's eighteen. She has two other siblings, a brother, Gold who is fourteen and a sister, Glimmer, who is thirteen. She's an amazing person, and I just hope that she gets to go home to her family.
Of course, I want to win. I want to win and survive and see my family and Finnick and everyone again. But that'll be hard to do, especially when you can't bring yourself to kill somebody. As much as Sparkle tells me she can, she's been trained to kill, I can't imagine her killing someone. Maybe if she can kill, she'll win the games. Maybe.
So as we're eating, I drink some of Cicero's water, and remember the canteen that Percy still has. That he has that note from Amelia, and I'll probably never see it again. I sigh, knowing full well that I'll probably die soon anyways, and that's why I'll never see it again. I look at the bottle of pills from Finnick, and any supporters I have in the capital, and I hug it close to me. If I close my eyes tight enough, I can almost smell the sugar that floats around him whenever we talked, reminding me of how sweet he is.
"So today," Desdemona starts, crossing her arms over her chest as she looks at me. "Are we grabbing rolls and looking around the arena for tributes?" She asks with an eyebrow raised, looking at Cicero. I swallow nervously. Jeez. Right to the point.
Cicero and Gunner nod in agreement, and Sparkle looks over at me. "You feeling up to it, Annie? We can trail behind a bit, if that'll make you feel better," Gunner looks at me, his green eye blank and staring into my soul. These district two tributes were tough. Didn't they both score relatively high? If I think hard enough, I remember Desdemona scoring a 10, and Gunner scoring at least an 8.
"Yeah, I'll tag a long and take up the back with you," I nod, smiling at Sparkle. She grins, taking out a hair brush and starting to brush her hair that was pulled into a tight high ponytail. Desdemona sighs.
"Again, Sparkle? You're in the Hunger Games, I'm sure the capital will understand if you're not in perfect condition all the time," she comments.
"It's a personal thing, Dez. I like to feel pretty. It makes me feel confident. Makes my aim better," she winks, handing the brush over to me. "Want to fix your hair?" she asks, looking disapprovingly at my red hair, tangled from all of my days in the rain and running from dinosaurs.
"Yeah, thank you," I accept the brush with a big smile, noting how awkward it feels in my hand. It must be some sort of capital material, some kind of precious metal. Had someone in the capital actually spent money to send a hairbrush as a sponsor gift? Sparkle is gorgeous, I won't deny that, but is her beauty more of an asset than her brawn in these games? Burundi is definitely onto something with the whole 'Panem is patriarchal' thing.
I hand her brush back to her after brushing out my bangs and the rest of my hair in my ponytail. I take one of the last two pills, figuring I should probably take one a day. Cicero helps me up, wrapping his arm around my waist to keep me stable.
"You ready to go gorgeous?" he asks with a smirk. I swallow, nodding nervously. This didn't feel the same as Finnick. But I figured if I wanted to keep my alliance with them safe, I had to have more than just Sparkle behind me.
"Yeah, I'm ready," I nod.
"Alright, Des and I will lead in the front, Sparkle, you and Annie can stay in the middle, and Gunner, you take up the rear, in case anyone happens to be following us," Cicero explains, laying out how we will be traveling, hunting, these other tributes.
They then pack a backpack which Dez carries, including a roll and a small package of that precooked meat that Percy ate for everyone.
"Oh wait!" Sparkle sticks her fingers up, taking a small Tupperware off the pile of food that the careers are hording. "This is some kind of premade salad. We found it in the cornucopia, and it hasn't gotten bad yet. Gunner had one the other night, he said it was good, right?" He nods in response, and she smiles back at me. I knew in her smile that this wasn't some sort of plan to poison me, instead it was a way to include me and my meatless diet.
I take her hand and squeeze it softly, thanking her for remembering me and accommodating me. As we're walking, Desdemona—Dez—turns back to look at me, "so if it came down to it, would you eat meat? Like if you had to?" She looks at me quizzically, an eyebrow raised.
I shrug. "I mean, I guess if I have to. I don't know. Animals are so innocent, I don't think that I could bring myself to kill one just for me to eat, I'd probably turn to something else first," I offer, glancing over my shoulder at Gunner. With a straight face and his green eye staring into my soul, I turned back. I'd rather look at Dez and her angry face and strong arms that could crush me in an instant than Gunner and his always-watching-me eye.
I sigh, feeling anxiety build up in my chest. Why was I getting anxious? Maybe because I felt smushed between two lethal tributes, with Sparkle as my only true friend. Cicero just liked how I looked, and I'm sure if it came down to it, he wouldn't protect me over another career tribute. Hell, I'm surprised he even picked me up and carried me all that way to the career camp. Maybe he does care about me, at least a little.
We spend the day searching for other tributes, for ~anyone~ to kill, because that's all they want. I don't know how they do it. I just don't know.
