Chlea Glades (A Hunger Games Fan fic)

Chapter Twenty-One

Eventually I will have to go and fight the careers, but tonight is definitely not the night.

I am still very beat up from the fight with the two boys, and Titus and I are quickly running out of food. The food we ate earlier today was the last of it, and we haven't been able to spot any animals or berries that are edible.

Titus and I found a cozy (as cozy as one can get in the arena) cave thats effectively cut off from the rest of the arena with a thick covering of vines and ivy. We both agree to stay here for a day or two, to nurse our wounds and get back to full strength.

I'm sitting at the front of the cave, looking betweek two pieces of ivy out into the expansive jungle terrain in front of our cave. Its getting dark out, and with that, its also getting cold out. I don't know if the sleeping bag will make us warm enough for the night, even with Titus and mines combined body warmth.

"Do you think we will be warm enough?" I ask Titus, breaking away from my little spot in the front of the cave and heading back to him, which it is slightly warmer back here because the outside air hasn't totally reached it.

"Yeah, probably," Titus guess and smoothes out the sleeping back on the dry dirt floor, "With us both sleeping in it, we should be fine."

With that he blushes and looks away, "Unless you don't wanna sleep like that again."

I laugh lightly, "Titus, stop getting embarrassed. Its the Hunger Games, we are doing this for survival. You won't get judged for it," I tease.

He laughs too, but its forced. Then he frowns at our backpack laying a few feet in front of us, "Its unusual to not see any form of food for the whole day. I think the gamemakers did it."

I frowned, "Destroyed our food? That would be pointless, we would all die. Thats no fun for them," I finish in disgust.

"I don't know." Titus says and leaves it at that. He hasn't been very talkative today, and its making me realize how nice it is to have someone around to talk to, whos going through this with me.

Hoping that there isn't cameras in this cave, I whisper to Titus, "I'm scared."

He looks at me with his eyebrows furrowed, "Scared? Scared of what, we are safe."

I shake my head quickly, "We are safe, now. Everything is calm, now. But our lives are in the gamemakers hands. If they get bored, we could die by just the press of a button."

Almost without thinking, Titus reaches out and touches my arm, "But right now we are safe, so lets enjoy it while we can."

I nod we both go to bed, without the gong ringing once.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

As soon as I woke up, something felt off. Titus was sleeping besides me, snoring soundly. No one was in our cave and everything was the same as we left it last night when we went to sleep.

I got up carefully, not waking Titus, and grabbed on of my knifes from besides me. I then slowly walked up to the ivy and vine curtain, and parted it with my hands and stepped outside.

Everything seemed fine. No one was lurking outside, waiting to ambush Titus and I, it was bright. But it was quiet.

I walked outside further and listened carefully. There were no birds chirping, not even the slightest bit of wind.

In confusion, I walked over to the other side of the cave and covered a gasp, afraid to disturb the eerie, profound silence.

The number one reason Titus and I choose this cave, although obvious, was there was a running stream of water practically right next to it. Water meant that we could have something to drink, and running water meant animals, which means food.

The stream was gone, the dirt which should of been wet was dry.

I ran up to it and fell on my knees, touching the dirt in panic. Completely dry. No sign of water ever being here.

I run back into the cave and rip open the back pack, and saw an absence of our water containers. I looked around wildly, then saw them sitting neatly ontop of a rock at the end of the cave.

I went up to them and opened them, and saw there was nothing there, although I filled them both up to the brim last night before we went to bed.

Its the gamemakers.

"Titus," I say roughly, and lightly kick his leg, "Titus, wake up. We are screwed."

He groggily wakes up and squints at me, "Huh?"

"The water is gone, completely empty. And there is no more stream."

This makes him instantly sit up and snatch the bottles from me, rechecking as if when he looks water will magically appear.

"Didn't you feel these up last night?" He asks, anger seeping into his voice as he realizes what happened.

"Yeah, you watched me," I snap then put my hands on top of my head, "I also put them back in our backpack, and they weren't in there. The gamemakers cut off our supply of water, Titus."

He sighs and sets the water bottles down. I didn't even tell him the worse news that occurred to me, and he already looks defeated.

"Titus, they also got rid of all the food. Its so silent outside, its scary."

He gets up and runs outside, and realizes that I'm right.

Hes mad, "What the hell do they expect us to do?" He yells at me, and I flinch back, "Kill off everyone before we die of dehydration and hunger?"

He angrily kicks a piece of wood, causing it to fly and noisily hit a tree. He cusses loudly then stomps back into the cave.

I don't follow him. Instead, I sit outside. He shouldn't of yelled at me, I didn't deserve it. But I understand his anger, but it doesn't take the surprise of him yelling at me away.

I go and sit where our stream used to be, and trail my hands through the dry dirt. A few tears well up in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. What are we supposed to do? We have no water, no food, and you obviously cannot survive long without either of those.

If they did this to us, they did it to the rest of the tributes too. I can just imagine them walking around the arena, hoping to find some sort of food or water source. Which makes the arena ten times more dangerous than usual.

I go back inside the cave and see Titus packing up our stuff like a tornado, not pausing to make anything neat, just throwing it in a bag.

"I'm not leaving." I tell him, and he stops what he is doing to glare at me. Instead of backing down, I look him square in the eye, "The gamemakers did this on purpose, and because of this the arena is more dangerous than ever. People are moving around, looking for food. Ready to kill if they think you have it."

He doesnt respond, so I continue, "The gamemakers did this on purpose, and I have a feeling they will tell us why and what to do about it."

I see understanding in his face and I walk over to him and take the backpack, "We need to lay low."

I go and put the backpack to the side, but leave it packed, just in case. We sit besides eachother quietly.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," Titus says quietly, and I smile at it.

"Don't worry about it."

And so we sit together, impatiently waiting for directions on what to do next.

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Hi, I'm back.

We reached 1K readers, and although that may not seem like a lot, its huge to me.

But also, I need to get something out in the open. I work very hard on these chapters (when I do write them), but I don't really get any acknowledgment. I need to know some people enjoy this, or I might just abandon this project.

Vote and comment, thats how you give acknowledgement. And in the near future I don't get some form of these, then I don't know yet.

-Brandi