BAM!

The first canon sounded; one tribute dead.

BAM!

Two.

BAM!

Three.

BAM!

Four.

Then silence; four tributes dead.

I looked to the sky as they showed the slides of the faces of the passed tributes. One was from my district. I was now the only one from my district left in the games. I felt like an endangered species; the last of my kind.

I decided to find a place to spend the night before it got too late. Quickly, and quietly, I crept through the rainforest trying to find a good spot that would cover me for the night.

I saw a few places that could have worked, but they weren’t enough coverage to keep me from being killed in my sleep.

Eventually I came across a ditch surrounded by shrubbery. I jumped down inside to take a better look, and when I did, I knew it was the perfect place.

There was a tree at the edge of it, and there were rocks casting shadows at the base of the tree. The one side was kind of like a cave, next to the tree, so that there was even more shadow at that side of the tree’s base.

I threw my survival bag down next to the tree, and started to set up what would from now on be my “home”.

Some people were making alliances, but I didn’t want to make any friends that I’d have to kill later. After all, there can only be one winner; everyone else is dead. I know how it feels to lose a loved one to the hunger games better than most, and I wasn’t about to set myself up for that again.

I didn’t even want to be reminded of that; of what I went through all those years ago. It was a dark period of my life. I’ve been spending every second of every day since then trying to forget it, but it always seems to sliver its way back in.

When everything was put into its place, the sky began to get dark, and I began to find my sleeping spot at the shadowy part of the base of the tree. The ground was damp beneath me, along with the bark of the tree. The air was thick, humid, and musky, and smelled of fresh rain after a storm. There was a slight breeze blowing, making a light, whooshing, white-noise ring in the back of my mind, and tickling my ears. I seemed so far away from the action, and everything seemed so peaceful. The struggles at hand seemed so distant and so unimportant at that moment, and I almost felt at home.