The Girl with the Key

Chapter 2

After a few minutes of silence went by, a cool breeze blew by and caused me to shiver. This caused a thought to occur to me. The thought that I missed my house and my warm, cozy bed with a soft mattress and blankets, but there are no houses around here. This thought made me remember a survival book I had once read that listed three things that were important, above all else: 1) Water: boil before drinking(unless it is from a hot spring), 2) Shelter: keep it dry, 3) Food: only kill what you need.

We needed to find shelter. "Guys we should see if there is a place for us to scale this cliff," I say as I begin to walk around and observe our surroundings.

"Maybe we can take these," Henry states as he points out a set of stairs that go down the side of the cliff.

"Where the HELL were these when we almost died!?" Sara yells intently.

"I don't know but all that matters now is that we are all safe and we now have a way down, a, hopefully, safe way down." I say with encouragement.

"Yeah, you're right," Sara says in a soft, slightly discouraged tone.

"Anyone volunteer as lead?" I hopelessly question because no one speaks up. They all just stare like a deer in headlights with fear filled eyes. "Fine..." I slightly grumble.

I begin to slowly walk down the stairs because they look as if they are old and rickety. After I get down a few, I tell the others to follow. The stairs were logs jabbed into the side of the cliff. They were about one foot apart with a gradual, but steep, slope.

As I approached the bottom, I started to make new observations of our changed surroundings to make sure it was safe. Seeing nothing, I take the last step.

"What should we do now?" Henry asks.

"We should probably try to set up a camp seeing as we were in that 'room' for who knows how long and we don't know the day cycle here." Nate says as he looks at the sky.

"I was just thinking that. Is that alright with everybody?" I ask. Everyone nods in agreement.

"Let's walk around a little bit and see if we can find a place suitable for shelter." I say as I turn toward everyone. "Let's split up into teams of two. We can cover more ground this way."

Everyone agrees and we split up: Henry with me and Sara with Nate. We go left and they go right. Everything around us was plants and trees, and only plants and trees. We walked down a small trail like path. It seemed to be an animal trail.

After a few minutes of silent walking, Henry turns to me, curiosity filling his eyes. "Soooo...how old are you?" He asks me as I continue to look around.

"I'm 17. How old are you?" I ask.

"I'm also 17. So that means we are the same age. Where are you from? I'm from Riverside." He continues.

"Huh. What a coincidence." I say with slight intrigue.

"Coincidence?" Henry questions.

"I just moved to Riverside. A couple days ago."

"Oh really? That's interesting. We don't get many new kids. Seeing how we are in the middle of nowhere that is." He says with a slight laugh.

"Well, I think you might be short two kids, if we don't get back home that is." I mumble with slight concern.

"So what exactly are we looking for again?" Henry asks as he walks ahead of me.

"Just an area that seems suitable for a camp." I tell him as we come upon a small clearing. "Ok. This spot looks like it'll work great. It's on relatively high ground because it's a small hill and it's pretty clear from lots of brush and weeds and it's surrounded by trees which is good for buildin materials. What do you think Henry?"