#itr

It’s no secret that Meadow would rather be anywhere else right now.

With only thirty seconds left on the counter, she briefly considers stepping off the little platform she’s on. Surely, that would entail a quicker death than the one she’s going to find here.

Here, where the canopy of trees above is so dense it may as well be late evening for how dark it is. Here, where the rest of the remaining world is watching her, and the twenty-three others trapped in her situation. Here, where nobody can do anything but die.

She doesn’t step off the plate, though. Instead, she watches the digital timer above the spectacular golden horn as it clicks down to twenty, then fifteen, and then ten.

The largest stream of sunlight visible around here is dancing down, casting the Cornucopia in a decadent spotlight. Sending it shining and glittering in a way that makes her head spin. Its maw is filled with weapons and food and medicine. The sunlight is guiding her gaze toward the gear, to the only lifelines available as far as she can tell.

Meadow misses the sun. She misses the open fields of home. The smell of wheat and sunshine in the air. She wants to be home. Among the barley, among the golden Summer air. Not here, where everything is green and dim and designed to kill her.

Five seconds left on the timer.

Meadow refuses to be lured by the siren’s song of supplies. She’s thirteen; she’s small. She knows full well if she goes anywhere near that gentle golden spotlight and all it’s shining upon that she’s going to die.

Instead, she shuffles her feet around (three),

and stares into the murky shadows that loom behind the dense treeline (two),

and she takes a deep breath (one),