(Earlier version) Flowerborn Part 1: The Arena

Chapter 7: Vision or nightmare?

I woke up caughing. There was fire everywhere. I saw a body, two three, four, five.. I recognized them as Faith, Kate, Anna, James, and more teammembers. Some of them were on fire. The smoke pushed itself into my lungs. Every breath I took burned the inside of my body. My eyes rolled back into my head. Darkness flowed from underneath, making it impossible to see. I choked and the darkness was slowly welcoming me more and more.

I heard a scream. Then I realized it was me who was screaming. It was still dark so assumed it was still night. 'Some of us are trying to sleep!' I heard Anna's voice yelling at me. 'I am sorry', I said softly. I cried silently. 'Are you okay?' Faith wispered to me. 'It's gonna be alright okay?  We will get through this.' I tried to get my breath normal again. 'Okay..' I said trying not to sound like I was crying. Maybe the camera's were still watching. And most of all maybe my team would hear me. Teamwork is key, and I didn't want to be the weakest.

The next morning I expected Faith to talk to me about last night, but she only smiled reassuring, which was actually better. First was breakfast. Because we didn't really knew each other most of us didn't really talk. I only exchanged a few words with Kate. Talking to her felt easy, and I needed that in this situation. After breakfast the first class started: Archery. My arm told me what room I should be. While breakfast I found out that Heath also signed up for this. Maybe it would have been better if we had a strategy behind what we sign up for, but the group was still a bit fragile. Heath and I walked together to where-ever we were supposed to be.

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Archery was really interesting. The reason I chose it was because my mother did it when she was younger. She always wanted me to try it as well, but we didn't have enough money for lessons. I learned a lot in the three hours. We went over all the theory, and we got the practice for the last two hours. Even though we had protection, my hands started becoming red more and more. In the end I was really happy that the next lesson was basic survival training.

Archery really took my mind off of things. Everytime the arrow hit the red or yellow my heart jumped a little bit. This was followed by the realisation that I may have to shoot something or someone else than straw.