𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘'𝐋𝐋 𝐉𝐔𝐌𝐏 𝐎𝐅𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐃𝐆𝐄 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑.
What District 2 victor, Saffron Creek, and prodigy, Finnick Odair, share is the very antithesis of what has been stolen from them. They test the edges of the rules that construct t...
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solitary . . . . .
Her fear is potent and infantile and thuds in her skull like a heavy boot as she darts through the jungle. It is like her presence is rejected by the roots she trips over and the walls of vines that block her path. This environment feels distinctly primal though it was synthesized by the dozens of Gamemakers sitting safely in the Capitol.
It was stupid, she knows, to separate from her allies when she is trapped in a hemisphere in which everything wishes to kill her. There could be a pack of Careers circling her now. Prowling. Capturing her only after it is too late.
She is stronger than that, though. She hopes.
Within minutes, night has descended upon Saffron unexpectedly in the form of a permeating darkness that huddles among the trees. A true night crawls across the sky, swallowing the blue of day slowly until a solitary moon wrestles itself through its orbit.
But this is unnatural.
She can see no moon and there are few stars. They are dim and pixelated like an afterthought. Saffron wonders what time it is outside of the arena. Are her parents and sister cooking dinner in the kitchen together? Or do they sit, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the sofa in the living room watching her stare at the sky in the dying light?
She is startled by the sudden, punctuated booms of cannon fire. Nine, she counts. Her mind is filled with heat, sweat sloshing around in the vessel beneath her skin. Shadows slither in shallow recesses along the trees and next to her feet, but she cannot quite tell whether this is reality or delirious hallucination.
Saffron finds a tree and begins to climb. It is chalky beneath her palms, but it supports her weight as she reaches higher and higher. When she breaks the leaf canopy it is like she has breached the surface of a great ocean of warmth and humidity. A breeze caresses her neck. She surveys her world—oh, how it has narrowed in the span of mere hours.
There is no one on the beach and the Cornucopia has been deserted. The jungle, too, lies still and it gives the sensation that she is the last artifact of humanity in an animal kingdom, but she knows this cannot be true. She tucks herself in the elbow of a large branch and presses her eyes closed and sleeps.
An hour has barely passed when Saffron feels something alien on her skin. Her eyes snap open to the desaturated murk of predawn and nothing has changed. She is still surrounded by a bleak jungle and a staleness that makes her feel as though she is suspended in limbo—
Freeze.
Her legs are constricted by an elongated body that stretches and then coils again. She is shackled to the tree, and she cannot distinguish vine from snake, from unknown monster.
She gasps.
It is around her neck.
It moves swiftly and all the air rushes from her lungs. Her hands scramble to that thing and she is met with a thousand contradictions, like it has been constructed from enigmas: rubbery beneath her fingers, yet chalky under her nails. Plaint but strong and unyielding.
She knows it will only take three minutes for her to lose consciousness, so she must act quickly.
By feel, she fumbles with her blade to slash the body of her assailant.
Blood—it is warm—seeps like honey between her fingers. There is a moment of delay and then a gag-inducing scent is emitted from the beast. Her throat burns and terribly, her attack has done nothing to free her. The creature around her throat exerts more pressure around her throat.
Unconsciousness prowls closer; an onslaught of dark stars orbits her vision.
Saffron still holds a weak grip on her dagger, but her other hand goes slack, and her chain goes sliding off her wrist. It falls to the ground in a series of tinny tolls.
