The chills quickly spiraled into a surging headache. I took a deep breath and looked down at my bare feet. "Well, this is going to take a while to explain, so you three should come back with me to my place. I mean, it's not really a house, nobody else really lives here and I can't build a real house by myself. But... Uh... Yeah, follow me," I said awkwardly. I turned around to walk back the way that I came, and stated heading towards the end of the woods. "Yeah right, like we have any reason to trust you," Austin remarked from behind me. Without turning back to face him, I responded "Well I don't see that you have any other choice as of now, unless you want to die out here." I kept walking, and they followed somewhat reluctantly.
As we trudged through the sea of metallic trees, I could hear Austin, Tyler, and the little girl who's name I still didn't know whispering. I don't think they thought that I could hear them, but I could. What I heard wasn't completely clear, but I could make out the shell of a conversation. They were contemplating whether or not it was a good idea to follow "someone like me". I don't know what exactly that was supposed to mean, but not gonna lie, I liked it. I liked that they didn't see me as a weak little girl lost in a forest in the middle of somewhere that definitely was not Earth.
We had walked for what felt like an eternity, when I heard a low hiss that stopped me in my tracks. I jutted an arm out to my side to signal to them to stop walking. "Hey! What the heck do you think you're doing?" Austin yelled from behind me. I stiffly said, "If you want to live, you will listen to me right now. Shut up, and stand perfectly still."
