Hatter's Revenge (rewriting - read at own risk)

Ch. 8: Desert, Not Dessert

Mad jerked himself out of sleep, pulling himself from images of the war, sitting up straight. It took a wild moment of looking around at the dark, chilly trees to understand where he was. Breathing hard, he lay back down and looked up to see grey, pre-dawn light filtering through the trees. He normally had dreams about the war, but these had been worse than usual. Sota had kept popping up in the middle of old firefights, asking him why he had lied.

With a shake of his head, he sat back up and yawned, knowing that he couldn't dwell on the images. He rubbed at his eyes and turned to find Cheshire looking down at him from the oak tree, green eyes glowing like emeralds in the dull light. 

"Which one?" Chesh asked.

"Guam," he answered quietly. Of course, Cheshire didn't know where Guam was. But that didn't matter. He knew what Guam was and just nodded, knowing that Mad didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about. Mad didn't say anything about Sota.

Mad stood and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his shoulder. It was still quite painful but he'd honestly had worse. Tilting his head from side to side, the bones in his neck popped and he tread easily through the camp. He let the others sleep and hardly made a noise, even with booted feet.

When he got to it, Mad crouched next to the river and splashed water on his face and up over his head, the chilly water waking him up more and washing the cold sweat from his face and neck. Cupping his hand, he drank his fill before going back to the camp to find everyone but Dinah awake.

He watched as Chesh shifted through the tree until he was just above Dinah. Before Mad could decide if he wanted to stop what was about to happen, Chesh dropped lightly from the branch, landing a hairsbreadth away from the other Ikati.

Dinah sprang into the air, yowling, making him double over with laughter. She was sidling sideways the way Mad had seen Real World cats do when something scared them and was hissing and spitting at Cheshire, which made Mad laugh all the more.

Alice went over to Dinah and started smoothing her hair, comforting her and shot a dirty look at Mad, who was still laughing. 

"Don't look at me. Chesh did it." Mad smiled innocently at her. Alice huffed but moved the look over to Cheshire, who was sitting serenely, looking very pleased with himself.

Eventually, Dinah calmed down and when Mad had verified that she wouldn't try to eviscerate Chesh, he said, "Try to drink as much as you can before we leave. You'll sweat it away in a little less than an hour out there." Mad took four canteens from one of his smaller packs. Looking  at Maris he asked, "How many you got?"

Maris said, "One for each of us."

"So five?" Mad asked.

Maris pursed his lips. "Four. I didn't realize that you would be joining us."

He nodded, knowing he deserved that. "Okay. Fill 'em up at the river after we've crossed. No sense in carrying the extra weight. Can you swim?" he asked, looking at Alice.

"Of course I can," Alice said, looking affronted.

Mad turned to Chesh. "Get my guns across?"

Chesh nodded and, after eating, they moved to the side of the river. Mad couldn't see the river bed, but the water didn't appear to be moving too swiftly. They watched as Chesh faded away, then reappeared on the opposite bank with their gear at his feet.

"All right. Here we go." Mad stepped into the river, wincing as the cold water soaked into his clothes. He held out a hand to Alice, who took it reluctantly, and helped her into the river. Mad stayed next to her, keeping her from overbalancing and being washed downriver.