Court of Feathers

Four

Word Count: 2,716

Climbing was hard, to say the least.

The downsides of serving in a fairly flat landscape made themselves painfully clear over their first few minutes of their trek uphill, Shiro having to stop a time or two to get his breathing back under control. That and still trying to get his stomach to calm down from the fall did not make a very good combination for either of them.

"Shir-"

Shiro looked ahead just in time to see Keith falling on his hands and knees, retching behind a bush, as the contents of Keith's stomach emptied itself onto the forest floor.

He ran up to the teen, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, just enough to let Keith know he was there, giving his shoulder a light squeeze, Shiro's own stomach began to twist at the teen's current condition and he swallowed the bile back down. Now wasn't a good time to join him.

Maybe running off right after plummeting to a not-so-sudden death wasn't the best idea on Keith's part, and Shiro was beginning to think that the teen had come to that conclusion as well and his heart went out to him.

After a second or two of just dry-heaving, Keith was able to sit back up on his own, he groaned, using the tree next to him as a support to get back onto shaky feet and Shiro took a step back and watched as Keith reached up to wipe the rest of the bile away from his lips, legs and fingers shaking. "Can- can we stop?"

Shiro's brows furrowed at the question, it would be a good time to stop, obviously, given the fact that they had been at this for several hours already, and with the clouds that had slowly drifted in during their hike slowly turning a light shade of pink, now would be a good time to stop and rest, and gather their bearings for the day(s) ahead. Because even though they were out in the wilderness, alone, miles upon miles upon miles away from anything (at least in Shiro's mind), Shiro didn't think that the pure shock and fear had made its way to either of them yet, it was obvious that they both were related for simply that reason: the ability to keep a level head in a stressful time, and then panic at a later date.

They had been hiking for several hours now and, after a second of thinking ahead to make sure they weren't going to regret it later on, Shiro nodded.

Keith's face relaxed into relief as he found his way onto a nearby boulder, shedding his jacket and pushing sweaty bangs out of his face, heavily panting as he sat on the rock, his arms laying heavily on his knees, and Shiro had a feeling the teen would be staying like that for quite some time.

Shiro looked around at their current surroundings, they were in a pretty decent clearing, thank goodness, and it didn't look like it would be much trouble to make a temporary shelter for the night. There were plenty of sticks and twigs littering the exposed ground, and even more hiding in the underbrush, and for once Shiro was glad that he had taken the survival class his high school had offered as extra credit during the summer because Shiro was definitely going to need it now.

With one last look over his shoulder at Keith, his teacher's instructions for creating a makeshift shelter echoed throughout Shiro's thoughts, and without another word, he got to work setting up camp for the night.

<<<>>>

The fire crackled pleasantly beside them as Keith and Shiro lay on their backs staring at the endless expanse of stars above them.

The last few hours weren't too bad, Shiro fashioned them a fairly decent lean-to out of sticks and leaves, but the weather didn't seem to pose any threat so they were currently laying on the ground with the open sky above them.