forest

Hollowed Souls

Chapter Four: Hollowed Souls

By BoldChrysanthemum

Slowly, we make our way back to camp, trudging through the pouring rain and half dragging a stumbling Alex down the muddy path. Our Hollow in the tree, our home, is off in the hazy distance. Thunder begins to rumble, and blasts of light can be seen not far out, filling our visions with a brilliant white. Although it is only shortly past midday, the sun has disappeared off the black horizon and strong cold droplets of spring rain have begun to fall.

Trees are blocking our path, yet we run harder, faster through the blowing wind pushing us back. Every step feels like an achievement, every stride grows more difficult. Alex is running out of strength, and his pale face becomes the color of hot ashes blowing from a campfire. He is fading away, and I have no idea what is wrong with him. Pulling a limp body behind me, and watching the others struggle as we push closer and closer to our destination, I begin to lose my own strength. Ever muscle in my body is throbbing, and a cramp in my stomach makes me wish I could stop, but I can't. Not quite yet.

Landmarks I can remember are behind me now, trees twisted into shaped that are burned into my memory are passing by. Emmi and Caroline are ahead of me, yelling out encouragement, warnings, and a lots of other things that I can't make out, excluding the occasional word or phrase. The storm above us is brutal. Wind cuts into my sides, into my lungs, and my eardrums shatter with every new roll of thunder. Trees begin to crash down, creating a maze. An obstacle course that three girls and a seemingly half dead Alex have to get through.

"How much further?" I hear Emmi's gasping voice shriek, as a tree quickly skims by the top of her head, her delicate curls drenched and matted with mud.

"Half a mile!" I choke out. "At this pace we should," I begin, before a mini avalanche of branches riding on mud boom past us, roaring in an undefined fashion. It seems as if everything is happening at once, and all the sound of the forest is concentrated in this one area. I commence my quest to stutter the words out once more. "We should make it in five minutes."

Time was something that did not correspond with the way the forest ran. Yet it was a concept we had all grown to understand. We all have a faded sense of relocation, basically meaning that from a certain point in our lives our memorable lives began, but before that there is nothing. I can only remember life since I was eight, but Emmi has memories since age three. Caroline's is super hazy, and she can reach as far back as two, but we never talk about it, and she never brings it up. Sometimes, she freezes up and stays there in place, her mouth moving, but no words coming out. Alex dubbed them the moments in ice, after Emmi once fell into the frozen pond two winters ago and acted similarly to Caroline's freeze ups.

Alex. The numb body beside mine is becoming lighter, yet his conciousness seems to be slipping. He is panting, and although the missing sun and ongoing storm are bad conditions for sight, his face is obviously growing a hideous shade of green. We need to get there soon.

"TO YOUR LEFT! NOW! MOVE!" A strained voice calls out from in front of me, and I oblige correspondingly, jumping over to the left. Half a second after, a fallen branch the size of half a tree hits the side of my head, and I cry out in pain. The wood would have killed me, but the only blow I suffer is to my right ear. The body of Alex, which is on my left, bares no noticeable scratch. Rain and thunder clash on in a horror of combined madness. I have no time to make out a response, because that second a deafening screech echoes thorough the filled air, and the ground shakes even more.

The minute I catch up to Caroline and Emmi, I know something is wrong. Their expression are filled with pain and agony. The Hollow is destroyed. Our home now lies in ruins, in splinters beneath a dozen other objects, trees, bushes, dead animals, and unrecognizable things. Four brown eyes and a set of unfocused black ones stare up at me.

"Leah?" Emmi asks, but is hushed by the loudness surrounding us, and the horrific scene that is in front of us.

Being the oldest has given me the task of leader, and as I glance at the destroyed Hollow and my companions, I make a snap decision. "We, a-all of us," I stutter, glancing at Alex, "are going to head in that direction." My pointer finger announces the direction, southeast. "There is not much time, and we need to find decent shelter." I continue more confidently now. "The Hollow is gone, and we are not coming back here. Collect what you think we will need, but only what is completely necessary, and all of us will leave as soon as possible." My authority filled tone is a new one, but Emmi and Caroline comply, with what seem like tears in their eyes.

I lay Alex down in the dirt, and help gather the leather packs and few medical supplies, which are mostly herbs. There is too much rain and wind to attempt to help Alex now, so we all hurry.What was once our beloved Hollow is ransacked into what looks like a heap of tangled twigs that could never dare dream of resembling a home. My eyes fill with tears. The salty liquid makes its way down rivulets in my dirt caked face.

"Hey." Emmi stands beside me. "We can do this. We've done it before. Dang it, we have spent our whole lives doing exactly this. Nothing can be held onto for long, everything disappears. Even people." None of us have ever witnessed or felt the hurt of death surrounding us, but it is a fact of life that every single one of us just simply knows. Our eyes meet, and we peer at Alex, who is whispering incomprehensible words in his troubled sleep. He cries out, but there is nothing we can do for him.

"I'll take him." She whispers. "I can carry him for at least a mile." I smile slightly, which was a thought I would have deemed impossible an hour earlier.

"Thanks." I whisper back below my breath. "Okay" I announce. "I think that the storm is beginning to let up and-" Thunder pierces through the vast air, humbly interrupting me for the thousandth time in one day. I clear my throat. "And, we should get going to find a new Hollow." We all mumble our own goodbyes, knowing that there was no chance that we would ever come back. Alex lies unconscious again, leaving Caroline and Emmi to hold their heads high in courage. Our journey was about to begin once more, and we were exhausted and defeated, both physically and mentally.