Catching Fire: The New Story

Chapter 78

Katniss's POV

I wake up yawning, the blaring sun glares behind my eyelids, making all I see red. I widen my eyes and look around me, the body's of sleeping tributes surround me. Johanna, Wiress, Beetee are still asleep. I don't find Peeta and Finnick in my view around, but the rustling of bushes behind me makes me stand, now loaded. I hear the deep voice of Finnick chuckle as he comes out of the trees, open coconuts in each hand filled with the tree water. Peeta comes out from hiding behind Finnick, holding two more coconuts. I yawn and sit back down onto the sand, unloading my bow and throwing it away from me. My stomach pained me, like something was kicking my side. I placed my hand on my stomach, laying down. I felt the little kick and smiled. Peeta noticed and placed his hand under mine, we smiled together.

"What are you doing?" Finnick asks, standing above us, looking down.

"The baby's kicking." I say, happily.

"Really?" he asks. I nod. I grab his hand and pull him down to his knees. I move Peeta's hand and put Finnick's in its place. He smiles when the baby kicks again. And again. "That's amazing."

"Yeah. It is." I say. It is also weird, knowing a baby was inside of me, kicking and living off of me. I need to protect it, to feed it. Crazy. Just crazy. I would have never thought of something like this in my life, a child. A family beside Prim and my mother. Now I have Peeta, and little Everdeen-Mellark. I smiled.

"Is Katniss dying? Or what are you doing?" I hear Johanna ask, sleepily. Finnick replies for me.

"No, she's fine. The baby's kicking though." Him saying it makes me smile, I guess I have been a good mother. Knowing it's alive, I have protected it. Johanna comes over and I put her hand on my stomach, I now realize all attention has gone on me at the moment, but I am too happy to care. She was shocked as she felt the kicks, but smiled eventually. Before anymore hands could linger over my stomach, I sat up and woke Wiress and Beetee.

The sun displayed the time was circa six or seven daybreak, yet the air was scorching, even with the wind arraying with more heat. I move Wiress to the shade of the trees, remembering last night. The arena, it is just a toy, a clock. This to summon our minds to enhance the flakiness of our already fooled heads. None of the tributes are intelligent enough to have contrasted such idea of the erratic arena, yet Wiress, who was dehydrated and brainless, found the true meaning of this place.

Everyone ploys behind, forming a circle of victors on the damp sand. It is quiet, all allowing the thoughts and spoken words from twilight to seep through there heads, fixing the dilemmas of the arena and what to do next. Finnick's bright green orbs survey on the ocean, the reflection of the blues and whites mix in with his original color of evergreen. Finnick's gaze becomes a trance I seem to get lost in as well as I look around to my surroundings. My own mind envisions plans and ideas of intact-

Beetee pulls me from my trance before I could conceive any great ideas.

"I've got it!" he screams, making me jolt upward. Johanna snickers at my expression of surprise, while the others overlook it. Beetee has got all of our heed, he seems to fancy it. He explains, "If you are willing to protect me until midnight." We all murmur agreements. "We get to the lightning tree, wrap my wire along the circumference of its frame, we drag the rest of the cool deep into the water. Safely far from the water and damp sand, at midnight when lightning strikes, it will burn everything alive in the ocean or on the beach."

We all process this idea. Could it work? Building up the images of dead, fried tributes makes my spine tingle. The fish in the sea would be useless, leaving starvation and dehydration at high risks to every tribute besides our little group of so called allies, having knowledge of the tree ears roaming around in the jungle and it's edible, crunch nuts. What if nothing happens? If everything stays in tact and we look like fools in front of the whole Capitol and Districts.