THE 68TH HUNGER GAMES - Book 1: Tribute

Chapter 11 - Surrounded

Aisling and I decide to stay in the tower ruin by the mountain for the night and thankfully, there were no disturbances.  As sunlight pours into the stone room at the top floor of the tower, my eyes flicker open. I notice Aisling sleeping in the corner, huddled in a thick jacket. Now would be a great time to kill her, but I decide against it. Aisling hasn’t exactly done anything suspicious, nor has she betrayed me or shown any hatred towards me.

“Wake up, Aisling,” I echo.

Aisling rubs her eyes and slowly gets up, yawning and sighing. She walks to the window, observing the surroundings and sighs again.

“We need food,” she says.

“Yeah, we do. I can’t hunt,” I reply, unhappy with myself.

“I’ll go hunting then,” Aisling mutters, “you can come and watch my back.”

I nod and join her at the window. Outside, we can see a large portion of the rainforest and if I look closely, I can see the clearing where the cornucopia is. It’s a few kilometres away, but our tower situated on the side of the hill provides a great view. I notice that on the farthest side of the arena, there are more mountain ranges and more ruins; however, ruins from a different time period. Our ruins that we’re in now are very Mayan. To the left and right at the end of the arena, there are more mountain ranges and ruins. I now realise why the ruins are here and it all makes sense to me now. At the beginning when we rose out of the ground and into the clearing where the cornucopia was, each tribute were facing different mountain ranges and ruins and obviously, they’ll go to the ruins in the distance to them. This tactic is to make us form alliances and create territories. The tributes that are still out there in the forest probably need as much help as they can get. I suddenly remember that Adriano Feneca is still out there because he refused to come with me to the ruins, and what about Ferdinand? He might be out there in the forest as well, or maybe he’s formed an alliance with other tributes.

“Look at that!” says Aisling pointing towards the mountain ranges on the right.

I notice that she’s pointing at a Cliffside with a volcano situated on top. Whoever’s there has the best area out of all of us.

“Do you think anyone’s there?” I say already knowing the answer.

“Yeah. Definitely,” Aisling replies. “The career tributes will probably take over it soon though.”

“Yeah, most likely. We should go find food now,” I say.

Aisling agrees and we both speed down the staircase and go out into the open. We both decide to play it safe and hunt further up the mountain where it’s less likely for a tribute to be. As we’re trekking up the steep hill, a cannon goes off and Aisling and I stop.

“Who do you think died?” Aisling asks with worry written on her face.

“I don’t know,” I reply vaguely, “Right now, the only tributes alive are the career tributes, excluding Dale Rover who died last night; both district 3 tributes; Caitlin Coal from district 5, Billiam Roberto from district 7, Ferdinand Gavinchi who is my ally, Treesar Limm of district 9, Adriano and Hannah of district 11; Sophie Bullstrode from district 12 and then there’s us two.”

“So one of them are dead,” Aisling says seriously.

I nod; however, we soon forget about the death and continue searching for food. The morning consists of mainly digging up roots and finding plants, which proves to be uneventful. Our best discovery was of a little creek that runs quite far up the mountain. Aisling and I use our water bottles to fill up with water in case we go thirsty later on during our trip.  We both take deep gulps of the refreshing aqua and wash the dirt off our faces. After a couple of hours, I analyse the items which we have collected, and I notive we have enough plants and roots, which will last us the whole day. The only issue is right now is that we’re lacking protein and there has been very little sign of living creatures anywhere nearby. None of us know how to shoot down birds or hunt for other land animals. We finally come to the conclusion that the mountains lack animals and that all the animals are probably in the forests in the middle of the arena; the forest where the cornucopia is situated.