The Fox and The Forest (EDITING)

Bridges and Bolts (1.3)

🙘🙘🙘🙘

In that moment of falling, Kate was back in the forest again. 

She was plummeting to the ground, grazed by the sharp inconsistencies of the branches as she fell. The trees groaned, toppling along side her; soldiers wounded in battle. Her body knocked smashed onto the branch of a particularly large tree. She desperately clawed at the wooden mass in an attempt to slow her velocity, but the bark came off in her hands like blood encrusted scabs. 

Sky looming further over her, Kate was engulfed in desperate scrabbling tree hands. She tried to cry - to scream, but the destruction occurred too fast. She wanted to make a noise, but someone had got there before her.

When she hit the forest floor the darkness overcame her- and yet, she felt little pain. 

Now that her vision was blotted out by inky blackness, the scream was brought further into her attention. It was low in tone and after a short moment it mingled into a pain-filled groan. Not like hers at all. 

 "Get off me."

It was Tom. Kate prized opened her eyes to see him lying face first in front of her. Relief brushed over her. I'm still alive. 

Barely.

Hands first, Tom and Kate had crashed onto the wooden bridge. A day ago, the bridge was hidden by the morning mist but now it's temperamental brown surface was pressed against Tom's forehead uncomfortably. 

They were half within and half outside as Tom's foot had secured it's place inside the boathouse, lodged between two planks.

Kate was almost limp on top of him, having been unable to stop herself from falling, through the door, after Tom. She shuddered as she tried to recover from the fall, that she'd been forced to relive. 

Tom shoved Kate, trying to push her off of him, and perhaps over the bridge and into the acidic water. The anger filled look that was etched onto his face, though unseen to Kate, would certainly have made that a likely conclusion. 

"I swear you'll pay for this," Tom spat, forced to look into the lake's dangerous waters.

Still, Kate barely stirred. The anxiety of the fall tied her to that bridge. She didn't want to move at all, in case she fell again, in the forest. 

Tom removed his splintered foot out of the hole in the floorboards. He then groaned in anguish; there was no way he would be able to get up unless Kate did first.

Overcome with further fury, Tom kicked Kate. He convinced himself he would've done again, harder, had the planks not creaked, as a warning, under their weight. 

The shove finally forced Kate into consciousness. 

She tried to quickly push herself off of Tom, but the planks seemed to crack under their weight and Kate's hand slipped off of one as it snapped like a bone. 

"Don't make any sudden movements," Tom ordered whilst Kate struggled to regain her balance. "Or we're both dead." He knew he would be the first to fall. 

With careful, if not scared movements, Kate spread out the weight of her palms equally and steadied herself. 

The wood creaked again. This time it wasn't Kate. "What the hell Tom?" Kate cursed. Had she not been hanging over a skin boiling mass of water, perhaps she would've fancied herself grown up - for using a word that she'd always been told not to use. 

She felt Tom go rigid underneath her. There was no reply. A thudding came to her attention. As she looked up from the wooden bridge she almost let her hands slip again. For the sight ahead of her was terrifying.