Mountain [18+] ✔️ Complete

Eight • Surf's Up

"At least Archer won't go thirsty if he can figure out his water powers, or whatever they are," I said as we continued to walk along the stream. I felt lighter after my good cry and getting all of my thoughts out. I wished I had told my friends about my dreams sooner, but it wouldn't have been as believable before this. I hadn't even really believed anything of them the previous day and they'd been my own.

"If he can figure out how to use them, that's the kicker," Lyla mused. "Mine just came out of me in an emotional moment. And I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single instance in my life before this where I had any weird wind powers when my emotions were running high."

"No," I shook my head. I would remember trees bending to my will in my youth if it had happened.

"So it's either tied to this place, or just woke up because we came here," she adjusted her backpack with a little bounce in her step. "Would be a pretty cool skill to have back home."

"Especially in the winter," I laughed, imagining a dome of pressurized air protecting our house from the snow.

Lyla stopped dead and shushed me, pointing between two trees. I squinted and saw a doe, grazing from a bush. It hadn't noticed us yet, and my companion nocked an arrow silently. I watched the determined concentration as she took aim, and then cool calm washed over her expression as she loosed the arrow. It was as if in the last second she let go of everything and allowed fate to take over.

Fate was on our side this time, because the arrow found its mark in the doe's throat. My stomach turned a bit at the vicious gurgling coming from the dying animal, but we'd need the food. And the others would need it too, if we could find them.

"Do you even know what to do with this now?" I asked my friend as we approached the carcass. "Because I don't."

Lyla shrugged. "I've seen some YouTube videos."

***

Thankfully Lyla retained a lot of her YouTube education and managed to skin the doe with the Swiss Army knife from her bag. I was so glad that she'd had the forethought to go back for her bag. It was reckless, maybe, but in the long run we had a better chance this way.

My job was to build a fire, as we figured cooking as much of the meat as we could carry would be safer to avoid spoilage. And after weighing the risks of detection, we decided it was worth showing our location to potential enemies to show our location to our friends. Or Marius.

I ignored the squelching sound of the raw meat as I lit the kindling I'd prepared from some dry brush. I focused on the flame of Lyla's lighter as it started to spread to the thin sticked log cabin I'd constructed.

It wasn't long before we were roasting kebabs of venison over a coal bed, chattering about school. It was nice to talk about something normal.

The sun was lowering in the sky, which meant that I'd been wrong about it being morning when I'd picked my traveling direction. In any case it had been the right direction because it had led me to Lyla.

We went quiet as we bit into the meat, and I savoured the juiciness in my mouth. We'd wrapped the raw stuff waiting to be cooked in leaves and then dragged the carcass far away from our little camp so we wouldn't attract predatory animals.

"I wonder if Marius will try to communicate with you while you sleep?" Lyla asked suddenly, and I chewed thoughtfully. "Do you think he was responsible for the second dream? Can he control them?"

"I don't know," I said through a mouthful and swallowed. "I didn't dream in the tree. Do you think he knows when I'm sleeping? Or he just has to keep trying until I am? Or does he have to be close enough to me?" I bit my lip before I started rambling again.

"I feel like it should be creepy, some dude being able to get into your head like that," Lyla said, "but it's not. Are you creeped out by it?"

"No." I shook my head. "It's almost comforting. Weird, right?"

"Maybe, but at least we're weird together." She shrugged with a small smile. I chuckled, and opened my mouth to say something, but there was a low rumbling in the distance and I strained my ears.

Lyla sat up straight and turned her head upstream. The rumbling grew to more of a roar, and it almost sounded like... water?

"Shit," she cursed, and grabbed her backpack, throwing it on. "Get the meat!" She barked, and started piling the little packages in her arms. I frantically followed suit, and then froze at the sight of a massive wave hurled itself towards us down the stream's bed.

Lyla screamed something at me and I dashed after her into the trees. We scrambled up an outcropping of rock and watched as the wave crashed down over our little campsite, extinguishing the fire. As the water swirled and dissipated, flowing downstream, there was a man sized lump left on the wet bank.

"Arch!" Lyla shrieked, and dropped her stuff, leaping from our perch and sliding across the slick grass. I slipped down after her, and reached them just as she flipped him over. She smacked the side of his face but he remained limp, and I scrabbled around to his other side.

Fingers laced together, I started chest compressions, and Lyla counted with me, voice firm. When I paused, she pinched his nose, blowing into his lungs. I started compressions again, my own heart pounding like a bass drum. She blew again, whispering inaudible things as she pulled back, slapping his cheek again.

Three compressions in, Archer sputtered, water shooting out of his mouth as he flopped onto his side. A sob escaped my throat and I fell back hard onto my ass, hands flying to my mouth in relief. They came away wet, and I realized tears had been streaming from my eyes the whole time we'd been doing CPR.

"Arch," Lyla threw herself over his chest, grasping his hair tightly in her fist.

"Ow," he moaned hoarsely, and she let go with a hysterical laugh. "I'm so glad to see you guys." He patted her head with one hand and reached out to me with the other. I took it in both of mine and kissed his knuckles, stifling another sob.

"What the fuck happened?" Lyla asked, voice muffled by his sopping shirt.

"I don't know," he replied, a bewildered look on his pale face. "But I think I might be telekinetic."