We take a break for lunch at the waterfall, and I for one revel in the deafening sound of the water hitting the pond as I eat my salad and roll. It reminds me of all of the time sitting here with Percy, drinking water and refilling our canteens. While the idea is on my mind, I dip my canteen into the pond, filling it quickly for future use.
We head back out after we're done eating, and I thought I heard a bush rustle behind me. I glance over my shoulder, and all I'm met with is Gunners never ending stare. As we continue on, I say a small prayer for Percy, that he is surviving and staying safe, not trailing too close behind us. I'm sure that the careers won't receive him as well as they did me. Gunner and Desdemona already don't appreciate my presence, my weakness, and I'm eighteen. Never mind a small twelve year old who scored a six in training.
As we're walking, we approach the dinosaur ridden landscape. Memories come flooding back like a tidal wave, almost knocking me over. I swallow my anxieties nervously, and speak up. "Have you guys ever been over here before?" I ask, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice.
A collective no and shaking of heads follows.
"I wouldn't suggest it. That's uh, where I got this, and it got infected," I point to my shoulder, where despite the capitals best medicine, I still had a cut. "There were uh, well I don't know if you guys have learned about them, but uh there were dinosaurs in there. Basically these ancient monsters from before the time of humans. A pack of them, velociraptors, attacked me, and were able to bite off part of my shoulder and bruise up my face. I don't know what else was in there, but I saw a pterodactyl too. It was all rocks, with one big cave, which I slept in for a night, before finding baby dinosaurs and a mom coming out of it the next morning. They definitely could have killed me, and I'm surprised they didn't," I explain, wrapping my arms around myself nervously.
"Oh well, there's five of us, not one of you. We can take them down. Who knows, a tribute might be hiding out over there," Gunner grins, excited to kill. I look at him for a moment, before I feel as if he is staring daggers into my soul again. I quickly look away.
Cicero laughs. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Gunner. Did you even hear what she said? Velociraptors. Those are the smartest dinosaurs out there. And these were genetically made by the capital. I'm gonna say no, with Annie," I smile over at him, thankful that he backed my claims, so I didn't look as weak and inferior to the district two tributes. He ruffles my hair a bit.
"Come on guys. I'm sure they're hiding somewhere in this forest, we just have to look," Sparkle entices, pointing us back in the direction we came. All I could think of was please Percy, be safe.
As we walk past the waterfall once again, I turn to Sparkle. "Why do you think they dammed it up like that?" I ask, pointing to the waterfall that seemed trapped, forcing a small amount of water to pour out.
"Oh I don't know," she shrugs. "I suppose it could be some statement about censorship, about how the capital makes us think we're living good and we're seeing the beautiful side of things, when in reality they are hiding something much more beautiful from us." Sparkle fixes her hair over her head, as if what she just said wasn't profound and completely true.
"Wow," I pause, thinking about the magnitude of what she just said. "I thought it was just to restrict the amount of water we got. But that works too," I laugh.
After some more walking, and the careers restless searching for a tribute, we end up back at the camp for dinner.
"I'm starving," Cicero proclaims, holding his stomach and looking at their pile of food. All I can think is, well, he wouldn't know starving if it hit him on the head with a brick. Not that I would either, but Cicero had more muscle mass than probably the strongest men back home in district four.
"Let's cook up the rest of that deer. Annie, why don't you eat some of those berries we found and rolls," Dez suggests. Wow. Was she talking to me directly, in a nice way? Maybe I'm making progress here.
We eat and discuss tomorrow's plans, and as the sky grows darker we decide to go to sleep for the night.
"If it's alright with you guys, can I borrow a match and write in my journal?" I ask, pulling it out of my pocket, and the pen with it. Sparkle winks at me, and the rest of them shrug.
"Sure, I don't see why not," Cicero strikes a match for me. As they all get ready for bed, I take a sleeping bag and sit propped up against the cornucopia. And that's how I could see them.
Eyes. Bright blue. Glowing in the forrest. Staring into my soul, like Gunner's. But Gunner was next to Sparkle, and she was right next to me. I could see him sleeping, or at least trying to sleep.
I see some kind of motion in the woods, the eyes darting around and moving. I scream out, just as an arrow whizzes through the air.
Gunner sits up in anticipation of my screams, and gets struck right in the chest.
Run, go! Run away, whoever you are. They're going to kill you! But the blue eyes just sit there, staring me down.
Almost too blue to be human.
The other tributes are waking up now, moving Gunner, taking the arrow out of him. As I lean over him, I see that his eyes are still open, watching me. In an act of both kindness and self preservation, I carefully close his eyes.
I look back at the woods, where the person was staying still, their blue eyes unblinking. I shudder as a cannon goes off, and the person disappears into the forrest.
Thank you for listening,
Annie