Calm Before The Storm {Finnick Odair}

Pheasant

Hebe trekked through the swamp with the careers all the way back down the hill she had scaled yesterday. She passed the small pond with the clear water, not saying anything to the careers about its existence. Partly out of respect to her fallen district partner, not wanting to tarnish his discovery by placing it in the hands of the careers. Partly because she was willing to take any small advantage she could possibly get over them. Hebe then remembered her backpack with all their supplies, still sitting in the clearing where she had left it.

The careers had been surprisingly smart with the way they had handled her, constantly having someone walk in front and behind her, not letting her go to retrieve her supplies. They had forced her to take the heaviest backpack from Icarus, Verity making it clear that while she was here she would be a servant. She was clearly used to such treatment in her mansion back in 1. Hebe wouldn't let that stop her though, she was already formulating several plots to take down the careers. At this point, she was willing to risk her own life just to get revenge for her partner, each new plan getting more wild and dangerous.

Suddenly they all stopped walking, Icarus walking over to a tree and flopping down, just in front of it, resting his head on the bark. Verity and Gaia followed suit. Hebe just stood and stared, recognising the gnarls of that tree as the one she had slept against only two nights prior. She was standing in the same clearing she and her allies had spent their first night in. What a sick joke.

"So 4, are you gonna make yourself useful and build us a fire, or would you rather spend all your time gawking at the shrubbery," Verity spat, her tone venomous.

"What don't know how to make one? Got servants to do that for you I bet." Hebe shot back, feeling no reason to be civil with the girl when she was planning to kill her.

"Yeah I do actually, and right now I'm having to make do with you. So hurry up, I'm hungry." Hebe didn't reply, not wanting to dignify her with a response and make her any more smug than she already was.

She walked around the clearing, using her axe to chop off branches to use for firewood, yet again reminiscing about the night before with her allies, sat around a fire eating roasted bird, smoke rising from their fire into the sky, the smell burning in her nostrils. She thought with a shudder that that must have been what alerted the careers to their location, they had obviously been closer than they thought.

Hebe blinked and saw Niamh's head, eyes staring at her, twitching one last time even though her head was detached from her body. She brushed it off and continued collecting firewood, arranging the pieces in the middle of the clearing and using the dead leaves as kindling once again.

"Oi, 1, gimme some matches?" She called out, Verity huffing and leaning over to the hefty backpack Hebe had dropped on the floor, grabbing a small box of matches out of it. She gave a feeble throw and the box landed only a few feet away from her, Hebe grumbling as she walked over to retrieve her prize.

She struck a match, watching the bright flame sway in the soft breeze. She began thinking about how easy it would be to start a forest fire, just one stray spark and the whole place would be set ablaze. She imagined how Verity's face would look as it was licked by orange flames, her hair alight and skin melting from the heat.

Hebe's face broke into a wide grin at the thought, dropping the match into the pile of wood, watching as it caught fire, smiling like a mad woman. She had to stop herself from letting out a witchy cackle, schooling her features into a neutral expression as she picked up her axe and walked back to the group.

Settling down beside a bush, she reached into her backpack (she thought it appropriate to dub it hers since she had been the one carrying it all day) and found a box of the same dry crackers she had been living on since she got here.