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★★★
I STUMBLE BACK, HEART POUNDING. "I—"
Rue peers around Thresh's gigantic frame and smiles at me, then glances back up at her district partner. "Thresh, this is Ivy. We're allies."
Thresh grunts, lowering his arm, and it's now that I realize with a spike of panic that he's holding a rock the size of Rue's backpack. Was he going to...
Distracting me from my rather gruesome thoughts, Rue edges around Thresh, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward so that Thresh and I are facing each other. "So. Allies?"
I tentatively hold out my hand, and Thresh looks me over with those strange golden eyes for a terrifying tension-filled moment before nodding and nearly crushing my hand in his iron grip. "Allies."
Rue beams. "Great!"
"Careful, the Careers aren't far," I caution, looking around. In the depths of the fields, all sound is muffled by the thick bunches of stalks surrounding us. For all I know, Clove could be hiding right behind me with a knife, waiting to pounce.
"The fields are too thick for them to hear anything." Thresh turns and makes his way deeper in, Rue following. I nearly trip several times trying to keep my eye on the two. "Besides, they're afraid of this place."
I can see why. The fields have an ominous, forbidding feeling around them. Thresh's head just barely scrapes the tops of the highest stalks, and I feel like there's something else in here, watching us...
"Where are we going?" I pant as I catch up. Pushing through the stalks, I hold back a sneeze as a shorter one tickles my nose. "Do you have a camp in here?"
"Kind of," Thresh rumbles as he pushes aside a cluster of grain stalks. How does he find his way so easily? "Rue said you found a place."
"Y-yes, there's some trees we can sleep in."
"Oh." Whatever Thresh was going to say, it's interrupted by our arrival at his camp. Well, not camp. There's a sleeping bag nestled in the grain... no, barley, I think. It's a different color than the rest.
Thresh unslings his huge backpack. "I move my sleeping bag wherever I want to sleep. I'm safe from the Careers here, but there's also snakes and..."
I stop. "Snakes?" Suddenly the fields seem even more sinister, lurking with snakes, menacing creatures, all kinds of shadowy things hiding in the stalks—
"Ivy." I realize Rue's shaking my shoulder. "Are you okay? You look kind of out of it."
"That happens when I'm thinking. Or panicking." I try to calm down, reassuring myself that nothing here can harm me (even if it's a semi-lie). "Are—Are we going to stay here?"
