𝖙𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 | THE HUNGER GAMES

Twenty three

Twenty-three

Peeta

I was struggling to say the least. The water wasn't stagnant like the ones my mother had thrown me as a kid. That was how she often bathed us. Being from the richer part of our district afforded us some small luxuries such as a bath tub. Mother would fill it us with water and thrown in a little piece of soap (if it was the end of the month, some laundry detergent). My brothers were big enough to sit but I would float at best.

I held on to the plate for dear life. Hopefully, the currents would die down after the bloodbath and I would be able to float myself to the beach, or at least till sliver of rocks nearby. I was trying to formulate a half-assed plan in my brain as I continued looking around. That was until I saw something move under the surface of the water.

'How?' you ask. There was only one human (or water mutt) sized place on the water that didn't reflect. Which means that something not shiny was there. It was too early in the game for mutts, so I resorted with my first guess of a victor.

I thought of lifting myself onto the platform, where I would have some advantage until a familiarizing head of black hair appeared next to me. "Get on." She said, holding the platform with one arm, trying to keep her head above the brutal waves. I considered my options before I held onto her, letting her paddle the two of us to the rocky sliver of land between platforms. "Get to the forest. I'll come find you." She said and I looked at her confused. "Why should I trust you?" I asked, in hesitation, scared of angering her. She could kill me with her bare hands if she wanted to.

"What are allies for?" She said, removing a piece of kelp from my hair and tossing it back into what I now realized was a lake. "Now, what is your choice of weapon?" She asked me, her hands still keeping me steady. At my unresponsiveness, she asked if a sword worked and I just nodded my head before she was off, running in the other direction.

It took a dagger whistling past my ear for me to take off towards the beach. I ran, something I had gotten quite good at since the last game. I had taken it up after we had returned home. It was the one time, where I didn't have to worry about anyone overhearing me. And it helped with the suffocating silence in the house.

I ran up into the forest until I could hear was the faint chirping of birds. I found a tree which had enough groves and made my way up it. It was a good thing I had started early. Because by the time I had caught my breath sitting on a sturdy branch, the pair of blonde district 1 victors passed by making sure the whole forest heard them.

I stayed there until I had heard the soft footsteps. Whoever they belonged to was a clever hunter and my mind immediately thought of Katniss. I leaned over the trunk to see who it was. And I silently thanked to whoever was watching over me that it was the brunette victor from district 10, whose name I now recalled was Kamari. The same 12 year old whose games Katniss had been obsessed with the entire time we were in the capitol.

I often wondered if she did it to remind herself that Prim was safe. Cause if not for Katniss volunteering, Prim's fate would not have been like Kamari's. "Can not climb tree. Noted, pita chip." She said as I looked up at her, from where I had fallen onto the forest floor. And she resembeled the image I had often seen in the books from the library. One from the book about the Greek gods.

She looked like a vision of a warrior. The setting sun was filtering through the trees and it lit her up. With the weapons drapped over her, she looked like the reincarnation of Athena.

"Let's go. We need to find your little wife." She said, pulling me up with the hand she had offered before she started her upward hike and I followed in her footsteps. "Please don't call me, Pita chip." I said and she laughed without a care in the world and her attitude made me forget for a second that we were in a arena fighting for our lives.

But only for a second.