The search
My life seemed to be taking a major turn. It somewhat confused me, puzzled me to the extreme. I didn’t understand where this game would take me in life, or if I would even get out alive. This Game I knew would end me no matter what I did. I wasn’t ready to give up though, not just yet.
“That is fine by me. It is a game isn’t it. So that is fine by me. Bring it.” I said confidently. “My life is a mess on a daily base, I’m sure that I can deal with some little creeps.”
“Fine have it your way, don’t say I didn’t warn you though. It’s tough, no one has survived.” He started disappearing into the woods as he told me this.
Pssshh I thought, I don’t care. I am woman enough to handle this, or so I thought. I walked away from the river, back through the woods. I thought it would be easy to retrace the steps I had taken this morning. I knew these woods, well the parts before the creatures. I would just retrace and see how far I would get. It really couldn’t be too difficult. I usually took the same route and I was determined to get back to the starting point.
As I walked I listened to thing around me. Things were calm in the night. Everything lay peacefully in place. I felt like I had regained a part of me I had lost in the past few hours.
Silently I walked through the woods. I thought about morphing back into wolf form, but who would be watching, when they would attack. I thought and thought about everything the boy told me. I went against it all and morphed back into my wolf. First my hind legs with all the muscle to hold my body weight form, my arms grew out and I fell onto them. My long, oversized snout grew next, my sense heightened.
I sniffed the cold night air, I could smell the Scented, not too close but I could smell them.
I walked for what I thought was a few more hours. Everything had been so peaceful; I wondered if the boy even knew what he was talking about.
So far I had not gotten any further than I was. I think I was walking in circles. I decided to go to my right. Go in a different direction then I had been. I walked several more feet and found a piece of mind. I knew this tree. It was the tree that my friend Jason and I used to climb as a child. We loved the woods. It was our home away from home.
I climbed the tree, to try and escape all the darkness in these woods. The tree was taller than most in these parts of the woods. I sat on a branch thinking of a tactical plan for escaping. I came up with nothing. I climbed even further up in the tree till I was sitting on a tippy top branch and I looked out over the woods. Usually the sun made everything look mystic and beautiful, but there was no sun now. All that lay over the trees was a thick mist. You could see the birds flutter out of some pockets of forest where the trees were sparse. You could hear the growls of some of the animals off in the distance. In this moment things felt somewhat real. They felt like I had some kind of chance at winning the losing game.
I sat in the tree for about 20 more minutes, and then I figured it was time to find more of my prized forest possessions, and trace my way home.
I started my way down the tree stopping at the branch Jason always overtook. It reminded me of him. It reminded me of how in the last maybe 8 or 9 hours I had lost so much. I knew too, that this was only the beginning. It depressed me to know that I could be out here forever and not see any of my sanity ever again. I missed home.
I climb down to the bottom limb of the tree. I stopped and listened for things around me.
That was when I heard it. Footsteps.
I stood still. The darkness engulfed me. I couldn’t even make out the trees around me.
