Peeta buried his knife into the monkey's back, stabbing it again and again until it released its jaw.
He kicked the mutt away, bracing for more.
By then she had collected some discs from the corpses- Finnick and Leilani at her back, breathing hard.
"Come on, then! Come on!" Peeta shouted, panting with rage.
But then something happened to the monkeys.
They began withdrawing- backing up trees, fading into the jungle, as if some unheard voice called them away. A Gamemaker's voice, telling them it was enough.
"Get her", Livia said to Peeta, "We'll cover you."
Peeta gently lifted up the morphling and carried her the last few yards to the beach while Leilani and Livia keep their weapons at the ready, locking eyes and nodding- prepared for anything.
But- except for the orange carcasses on the ground- the monkeys were gone.
Peeta laid the morphling on the sand as Livia cut away the material over her chest, revealing the four deep puncture wounds.
Blood slowly trickled from them, making them look far less deadly than they were.
The real damage was inside. By the position of the openings, Livia was almost certain the beast ruptured something vital, a lung, maybe even her heart.
She layed on the sand, gasping like a fish out of water. Sagging skin, sickly green, her ribs as prominent as a child's- dead of starvation.
Surely she could afford food, but turned to the morphling just as Haymitch turned to drink, Livia guessed.
Everything about her spoke of waste- her body, her life, the vacant look in her eyes.
Livia held one of her twitching hands, unclear whether it moved from the poison that affected their nerves, the shock of the attack, or withdrawal from the drug that was her sustenance.
There was nothing they could do.
Nothing but stay with her while she passed.
"I'll watch the trees." Leilani offered before walking away, Finnick following close behind.
And Livia would've much like to join her, but the morphling gripped her hand so tightly- she would've had to pry off her fingers, and she didn't have the strength for that kind of cruelty.
Livia's mind was filled with thoughts of Rue, how maybe she could sing a song or something.
But she didn't even know the morphling's name, let alone if she liked songs.
Livia just knew she was dying.
Peeta crouched down on the other side of her and stroked her hair.
When he began to speak in a soft voice, it seemed almost nonsensical, but the words weren't for her.
"With my paint box at home, I can make every color imaginable. Pink. As pale as a baby's skin. Or as deep as rhubarb. Green like spring grass. Blue that shimmers like ice on water."
The morphling stared into Peeta's eyes, hanging on to his words.
"One time, I spent three days mixing paint until I found the right shade for sunlight on white fur. You see, I kept thinking it was yellow, but it was much more than that. Layers of all sorts of color. One by one." Peeta explained.
The morphling's breathing was slowing into shallow catch-breaths. Her free hand dabbled in the blood on her chest, making the tiny swirling motions she so loved to paint with.
