The Hunters of Artemis

Chapter 4: Night out

Emma wouldn't wake up. No matter what we did. We shouted at her, clapped our hands in her ears, pried her eyes open, even slapped her. Noah even wanted to go as far as to kiss her, but the Hunters vetoed that idea automatically. 

"Ew. No way are we going to let you kiss her," said a disgusted Rhea. I nodded in agreement. 

I added, "Besides. This isn't a Disney movie, people. That kind of stuff doesn't work."

Noah shrugged. "It was worth a shot." 

Robyn looked at the sky. It's light was starting to fade. "Hey guys? We should probably start setting up camp. Our supplies are right over--" When she went to see our supplies, she found our tents in shreds. "Um... we have no tents."

"What?" cried Hannah.

Robyn looks up with her eyes closed. "Lycaon's wolves must have torn them to shreds during the fight." 

I got up and walked over to where Robyn was standing. "What's left then?"

We looked inside our bags together. "Our sleeping bags, food, water and some tools for making fire."

Lyra came over too. "Is that it?"

I nodded sadly. "That's it."

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Okay. Alright. We just have to make the best of it. Are we in a relatively secure area?" I did a quick scan of the area we were in. The trees sheltered us from the weather, and there was an area large enough for us all to sleep in. We would be able to see anyone sneaking up on us easily. It seemed safe enough.

"Relatively... I think," I replied. 

Lyra nodded and directed everyone to start making camp. The boys started rolling out the sleeping mats so they could fill with air. Olivia started making a fire with Atlanta. I counted the amount of food we had with Rhea and Lyra. The only ones without anything to do were Robyn and Hannah.

"Can we go hunt?" asked Hannah. Lyra nodded and they set off. She was like our unelected leader. She just had the right qualities. Determination, strenght, bravery, intelligence, wisdom. 

I counted how many packages of dried fruit we had. "We have ten packages of dried apple, twelve of dried apricots, twenty of raisins, eight of prunes, and two of dried oranges." I looked up. "Who dries oranges? That's so gross."

Lyra laughed as she counted the fresh fruit we had. "We've got sixteen apples, eight bananas, fifteen oranges and that's it."

"I counted three bags of dehydrated ice-cream, four of spaghetti, twleve of ramen noodles, and eighteen of-- am I reading this right? Eighteen bags of dehydrated shepard's pie," counted Rhea.

I sighed and sat back. "It's a good thing Hannah and Robyn went hunting then..."

Rhea and Lyra nodded in agreement. 

"So should we make a plan for tomorrow?" I asked. 

"Yeah. Probably. It would be a good idea to know what we're going to do once the sun comes up tomorrow..." said Lyra.

"What should we do?" asked Rhea. 

I suggested, "What if when we get up tomorrow, if Emma's awake, we set off to the north, which is where most likely we'll find a library like we were going to do today... before we got sidetracked."

Lyra nodded. "But if she's not?"

"I don't know... let's just hope she is," I replied. 

"We could have Atlanta levitate her," suggested Rhea.