Experiment X

25 | Followed

Phase Six | Desperate Measures

25 | Followed

Sera feels the warmth of sunlight kiss her cheeks, flitter against her closed eyelids, and cracking them open, she’s awake. Leaning upward, her head feels clogged, stuffy and she waits for a moment for the scenery to become clearer: rubbing the sleep out of her eyes helps too. But sleeping on a mat on the ground has become extremely tiresome, when she remembers the comfort of her bed back in their Unit. Even if they lived in fear, sometimes she considers what they had there is better than here out in the wilderness, but as long as she is with her uncle, she is content.

Suddenly, there’s something slimy and wet licking her in the face, and she laughs. “Streak, stop it!” She hears the dog that has in his own mangy way become a good friend of hers over a few days since…that night. The night she doesn’t like to dwell on, but is still in the forefront of her thoughts. Recently, he gaze settles on Teran, thinking of her choices, and decision that lay before. If she tells Manu or anyone, she could run the risk of him being hurt, and she doesn’t want that to happen. For Teran in his own right has become for her something more than a friend, someone who has feelings for, feelings that are beginning to run deep within her, that are strange, for she’s never experienced anything quite like this, but welcomed all the same.

The dog’s stinky breathe huffing in her face brings her back, and she gently pushes him off, as she sits up, rubbing her forehead, looking around the group that lies motionless, still asleep. Although there’s Gil’s aunt who is sitting upright with his grandmother talking in hushed voices. Even from the distance Sera could see the weakness and frailty in the older woman soft blue eyes. The elderly woman had been very recently taken ill, coughing and not eating much, which didn’t bode well. Sera could sense the uncertainty in her Uncle like a piece of fruit clomping in her head fallen from a tree, when she had asked if she would survive last night. “Honestly, I don’t know,” he had said to her.

“It may be one more day, or months, but I don’t think she has long if we don’t find this place soon.” It was the truth, and he had promised her this from now own. But Sera still isn’t sure if she wants to hear or deal with it, especially Gil and his Aunt, who is the only remaining daughter of the kind, old woman. She could see the hopelessness in his eyes too, and she tried to comfort him when she could, but he changes the subject usually not wanting to talk about it. And who could blame him.

Sera mind’s still in a foggy haze of dreams of home, their Unit, sleeping in her bed and her flower garden, but she focuses on other things. Tasting her dry lips, she figures she’ll go get some water at the nearby wide river they passed before stopping to rest here the night before. Wearily, she stands to her feet, carefully stepping around the snoring figures of Manu and Teresa and makes her way to the burnt-out campfire that is now nothing more than a pile of ashes and charred wood surrounded by a verity of river rocks.

She can hear the morning birds twittering in the distance, flying from tree limb to tree limb, and as she bends herself down to pick up the water canteen she watches out for those awful two. They’re sitting together, slumped up against a gnarled hardwood, both asleep obnoxiously snoring. Her lip curls at them in disgust, and she quickly grabs up the bottle, casting her eyes elsewhere. Abrutly, she feels Streak rubbing his furry body against her leg, and she smiles down at him. He looks up at her with those big, black eyes wagging his tail.

“Alright, you can come too…Going to the river. Come on.”

She treks through a wooded, underbrush area mottled with crackling leaves, and fallen mossed-over limbs and logs. When she reaches the river sparkling in the early sunlight, a cold rush of wind whips through the forest, and she clutches her thin jacket closer to her body. Sighing, she stoops to her feet, unscrews the canteen open, and scoops the empty bottle into the babbling water, meanwhile she can hear Streak lapping it up just beyond her. He had been thirsty too. She begins to grin to herself. It’s so quaint and pretty here. Almost like being at home, looking out from the garden, but there…