The River

Chapter 8

"Come on Natasha," I decided to try and take control of this situation as everything seemed to be going rapidly wrong, "Hold onto Dina's left side, Dina try and stand up, here I'll support your right side"

With that we all stumbled around a bit but managed to get a rather moany Dina between us, "OK Dina and try and walk, we'll support your weight so you should be OK."

"I can't" moaned Dina, "My ankle really hurts, I really do think it's broken!"

"No it's just badly sprained, " I answered, "Try, come on, just little steps, remember Marizan told us to walk straight through in this direction and after about an hour we will come to the river, we can rest there then continue on. We'll be a little late, but don't worry, Marizan will have all the first aid stuff at the camp, come on, it's not that bad."

We moved on, very slowly, it was hard walking through the dense forest. Due to the fall we were way off the track and the going was hard, there wasn't a path or track as such, we just had to keep looking at the sun and hoping we were heading in the right direction. We kept stumbling on the vines and undergrowth. Once Hazel tripped over a log and the three of us went head long into a rather prickly bush!

After about half an hour Dina was crying, literally, "I can't go on" she wept, "I really have to stop."

Hazel and I looked at each other, Dina was always complaining about little things that sometimes lead us not to take her too seriously, but in all honesty this did seem real.  She really appeared to be in a lot of pain. "OK" I said, "Let's take a rest." 

We all flopped down under a tree. "I'm thirsty" complained Dina,

"Well take a drink fro your water bottle" I answered rather irritably, I was starting to become a little worried about the time, it was starting to get late and we still had a long way to go and I did not feel like being in the forest during the night!

"I don't have it!" called Dina in a small voice, "I think I must have dropped it when we fell"

"I don't have mine either" whispered Natasha.

Miraculously I still had my bottle, I gave it to Dina and she took a long drink, "Hey, hang on there Dina, we're all thirsty and it's the only bottle!" shouted Natasha snatching the bottle from DIna and taking a gulp herself. By the time the bottle came back to me there was very little left. I took a drink and that was the end of the water. Great! Still, theoretically we were about half an hour from the river so no great worries.