Split Loki Universes

Chapter 11; Sympathy

Me and Katniss do not speak to each other for a long time. The sun is already setting by the time that Rue returns.

"Our traps caught two wild roosters. Can you start a fire?" She asks Katniss. She gets up and begins to rummage around in her backpack.

"Is there anything I can do?" I ask.

"Not really." Rue replies.

Katniss gets a fire started, Rue takes about 30 minutes to roast the birds, and then we are allowed to eat the food. It's not very tender, or even seasoned at all, but I manage to choke it down bite by bite without complaint, since I haven't eaten since the beginning of the Avengers battle. It seems like ages ago.

When we're finished eating, they extinguish the fire and climb the trees. I had asked them where they were going, and they said that it was safest to sleep in the trees. I had no other choice but to oblige, and since I'm not a good climber, I flew up there as a bird. They didn't have any other sleeping bags, so I had to make do with what I had. Which was nothing.

I couldn't sleep at all that night, which was a shame, because I was very tired. Since I didn't want to sit there all night fidgeting, with absolutely nothing to do, I transformed into an eagle and took flight.

I soar high above the trees, searching for something interesting to encounter. After a while, I find a large clearing with a giant metal structure in the middle shaped like a cornucopia. A giant pile of goodies sits right next to a large camp of people sleeping soundly. One unlucky soul stays up to keep watch.

I survey the camp from high up for a while, and then I dare to circle lower. The lower I get, the more I can see that there are piles of dirt all around the store of goodies. It seems as if they had unearthed the ground in order to bury things.

I fly to the edge of the clearing and transform back into myself. I observe the people from a distance for a while, until I decide to walk back to Katniss's camp. In a bit, I realize that I have no idea where her camp is. And It was hidden really well.

It got worse when I started to feel sick, and eventually I vomited behind a tree because of the food that I ate. I was ill suited for this type of living- I never had to survive in the wild, I never had to live with unsatisfactory food, and I suddenly felt a great surge of sympathy for the people who had to live like this. I had never saw things from their point of view, and now I was suddenly living like them.

I collapse against a tree and slide down it, finally wishing that Thor would suddenly appear and take me back to Asgard. When I sat there for a while, I realized that Thor was not going to appear from thin air and wrap his arms around me to comfort me, and I was ashamed of myself for wishing that.

Eventually, I found myself drifting off to sleep right against that tree, and I didn't even care if I woke up alive or not.