Academy Island

Sustenance

My shins and arms were going to be murder to deal with in the morning.

Crashing through jungle at night. Hands, arms and legs numb from being whipped by branches and plants repeatedly. Feet were dead to pain, used to the hell now. Breath sucked in in waves of terror at every sound I heard behind me. I couldn't go any further. If slamming blindly into a palm didn't kill me, the pain in my side would. Stumbling, I let the soggy ground have me, rolling to a stop over the painful knobby roots of a tree. I let my gasping pan out and laid there, trying to listen for sounds of pursuit over my noisy lungs. Nothing. I relaxed and tried to see where I was as my breathing calmed.

The tree I'd fell to rest at was more normal, branches spread out at just above my head like a huge umbrella. I could look up at the night and see them, even blacker than the sky, making vivid crooked paths that disappeared into the stars. It was something I could relate with in a place where everything had been foreign to me. I shivered and stood up with the help of the trunk. Wind blowing gently around my figure brought every wet fold of cloth down in temperature till it may as well have been winter. My skin crawled and trembled, my shirt and boxers clinging to me in so many places, violent shaking taking over when the wind became a bit stronger. I pulled at the shirt to tent the icy sensation away from my chest, the pocket of warm air welcome even though my skin was still wet. I wasn't sorry. The water had done me good, even if my mouth still wanted more. I'd been chased away so soon, hardly time to get myself wet and gulp down enough to clear the vertigo. I glanced around myself even though I could see little, attempting to see something of my surroundings in the dark. All I could tell was that the ground was spongy here, that I could smell moss and mud. A mosquito haven. I slapped at one and waved at the high whine of others looking for an opening to add puffy itching mounds to my list of tortures.

It couldn't be helped. I would rest here for the night then, even though I wasn't looking forward to getting crawled all over by the little winged vampires. There were no men combing the area for me here, no searchlights or - heaven help me, - the dog snuffing me out. I wasn't sure if I could go to sleep, no matter how achingly tired my body felt. Those men knew I was here, so I would have to stay alert. It was only a matter of time before they came across me, especially if I stayed in their area. I either had to leave or surrender. Neither seemed like a very good idea to me really.

A sigh escaped me. It would be better to figure out what to do next when I could see better. I felt along the trunk and found the lowest branch, thick and soft with parasitic plant growth firmly clinging to the bark. A well placed foot against the trunk helped my scrabble to lift myself up into the tree's arms, out of the reach of anything that might be hunting on the ground. It was a long while of feeling my way along the tree's contours before I found a suitable resting place, a spot where two branches closely collided and weaved a place I could lay forward on. I took my shirt off and hung it on the branch in front of me, careful to spread it out fully and evenly so the wind wouldn't knock it down to the ground. It was still ice cold, but my skin would dry faster if I didn't have that wet thing freezing me with every curious gust.

I let my legs dangle safely as I hugged the makeshift bed and tried to shift myself into a comfortable position, praying my clothes would be dry soon so I could put them back on. A restful perch wasn't happening and I wondered if that was a good thing. It would probably help keep me up.

Now all I had to do was wait for morning. What I couldn't see but could hear enveloped me.

Nighttime holds many sounds that are nice when you're snuggled up in bed and there's four walls surrounding you. Crickets. Wind. Creaking branches. These sounds take on a completely different attitude when you are vulnerably exposed the way I was. Ominous. Dangerous. Chilling. I wanted a blanket to hide under. My shirt was still disappointingly wet. A monkey screeched angrily and birds chattered. Winged creatures flapped by. Even if I had wanted to sleep, it would have been impossible with the activity of nocturnal beasts going on all around. Still, my eyes were so heavy. I rested my head against digging bark and closed my eyes. Couldn't see anything anyway. Couldn't do anything about it even if I could. I wondered if would just be better to give myself up to the men and let them do what they would with me. My stomach pitted, thinking of Mother's warnings to me for all of those years, that all men were bad news no matter what. I wondered if it was true. It certainly seemed so. They'd shot at me twice, yelled at me and frightened me. In retrospect I probably deserved that; I had scared him as much as he'd scared me. I mumbled tiredly and rubbed at my face where the bark had left indents, letting my cheek lay exactly the way it had originally even though it was painful. It was going to be a long, uncomfortable night.

The shocking gray tones of morning met my eyes when I suddenly shot them open, startled.

I'd fallen asleep.

Groans of stiff, chilled joints couldn't be helped as I worked through my stiffness to sit myself up off the branch. A headache throbbed up in my left temple above my eye. I rubbed at it, boggy swamp shrouded with fog greeting my curiosity at the place I'd found refuge in. I could smell the stagnant water and the earthworms. Time to wake up and start another day. I grabbed my dry shirt and swung my feet up so that I was sitting, then twisted so I could begin climbing down the branches laced with pale moss. Vivid color caught my eye on the other side of the tree, hard to ignore.

My tree held another occupant.

He was bright jade green, perfect coils draped lazily over the faded colors of the branches. A threadlike tongue darted out, tasting the air as he lifted his angular head to analyze me. He looked sleepy himself, even with his unblinking stare. I guessed him to be twenty feet, gauging by the thickness of his waist and what I could see of his body. Anaconda? Python? I wasn't familiar enough with his markings to tell. He made no move towards me, sitting in his own side of the tree like a complete gentleman.

I wasn't going to wait around all the same.

The ground was a short enough drop with my retrieved shirt in hand and I easily landed, only needing to bend my knees deeply on impact. I kept my eyes on him as I backed away, waiting until I was out of striking distance before I pulled the stiff shirt over my head. He stayed in place, only his head and muscular neck fluidly arching to watch me descend and leave. He was probably too cold to hunt just yet, lucky for me. Most animals probably were right now. I stepped over green scum covered puddles, examining the mixture of jungle and swamp plants. There were more flowers here, growing lower to the ground, but they weren't as bright as the jungle's had been, leaning more towards pale blues and whites. I picked one and put it in my hair, tangled as it was. My fingers wouldn't go through it anymore to fix it, so I just left it: a flower to grace the mayhem.

I quickly tired of climbing over the slippery system of twisted, knotted roots and was glad when jungle made a reappearance. Every grassy bush and waxy plant was inspected until I found what my stomach begged for; something I recognized but had never tasted before. I brushed the ants off the sticky smooth skin of the fruit and smashed the ones that stubbornly clung and tried to bite me as I tore into the still green-skinned mango. A passing worry that it wasn't ripe yet didn't matter at this point of hunger, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it yellow inside; soft and sweet. It was gone and I had another started, then another. I couldn't stop, even when I knew I was full. I'm sure the hunger contributed to the ecstasy of taste. The flesh tasted of pine and peaches. I sucked at the clinging fibers on another huge flat pit, juices happily dribbling down my chin. So good. I took an armful of three after I'd more than had enough, paranoid I wouldn't find more before the end of the day.

Marching much more cheerfully, I continued on my trek to find a more suitable place to make a camp for myself, making plans for a dug in shelter as I went. Food made my outlook far more optimistic than I'm sure it should have been. Especially since slinking movement to my right stopped my footsteps dead. Dread forced my slow sweep of the jungle calling warnings around me, warnings I'd ignored in my bliss at having discovered food. It was a moment before I caught sight of the trouble I was in.

Orange and black slunk through blades of green, disappearing along with my breathing.

I was being hunted.