Vivid - #JustWriteIt

2

I wake up seconds before sunrise to an explosion ringing out from the woodland to the left if our camp. I leap up and kick Haze awake. Crouching behind the large boulder behind us, we watch as three figures emerge from the dark forest. Retreating, they slowly make their way from the smoke rising into the pinking clouds and mixing with the dark leaves of the tall trees. They continue towards us as my heart begins to speed up. This cant be good. They are heading directly towards us, slowly approaching, like a lion crawling slowly through the grass towards its prey, ensuring that it doesn't alert the oblivious zebra to its where abouts, crouching down, camouflaged. It springs forward and...

Gunshots ring through the air and two bodies drop to the ground at the base of the boulder, just showing how close we were to being caught.

I slowly turn as a third body drops, signaled by the thump as it hits the dust. I look up to see a teenage boy, no older than me, holding a gun out towards the forest He lowers his weapon, releasing his hand from its tight grip at the trigger, as he looks down towards me. I smile at him and stand up.

"Thank you, but where did you come from? Heck, who are you?" I take a step towards this stranger as he mirrors me with one backwards. Smiling he turns, breaking into a jog and making his way over boulders and around trees, only looking back once as he makes his way away from us and towards the city visible in the distance.

"Who the hell was that?" I look down at Haze who is still slumped in the ground, staring at the spot where our silent saviour had been standing only seconds ago.

"I have no idea." I reply truthfully, if a little annoyed at the lack of knowledge. "Lets just be grateful that he was there and get the bloody heck out if here. Before The Hunters come to investigate the noise and find three of their own dead." I glance at the tattoos on the wrists of the dead, confirming that they were Hunters, and pick up my backpack, shaking it clean if dust.

"Please leave them alone." I say to Haze as he moves to check the bodies out. "You know that if they find your finger prints on them they will hunt us both down. They already have your prints from the fire incident a year ago." I start trudging across the barren landscape before us, looking for higher ground that will give us a good viewing point of the forest.

"OK, that wasn't my fault, the flames just got a little out if control, that's all." Haze calls after me, catching his own bag up from the ground and following me.

"A little? Just a little out of control?!" I scoff, raising an eyebrow. "You managed to burn half a forest down! They would never have let you go if it weren't for me and the fact that none if their soldiers were seriously hurt!" I turn around to see Haze smiling at the memory of the fire he had caused just over a year ago.

He had been trying to create fireworks by shooting flames into the sky to collide with one another. It had begun to work but the sparks and ash sent flying when he set one off fell into the dry leaves if the forest nearby, where The Hunters had set up camp. The fire began to spread and, as we ran towards the flames, Haze trying to get it under control, he was spotted using his affinity for fire by a scout in a nearby tree. Once the fire was under control, a group effort of Haze and The Hunters' resident fire link, Haze was arrested by the scout and brought to The Hunters leader who eventually released him after we explained that it was an accident. However, if someone had even been touched by the fire, we both would have been killed on the spot.

"I don't know why you are so hung up over that, i mean, they didn't actually care, they just have a reputation to keep up, don't they?"

Ignoring his question and continue to walk up the hill, Haze trailing after me. As we reach the top shouts can be heard from the boulder that we had just left.