Katniss: In The Arena

Author's note:  This is a creative piece from the perspective of a tribute of the Hunger Games.  The purpose of this is to tell what a character in a book was like.  I chose Katniss, and made it from the perspective of someone else in the same situation as the character. I haven't really ever wrote something like this, so please give me feedback!

I dash through the trees.  My blood is pulsing and I can feel the wind pushing the leaves as I tear through them.  Breathing heavier and heavier thinking, “Run faster.  Go faster.  He won’t get you.  You need to survive.  You need to have the will to win.  Run.  Just run. ” 

Branches scratched at my arms.  At this point, I didn’t care what scathed me; I just wanted to live.

In the distance, I see a small fire blazing in a tree.  Its fingers, fierce and commanding burned the tree’s body.  The tree was beginning to lose.  The fingers didn’t restrain from the destruction.  Soon, all that was left was an ashy, shrunken stump.  This is how these games will go down. All of us will end up like the tree.

Looking up, I see a shadow descending silently through the forest.  She seemed to have the nimbleness and gate of a phantom.  The earth ceased to leave a mark from her steps.   The leaves didn’t rustle from her breath, or her movement.  When the wind blew, her gasp didn’t carry along.  Her steps were that of a ghost, but of a warrior.  She moved quickly and powerfully.   All in all, she was a ghostly tool of destruction.

 I see her dark grey eyes gaze into mine.  Her shadowy, straight hair littered with leaves, and her olive skin smeared with earth.  On her arms, bruises and scratches covered her arms.   After all of this, she hasn’t been wounded very badly defending herself. 

 She raises her bow quickly turning to face me.

It’s Katniss Everdeen.  She’s that girl from District Twelve.  I know she is strong enough to fight.  All of us are aware she is skilled with her bow, and she is swift.  I also know that she won’t give up. Well….neither will I.  None of us will give up.  No one wants to die here, or even now. We’re both in this, and only one will come through victorious, bearing all the glory from these games. 

All of us are hungry for the glory.  Some are starving for the blood and some for the riches.  Others are ambitious for the satisfaction of survival.  Then there are those lusting for the kill.  What was she fighting for?  Who did she think she was up against? 

Firing at me, I twist me body, dodging the arrows, hitting the ground hard.  Hastily standing up, I grab anything I can defend myself with.  My fingers grasp the spear, as I hold it up.  Again, her fingers nimbly reloaded the arrow and she releases it at me. This time it plunges into my arm.  I fall to my knees dropping the spear and almost declaring my defeat.  Was my time over?  I was fallen.  My fight was over…the battle was over.  I despaired, laying in my defeat.

I know that this fight wasn’t over.  It was too early in the games to pronounce my death because the night was young.  The moon was white, pale; No blood was shed on its luminous body. My time wasn’t done, for I knew that my eyes would see the dawn.  But, when the districts would awake, they would see a rising, bloody sun from the brutal fight in the night.

She watches with her skilled, curious eyes as I kneel down on the Earth.  Floating down to me, she almost looks pitied as she holds up her bow, taking a single arrow in her hands.

Gazing at my wound, she looks into my eyes with her ashy eyes.  They looked at me with such sadness.  Such a mortal, fragile emotion I saw in her eyes.  Pulling back the string, she steps back, aiming at me.  Closing her eyes, she releases.

 I feel dead. I’m not dead yet, but such a feeling has come over me. 

She watches with crystal drops lining her misty eyes.  Of course she doesn’t want to die. None of us do.  All of us want to taste the freedom; the freedom of survival.  Every one of us here wants to taste the outside world after this.  All of us want to taste the sunlight again; to touch the rays of the sun raining down on the earth.  I know I want that one last time…but fate intervened amidst it all.

Before she leaves me, she turns to look at me one more time.  Again, her eyes told me of the regret she would face.  Silent tears streaked down her face.  She didn’t make a sound as she mourned for me. 

                                                                        

Her hushed despair overwhelmed me, too. What her eyes told, was chapters and chapters of a story.  It would be a story of the survival…a story of the regret.  It would be a tale of the blood, and of the glory.  Of the lusting; the hunger of these games.