Elusion

Chapter 1

Forest

Rain pounds on the thin fabric of the tent, leaking through the small hole in the top. Drip, drip, drip. Lightning streaks across the night sky. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Thunder shakes the ground. 5 miles away. I sit up, panting. Another nightmare. Not just any nightmare, but the same one as before.  Splash. Flash. Crash. The storm rages on outside. I see a blinding flash out of the corner of my eye. Quietly, I creep over to where Jack is curled up on the ground. His breathing is slow. He is fast asleep. I know it was only a dream, but sometimes dreams can seem so real that it's scary. The boy in my dream looked a little bit like Jack, but in the dream I had been so busy running away from his knife that I hadn't seen his face clearly. I never have, even though I've seen the nightmare before. I quietly unzip my bag and pull out my flashlight. I squint as it cuts through the darkness. I shine it around the spot where he sleeps, just to be sure, but as always there is no knife. I should know that he wouldn't have one anyway. It may not seem like that long, but Jack and I have gotten to know each other pretty well in the past little while. Being stranded in a forest with someone gives you that oppurtunity. I know that even if did have a knife, the last thing he would do is hurt me. Besides, if he did, it might lower his chances of survival. The only thing that could possibly make our situation worse is being alone after we've learned to depend on each other.  It’s been five days since it happened. Since I suddenly woke up with no recollection of where I was, remembering nothing but my name, and wondering why there was a stranger beside me who knew less than I did. The weirdest thing is that I had a backpack, carefully packed as if I had planned to be there, planned a camping trip with a person I didn't know. Since then, we've been traveling, following the stream in the hope of finding the city we came from. Maybe once we get there, everything will come back, and it will all make sense. I crawl back over to my side of the tent and lay down. The thin layer of the tent floor doesn’t offer much padding from the hard ground. It isn’t the most comfortable sleeping arrangement, but I’ve gotten used to it after a few days. The steady tattoo of the rain on the canvas combined with the sound of Jack’s slow breathing makes my eyelids heavy and before I know it, I am asleep. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 I wake up the next morning to birds chirping loudly. At first, I wonder why their high-pitched chatter is so loud, but then I realize I'm surrounded by trees and each tree is full of birds. I pull my long, dark hair back into it's usual ponytail and go outside. When they hear me walk towards them, some of the birds scatter. I find my way down to the nearby stream and splash the cold water over my face. I sit on the bank for a while, watching the sunrise.

 It's been this way for a couple of days now, sun in the morning, rain at night. Twice it stormed. We're lucky our tent wasn't damaged the first night. The first night had been the hardest. Both of us were scared and alone. We didn't know each other. It was storming. Neither of us could sleep that night. We talked for a while, since we had nothing else to do.  We decided the best thing to do would be to move along the water, hoping we would find a city or town somewhere. We figured we should stay close because we needed water anyway. There hadn't been much else to talk about. We didn't remeber anything about our past.

 It seems suspicious, almost too easy, that we had everything. Tent, backpacks, stuff like that. Any reasonable explanation I can think of doesn't invovle preparation. Like, maybe there was some sort of natural disaster and we both got dropped out here and landed on our heads.  But that doesn't explain the tent or the backpacks.

 I'm pulled away from my thoughts as I hear a rustling from behind me. I walk back to where our tent is set up and see that Jack is standing outside of it.