A Time In Time

Chapter Nine

We spent the rest of the day listing to Ryan's stories of hunting and killing Darorcks.
It was very interesting and I could tell Leia was enjoying it. She couldn't look away.

She's a hormonal teen, unlike me I focused more on my school and venturing off into the forest near my house.

Leah was popular and wore fake nails and loads of makeup with expensive clothes and hung out with other popular people. I wouldn't hang out with her in school I would hang out with my other friends Conor and Izzy.
Izzy was alot like me, and so was Conor but he was more of a guy-who-loves-th-Internet kind of guy.Cute aswell.

Anyway I had enough of Leia Googlie-eyeing Ryan so I sat outside in the night air. Just me and the stars.

I closed my eyes. I want to go home.

"Arnia, where are you?"

I turned around, Ryan was standing behind me.

"Go away, I'm not in the mood." A tear rolled down my face.

"It takes a while to get used to this place trust me I know, but I can help you." He held his hands out with two black stones hitting them together to make sparks.
He knelt down next to the bunch of sticks beside me, lighting them on fire.

"You cold?" he asked, sitting next to me.

"Yes," I looked at him. He had a scar just below his eye.

"What? Something in my teeth." He laughed and started carving into his bow.

"No I'm just looking at your scars."

"Cool right?" his smile faded. "What's up with Leia? Is she usually this.... Um....."

"Clingy? It's because she likes you,"

He gave me a look, a look like he didn't like her the same way.

"I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I don't like her in that way."

"She won't take it well." I smiled.

"What's so funny?" he moved closer.

"Nothing stop asking questions!" I shoved him." I better go to sleep or I'll never wake up in the morning."

"I'll see then, goodnight Arnia. "

We stood up, Ryan helped me to my feet and I started for my hut.

"Goodnight Ryan."

~~~TimeSkip~~~

It was the morning and I had decided to get up when the sun rises, so because it was Summer, I got up at 6 and headed out.

While we were learning to train yesterday I crafted myself a bow and made some arrows out of sticks.

I grabbed my bow and ran into the forest, I wasn't going to let what almost happened with the bear happen again.

So I was going to practice on some small animals.

Walking through the forest made me think back to when I was nine years old and I was with Leia in my back garden. When my parents were around we would pretend to play with the dolls my neighbour had given me, 'the creepy faced dolls' as we liked to call them. But if my parents went in to watch a movie or out shopping, we would sneak through the gap in the broken fence and run across the field into the forest. There was this old tree house from the 80's possibly that was up in the biggest tree in the forest it's almost impossible to find, but we had our ways, we tied string to branches and that would lead us to the tree house and back to my house. How we knew that the tree house was built possibly in the 80's, was that when we first found it we found pictures that had been drawn by someone called John Michelle and it had the dates always in the right hand corner. The tree house also had posters and magazines from the 80's. It was like John Michelle just disappeared and left his stuff behind, and some of it was very expensive too.He must have been lonely and came out here to draw, maybe he got the feeling I got, when you're out there it feels like everyone, everything, just.... stops.

I reached a river and sat down.

I remember when Leia and I got into a fight because she was spending more time with her fake friends and leaving me behind. I talked to her about it and then she got mad because I said she was acting like a 'wanna be popular girl'. We started shouting at each other and then came the malicious comments and then hits, and punches. We almost got expelled.

As we grew apart, she dyed her hair blonde like mine and got it cut into a shoulder length bob.
She wore makeup to school and started getting into trouble alot with the teachers.

She became the most popular girl in our year.Going out partying and drinking at only fourteen years of age.

When we stopped talking altogether, I found her with her head down the toilet in school, vomiting.

We ditched school that day and I brought her,on the bus, back to my house. If I took her to the office they would know she was drinking, and if they didn't her family doctor would.

She felt better after and went back to the tree house. I had painted it purple and white.
She apologise and left her group at school to hang out with Conor and Izzy.

That's when things got better for her.

Snap!

I turned my head and saw a badger right beside some bushes.

Here's my chance.

I turned to face it drawing back my bow staying as steady as I could.

"Just remember," I heard Ryan say in my head. " If you don't get it someone or something else will."

I pulled my arm back as much as I could and released, letting the arrow go flying into the badger's neck.

I smiled, a sigh of relief.

"Good job." Ryan stood, leaning against a tree. "For a noob."

"Shut up I got it! " I picked up a stone and threw it at him.

"Hey! I'm joking! I'm joking!" he flinched as I threw more at him.

He picked up the badger. "Now you need to know how to cook it."

"I think I know already,you skin it then put it on a stick and turn it around the flame. Cut it open a bit and if it's no longer pink on the inside then you can eat it. Am I right?"

"Yep, pretty much."

Okay so you'll need to know which berries you can eat, then you'll learn how to fight a Darorck using various weapons."

"Who will I be training with?"

"Leia, and me of coarse" He smiled and we walked out of the forest back to the huts.