The Hunger Games - Primrose Everdeen

Chapter seventeen

Morning comes too fast for my taste. Since we had to relocate last night - due to our location being broadcasted to every tribute because of the screams and hovercraft - so I'm way more tired than usual, but I manage to wake myself up. I pack up and scurry down the tree, meeting Rue at the bottom. "Since we are almost out of food," She explains as she hands me some blueberries and I divide up the rabbit squares and crackers and pass Rues half to her. "I was thinking that I could go gathering and maybe you could set up a few snares, since you seemed quite good with that."

I hold my aching rib and take a deep breath. Setting up snares means killing innocent, harmless animals for our benefeit. Well, I guess it is better than us, two innocent harmless twelve-year-old girls, dying from starvation. What if the snare doesn't work properly and ensnares the creature but does not kill it? Then I would have to take out this fine knife and kill it myself. Geeze, I don't know if I could do that...

Right as I am about to protest, the rumbles from my stomach remind me of how famished I am. "Alright, but how about we stay close to one another. Only about a thirty yard radius." I add.

Rue nods her head and we head off. Since pickings - for her and for my snares - would be best down my a river, we follow the teeny stream. Walking kills my rib cage, it probably would have been best if I had told Haymitch so he could get me some real help. Possibly even from a Capitol doctor. Oh how wonderful that must be, having an expert doctor. Getting the flu wouldn't be life threatining. A burn from working in the mines could easily be healed in a matter of days, maybe even hours. My rib would be of no issue to me right now if I had told Haymitch. But you didn't tell anyone. So suck it up and stop complaining, I tell myself. If only it were that easy.

Finally, we reach a nicely sized river. No longer do we have to call it a stream, or a brook. But a river. "Okay, while we are here, once we're done getting food we should probably bathe." I nod because the scorching heat makes me just want to dive right into the river. Of course, when I bathe I will have to be very careful, after all I never learned how to swim.

Rue begins to scavage for roots and berries while I take off, into the shade of the pines and hemlocks. When I finally reach a pleasant spot - where the earth is flat, and not too far away from the watercourse -to set up a few traps, I kneel down, take a sip of water, and get started. After taking the rope out of my bag and taking out the knife to do some whittling, I begin to build the entrapment. Right as I finish I hear Rue, "Prim!" 

Hastily, I turn to her as she breaks through a cluster of trees, running fast and nearly out of breath. "Rue! What is it?" 

"That boy," She informs me. "Roland, from Ten. I thought that he was weak!"

I shake my head. "He killed that boy from Nine yesterday night." 

"Yes, well they are both weak. But more to the point, he's tracking us!" Cries Rue. "Well, more of me. He doesn't know that you are here. Go run. I'm scaling a tree." With that, she grabs onto a nearby tree and begins to climb briskly. 

No one needs to tell me twice. My legs, so feeble and slim, carry me through the forest at top speeds. Adreniline fills me as I bound througout the trees. It feels like I'm flying like I learned to do last night, or zooming on the elevator in the tower that the tributes were living in once, before the arena. If only I were, though. 

The adreniline can only last so long as I begin to slow down and with one last effort, I came to a hault. All of the breath has been whipped out of me. I put my hands on my knees and catch my breath while scanning for a tree to scatter up. One catches my eye, and I rush for it, as if someone might steal it from me before I get there. And something already has. 

I look up towards the sound of the gentle buzz. We've learned about these in school before, yet I can't quite remember their names. They are some sort of muttated wasps used in the war during the Dark Days. Huge bees with venom in every sting that causes deathly hallucinations. Having worked with my mother as she fixed up people with illnesses and injuries, I know all too well how bad these stings can get. Fortunately, I have only seen a case three times before, but they are the ones that brand themselves into my mind, looming over me for life. Two out of the three times the victom died.

So, instead of climbing this tree, I head towards a separate tree, about twenty feet away from the nest of genitically altered hornets. 

I stay perched in my tree, almost fifty feet off the ground, until night begins to fall. No canon has sounded so I do not worry about Rue, she must have survived. Without a sound, I make my way back over to the river. When I am just a few yards away, there's a flicker of light and the sound of twigs snapping. I stop dead in my tracks. Just a small ways away lay the Careers.

I am so sorry. It's so short. But I will post another chapter tonight to make up for it.