Hiding in the Dust[open]

I hate the Capitol. Those mutts are so unnatural, so evil and for them to just let them roam about and use them to control people is an absolute travesty and utter proof that the people of the Capitol are soulless. Charlie sleeps during the morning and I nod off in intervals of a few minutes, no more than ten at a time. My knee feel wrecked.

I roll up my pant leg before Charlie wakes and up and see that it looks about as bad as it feels. Its huge and purple and it looks really sick. But it isn't broken and nothing feels torn, so I've just irritated the joint immensely.

"Is that going to be enough to heal it?" she asked when she gave me the plant. I tell her the truth, it won't heal it but it will help the pain, even if it tastes absolutely horrible. We need to figure out a way to get out of here safely. The plan of making a map had been completely destroyed when that mutt showed up. There was no way to tell where we were or how far from the district we were. We needed to find a way to get to district thirteen and we needed to find a way to get out of the forest without getting turned into Avoxes; but the potential for that was something that I kept from Charlie. We had enough going on.

"We're gonna try to get to district thirteen. As quickly as we can, I just kind of need to...tweak the plan to meet our current situation," that was the best way to describe it. 'Tweak' was a better word to use than to say the phrase 'I have no idea what's going to happen or how to get out of this'.

"No, we aren't going back. If we do they will all make sure that we never get another chance to leave again. We'll never be allowed to go anywhere by ourselves again. We can do this we just have to stay hopeful and smart. We need to make our shelter as impregnable as possible. And I've got a plan for that," the plan had jumped into my mind the instant I told her I had a plan. It had appeared out of nowhere.

I lead her out of our cave shelter. She didn't want to go and I wouldn't have been surprised if she forced me to let her stay in the cave. But as I offered her my hand, she took it regardless. The fact that she still trusted me bolstered my confidence. I made sure that we could see the cave no matter where we were at. And I started grabbing logs.

The logs weren't super massive logs, oh no. But they were at least six feet long and I made sure that I checked them for dry rot. I had Charlie help me carry them back to our cave one log at a time. It was log and painful work. Both of us were suffering from sore backs and burning muscles but I wasn't going to stop working until I was content with our fortifications.

I set to work ripping any moss or leaves or twigs that were still attached to the logs. Then I chose one end of them and started whittling away until there was a sharp and lethal point at the end of every log. Then I started to dig holes all around the entrance of the cave and stuck them deep in the earth at an angle that was sure to catch any animal or human that tried to jump over them. I even angled them so that if someone wasn't paying attention they would get speared in the legs. After that I covered the lower ones with moss and debris so that they weren't openly visible to the naked eye.

That was just the beginning.

"Well, honestly, I can't remember what these are called but they are extremely useful," I patted one of the pointed logs and smiled proudly at it. They were perfect. And the angle that they were at would catch anything. But now for the next step.

"We need to find thorny plants, like thorny vines. They'll have these really wicked thorns that will be serrated on both sides. We're going to wrap that around these and make a wall of the stuff. But we have to be careful because if we get cut it won't be some tiny little thing, it's going to be a serious issue-like requiring stitches."

I left the cave, making sure to keep our fortifications hidden and started hunting for the thorny vines.

(Wanted to let you know Charlie's appearance changed a tiny bit to just having long hair)

"Kinda, except bigger, but these give me another idea," I turned around and looked around until I found a thick blanket of moss and I sat it in front of her. "I want you to cut the roses and keep as much of the thorny stem on as you can, then we'll wrap them up in here so neither of us gets cut up,"I helped her strip four massive rose bushes of their flowers. We got a lot of the thorn covered stems and bundled them in the moss which caught the barbs so that we were perfectly safe. I found another blanket to use for the thorny vines and we set out looking.

It took a while, especially carrying the moss-covered roses but after twenty minutes we found a massive thicket that was full of the vines. I made a small happy noise and quickly set to work chopping down the vines in great lengths. It only took me fifteen minutes to completely strip the thicket and we had enough of the plant to completely cover our fortifications.

We made our way back and before night fell we had completely covered every possible entrance into our little cave home with the thorny vines and the rose stems. We laid the stems on the edges of the pointed logs that we had buried a little lower to the ground and they would be great at catching feet and causing anyone or anything to sprawl and flail into the thorn vines. It was perfect!

"Charlie, I'd say that we have a very fortified little home. And! The vines will continue to grow and grow into the ground in the next twelve hours. We'll be even more protected over night!" I was proud of myself. This was awesome.

I made a little more food than usual for dinner, we deserved to splurge a little bit. After all we did an insane amount of work and it had turned out wonderfully. And with our fortifications someone would have to be an absolute moron to try to do anything at all. I could see that even the animals were giving us a wide berth. It was amazing!

"I think that this is going to serve us very well for a while, what do you think? And it smells like roses," I grinned and handed her the cooked rabbit and a bunch of berries to eat.