Meet Me In Our Hiding Place {Phresh}

P I P E R
Piper’s stomach growled from inside her sweatshirt as she tromped through the forest, pulling at her insides like a vacuum. It’d been over a day since she’d eaten more than bland pine nuts, tediously plucked from fallen cones. How annoying, she thought, that she had to keep up with the exhausting task of trying to feed herself on hunting and gathering. Just the act of hunting or gathering always made her even more hungry, so she had to keep doing it. Still, she took pride in knowing that she could do something most Districters had never learned.

Man, I’d kick ass in the Games, she thought, hand resting on the butt of the hatchet she kept at her hip. She’d never thought of herself as a fighter, but she was definitely a defender; the count of times she’d been close to dying or being caught would take up more than two hands. She knew how to hunt and she knew how to hide, how to be resourceful and how to conserve. There wasn’t much she could do with a bow, but she could throw her hatchet with decent accuracy. Sometimes she pictured herself in the Games she’d watched as a child, aiming right at Mace Emberstatt’s head, just feet away from winning the whole thing and feeding her family comfortably for the rest of their lives.

She had to admit that’s probably not what would have happened, though. The problem with throwing an axe is if she missed, it wouldn’t boomerang back to her; it would probably get stuck in a tree or something, and she’d be without a weapon, an easy target. Anyways, she was too old now to be Reaped even if she hadn’t deserted Twelve. It was best to leave these things up to speculation.

Piper couldn’t help but wonder if it had happened to any of her siblings. They could all have been in the Games and won, for all she knew. It was easier, less draining, to imagine them all in the best possible situation; every single one of them was a victor (except her youngest sister, who was 11) and hers was the richest family in Twelve with their combined incomes. She imagined they rotated which house in the Victor’s Village they lived in at any given time. It was better to imagine them like this rather than the alternative, and what else was there to do in the forest but daydream and trap squirrels?

Then she heard a cry for help; apparently she’d jinxed herself. It split through the silence and sounded so much like her little sister’s voice that it bristled the hairs on the back of her neck. Somewhere, there was a girl that needed help. Pulling the hatchet from her belt, Piper sprinted towards the sound, careful to avoid the trapping roots below her and the low branches overhead.

The girl came into view, long brown hair and not very old, cheeks still chubby and rosy. In her eyes Piper saw the innocence she herself had lost at a young age, and she decided the girl must not be a lone traveler--if she was on her own like Piper had been, she’d probably know to carry a weapon and how to use it. She’d have been able to kill the snake in front of her without yelling for help. So where were this girl’s parents? The thought of such carelessness irked Piper to no end, but there was a more important task at hand, and all of these thoughts blurred together into one instant, a quick and decisive decapitation of the snake with her hatchet before it could get too close to the girl.

“Get back!” she ordered as she swung. For a while the snake writhed in its phantom pain as Piper watched in disgust, spitting a gob of phlegm onto its body for good measure. “Sneaky bastard,” she muttered. It must have been hiding in the berry bushes; they were so full of fruit that she could spot them from this far away. The sight of so much food--food that actually had flavor--made Piper’s mouth water, her stomach growling even louder. It was tempting, but she knew to be wary around those bushes if she were to pick anything. This girl should have known, too.

Wiping the dark red blood off her blade with the heel of her hand, Piper focused on the root of this problem--a question was boiling inside her, and her words came out like stingers, more harsh than she meant them to be. It was hard to practice speaking when there was no one around to talk to. “Where are your parents? Don’t you know not to pick berries all alone with nothing to defend yourself? You’re almost guaranteed to find a snake in there.” Sheathing her axe, Piper placed a hand on her hip and waited for an explanation.