☞︎ℍ𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕣 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 ~ 𝔸𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕪𝕤𝕥'𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 ☜︎

~SCENE CHANGE!~

I still wouldn't say me and Victor and Aegis are friends, but I'd say we're pretty close. If you don't count how we have to kill each other later. 

My eyes open, and I find myself still safely in the cave, facing the blank gray wall. It's light outside, but possibly brighter than it was before. The thunder's stopped, that's nice, and it's not even cold anymore. 

It's actually really hot now... that can't be good. 

A large thunk makes both me and Victor sit up, thinking someone's found us. But of course it's Aegis, hitting his head on the ceiling as he wakes up from a nightmare.

I turn towards the entryway, looking for the small bit of supplies we left outside. But it's gone. All I have is a small bit of food and my ax.

Someone must've taken my backpack and our other supplies while we slept. 

I growl and stalk outside, expecting there to be someone in sight, running away with my bag slung over their shoulder. But there's no one.

And outside is a vast, endless desert. 

I grab my ax, swinging it carefully around outside, as if I'm trying to see if anyone's sneaking around invisible. It doesn't hit anything.

The trees have completely disappeared, leaving only sand and more sand.

Aegis comes out out of the cave, rubbing his eyes, and looks around. 

"Whoa, what happened?" He asks. Victor agrees, somewhat happily.

"We're in the desert now! I've never seen this happen in any other games!" She says. 

"Yeah. Maybe it's something special just for us. They must've been getting bored," I say, and smile at my joke. It's not much of a joke, yes, but I don't usually say things like that.

"Hey! You smiled! See, I told you she's not gloomy!" Victor excitedly spins to face Aegis. He laughs and nods. 

"I never said that! But when we were talking about the interviews I just commented that she was mysterious, not gloomy!" He says. I fix my face. No smiling, you'll have to kill these people or die yourself.

"I'm both!" I say, taking my food and stuffing it in my pockets. I sling my ax over my shoulder and start to walk away.

"Now come on, we should start moving before the other tributes find us. It could be soon." Victor nods solemnly and Aegis follows me.

We don't have much, but maybe we'll have more later, once we've been through the desert more. 

We start to venture through the desert, which seems to be just as endless as the woods. Maybe even more so, as here you can see farther than in the woods and it still seems to go on forever. 

I don't really know where we're going, but I know that we need to move and it doesn't really matter where we go. 

There's deadly tributes all over in this arena, and we don't want to get cornered by any of them. 

Well, not like it's easy to get cornered here, with all this open expanse.

"What do you mean by you're both gloomy and mysterious?" Aegis asks. Victor looks at me expectantly. 

"I'm mysterious, I can't tell you." I say. That's not the only reason. I just have a past most people don't have, and I don't go around flaunting it for sympathy. 

I don't need sympathy. I've needed sympathy in the past, but I didn't get it. And now I've learned to live without it. 

"Aw, c'mon, you can tell us! We won't tell anyone," Victor says happily. I glance at her face. She really did forget that all of Panem is watching right now- well, maybe not all of Panem, it's the middle of the day and kids must be in school. 

But most of Panem, mainly the Capitol. All of the Capitol is probably watching right now, wondering what secrets I'll uncover. 

Maybe I'll tell her anyways. Just so she can understand that not everyone has a perfect life. So the Capitol people can understand that most people don't have perfect lives, not even close. 

"Fine, I'll tell you." I say. Victor smiles happily and Aegis mirrors her. 

"I had a family once. A long time ago. Then when I was little, my father and my sister ran away. I don't know where they went." I paused. 

I don't want to edit any of this out. I want to expose my mother for letting my father go and rebel. I want to tell my friends the real story. But this would hurt me, too, not just her. So I remove the parts about thirteen and where my father went. The Capitol doesn't need to know that.

"So I was raised by my mother. We had a normal life. She worked, I went to school. We were friendly enough for a good portion of my life, or at least when we fought we got over it. We weren't close. I don't regret that. I'm too much like my mother, we could never be close. But we were sort of opposites, or we grew to be. When I was twelve, I had my name in the reaping ball three times, for two tesserae. The next year, I took two more tesserae out, for me and my mother again. So that was six. But then, this year, when I turned fourteen, my mother and I had a huge fight. I'm not going to disclose what it was about, for... security reasons. But that year, this year, I have my name in the ball only two more times. Eight in all, which isn't very much, really, but it's more than the three I would've had. And now since I'm here, fighting for my life in the arena, she's probably taking my year's supply of food." I glance over at Victor, who seems to have remembered a lot of Panem is watching this and seems somewhat concerned for me. 

I look up. There must be a camera in the sky somewhere. Watching us, recording us. Showing my speech to everyone who can look at a screen. 

I stare at the sky, my face hardening. I pretend I'm looking at my mother. 

"And I know she might be watching this right now. So I've got a message for you, MOM: I hate you. I haven't always, but I always will. And if I'm saying something wrong right now and they end up targeting you, then so be it. You were a horrible mother." I stop and look away from the sky. 

I don't know if I meant all that. But I really do think she was a horrible mother. Because she was.

It feels like I just made a speech in front of the whole viewing audience, not two friends. Which I did, but still. 

"I don't think you're gloomy," Aegis says. I look at him, raising my eyebrows. 

"Yes, I am. Everyone I ever cared about left me. I've got no reason to be happy." I'm staring straight at Aegis, wanting to see his response to my cry for sympathy.

And so it is that I don't notice the knife whistling towards Victor's head until it's too late.