☞︎ℍ𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕣 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 ~ 𝔸𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕪𝕤𝕥'𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 ☜︎

~More friends?~

When I wake up, I find that I'm not being pelted by sand anymore. My head throbs lightly, and of course my wounds sting so badly it feels like my arm's going to fall off, but otherwise I feel fine. 

I look around me, slowly standing up. I'm not in the desert anymore. I seem to be in some kind of forest, and thankfully it looks exactly like the kind I'd see at home. Well, without the tree stumps every five feet.

There's a small river next to me. I almost squeal in delight, but then remember that I need to be brave for the cameras and I can't have any other tributes finding me. 

I rush into the river, feeling the fresh, cold water wash all the sand off of my body. It's nice to be clean, finally. I was getting tired of sand, sand, and even more sand. 

I sit in the river for a while. I don't know how long, but I do know it's long enough for my fingers to start to get a wrinkly texture, like prunes. 

Eventually I start getting tired, and decide to take a nap. If no one's found me by now, they probably never will. At least that's my theory. 

I curl up next to the river, and let myself drift off listening to the gentle sounds of rushing water. 

And before I know it, I'm pulled into a dream. 

I'm running as fast as I can. The icy terrain below me offers very little traction, and I'm afraid I'm going to slip. 

But I don't. I keep running, and running, and running. I don't even look behind me to see who I'm running from. I don't even know what I'm running from. 

Maybe it's the careers again. Maybe it's some sort of wild beast that managed to find me while I was sleeping. I don't know.

I feel a tap on my shoulder, and look behind me.

My heart almost stops. I'm being chased by two tributes, one who looks around my age and the other who looks a few years older. They're going to kill me for sure. 

I try to run faster, but my muscles already ache from the strain and I trip, hitting my arm on the hard ice with a sickening crunch that makes me think it's broken. 

I try to look up through the pain, and see the tributes advancing on me. The female one, the older one, taps my shoulder again, and talks but doesn't open her mouth. 

"Hello? Anybody in there?" 

"Y-yes," I say, stuttering. She nods and smiles, then grabs a stick from the ground and hits me hard on the shoulder. 

I wake up screaming and clutching my shoulder. Next to me, the two people from my dream are standing and arguing. I look at them and freeze, my eyes widening. 

Should I run? Yes, that seems like the best option. Though if they didn't kill me in my sleep, why would they kill me while I was awake?

"Who are you?" I ask defiantly, standing up as if I'm brave and confident. 

But I still feel myself clutching my injured shoulder, trying to protect it from these people.

The older one, the girl, looks at me with an annoyed expression. 

"District eight. I'm Lea, and that's Lee. And don't you DARE laugh at our names." I nod, holding in my snicker. 

"I won't. I'm Amethyst, district seven. Why didn't you kill me?" I say. Lee pushes past Lea, earning him a glare from her. 

"Because I wanted to be allies. Ignore Lea, by the way, she's grumpy that we had some food stolen a bit earlier. Also, sorry about her hitting you." He says. I consider it. Do I want to have allies again? Well, maybe not, but I could use their help and supplies. Maybe I'll join with them and then take whatever I need to go find Aegis.

"Sure, we can be allies." We shake on it, ignoring Lea's fierce glare. 

Well. Now I have two more allies, something I thought I wouldn't get. For multiple reasons, not just that I'd be a horrible person to team up with. 

I also thought I didn't want them. I don't want to have to see more of my friends die. 

But I do need help. 

I follow Lee and Lea to their campsite. Along the way, we talk in quiet whispers as I learn their story. 

Apparently, they're siblings. Lea is Lee's older sister. They're all their parents have. 

I tell them so am I, though I leave out the part about my mother hating me. They don't need to know that. I don't want sympathy. 

They tell me about what they've been through so far. They were sleeping in a tree when the scene changed to desert, and it was a hard fall to the ground. Then they camped out there for a bit before they fell asleep on their fabric, handmade mats and it changed again. 

I don't tell them that I was the one who stole their food. They don't need to know that. They don't really need to know anything about me, so I simply tell them that I managed to find a good amount of stuff in the wintry forest, bring it with me to the desert, but then lost it when I got chased by a sandstorm. 

Really, it's a lot more interesting than that, but I don't like telling strangers my whole life's story. They don't need to know and I don't want them to know. 

Eventually we reach their camp, which seems to be a few hammocks hanging fifty feet up in a tree. I know how to climb trees, so I'm not nervous at being so high up. 

I make my way up to the top, finding a nice fork in the tree right above their hammocks. I settle in there, hoping I can go to sleep before they start to talk to me. I don't really want human interaction right now. Or ever. 

Once the sun sets, we start to get ready for sleep. Lee and Lea raise all their belongings into the tree, and we eat a meager dinner of a roll and some berries each. 

Then we all lie down in our sleeping spots and watch the sky. No one's dead, as far as I can see. The anthem echoes throughout the forest, and then it's quiet again. 

I can hear Lee's quiet snores now, but Lea's still wide awake. She scoots over to the edge of her hammock and moves as if to talk to me. 

"Amethyst?" She asks. I don't want to talk right now, I want to sleep, but I turn towards her. 

"Yeah?" I say, yawning. 

"Who do you think is going to win?" I contemplate this for a few seconds. I don't really know, though I do know it's not going to be me.

"I don't know. Not me. Probably Gleam or Cassia, or maybe Oceania." Lea gives me an odd look. 

"Cassia's dead, Amethyst. Did you sleep through it?" She says. I shake my head. 

"No. Well, yes- but I saw her. She's alive." Lea looks at me weird again, like maybe I'm slowly going insane. 

"It was really hot in the desert. You're sure she wasn't a hallucination?" I nod. 

"Her and Oceania managed to hurt me, badly," I say, showing Lea the gaping hole in my shoulder and leg. They've gotten a bit better, but they still hurt when I think about them. 

She winces. 

"Oh. Is that why you screamed when I hit you? I thought you were just being dramatic." She actually looks sorry, which surprises me. 

"Yep," I say, not sure what else would be appropriate. 

She apologizes, and there's an awkward moment when we're both staring into the distance, thinking. 

Then the sound of a cannon goes off, making us both jump. 

There's a small yelp along with it, and Lee's screams as he plummets towards the forest floor.