#rowantask

[little-red-finch]

The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound. || Grassland Task.

The night is quiet.

The night is calm.

And then it is no longer.

There's hardly an instant to collect myself, and tell myself to get up. On the ground below me, large beasts are springing from the ground. Mutts, deadly and ready to kill me at all costs. But while they're large, they're clumsy and rear at the tree I sit in.

They can't climb, I notice, but they can jump at one throws itself into the trunk and sends me clinging to a branch for support. I can't stay here, and so I shimmy myself out onto a limb and reach for the next tree. I make it, but they're limited in the grassy plain. I know I can't make the next and I'm assured as I jump from the tree as the beast knocks it down.

A pain shoots down my shins as I land, and I stumble forward. I land among the rubble of the torn up ground and I feel a cut across the bridge of my nose and down my cheek from the brush. It's going to scare, but I can't think of these things right now because I have to move or die. And so I move, and my legs are sore from the fall, but I keep them moving and the animal charges behind me. They're clumsy like this when running, and overall fascinating.

I move swiftly through the tall grasses, and in the distance I hear them -- tributes must be nearby. The thought makes me push myself harder until I am conscious of the lungs in my chest ready to burst. But then I'm not there.

I hear his laugh behind me. I'm a child again, running through the forests of my home. I am trying to beat Augustus with all my might even though I know with his long legs he's letting me win.

And I win. But I do not beat Augustus because I realized I have beat them. They've stopped behind me as if they can go no further. I fall to my knees. I can't move. I can't make myself move. I don't want to. I want to go back to that memory. At this moment, I want them to come for me. I don't want to be here.

My wish isn't granted. They never are. But I become aware that in the horizon and the early glow of the morning that the Cornucopia sits there. I've completely retraced any progress I have made. But it's a good thing.

My legs are legs and my lungs are lungs and I am me and this is my reality.

I need to find them.

My feet rise and I take the step.

The oxygen pulses through my lungs and out again.

I move towards the Cornucopia, my old friend.

I will find them. I will find Logan and Larka.

And so I go.

[little-red-finch]

This is it, boys; this is war. || Day One

Six cannons have rang.

Six victims have become casualities in this bloody battle, and I am not one of those six. For that, I am thankful.

But my feet have been sore in these boots I wear, but I cannot afford to quit moving. The sounds behind me have faded and the Bloodbath has ended, but I am still in danger. Yet I'm in danger no matter how far I travel. Not only are these now eighteen other people threats to me, but this environment has become my enemy as well. And I must keep moving.

I can feel a breeze. It's small but it grows as I try to get my feet to take just one more step one after the other. It's simple logic. The breeze means I'm nearing the edge of the forest, and all things must end after time. This also poses a choice. Do I want to continue to see what I find? No, no I can't do that because I need food. There's a gnawing beginning to grow in my stomach, and I wish I'd ate more than could this morning that seems like days ago instead of hours.

These trees are different. This entire arena is different from what I know, but at the same time it's the same. The knife in my hand is alive and ready. I feel on end, and paranoia is strong from weariness. I keep along the edge; just enough hidden but far from the others. Along the path I recognize berries. They're safe, I know, and I'm glad I spent so much time at that station with Logan. And that makes me think. I wonder who those cannons are; where is Logan and Larka and Atlas and the boy with those brown eyes I can still feel holding me tight. Perhaps they were one of those cannons. Perhaps they think I was one of them.

The berries fill my stomach with what little they can, and I decide I need to set up camp. Trees. I can manage with trees. I sink my knife into their bark and pull myself up it's trunk, my hands and feet gripping for something to hold. And soon I'm up in it, and I feel home among the branches and leaves some twenty feet above the ground. In the middle of where the sturdy limbs meet, I cram myself into not wanting to fall from it.

And here I await, eating my berries and my knife is slung through my belt hole. It's like me, I think: small and fragile, yet determined. And here I sit awaiting the night and the dead tributes it brings.