I wasn't particularly sure what I thought about Ryder. He could be funny, yes, but he would often start talking to himself like he had completely forgotten that you were there, and most of the time he didn't say anything at all. I tried asking him about it, but he did nothing more than shrug, and I figured that asking again wouldn't do anything.
We walked for a couple of hours, then stopped for food, and then would continue. It took days to get anywhere. Every now and then we would see something in the distance, but Ryder didn't see anything helpful about it, so I didn't either.
"Do you know about a stream anywhere around here?" I asked him once, and he just shook his head.
"There haven't been any streams or really anything around her for a long time." He said quietly, like there was something bad that he was being reminded of.
"Well, it was dried up. I originally left to look for it but I kinda was knocked out or fell asleep or something and then you were with me after that."
"Are you sure you didn't pass it and didn't notice? It was dark, and if it was dried up you could have very easily just ran over it and not notice a thing, especially if it was in the later parts of the night when you were most likely lowly growing more tired and not as many things were entering your brain like they should have."
I nodded, though I was a step behind him, so he couldn't see me. "Too bad. I was kind of looking forward to that."
"Really? If I were I would just be happy that I was alive." He said, and then looked back when I didn't respond, but didn't bring it up. "We should stop here. It'll be getting dark soon."
I sat down on the ground and opened my bag. I had packed all of my food last minute, and although we'd been trying to have only just enough to get by, we were almost out. "Small problem." I said. "We're almost out of food. So unless you have any ideas on where we might be going, I see possible starvastion in our near future."
"That's fine. I don't need anything right now." Ryder said as he sat down on the grass next to me, and I could already see that our surrounding were starting to get dimmer.
I rolled my eyes and through a small packet of assorted nuts at him. "You are not allowed to starve, because, believe it or not, you are the only person here who knows where we might be going."
He threw the packet back at me. "When exactly did I say that?"
"Hmm. The other night, when I was joking about ditching you in the middle of this field and you got all offended and said that I couldn't because you were the only one who knew anything about where we moght be gong." I threw the packet back at him. "Now eat."
"Well unfortunately for you." He said as he tossed the nuts back at me and then leaned back onto the ground, as though he didn't expect me to throw them back. "I'm allergic to nuts."
"Is that so?" I asked him with mock interest.
"Deathly. If I get anywhere near to one I'll immediately stopped breathing. It was horrible to deal with as a child, as that was almost all my mother would eat."
I nodded and then stood up. "I'll take first watch. You can get some sleep." And then I dropped the packet onto his face. "And too bad for you you were eating a packet almost exactly like this last night."
Within a few minutes I could tell that he had fallen asleep, though I knew that he hadn't eaten anything. Taking watch was a weird thing, because even though you pretty much knew that nothing was going to come out of the shadows and attack you, there was still a sense of uneasiness that came with it, as though the would be something there, but it wasn't there yet, and because of that we always wanted to make sure that somebody was always watching. It was also quite hard to see anything, because it would get so dark at night, and I hadn't thought to bring anything that may have provided light. Ryder didn't have anything with him, which he claimed to be because he "didn't have time when he came out to find me", but he would always change the subject almost immediately after I brought it up, so it was very likely to be something else.
