Fear

Chapter 2

We spent a couple of nights under the willow tree, visiting Stumptown daily to restock supplies. Mitch brought around 1,000 Inaylan dollars with him when he and I escaped The Medaeno's castle, which was enough to feed the average family in Inayla for a month. Most of the people that lived in Inayla were poor, with The Medaeno at the top. Mitch said things were different before The Medaeno took over, better. You could say The Medaeno chose to have his possessions cost as much money as possible, almost as if he were saying to the residents of Inayla, 'You are below me.'.

We had spent less than 100 Inaylan dollars over the span of the month, leaving plenty of money left. Our bag was filled with bread, cheese, and cuts of beef, which we would save for later. For the last couple of days, we had just survived on the fruit we found in the forest.

"Mitch, wake up." I shook his shoulders until he finally started to move.

"What do you want?" he asked, trying to steady himself against the tree trunk.

"We can't stay here, the wind keeps breaking off so many of the branches," I said, collecting our thin jackets into my bag.

"Just buy more clothes if you're cold," Mitch said, still lying on the ground.

"A good jacket would have to be over 100 dollars don't you think?" I asked, pulling him up.

"Fine," Mitch said, stretching his arms. We went further down the path to where a wider variety of trees grew. Not just willow trees, but pine and cherry trees too. Soft rain pattered on the ground, and wind howled near the mountains just outside of Inayla's border. I started to quicken my pace, seeing a shape in the distance, a structure of some sort. I started to run, and then finally realized what it was. A cabin. A shelter.

...

"It looks abandoned," Mitch remarked, blowing dust away from the kitchen counter.

"Everything still works," I said, turning on the sink in the bathroom.

"It's small, but nice," he added, lying down on the long sea blue couch. The cabin only had two rooms, the kitchen and bedroom combined into the main room. The wood was in good condition surprisingly, thin strips placed to make a floor.

"Let's check the kitchen for food," I suggested, opening the fridge. To my disappointment, all I found was a large bucket of ice and a stick of butter. "We can use this for water." Mitch opened the cabinets in the kitchen, but only found loaves of bread.

"Bread."

"I can see that." I unpacked my bag, putting our food in the fridge, our clothes on the couch, and the empty bottles on the granite counter.

"Seems like a good place to stay for a while," Mitch said, locking the rusty wooden door with its two sliding bolts. Agreeing with him, I gave him a smile, feeling a sense of hope.

"Should I go out to try and find some cherries?" I asked him, slipping on my thin jacket over my undershirt. He shrugged, sitting against the wall and eating cheese.

"We don't need it yet, but sure."

"Wanna come?" I asked, but it was obvious he was exhausted. I didn't know why, but I wasn't going to ask, it didn't seem important enough.

"I'm just going to stay here a while; maybe I'll join you later. Don't get yourself killed," he replied, smiling at me before I left.

It was colder outside than I would have expected, so I had to be quick. A small cherry tree orchard grew to the left of me, so I headed there first. I guessed that it was the equivalent of fall in Inayla, as most of the fruit had already been picked, but the weather was not the coldest it could have been. The wind and birds picked at the fruit on the trees, leaving tiny amounts left. I gathered the rest of the cherries on a couple of trees, storing them in a bottle. As I headed back to the mahogany brown cabin, my ears caught an unusual sound somewhere in the forest, but I couldn't make out the sound at first.