Caspia smiled awkwardly at Chaska when he moved to give her a reassuring pat on arm before realising his hand was covered in blood. Really she was touched by the gesture. The fact that this stoic career had a dagger in him but was concerned about how Caspia was feeling really showed something about his character.
She listened carefully to both District 2 tributes responses to her question. So, stabbings during training were not frowned upon in District Two then. That sounded questionable but Caspia supposed it would certainly be helpful in learning to survive the Hunger Games.
She raised her eyebrows as Gloria suggested that fights without stabbings were boring. “You cant have been fighting the right people.” she responded in disagreement, with a shrug of her shoulders. Fighting had been what she loved back home, and that was all without a single stabbing. There was nothing a fun as a fight against friends, making jokes with gasping breaths between swings. Perhaps Two was just too serious about fighting to enjoy it like that.
Chaska seemed as unfamiliar with mock fights that didn’t allow stabbing as Caspia was with those that did. She smiled fondly, remembering all the many many sparring matches she had back home. “We had a few different types.” she explained, “We had fights unarmed or with blunt weapons until one person was too sore or tired to keep going. We had blunt weapon fights with a referee who would work out what injuries would be and so who would win. Or we did have fights with real weapons to first blood but stabbing or any other sort of severe maiming was strictly off limits.”
As they walked Caspia was relieved to see Chaska was at least pressing his hand to the wound. His apathy towards being stabbed was at least not going to result in him bleeding to death.
“There weren’t tons of us Career kids back home and we had lots to do apart from Career training, I guess it would have been a bad idea to risk of bad injuries even if any of us had wanted to stab each other.” That was one possible explanation for the difference in training regimes, though Caspia still wasn’t fully sure how everything worked in Two.
———
Felix Prestman | District 12 | Location: Western Valley | Tags: Penny | Pretty Much Lost
Felix hadn’t been the only one sliding down the sheer valley walls and walking along the stream was a plan as good as any. They didn’t have a coin to toss, but Felix was happy to go along with Penny’s decision. “Right we’ll go then.” He was starting to feel a little more chipper again, putting that recurring realisation far back in his mind. “I’m sure we’ll find something useful eventually.”
