The 73rd Annual Hunger Games

Chapter 16- Was it wrong?

The early dawn light filtered into my eyelids, penetrating the immense comfort of sleep. It felt like a thick blanket was being pulled off of me on a cold morning. I covered myself back up with the blanket, and tried to tell my dad to stop. I just wanted to sleep for a few more minutes. A little longer and I'll get  up and tackle the long day ahead of me at school, learning to make nets more intricately than before. Just a little longer.....

I got jostled around, and the ringing in my ears started. There were shifting colors above me, and sounds sounding like they were resonating inside of a tin can. I saw a shifting form above me, most likely saying my name. A smaller form raised beside that one, and drew back. Suddenly, in a bright flash, I felt a sharp pain on the side of my face, and the sosunds and sight came back in a flash.

"Cass!" Cyrus's voice came out in a loud whisper. It was like he was trying to be quiet at first, but became more and more nervous as it wore on, and lost the quietness.

"Cyrus..?" I asked. He had slapped me to get me awake.

"You're awake!" He exclaimed. He collapsed in tears, and I realized that we were still up in the tree from last night, and there was an enormous patch of dried blood on my side of the sleeping bag. And all over the side of my body, and head, and basically everywhere.

"Yeah, and you slapped me. What else is new?" I asked, sarcastically. But it didn't have the effect I wanted, because it came out faltered. I was still reeling from the sight of my blood on everything.

"Do you know how bad I was scared? Why didn't you use any gauze on yourself?" He asked, gripping my shoulders.

I sat up. "Because you were in worse condition. It was only fair."

"Only fair for you to die? That's not fair at all!" He exclaimed. "Then I'd be all by myself here, not to mention you being dead!"

"Relax. There's got to be something for me to wrap my side in in the backpack." I said. I got up to reach in the backpack, but my head spun; black dots danced across my vision.

"Sit down," He said, almost strictly. He bent his head down sheepishly. "Sorry, just nervous." He rifled through the backpack, and found a stray piece of gauze, and wrapped it over my wound, which stretched from the bottom of my ribcage on my side, to the top of my left hip.

I observed Cyrus's tangled, dirty hair, and bloody/muddy skin and made an obvious statement. "We need to get clean."

"No, you're not moving an inch until you get more blood back into your system. YOu could faint cllimbing halfway down the tree, and where would we be? So you just sit there and I'll go catch us fish."

I objected immediately. "No. You can't. You're gonna get hurt and I'm gonna get permanantly treed!"

"No. It'll be fine. I got the knives, I can catch the fish, and it'll be just fine. You and I need to eat sometime, huh?" He asked.

"Fine. But if you die, I'll kill you. Got it?" I asked.

"Yeah," He said laughingly. "I wouldn't want to die twice."

He climbed down the tree, mocking me by making an overly frightened face everytime he heard a noise. I picked up the net out of the backpack. Seeings how he's going to be the one fishing, I was counting on going hungry, because he forgot the very tool to help catch the fish.

I threw it down, and it landed on his face. He shot me a thumbs up, climbed off of the tree, and took off quietly towards the river.

While I had time to just sit there, to keep my mind busy from thinking about the possibilities of Cyrus dying, I counted how many tributes were left.