𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

sixteen

☆ CHAPTER SIXTEEN! ☆
016. the sacrifice.

|| RUNNIN' ||
❝And every voice
that cries inside my
head, forever drives,
forever drives, I've
killed the lights.❞

➳➳

THERE NEVER SEEMED to be any rest in sleep. I had heard that for most sleep was a time when they felt the safest, where the warmth from their blanket or comforter made them feel as if no monsters could attack them or prove them wrong. To others it was just a place to rest their head and close their eyes without noise polluting the calm that would flow over them in buckets, and there were some that simply stayed in bed all day because there was nowhere else that they could trust themselves so deeply that they fell.

I didn't feel like that on the good days; it was ludicrous to think that my eyes would close on their own in a jungle.

Without a clock, it was hard to time how long I had been floundering with the idea that at any moment I would actually be able to close my eyes and finally shut off every single unanswered idea; all I knew was that at some point I must of almost drifted away, because as Katniss's heel kicked a spear twig in my direction it woke me up with a sharp intake of breath like I had been sleeping deeply.

Unlike most nights I didn't momentarily forget where I was when I was shaken back to life, or forget what I was supposed to do once I had; I remembered exactly what I had to do and why my back was screaming into a woven leaf mat on the floor.

I didn't glance anywhere else but at Katniss as I rubbed my aching eyes.

"How long was I lying there?" I asked between deep breaths. My muscles felt as if they hadn't been asleep at all, neither did my eyes as they tried to keep track of the raven-haired girl in the darkness. Every once in a while I would get distracted by a vine in the night, but it wouldn't hold my attention for too long.

"3 hours at most."

The jungle floor was harder to walk through at night, when the shapes of bodies seemed to blend seamlessly into the rocks and dirt it was hard to find a spot that I could place each step until I was back in the centre of the clearing. It would of been impossible if I hadn't heard Katniss's gentle breathing in the night air the closer that I got, or as my feet scraped the main log she had been sitting on.

The souls of my shoes had somehow worn enough for me to feel every single branch and artificial stone that I stepped on as I walked over to the only other tribute awake.

"You can sleep if you want." I mumbled as I sat on a particularly flat rock beside her. The moss made the seat almost bearable; a haven compared to the ground that I had come from. "I know I can't."

"Neither can I."

"Yet another thing we have in common."

She seemed strangely calm as she watched the jungle. It was the first time I had seen her when she looked anything other than on edge, there was something about how soft her jaw had become and how lazy her eyes glanced around the entire area that made it seem a little less dangerous- a little more normal.