the 19th Hunger Games

Chapter 9

When waking up, I vaguely remembered seeing Sylvari’s face hovering in the sky. I was convinced she’d tried to kill me, hallucinating that she was still alive. I can’t even remember what else I hallucinated about. I saw giant snakes and bumblebees, and tiny kittens with horrible claws and whatnot. I dreamed about being eaten several times too. But all the time I was the worst, a pair of arms was holding me, and another pair of hands working rapid but carefully to fix me. A remember a couple of times I tried to kill the arms and hands but I never succeeded, thank goodness.

   When I finally woke up, my whole body was burning. Everything just hurt and I wanted to go back to sleep, drown myself in dreams about killing hands and kittens. But there was this something that kept nagging at the back of my mind, some tiny voice that whispered I shouldn’t be going back to sleep.

“Open your eyes,” it whispered.

“No, I wanna sleep and kill hands and stuff.” The voice started chuckling and then a second one joined in. A second one? A second one? Was I going crazy?

“Open your eyes,” the voice repeated. “Come on, you can do it. We didn’t heal you for nothing.” Slowly my eyes opened and bright light was blinding me.

“Damn, am I dead?” I murmured. Both voices now laughed out loud.

“No you idiot, you’re not dead. Come on, get up.” The voice helped me up and as I blinked, Oscar’s face got into my sight.

“Oscar? Where am I?”

“In the woods, still. How are you feeling?”

“I feel like I’m on fire,” I groaned. “And not the good kind of fire.”

“It’s the spider’s venom. I think we got it out of your system but it left some nasty blisters across your body.”

“My whole body?” I croaked? He nodded and looked kinda grave. “Is it gonna leave scars?”

“Probably, yeah,”

“Ew,” I exclaimed.

“And now it’s time to eat,” the person who’d helped me up said. It was Lan who’d also rescued me from the spiders. He leaned over my shoulder and held some dirty looking stuff to my mouth. “Eat,” he orderen. I wrinkled my nose and then took a small bite.

“What is it?” I grimaced and swallowed.

“Combination between berries and some leafs and a bit of fish.” I wasn’t sure about that combination but it sounded horrible, really horrible. It tasted rather gross too. Still, I shut up and ate all he fed me. I’d been almost killed, sure, but that didn’t mean I was gonna give up. And if he was convinced this would get me back on my feet, who was I to complaint?

“Good girl,” Lan laughed softly.

“What ya guys do to heal me like this?” I then wondered, seeing how my arm was practically healed up completely, with the exception of the blisters covering my skin.

“It was Lan’s district,” Oscar said, obviously still perplexed. “They saw you were dying and sent medicine just like that.”

“Why?” I asked breathless. Oscar looked away without answering me and Lan stuffed more food into my mouth to shut me up. That I did not enjoy. I needed answers.

“What’s going on?” I asked after I’d chewed all the food away.

“We don’t know,” Oscar said. “Hold still.” He grabbed a small bowl made out of leafs and started putting this weird creamy kind of stuff on my legs, which made me realise I wasn’t wearing any pants over my undergarments.