Off The Beaten Path

Day Ending

The wagon bumped, jarring Bernell awake. She wasn't sure when she'd dozed off. She wasn't sure how either though. Between the ripping wind passing through her body and bones, the snow falling down and coating her clothes, and the horses starting to get upset she shouldn't have been able to doze like she did. Sore, exhausted, and frozen straight through she sloppily fell off the wagon. Cerberus nickered and she smiled at him, her fingers were nearly purple with cold. she worried for a moment about frost bite. She bit her lip and pinched the tip of her middle finger, hard.

After a moment she let go. The return of blood stung and buzzed. She held back her curses and took stock of where they were. It was a cave. the top was large, a huge hole nearly in the middle let in a little snow, mostly pale sunlight. She looked to the opening. the horses had broken loose from the wagon, grazing in groups of two and three just outside. If she and everyone had lain tip to top they still wouldn't take up the length of the opening. She moved away from Cerberus, making her way towards the back of the cave.

It was too wide and open for an animal to be living in it. It didn't offer the protection that a bear or lion would be looking for. Nor a wolf pack or whatever other animal may have infiltrated the walls to scavenge the bodies or escape the cold. She moved outside, catching her toe on a tree root and stumbling to a knee. Bernell stayed down for a moment, collecting herself. She breathed deeply, exhaling before standing back up. Everything hurt so much more from the cold. A patch of dead grass circled the front of the cave for a few feet, the ground mostly dry in that area. curiously she began hatching a plan, moving to the wagon before the others woke.

Pulling out a pile of papers she began making a list.

~*~*~*~

"Are you sure about this?" Lisa asked, baby on her hip. "I mean, you should at least bring one of us with you."

Bernell closed her eyes to hide the fact she was rolling them. "Lisa, we need to go back into town to grab supplies. I've got Phillip with me. We'll be back before nightfall, hopefully by noon to get the fire started. Till then we need you to start gathering all the broken sticks and limbs you can find. Pile them against the wall. If you can grab more food and berries and some water... We don't have water..." Bernell frowned at the over sight. "If you can find a body of water we can pull from?"

Lisa sighed and nodded.

She turned to the horse strapped to the wagon, Cerberus had deserved the break and she needed to get familiar with all the animals they currently had. This one was a deep brown, his legs were dipped in white with a small star under his black mane. As they pulled out into the snow Bernell turned back.

"And for Gods sake! Name that baby!"

Lisa yelled something back, but Bernell couldn't make it out over the crush of snow and hiss of the wagon wheels pulling through the slush. The sun had risen warmer than normal, making everything swampy and wet. Heavy. They had to stop a few times to knock the snow off the wheels and underbelly of the empty cart to keep it from becoming too heavy.

"How do you know where town is?" Phillip asked, his face an unflattering shade of red from exertion and cold as he climbed back up beside Bernell.

She shrugged, "We just gotta make our way back into town. Towards Wall Rosa."

He was silent for a long while.

"What's on your mind kid?"

"Well." He fidgeted. "What if we get caught?"

Bernell smiled, "The only thing that will get us caught is getting seen by any Garrison troops. I can almost guarantee you they won't be bothered looking down into the town. They're too busy looking for titans, not people."