Cage me like an animal • F Odair¹ •

XI

"I never realized it comes so soon... look at the sun"

•∘♛∘•

"Something's going to happen soon."

Athena blinked. She had just been woken from a short, fitful sleep a few days later, as had Rowan by Cara. The statement, said by Cara almost as a promise, threw Athena off a little.

"We're in the Hunger Games," Athena said finally. "Lots of things happen all the time. Try elaborating."

"How many days has it been since something big happened?" Cara said impatiently. "Besides that fire, we had to run from, because that barely counts. None of us even got burned. The Gamemakers are going to pull something soon, and it's going to be big. Tell me I'm wrong."

The last sentence was a challenge, looking at Athena and Rowan defiantly, as though daring them to oppose her. Neither Athena nor Rowan could do any such thing. Cara had said what they had all been thinking lately, and she was well aware of it.

"Well," Athena said bracingly, "we can't stop it. We'll have to be careful and figure out how to cross that bridge when we get there."

"Yeah," Rowan agreed. "The calm wouldn't last forever."

Not that the last few days were what Athena classified as calming. Travelling in the shadows as best as they could, afraid to even breathe too loudly, constantly looking over their shoulder, straining their ears to hear any signs of incoming danger, and eating and drinking very little to preserve the little supplies they had. They still had a good amount of food and water left, but they had to have very, very few microscopic portions per day to preserve it. The only real upside was that they now knew where to go if they needed more. Athena was only glad that her recent life back at home had taught her to deal with hunger. The academy trained students tirelessly for the games part of the Hunger Games, not so much the hunger part. Most Careers struggled with the lack of food and water the most. Even her fellow allies were surprised by how well she was dealing with the situation.

"Where does a rich girl Career learn to deal with stuff like this?" Cara would muse, staring at her like she was some grand mystery.

"A necessary skill that I've picked up," Athena would reply shortly. Stupid as it was, since she had already shared it with all of Panem, she was still embarrassed to talk about how much she and her family struggle with money. Rowan and Cara clearly thought that her story about applying for Tesserae was a lie, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted to let them know that it was the truth.

"Come on," Athena said, standing up and stretching. "We should get going soon."

Just as she did every morning, Cara brought her fingers to her hair to redo her plaits. Despite the amount of practice she had, she still struggled with braiding her hair, and it got more and more tempting for Athena to just do it for her, though she held back, knowing Cara likely wouldn't take kindly to it. Still, the line had to be drawn somewhere, and for Athena, it was the point where Cara took out her braids in frustration and restarted for the fifth time in a row.

"Do you want me to just do those for you?"

Cara looked at her. "What?"

"Your hair. How about I just braid it?" Athena said. "I'm not half bad at it. I braid my sister's hair all the time, and hair like ours is much more difficult to maintain than hair like yours."

Athena gestured to her own hair, which, though it was currently in a tight bun, was all curls and coils, as opposed to Cara's wavier hair.

"I'm not your sister, am I?" Cara said sharply.