The Kingdom of Eternal Winter (Divergent Fourtris Fanfiction)

Chapter 18

Hey there, I know this is late again. I'm sorry. I'm trying to post on time, but I can't always make it at the moment. Still, new chapters will be coming, I promise. On the plus side, you won't have to wait as long for the next update. Stay safe everyone!

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It was a long and exhausting hike to reach a less dense part of the forest where they felt safe enough to set up their tent for the night. But neither of them was able to sleep well. When dawn cast its light upon the sky, Beatrice wasn't sure if she had slept at all or if she'd just tossed and turned around on her straw mattress in a useless attempt to calm the flood of images and impressions from her adventure earlier that night.

They got up in silence and packed their belongings. They still had a long way ahead of them if they wanted to make it back to Beatrice's parents the same day. It had taken them two days to reach the Dark Forest, and they'd only spent half a night wandering back.

Christina had refused to speak about what had happened when she'd been off to get the stone, and Beatrice had known better than to push her. If she didn't share it of her own accord, it had to have been disturbing. Christina hadn't shown to be the reluctant type in the past. Beatrice accepted her need for silence, as unusual as it was, and refrained from bringing the topic up. She could wait and took the time to process her own experiences.

It felt good to be able to walk after the restless night. It gave her back control over her actions and thoughts the more familiar the territory became. While her body was drained from the excessive walking, her determination was burning bright, taking over and pushing her homewards. She had always been a little too stubborn, a little too selfish for a girl in Abnegation, she knew it, had often felt like she didn't belong. But now, for the first time in her life, she not only accepted this side of her personality, she welcomed it.

They reached her family's home late at night, when her parents had already gone to sleep. The fire had burned down to ember that emanated a soft glow and a humble amount of warmth. Since they didn't want to wake anyone, they put their mattresses down right there. The knowledge of being safe at last made them fall asleep quickly.

Andrew and Natalie were surprised when they found two sleeping girls on their kitchen floor close to the fireplace the next morning. They were relieved to see their daughter again, alive and unharmed. The Epaticamey root had lifted Natalie's condition, so she was able to get out of bed together with her husband now. Andrew still gestured for her to sit down at the table while he put logs in the fireplace to reawaken the flames. It wasn't easy to move and set the kettle on the fire to get water boiling to brew their tea without accidentally stumbling over the sleeping girls. Natalie wondered what they had encountered that caused them to not immediately wake up from the clatter.

When the girls finally did wake up, they hurried to sit down for breakfast. While they avoided going into details about the Dark Forest and the specifics of their task, they summed up how they had spent the last days. They had decided the day before that they wanted to stay as long as possible before returning to the castle to make themselves useful and take the time to work on their fighting techniques. It would be easier to do it here, without attracting unwanted attention from the other girls in the competition. While only Beatrice had managed to gain the requested stone, she had offered that her and Christina could try dropping it into the bowl together and see if that counted for both of them to pass.

Only after Andrew had left for the close village to help a family repair their leaking roof and all the dishes had been washed and dried and stowed back into the shelves, did Beatrice ask about Caleb. He didn't usually sleep this long, so the only other option was that he had left early for a job. Sometimes, when someone living further away than the next village needed help fixing their hut or offered any other kind of job that promised some silver, he left at dawn or even stayed elsewhere for two or three days at a time.