An Extra Tribute

-too romantic to kill-

The next day is as eventful as last night. In the morning, we search the forest for any victims, but after no success, we come back for lunch. After that, we all laze about back at the Cornucopia which has been relieved of all the bodies of the dead tributes. It's late in the afternoon and I fill up a few bottles with water from the lake. I use three drops of iodine to filter them all. I wait forty-five minutes before giving half to Peeta and stuffing the rest in my pack, much to the annoyance of Glimmer and Marvel.

"Can't we have some water?" He asks, glaring at me. I nod, raising my eyebrows.

"Yeah! There's iodine drops in the horn and bottles there too. Filter your own," I say.

"But, you gave Peeta some," Glimmer whines.

"Yes, I did. Wonderful observation hun," I say condescendingly. She glares at me and Peeta takes a sip of his water, wiggling his eyebrows. They roll their eyes and walk back over to the Cornucopia where Clove and Cato were laying in the shade. I look at him and burst out laughing. He laughs as well and we just take a few moments to enjoy ourselves.

"They are not my favorite people in the world," I comment, leaning back on my hands on the shore of the lake with a grin. Peeta sits with his legs crossed in front of me and agrees.

"Nope," he says, popping the 'p'. I splash some water on myself and groan.

"It's so hot, Peeta," I complain. He suddenly grins.

"You want me to help you with that?" He asks. I furrow my eyebrows.

"What?" I ask. Then, a wall of water hits me in the face. I wipe my eyes and stare him down while he just looks away with an innocent smile.

"Peeta Mellark," I say.

"Yes?" He asks, looking at me again, grinning widely. I then scoop up water in my hands quickly and throw it at his face, succeeding in getting him wet. He spits out some of the stuff and then looks me in the eyes.

"Oh, it is on," he says.

"Let's go," I taunt and we both shoot up, lunging for the lake. I scrape the top of the water and send it at him as he does the same to me. I jump into the shallow water (as my shoes and socks were already off and my pants rolled up because I'd had my feet in earlier) and kick the water at him. He gasps and pelts me with water. We keep up this routine of splashing each other until he slips and falls in. I giggle and point at him before he pulls me in by my ankle. I come down with a huge splash and glare at him.

"Rude," I say. Peeta shrugs and chuckles. He lightly splashes my face and so I push him further into the water. I know he probably can't swim, but it's really shallow and he'll only need to stand up to breathe. Even then, it'll only go up to his knees. I stand up and watch him try to get up. He finally sits up and breathes heavily, giving me a playful glare. I stick my tongue out at him and giggle. Discreetly, he points behind me and I spin around. The other Careers are completely weirded out by our water battle and are giving us looks to match. I laugh and stick my tongue out at them as well, but they don't know what to do with that, so they ignore me.

"I'm going to dry off and change," I announce. Peeta looks at me with furrowed eyebrows.

"Noah, they only have jackets in the Cornucopia," he says. I nod and smile.

"I know. I'll make it work." WIth that, I head into the horn, searching through a few boxes for the jackets I saw earlier. All of them were made to fit even the biggest tribute, which here is Thresh or Cato, and so they are huge. My plan is to wear one without a shirt underneath, I'll just zip it up, and for the bottoms I'll zip another up and slide it on like a skirt. Then, I'll tie the sleeves into a knot so they won't get in the way. At least, that's the idea.