Snippet #1926187

The first thing he needed to do was find shelter and disguise himself so that he would be less visible in the stark black of this arena.
With his quaking hands before him, Leo made his way through the forest slowly, the bitterness of the wind and the cold had not diminished, and with no legitimate jacket to speak of his body temperature was dropping rapidly. The thick clouds in the darkened sky allowed no light through and made forward progress difficult, heavily falling snow also hindered free movement as the snow continued to pile up as he walked.

Figuring it would be best to find out what was in his bag sooner rather than later he stopped beneath one of the thicker branched dead trees and, placing the warm-ish sleeping bag which he had been clutching to himself to hold in his warmth, on the snow before him.
Pulling the pack off of his shoulders, He unzipped it, gingerly in the darkness Leo began to pull out the items within his bag. On the top was something soft and large, struggling to make out what it was that he was holding he lifted the object completely from the bag holding it up before him, and then suddenly it struck him he was holding a jacket, a warm heavily insulated jacket!
With a sigh of relief he unzipped the jacket and pulled it around his shivering form. Continuing on he removed two small daggers, careful not to touch the sharp blades, immediately he hooked them into his belt loops, there were a few other assorted things most of which would be extremely vital to his survival. finding a pair of gloves at and an empty water bottle at the bottom of the bag he quickly scooped some of the snow around him into the bottle and capped it off.
Before putting on the gloves he unzipped the jacket slightly and slipped the cold water bottle in, hoping that body heat would melt it and give him some water. Rolling up the sleeping bag tightly he stowed it in the now considerably lighter backpack along with the neatly coiled rope from the abyss.
Feeling warmer and slightly less tired Leo pressed on hoping that maybe in this frigid wilderness he would find an ally, perhaps even his district partner Lara. As he continued forward he began to warm up, sensation returning to his fingers and his breath becoming less labored.

And then he stumbled into a less snowy track, his eyes widened as he realized that these were distinctly human footprints. Looking back the way that he had come he realized just how easy it would be for another tribute to have been following him, less hindered by the snow. Silently cursing his stupidity he turned into the tracks and picked up his pace to a slow jog, not so much as to cause a sweat but enough to get his blood flowing and out distance his pursuers if there were any. Hopefully dumb luck had led him to Lara's tracks and he was trailing her now.

Just as abruptly as he had come upon it the trail of footprints ended, terminating at the base of a tree, Shit! he thought to himself. Now what? He looked up into the tree, hoping beyond all hope that whoever was up there was unarmed and willing to become allies. Pulling a dagger from his hip he positioned himself behind a neighboring tree and called out,
"Hello?" in a voice only barely above a whisper. The moaning of the wind through the dead trees masking his voice to anyone who wasn't in his immediate vicinity.