Hope and Nightmares - A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I made camp closer to the base of the mountain and farther away from the lake. The same creek still runs, but it's narrower up here. I found a hidden little cave, in between two boulders. I at first peeked down there to follow a squirrel that I was hunting, but discovered that once I crawled through the small crack, it opened up to a small cave.

From the way that the slope of the land is angled, the cave is about ten feet tall at its highest, but the roof curves down to about three feet at the entrance. Words couldn't explain the relief I felt when I laid out my sleeping bag in the space and lit a teeny fire, enough to roast the squirrel I killed. No sleeping in a tree today.

I prop myself up against the cave wall, thinking about last night. Images keep flooding my mind - the bulge of Flint's eyes as I shoved my knife into his stomach, the sound of his sword hitting the dirt. I shake my head to get rid of the thoughts, but the unshakable feeling of guilt, the responsibility of ending another person's life, doesn't leave me.

It's the Hunger Games. This is our punishment, I guess. I don't suppose the rebels in the Dark Days ever planned for this to happen. They didn't mean to get the generations to come stuck in this mess. But I can't help feeling mad at them.

I wonder what my family back home is thinking. I can picture my dad, staring at the TV with disappointment in his eyes and patting my mother's knee as she held her head in her hands, rocking back and forth and refusing to look at the television. The look in my dad's big blue eyes that he got when Scarlet was in the Games, the sheer look of disappointment in the Games for putting us through this, would be enough to make the entire Capitol feel ashamed about what they're doing to us. I can picture Brick, his head leaning against Crimson's shoulder, his eyes closed, his favorite fleece blanket draped over him. Rusty, shaking his head and looking away from the screen as the earsplitting crack of Scarlet's neck breaking rings through the room. Crimson, the tears spilling down her cheeks as she lost her sister. And she's losing another one right now.

I wonder if I have any sponsors. If I do, is Max in the big banquet room right now, making deals and shaking hands as my face is televised on ten different screens around the room? Was he proud that I killed Flint?

I abruptly stand up. All this time alone with my thoughts is making me stir crazy. I grab the near-empty canteen of water and my backpack and shimmy through the little crack in the cave. I've been doing alright on food and water since I've been in the arena, and I still have a can of nuts and a pack of dried fruit. What I need most right now are some knives. I would give anything to open up a silver parachute full of shiny bladed and feel the clean whoosh as they slice the air and hit a target.

I slip quietly through the trees on my way to the stream, which isn't too far away. Once I reach it, I wash my face to rid of the growing layer of dirt and even dunk my hair in, which is almost brown now from all the mud and grime. I fill up the canteen and drop in a purification tablet, and sit next to the stream and listen to the soothing sounds of the running water. As I'm waiting for the water to purify, I explore the variety of new trees and plants growing up closer to the mountain. The trees are more thinly spread up here, and with careful examination, I find fruits and berries growing on some of the plants.

So far, my diet has completely consisted of squirrel and a few nuts, so I use my whittling knife - which I always keep in my coat pocket - to break open a plump greenish fruit. Sweet-smelling juices dribble out onto my fingers, and I stop cold as I raise them to lick the juice off. The scent of the juice reminds me of my time spent at the edible and poisonous plants station, where they showed a light greenish fruit that was vaguely shaped like a lightbulb. I drop the fruit onto the ground.

Sure enough, most of the fruits and berries that I found on the bushes I remember to be poisonous. I pick the green fruit back up and turn it over in my hands. If I had eaten the fruit, I would be dead. What a great way to pick tributes off. If there was a way to trick all the others, I could seriously do some damage to the numbers.