Prisoner Thirty-One

Joe: A solid eight hours

Standing outside felt like the first time I had been able to breathe all day. I stood there head leaning against the outer wall with my eyes closed for a minute before someone approached me from behind. "That looked rough, is she going to be okay?"

I turned to look at Windsor and wondered when he watched the event take place. "Lets hope, we need her to be, but it's up to her now."

There was a beat of silence between us as I wished that he would just leave me alone. "You guys seem like a really close group of friends, that's nice to see." He stood in front of me alone in a cream cotton outfit after losing the brown leather jacket he was wearing earlier. We were about the same height, but he had black hair that reached his neck with a tan darker then Alec's. "We aren't friends, we are a family."

He smiled up at me with a smile that looked more pretend than I think he realised. "That makes more sense, I guess. I need to talk to you about something though. Our community is led by a council and a council head, that is elected regularly. In order to stay here you will all have to have a meeting with her, obviously with the girls condition she, will be excused from it but the rest of you will need to go. It should only take a few minutes but it's necessary and I hope you will be able to persuade your friends to go."

Part of me was annoyed to be hearing about this now. I got that there hadn't been an opportunity before this, but I felt that they could have waited until I had actually had my rest.

"Well when would it be?" I looked up and saw that the sun was starting to set.

"Tomorrow morning, I'm assuming you guys will want to stay with your friend tonight and we can get stuff to make that more comfortable. If you and your friends wish to go through with the meeting, I will come back tomorrow morning and take you guys there."

For a moment I just stood there watching him. "And if we don't want to go through with it." He thought about this for a bit probably wondering why we wouldn't want to stay in their compound. "We would wait until your friend was back on her feet, provide you with a few supplies and let you go on your way."

He looked earnest and I found myself wanting to trust this guy, but I guessed that it wasn't this guy I needed to trust. "I'll talk to them now."

The scene I walked back into was exactly the same, which was more or less reassuring. I gently took the needle out of Kimba's arm, wiped it and then placed it in my own. "Guys we have something to discuss." Both of them looked up at me wearily, clearly still not over the day's events. "Windsor came to me while I was outside and told me to talk to you guys about meeting the head of their compound to discuss staying here."

"What? You really want to stay here?" Kimba addressed the rusting walls and raised her eyebrows at me. "Kimba, look, I get that you are not a fan of change or new people for that matter but so far this place doesn't seem that bad. They let us save our friend and only asked that we talk to their council leader." She made an indignant noise. "And what happens if we say no."

I had to stop myself from laughing at the similarities in our questions. We had clearly reached the stage where trusting people wasn't even something, we could think about doing. "They will wait until Fe is able to walk and let us leave."

"Oh, so we are just going to forgive the fact that they shot us with arrows and tied us to a tree." Kimba raised her voice but had definitely started to gain colour in her cheeks, which was a good sign. "K, the way I see it, we lose nothing from hearing this lady out. Worst comes to worst she says things we don't like, and we leave but best-case scenario we could get a safe place to live." She sighed but seemed to have nothing more to say on the matter.