The Arena

Chapter 1

The announcer begins to count down from 10 and I can hear my heart pounding in my chest. My palms are sweaty and I feel like I may lose my breakfast. I look around, frantically trying to find Peeta, the boy from my district. When I find him his eyes meet mine and he just stares at me. He looks just as terrified as I probably do and his blue eyes hold a fear that I've only seen once before in my sisters gray eyes after my fathers death. During training Peeta and I didn't talk much, but I guess we could be called friends. He is 4 years older than me, but he sometimes would draw me pictures and he never spoke an unkind word. He does seem to know my sister, Katniss, which is strange since I've never seen them talk. When I was saying goodbye to my family, after the reaping my Katniss told me she would have volunteered if it were still legal, which it hasn't been for sometime now. The last year kids were allowed to volunteer was when I was just 2 years old, and it's been much longer since District Twelve even had a volunteer.

When Katniss held me in her warm embrace in that small room with the white washed walls and red velvet furniture, she said she made Peeta promise to get me out alive. I still wonder how she had done that, gotten Peeta to sacrifice his own life for mine, even though we'd never meet.

As my eyes strain to adjust to the almost blinding light of the sun, I look around the arena. Behind me is a large forest and beyond that more trees and a mountain that's taller than anything I'd ever seen back in Twelve. To my left is a small lake with smaller versions of the large mountain rising and falling behind it. Everywhere else is covered in trees, some of which I recognize from studying them in school. There are oaks, maples, birches and even evergreens. Though the scene is absolutely striking, there is something still so wrong about it all. The snowy caps on the mountains shine to brightly, the leaves on every tree are unnaturally green, and the water is unsettlingly still, despite the small breeze that whips lose strands of hair in front of my face. 

As I continue to look around on of the tributes catches my eye. Clove, the small girl from District 2. She looks almost nothing like she did during the interviews with Ceasar Flickerman. She had worn long red dress with beautiful sequins with soft orange and yellow accents. The makeup she wore made her eyes look like they were on fire, but now they're stone cold. She looks like she could break my neck without a second thought. The careers will surely be the first to the cornucopia where the bloodbath will begin, and when it does I don't plan on being anywhere near here.

5...

4...

3...

2...

1...

The cannon fires. The sound echoes through me and I am frozen on my metal plate and all I can see is the blur of my fellow tributes running towards the golden horn. Suddenly, as if my legs have a mind of their own, I'm off of my pedestal and sprinting towards the woods. I turn around only when I know I am under the cover of the unusually green trees. My throat is already rough and I have to stop for a while to catch my breath. The woods I'm sitting  could be a replica of the woods just outside the fence in District 12, if it weren't for its unsettling features. The woods outside District Twelve had provided my family with food. The woods my sister found comfort in.

I stand up from the ground a brush the leaves off the back of my green colored cargo pants. I continue walking as soon as I feel I can, and almost immediately I start to notice all of the medicinal herbs and plants in the arena. Having spent my life learning how to heal with plants like these this will come to my advantage. Katniss used to say I have an eye for beauty and nature; always seeing the beauty in things and always seeing things as they are, and now I can see what she meant. The echoing bird calls mixed with the sound of wind rustling the leaves is almost calming. If I weren't in the Hunger Games perhaps I might be enjoying my time in the woods; surrounded by trees.