The 49th Hunger Games

Day 11: Nightlock and Kane

I've been too scared to come out of the root cave since the Career attack, and I ran out of food 3 days ago. The end is very near. I'm too weak to move, to sleep, even to cry from the stomach-gnawing pain. All my bones protrude under my skin and I think if I tried to walk I would break. It hurts even to breathe. I just lay here, eyes closed, gasping every time a sticking out rib catches on something. I hate the Games. They're so unfair. I'm starting to wish I hadn't survived and Cody had. He had more willpower. He was braver. He deserved a chance. But look at me. What am I doing? Giving up. Pitying myself. Slowly starving to death. I'm no match for the Games. I knew from the start that I'd probably end up like this. Terrified of getting murdered every time I tried to go anywhere. So now I'm just laying here dying. Calmly and quietly. My only enemies not the Careers, not the other tributes, but President Snow and his sick mind. Entertained by watching me lay here, fragile like a film of glass, probably bleeding internally from where my sharp bones have poked against my organs or tissue. I can't even cough without wanting to just die. My throat, though misused, feels like it's been scratched raw. My bony fingers can't grip or bend. I just try to fade away through the haze of pain. Maybe if I try hard enough to focus on the bliss at the end of the agony I can...

_______________________________________________________________________

Boom.

I snap open my eyes, leaning against the trunk of a tree on the branch below where Autumn sleeps. Since our encounter, we've pretty much become an unspoken alliance. Literally unspoken. After her outburst, she fell into silence and still hasn't spoken now. I haven't tried to talk to her. She's just broken, and I figure it's easier to leave her to it. But now, I'm alarmed by the cannon. Autumn's out picking berries, and I don't know who or what is living in this forest at the time. At least the Careers haven't returned to their camp at the oasis, which means they're nowhere near us. We're safe from the most brutal opponents.

"A-" I cough, trying to clear the cobwebs from my larynx. "Autumn!" 

There isn't a reply, but I see a hovercraft lowering just beside a tree. I jump down from our designated tree - marked by an abnormally shaped rock at the foot - and steadily jog towards it. The weather is really windy - much colder than yesterday, so everything is at least a bit harder to hear. And I regret cutting my trousers. I watch curiously and worriedly as a skeletal girl with limp brown hair is gently pulled from beneath some roots and taken away. What killed her, I don't know, but I'd put my money on starvation. Or dehydration. 

"District twelve - out." A quiet, solemn, slightly croaky voice comes from just to my left. I whip around in terror only to realise it's Autumn, a knapsack probably full of berries around her shoulder. "I filled the water bottles too." she says almost irrelevantly, tossing one of the two plastic containers she holds to me. 

"Oh-er, good." I stammer awkwardly. 

She nods and shoulders past me, trudging back to the tree where she jumps and uses her free hand to haul herself onto the lowest branch. The muscles in her arm are clearly visible, and it's hard not to admire such strength from such a small girl. I follow her, tossing my bottle up to her when she reaches her vantage point on the branch above mine and climbing up far more ungracefully than her. 

"Imagine how her family must feel." I exhale, "Her friends."

Autumn is silent for some seconds, then she snorts. "Her? She didn't have friends. And her dad isn't exactly a good one."

"How did you know?"

"I spoke to her a little, I guess. Her name was Nightlock. In her father's anguish." 

"Poor girl..." I mutter.

Then the conversation sort of fades out, both of us thinking about little Nightlock and her misfortune. I'll never erase the image of her stick like body from my mind.

"How would you have felt if that cannon was mine, Kane?" she asks randomly, after another silence 

I have to support myself on the trunk as I turn to look up at her. "What kind of question is that?"

"One I want an answer to." Autumn replies evenly, peering past her black tumbling hair. 

How would I feel? I've never thought about her dying, even though I know she has to if I'm to win. I believe hands down she has a better shot than me at winning anyway. "In all honesty, Autumn?" I start slowly, concentrating on my thoughts. "I guess part of me would be relieved. Another part would grieve for you. Another part would damn the Capitol for stealing the life of an innocent young girl." I breathe, uncoiling my arm from the trunk and returning to staring horisontally, "And the last part? That part would wish you could come back to me and we could both live happily ever after in a world without the Hunger Games." I close my eyes, proud of my eloquent but true reply. "Happy with that?"

She hangs her hand over the side of her branch, just slightly above and to the left of my head. I reach up and take it. "I'm happy with that."