𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Twenty-Six

The forest grew muggy with afternoon heat as Lucy came vaguely back to herself, still kneeling in Lilliandil's blood, head spinning, eyes burning dry in the absence of long-spent tears.

She took a deep, shaky breath, and glanced up into the bright green world beyond her fingers, buzzing with insects, the glittering stream rushing just a few yards away.

For the first time in over an hour she remembered that anyone else could come crashing through at any moment, her position dangerously exposed. But through the haze of her screaming mind she almost couldn't bring herself to care, stumbling clumsily to her feet and staring down at her own dark stained hands for several moments before turning back at last toward the river and kneeling at its bank.

Ice water slapped her wrists, threads of pink washing downstream as she rubbed her palms and splashed her face, hints of red still lingering beneath her nails by the time she moved to get up.

She stopped short as her eyes fell to a patch of tiny white flowers flocking the stream's edge—the same baby lilies springing up from the tubers she'd so often collected with Edmund and Jill.

Her hands plunged into the flower bed before she even had time to think, ripping up the tender plants in thick bunches, grass and earth clinging to delicate leaves as she piled up a sloppy bouquet and stood to carry them over to Lilliandil's body.

The horrifying image of the girl drenched in blood didn't match any of the bright sights or sounds around her, but Lucy knelt and zipped up her jacket before tucking the white flowers between cold hands, arranging the flowers to cover most of the blood, as if Lilliandil were merely asleep in a woodland glade, like a girl in a fairytale.

For a moment she only gazed numbly down at her own handiwork, a vacuous, heavy feeling settling in her veins before she stood and collected her things. Her bow, her dagger, still stained red, but she didn't bother washing it before shoving it back onto its sheath and wandering away into the afternoon forest, off into the north where she'd been meaning to go all along, though now she barely remembered why.

Hide. You're meant to hide.

That was right.

But now it felt pointless. If Rhince had crashed through the trees at that exact moment, would it even matter?

She trudged until the babble of the river faded behind her, and nothing but birdsong broke the silence of her misery, save for the brief whirr of a hovercraft as it descended out of sight, and vanished again, along with the last traces of Lilliandil's presence from the arena.

The afternoon stretched on into oblivion.

Lucy wandered without quickening her pace, even when the whole valley would have seen exactly where the hovercraft came down. She walked, and walked, until she hit a thick patch of bushes nestled up against the northwestern cliff face, and crawled in amongst them, collapsing against the trunk of a thick tree in the shade.

Time faded into a relic of another age, shadows moving through the brush and eventually vanishing as the sun sloped beyond the peak of the cliff overhead and cast it all into a cooler haze.

The sky had begun to glow orange beyond the canopy of dense foliage when a faint ding broke Lucy out of her hazy reverie, and she glanced around in the strange light to find a silver parachute floating down toward her.

It caught on a branch overhead, and she reached up to pull it off, gazing down at the small tin like she'd never seen such a thing before, the usual number 8 engraved on its surface.

She twisted the lid and cracked it open to a packet of grain bars, nestled on top of which lay a strawberry scone drizzled with frosting and wrapped in wax paper. The very same as those she'd nibbled with Digory that very first day on the train.