9

Humid winds sweep up the eastern slopes of Appalachia. Dark clouds gather over their peaks.

To Peeta, the wild never looked bigger. The weeds are as big as trees. And everything else is so far away...including the top and bottom of this hill. And he doesn't know his way home from here.

At least he's gotten one good thing from all of this. Katlanna is no longer in his life. This is just...not the way he thought he'd do it. But it's just as well; all of his methods failed.

Rain pours down over the peaks. The springs erupt, and cause flash floods that flow down the mountains.

Speaking of what, Peeta's standing in the path of one. To him, it looks like a tidal wave coming downhill. He runs. But he's small, and can't get to a high spot in time.

The water hits him, and sweeps him off his feet. What follows is like a water ride-minus the safety precautions that a water park would reinforce its own real water rides with.

He gets pulled under. He gets thrown over. He bounces off rocks. He falls from rocks. He splashes back down. He gets scraped by debris.

The flash flood floods an area of grass. All around Peeta, the grass blades break the surface like treetops. The blades grow taller and taller as all the water sinks into the soil beneath the grass blades. At long last, the flash flood has given him a break.

The air is thick in here. And it's cold. Peeta stands, and tries to find his way through the forest of grass. He imagines he'll wander through it for days.

Time passes. The sun rises. Farther away, the mockingjays sing. And as the sun's radiation penetrates the canopy of the grass, the forest Peeta's trapped in starts to stink.

He falls over. All around him, the dawn sunlight heats him. He feels sick. He feels that if he has to wander lost through one more meter of grass...

He looks up. Most of the grass is gone. What little grass that's left is much more fashionable-in contrast to what Peeta just stumbled out of-which seems to be separated from all of this by a fence, Peeta turns around and sees. And much of what little grass is here seems to orbit the bases of flowers and small shrubs-all of which, to Peeta, are tall enough to make a sequoia tree envious.

It seems the sprinklers were waiting for Peeta. They surface from the ground, and make rain everywhere. And now Peeta's caught in an artificial downpour. And some of the raindrops, to him, are as big as beach balls.

Thankfully, the shower doesn't last long. The homeowner-whoever they are-must've realized there's been a rain, and delayed the irrigation system's timer.

Peeta lies among the drenched mulch, and rests. For the birds' sake, he sure hopes he doesn't smell like worms.

The ground shatters near him. Spooked, he rolls over.

An earthworm has just crawled from the surface. To Peeta, it's as big-and as scary-as a Graboid in Tremors. He's too close. Peeta sure hopes he can't smell him.

All around him, the worm's in good company. Other earthworms breach the surface in multiple places. Apparently this ground has gotten too much water after all. The soil's now too loose for them to figure out what their next job is.

They're blind, after all. And they can only crawl through their territory so fast.

Peeta stays put, and watches them...while fidgeting. He doesn't think they can sense him.

Some of them start crawling towards him. They're getting too close.

Then again, Peeta can only imagine they don't get very many of him out here on a day-to-day basis. He runs.

The worms are all around. They sense him. They crawl towards him. The only two things that make this better than Tremors are that they're slower, and they're above the surface.

And their faces are less scary, too. Alas, earthworms were pretty creepy to Peeta back when they were smaller than his foot.

Peeta runs to a patch of groundcover, and climbs its vines. They're hard to climb. Up there, though, the worms lose his trail and crawl away. At last, Peeta can rest.

He looks around, up and through the groundcover. Caterpillars rest on some of the leaves. Their smorgasbord surrounds them. Peeta imagines they'll be up, crawling around, and munching soon.

Too bad one of them isn't Absalom from Alice in Wonderland. He could tell Peeta what to do now-all while blowing hookah smoke in his face.

From aloft, Peeta hears a noise that reminds him of a helicopter. Hoping it's a rescue helicopter, he turns around. Fearing it's a bee, he screams. He both relaxes and frets when he sees what it really is.

It's a ladybug. To him, it's the size of a battle tank. It lands on a leaf, just uphill from where he is. The leaf bends-and makes Peeta feel uneasy-as it adjusts to accommodate for the ladybug's weight.

Peeta must admit that they look scarier when they're this big. It's in moments like these he wonders if he's as small as the bugs the ladybug preys on.

Like a huge animal creeping into the midst, a woman's finger lowers itself into the groundcover Peeta's in. Peeta's startled; he didn't realize there was another human out here.

Her finger has a white-polished nail. She places it next to the ladybug, like a platform for it to crawl on. It does. She raises her finger from the midst.

Peeta climbs the groundcover, to get a better view. The sun blinds him at first, but in no time, he recognizes his giantess host's voice.

Her knees are like cliffs. Her upper legs are like mountainsides. Her navel is like a cave. It's hard for Peeta to believe that this is the woman who once escorted him and Katniss to the Capitol prior to the Hunger Games.

It's Effie Trinket. And she's home alone while the husband's away.