Highway to hell

17. Bloody Berries

Mara's POV:

I cloud only feel one thing, confusion.

I could've killed Cato in our fight, yet I didn't. Like if something, some force, stopped me from doing him any harm. And now I'm stuck with the ginger from District Five. Don't get me wrong though, I like her company, but it feels wrong. I don't know, maybe these games are making me go crazy after all.

"Oh, you're already awake," I soft voice wakes me from my overthinking. I just nod in response, not wanting to speak. "Well someone's cheery." She snorts.

"Funny,"

"What's wrong?" She asks, leaning closer to my side, "miss your boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend,"

"Well if you say so, I'm no one to judge," she stands up and hands me her hand. "How do you feel about berries."

_____________________________________

I didn't pay attention to the berry classes in training sessions.

Good call Mara the Wise, now you're going to get poisoned by some stupid berries.

I'm such an idiot sometimes, I swear.

I've barely spent a few hours with Foxface and this is what I'm able to make out. She's really smart, like really really smart, she's my age, so she's pretty young for the games, she doesn't know how to manage a weapon and she likes laughing at me for my apparent lack of knowledge.

Funny, I know. Gotta be real brave or real stupid to laugh at a Career, and I know she's not stupid.

I walk over to a bush full of blueberries, take a closer look at the berries. They look completely normal to me. I grab my bag and start shoving them inside. I've never seen so many berries in one bush, it's starting to get a tad suspicious.

Nonetheless, my hunger overpowers my ability to think straight and I keep putting berries in my bag. A little bunny crosses my path, it's stops on its tracks and looks at me, who's getting a knife out of my vest, the moment it's about to run off I shoot my knife at his head, missing it's by a few seconds.

"Shit," I breathe out. Closing my bag quickly and running behind the bunny. I throw myself to the ground sliding down the grass to grab my knife that's stuck in the dirt. I get up and run behind the rabbit. I shoot again, aiming for the body, to which I have a better shot at hitting. My knife flies to its back and it stops running almost immediately.

"Well I think we've got dinner," says Finch behind me.

"Yeah, I got some berries too," I say getting my bag. I open it wide and showing her my harvest.

She grabs my bag and pulls out a handful of the blueberries. "This... Mara! These are not blueberries! This is nightlock! You'd be dead in a heartbeat!" She scolds me.

"Right, sorry," I say. Starting to throw away all my work.

"Don't throw it away!"

"But- I thought you said it's poisonous,"

"Yes, we could use it as a trap," she explains. Realization hits me hard, we could kill District Twelve by leaving these around, I guess. I don't know what her plan is, but it's likely to work.

"Well then, let's get to work,"

________________________________________

After setting up the trap, which took us a while, Foxface decides to take a nap, leaving me to do the food. We obviously couldn't eat the nighlock so I had to stick with the rabbit. I made a fire with some wood and a match, and started preparing the rabbit.