Cage me like an animal • F Odair¹ •

XVII

"Don't tell me to shut up!"

•∘♛∘•

Kai had fallen asleep a few minutes later. He slept for only a few hours, before getting up and insisting that he take watch, to which Athena refused. They went back and forth for at least five minutes until Kai vowed to knock her out right where she sat if she didn't go to sleep on her own. Athena stared at Kai's face, decided that he was not joking, and gave in only then. She didn't need any more injuries. Satisfied, Kai took up watch, and Athena stretched out on the floor, falling into an uneasy sleep after nearly fifteen minutes. Athena dreamt she won the Games and was crowned victor, but when she returned home, District Four was nothing but sandy ruin, and she could not leave the arena no matter where she went.

Kai woke her up in what felt like no time at all. She jumped a little as he shook her awake. He was much more comfortable with waking her up suddenly than Rowan and Cara had been; they had been much more tentative with her, as though afraid of what she would do to them if they startled her. Kai, in comparison, did not seem worried at all that she might hurt him. Athena couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not.

They prepared themselves for the day ahead of them in what was mostly silence. Neither of them mentioned any part of their conversation from the night before. After they were ready to head out for the day, they decided to start searching for the watering holes. Even though they were both relatively familiar with the way there and they still had a good amount of water between them, it would take a few days to find them again. If they started looking now, they would hopefully find the watering holes by the time they ran out of water.

With this decided, they set out together into the hot, desert air. They hadn't found the watering holes by the end of the day, but they also hadn't been expecting it. Only two things of interest happened. One, while they walked when the sun was just about to start setting, they heard a canon. They stopped dead in their tracks, looking up as the noise sounded from above. Instinctively, they looked around them, as though a tribute had been dying in their vicinity and they just hadn't noticed it; evidently, they heard no one. They stayed where they were, still, silent, waiting. Sure enough, just over five minutes later, the canon sounded another time. They waited again, another five, ten, fifteen minutes, as though waiting for the canons that would confirm the other two remaining tributes as dead, but they never came. Eventually, Athena and Kai only exchanged significant looks and kept walking.

The other event of significance was after night had fallen and Athena and Kai were searching for shelter. They almost ran into those fatal sand mounds, and (trying not to think about the destroyed body of Paige Yarnn, the very first all they had ever had besides each other) ran away in the opposite direction as fast as they could. While they ran, Athena stumbled over the uneven ground they were running on and somehow managed to mess up her sprained ankle even more than before. Kai laughed at her as they ran, and Athena had to laugh at herself a little, too, even as she cursed her luck.

When they found shelter to rest in for the night, Kai insisted, in what Athena supposed was a rather chivalrous manner, that she stay in the sitting room and tend to her leg while he searched the house himself. Something about that made her feel uneasy, but she accepted when he continued to insist on it. Athena collapsed onto the maroon sofa with its broken springs as Kai went to search the house for any dangers, his bow and arrow at the ready.

She found quickly that the state of her ankle hadn't actually worsened in any way; the extra pressure that her stumble had put on it had simply caused more pain. Otherwise, she was fine. Athena had never considered herself a particularly clumsy person, though. Her father would likely get a kick out of that, if nothing else out of these Games. "See, you inherited more from me than we thought!" he would say, laughing in his way that always made her feel more at home, while her mother smiled and laughed with him, and Calypso made fun of her for her clumsiness. The thought made her smile.