The Beasts of Us [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

FENCES XII. Creedence.

Shrill was a peek of red and green among the trees, her wings flashing in the dappled light. The fence hummed nearby. Somewhere the district was busy, but this wasn't, technically speaking, the district, and the teenagers sprawled against the logs and moss and fallen leaves had the laziness of people who are supposed to be somewhere else doing something useful and are really enjoying not doing so. A small fire smoldered away in a circle of rocks. A raggy cat-daemon was curled up next to it, ears pricked up, its paws resting on the feet of its human, a boy in a shirt that hung down over his hands and pants that showed his ankles. There were three others: two girls, one younger and one older, and another boy, who was pretending not to pay any attention.

"We could just, y'know, not turn up," Hayden said. His cat-daemon made a little noise of agreement.

The older girl sighed. "Madman."

"I'm not scared," declared the girl with a pointed little chin and a forehead that looked too wide for the rest of her.

"You wouldn't be. You're in there, what? Twice?"

The girl huffed. "Still in there."

"If it's you I'll eat my socks."

The younger girl rounded on the older. Her opponent was flopped back against a tree, hair chopped savagely short, her face and hands muddied and her eyes half-closed. A faintly damp smell hung like a fog around her. "Looks like you ate them already," the pointed-chin girl snarled.

Overhead and without any warning, Shrill dived. The girl with the pointed chin ducked, her daemon shifting into a wren, and the two birds ended up fighting over the fire, jabbing at each other with their beaks. A boy on the other side of the fire, the exact image of Hayden but with green eyes and a tooth missing, hoisted himself into a sitting position and glared at them.

"Creed, call her off."

The short-haired girl opened her eyes and whistled. Shrill, her quetzal-daemon, slashed at the wren-blackbird-swallow and ignored her. She sighed. "Shrill. Hey. Get here."

Shrill lashed out again. The younger girl's daemon let out a cry and retreated to his human, changing into a mottled brown and white kitten so that she could cuddle him. She gave Creed an angry, tearful glare and threw herself onto the ground by Hayden's feet. He patted her back absently.

"You'd better hope it's not you," Creed said to her. "You wouldn't last a minute." She stood up. Her clothes sagged, ripped and torn so that they looked more like sacks with armholes, making her healthy frame look starved. She was wearing three or four layers, none of them fully intact. In places you could see right through to her skin. A little burlap sack hung around her neck. Shrill landed in her the thicket of her hair, beady eyes staring out over them all. "We're going," she announced. "Might see you later."

"Alright," said Hayden. "Going roaming tonight?"

"Might do. Anything's better than listening to Mom and Dad tell me how worried they aren't."

The boy with green eyes nodded grimly. "Mine are like that. 'Oh, you'll have to go and see Mrs Worthy next week, Mark', 'are you going back to school after the Games, Mark?' It's as if they think I'm not in the bowl at all."

"I'd like that," said the girl with the pointed chin. Her daemon had become a butterfly with heavy brown wings and was perching on her fingers. "Mine just cries."

"Wait until you've got kids." Hayden gave her a nudge. "I bet you cry all the time."

"I'm never having children," Mark said.

Creed rolled her eyes and set off into the trees, ignoring the goodbyes called after her. Her friends were...well, they were friends. Sally wasn't as brave as she thought she was and the way Hayden looked at her made her feel awkward and Mark reckoned he was the leader that they didn't, in fact, have. Sometimes they got on her nerves. Sometimes she loved them so much that it almost hurt. There were always others drifting around on the fringes of their group, attracted by the hints of theft and mischief and wandering around the district past curfew, but these three were the core, the closest, the ones who mattered most. The ones she, in the dead of night, worried about. She hoped that they worried about her too. They wouldn't mind her suddenly leaving; they were used to it.