Once more, with feeling

2

Meg Thomas had never found it so hard to think before.

When Claudette had rattled on about plant types and cross-examination, her brain had blanked out until fingers were snapped in front of her eyes and she began once more. When the other three had argued, Jake's cool demeanor clashing with Dwight's will to hide mixed with Claudette's unstoppable passion for making sure everyone gets out, damnit, she had yelled at them to shut the fuck up and let her sleep.

Nothing seemed to be as distracting as the dead silence that wrapped itself around her.

"It's fine." She reasoned with herself out loud, rubbing the tips of her fingers together. "They'll be fine." Meg carefully held her palms closer to the fire, not getting too close by instinct even though they knew that the fire did not burn. The runner chuckled lowly despite her tension, remembering the time that Jake, at the height of his fear and stress, had pushed her in the wrong direction. It was what- three, four trials after they had all met each other?

Time passed weirdly in the realms. It seemed like both yesterday and a thousand years ago she had been lying on her couch, exhausted after a day of caring for her mother, of pleasing her coach and hyping up her team.

Her mother... was probably long gone. Meg had had a lot of time to think about that. Too much time, spent in the minutes and hours quaking in corners and plastering herself to the trunks of trees. Claudette had a regular family, and Jake seemed to seal up like a brick wall whenever they mourned their old life. Dwight didn't really want to talk about his either, though it seemed less like he murdered his family, (an inside joke about Claudette) and rather just had a pretty shitty life.

The bottle of moonshine they found on his person just before the first trial felt like a testament to that.

They all had bits and bobs that were on them when they first arrived. Claudette had an armful of hair ties that ran up and down her arm, a dried sample of milkweed in her back pocket and a notebook of little poems in french. Meg had two tangled pairs of earbuds and the crumbs of a ham sandwich. Jake had dried pieces of beef in a cracked tupperware container, wrapped in a plaid towel and Dwight had a flip phone with the top left keys missing, next to stained memo from an old boss.

Each of them told their own story, and after a particularly bad trial the little group found themselves drifting off to the sound of Claudette's voice, reading a poem her mother used to sing to her.

20 minutes passed. Meg could only tell because she had been counting the seconds as they passed, marking a tally in the dirt every time a minute went by. Perhaps this was some kind of new, cruel torture developed by the Entity, instead of some majestic fuckup.

She knocked over the pile of medkits, swore, and proceeded to do nothing. Claudette's mild annoyance was worth it if it meant keeping her sanity in check.

After 42 minutes and 3 seconds, Meg stood up and cast her gaze to the treeline, shouting angrily.

"Come out! You fucking bastard!" She raised her middle finger at the darkness surrounding the campfire, and then shakily raised it to the sky. "This is all your fucking fault!" Meg grabbed one of the shittier toolboxes and hurled it at a nearby crow, watching it cry and fly away. "Fuck your crows! Fuck you!" She panted, out of breath from the sudden outburst. The toolbox's materials were scattered everywhere, the flimsy beaten up metal sporting a large rock sized dent. The being above said nothing, did nothing, and quietly consumed the ruined toolbox without comment.

Meg slowly crouched down, breathless, hugging her knees to her chest. The silence was getting to her, the complete absurdity of the situation almost regressing her to how she had once been. She was better than this, better than wasting precious materials in the heat of the moment.

"So why can't I...?" The redhead whispered hollowly to herself, making her figure smaller in the campfire's light.

Eventually, she must've fallen asleep. Somehow, she came to at the edge of the treeline, at least a few hundred meters from the fire. The grass felt cool against her bloodied skin, and Meg reluctantly came to her senses when she heard yelling in the distance. Two silhouettes, one male and one female, were running towards her, their footsteps loud against the hardened ground. A few others followed behind them, keeping up much the same pace.

"Meg! Holy shit- we thought you were-"

"Are you alright? Sit up-"

"Who the fuck is-"

"Meg, I-"

"QUIET!" Meg yelled, voice extremely hoarse and croaky. A headache was beginning to form in the back of her head, and she couldn't feel her fingers nor her knees. She could feel her face pinching, and squinted to look up at four forms hovering above her.

Wait... four?

Meg raised her arm to block out some of the campfire light, and squinted to try and make out the features of this new and unusual silhouette. Her- at least she assumed they were a her- had sharpened features and even sharper eyes, as well as a painfully familiar expression painting her face.

"Is that...?" Meg began.

"A new survivor?" Jake sighed, seeming a lot calmer now that Meg wasn't in any immediate danger. "Afraid so. We found her... well. We found her in the trials, being chased by Billy."

Meg shuddered. The Hillbilly was a horrifying killer, more deadly than any before. It was incredibly tough for the four of them, fairly experienced with the trials, to face him. She couldn't imagine facing that beast when she just arrived.

"Well." She started, voice beginning to regain some of it's natural spark. The stranger was starting to creep back to the heat of the campfire, passively drawn to its heat. She froze up as Meg gently put a hand on her bony shoulder. "I can't exactly say welcome in this situation, but welcome anyway, newbie."

The taller girl brushed Meg's hand off of her, fixing her under an icy glare.

"It's Nea." She huffed, quickening her pace. "And don't think that just 'cause you guys can't find a way outta this place, it's suddenly gonna make me all buddy-buddy with you."

Meg simply grinned.

"Of course not, why would you think that? Now lemme tell you all about the fire. You see..."

The sounds of the two brash personalities bounced off of each other as they sat at the fire, their arguing reached all the way to the treeline, where Jake and Claudette sat. The medic was rubbing her fingertips together, smearing a strange golden light off her skin. Jake spoke up from his position at the base of the trunk, hands cradling his forehead.

"And you're sure you found this on her?" He gruffly asked, looking at the way Claudette cleaned her fingers of the substance.

"Positive. The stuff I've got here was only in excess, all the way from her jawline down to her collarbone." She paused, eying the way the grass glinted. "There were also a few spots that didn't come off. It looked like it was almost... embedded in her skin."

Jake shuddered. He didn't like the thought of anything of the Entity's in him, and by the looks of it neither did Claudette.

"It shouldn't hinder her in trials, so long as she keeps her head down. What I'm more worried about is the fact this happened while she was alone. What about next time? Who'll stay behind, and if it's one of us, will we get this... this substance on us? And if it's Meg again, who knows what repeated exposure to this form of the Entity will do to her?" Claudette got up, shivering against the cooler air of the forest. "The possibilities are completely unknown, and that's what scares me the most."

Jake suddenly wrapped her into a side-armed hug, looking away from her awkwardly. "I know you worry a lot." He murmured lowly. "But until something I happens, I don't think... I don't think there's any use in fretting about something you can't control."

Claudette didn't say anything, but she huddled into the warmth of Jake's parka, the firelight catching in her eyes.