Calm Before The Storm {Finnick Odair}

Dogs

They managed to safely navigate their way back to the ladder, and surprisingly didn't fall off of it and break their limbs. The pair of them both vomited in some shrubbery when they got up there, the lack of transportation in the districts not preparing them for the high speeds of that 'elevator'.

Despite the fact that the remnants of their lunch was deposited in a nearby bush, Hebe and Gaia decided to set up camp in the clearing. They wanted to be as close as possible to the tunnel, meaning they would have an easy escape should anyone find them there.

They spent the afternoon trying to recover from their nausea, drinking copious amounts of water in the process. By evening their supplies were dwindling. Hebe regretted eating so much of Gaia's stuff, having thought that it was limitless. Compared to the rations she had spent the last week and a half on, it did seem limitless.

A fire was out of the question at this point, so they sat in their sleeping bags, huddling together in the cold. The pair of them waited in earnest for the sound of the anthem; they had concluded it was impossible to hear the cannon in the tunnels.

At last it came, blasting through the arena at even higher volumes than usual. However, tonight no faces were projected into the sky. There were still 7 tributes left.

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The two girls continued to spy on Anise and Ash in the days that followed. Each time they watched them, it felt as though they learnt something new. At first this seemed to be a good thing, but the more they witnessed, the worse she felt about her chances of winning. Although Gaia didn't seem to share the same sentiment, constantly plotting on ways they could eliminate them.

It was unusual for there to still be strong allies at this stage of the proceedings as tributes were normally so paranoid that they couldn't even consider trusting another person. It was certainly unprecedented for there to be two teams of strong tributes. Whilst they didn't have the natural connection of being district partners, Hebe knew that Gaia and herself had an unusually strong bond. It was one that was undoubtedly forged by a hatred of the careers and now the Capitol.

It was easy to trust someone when you shared not only common goals, but common enemies. Yet at the end of the day, only one tribute would come out alive, and that was too close for comfort for Hebe.

She was constantly on edge, snapping her head at every sound, twitching at every small imaginary flash in the treeline. While she missed her family and her home, more than anything she missed the feeling of complete and undeniable safety. She missed the feeling of being able to turn her back on someone without wondering whether she would get stabbed or strangled.

It was beginning to wear her down, she couldn't sleep as well as before, she couldn't eat as much as before. The arena now felt like her home, like she had a special connection to each tree she passed as she stalked through the undergrowth. She had begun to forget the face of her mother, her exact features were no longer clear as day, but misty. Like she was looking at her memories through foggy glass.

She lay in her sleeping back each night straining to remember the way her home smelled, the sounds of her mother jostling about in the kitchen early in the morning, the taste of her hastily eaten breakfast before school. But all she could smell now was blood and dirt. It was all she could taste too, the metallic tinge coating her mouth at every minute of the day. And it wasn't the gentle jingles of cutlery that rang in her ears, but the screams of those she had watched die in the arena.

Hebe rewatched their last moments in her head every night, unable to prevent her mind from conjuring those images. They were clearer than her own vision, each and every detail carefully mapped out, down to the exact colour of the flowers, down to the position of the sun in the sky.