Black Beauty- Steve HarringtonxOC

Chapter 2

She looks ahead. There are trees for as far as she can see. A forest, she thinks it's called. She wishes she had her dictionary. She could only bring one book. Black Beauty.

Filly doesn't know the year or the time, only that she has been trapped for a long time. She doesn't yet know that she is fifteen. Fire burns within her at the warmth of the outside. The green lengths between her toes is what Black Beauty eats, she thinks. It is grass.

The outside is louder than she remembers, though she doesn't remember much of anything now. What did her parents sound like? What is her name? She had already lost those things. Filly reminds herself that she must hold on to her hope. She never thought her plan would work, but she was wrong. She can be wrong again when she assumes she will die in these woods with no food or water.

There isn't a large, pleasant meadow for her to run in. There is no pond of clean water.

However there is water, somewhere. She follows the setting Sun until she reaches it, recalling that it rises in the east and sets in the west. She would feel much better if she could see the page again, how it's written exactly, but she must make do with her own memory.

She feels dry, dropping to the shore of the water. Filly is so incredibly thirsty that she sticks her head right in the lake.

"Ugh!" Filly resurfaces, shaking her shaved head frantically. Something burns in her nostrils but it isn't coming out. She should not have done that. Instead, she starts to bring handfuls of the murky liquid up to her mouth.

She misses her encyclopedia. It's too bad she leave the large tomes behind. One page she had seen told her that water isn't always safe, that it can have bad things in it like parasites and illnesses. She wishes she knew or could read about how to make it clean, but she has no choice now. She would rather die of disease than hunger.

She fills her stomach with silt and drink, hopeful it will calm her stomach pains. Her gown is thin, allowing the air to seep in. The first few nights, it doesn't bother her, but as she weakens she feels it more and more.

Like Beauty, she feels that she has known better days. She can remember the good feelings, but not the memories.

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The grass carpets every bit of the ground she can find. It takes her weeks to find that it can't sustain her. It makes her feel nauseous after three days, but she keeps trying, nothing else available to satiate her.

She spits it out in the dirt, laying on her side by a small wood construction. She can see inside it, but there is no way in and it's empty. There's no one inside whenever she comes here. She still uses it as a shelter, it keeps the wind from getting to her too much. She likes to sit on the porch here and read also.

She makes trips from the cabin to the lake and back again for what feels like serveral months. She keeps a tally on the outer wall of the building though, so she knows it has only been 18 days. During her next trip to the lake, she looks inside of it. She sees fish too deep to reach, turtles skimming just under the glassy lake. Odd-looking birds float upon the surface. She knows from experience that none of them are viable food sources as she can't catch them.

When she looks again to the water lapping at her toes, she starts at the sight. She first thinks they are some kind of parasite. A closer look reminds her of what they truly are.

Tadpole: noun /ˈtædˌpoʊl/

The tailed aquatic larva of an amphibian (frog, toad, newt, or salamander), breathing through gills and lacking legs until the later stages of its development.

The little dots that dance around her feet do not look appetizing, but beggars can't be choosers.

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