Remi-niscent

Chapter 12:

Never one who was good at dealing with uncontrollably weeping girls, it doesn't take long for Ty to quickly become overwhelmed when he realises the severity of the situation. He even pushes aside his macho possessive nature to let Sam, a complete stranger to him, lend a hand towards helping to soothe me. While he instead tries a new tactic of whispering sweet nothings and promising me that everything was going to be alright. However it's all in vain as while I'm rocking numbly back and forth, my whole body trembling with the racking sobs rolling over me in waves and verging on the brink of a panic attack; I'm just too deeply caught up the dark tendrils of hysteria that cloud my mind to even notice their efforts. All in all it takes both of the boys working together, albeit somewhat unwillingly on Ty's part, over the course of at least half an hour to calm me down. 

When I do eventually stop bawling due to the boys gentle coaxing, I manage pull myself out of my funk and finally regain a loose grip on my emotions. So while the boys start the planning process, I stumble down to the water edge to splash some water on my face as it feels feverishly hot and tight. When I catch sight of my reflection in the ripples I have to grimace when I see that my face is red and splotchy, my eyes all puffy and swollen. Taking deep breaths like the boys had instructed I stare at the image of myself in the water unblinkingly, because I had read somewhere once that you can't cry while you're staring at yourself in the mirror. And mirror - water basically the same thing right? 

Feeling marginally better now that I seem to be all cried out and my face doesn't doesn't resemble a botched canvas anymore, I join the boys and attempt to make myself useful. But in the end all they decide to do is to continue onward in the direction of Denyt's camp like Sam and I had previously been doing and then play it by ear the closer we get. With everyone in agreement we set off and on the way it's all serious talks as we discuss what possibilities we potentially have at breaking out the others, no one willing to think about the alternative that Denyt has moved them to another location or worse.

Admittedly, at this point Sam is the most valuable person in our little group of misfits as he'd been scoping out the place for a few months now and therefore roughly knows the layout of the camp and has an idea of how it runs. But before the incidents that had occurred today, there had never been any point of him actually trespassing, the risk of being caught just too great.

While we walk, Ty and Sam carry the canoe between them and while I had suggested just taking its contents to make our travel arrangements easier and faster, Sam had disagreed; As he reckoned that since we're still somewhere in the area inbetween the two rivers, our best move would be to just carry the canoe to the other side, even if it seems like more work now because then we'll have another escape option if need be later on.

Already the boys are a sweaty mess, their muscles straining as they follow behind me struggling with the size and weight of the canoe and all the contents inside. Not saying a word I leave them to their display of manliness as I had attempted to help earlier but instead been firmly refused. Knowing they both just thought I was too weak to be any use to help with the heavy lifting I had wheedled my way into being able to help in some way at least, so now I was in charge of using a machete we had found in the canoe to bash a pathway for us though the dense undergrowth.

Not having checked the time as we left the waterfall, I would guess that it takes us a few hours to reach the river bank on the side of the left fork as at this point it's already starting to get dark. The sun is quickly setting below the trees, so not wanting to be stuck without a shelter in the dark, the only viable option is to set up camp. Looking around for a suitable spot, we end up in a small shallow dip which is near the waters edge, but out of sight from anyone who may happen go past. However unlikely those chances are, one thing that I've learned is that you can never be too cautious. I will admit that the word camp is probably slightly overrated for the reality of our little set up, as all it consists of is a small flickering camp fire; And even that we quickly let burn down to nothing more than embers, so to keep us a little bit warmer over the night without the risk of it spreading and setting us on fire.