(DISCONTINUED)
To K, a forest was a forest. She did not like having no internet, no friends, and no city comforts. Overall, she hated the outdoors (except maybe the air). To K, the only thing dangerous there, were the bugs (and maybe the trees). So...
It was evening by the time K finished reading her comic book. She had already finished half a bottle of water, and three of her chocolate energy bars from her limited store of them. She looked at the orange sunlight streaming in through the flap of her tent and yawned.
She was bored, and wanted to scroll through Instagram and stalk her crushes. She wanted to sit in her comfortable pink silk pillow back home and paint her nails. She wanted to try out new outfits and stare at herself in her mirror all day. But she couldn't do that in a forest. The one thing she could do was rockhound. She had seen a river nearby marked on her map...
The thought brightened her mood and she took a smaller bag with some water and energy bars, and a plastic bag to keep the stones in. She also took a flashlight on her way out, and soon, she walking cheerfully on a path to the river nearby. She swatted bugs, jumped over tree stumps, and looked at birds, and banged her toe on a tree.
After about fifteen minutes she reached the river. She stopped swatting at her face and gazed at the river, admiring the water polish the huge rocks beneath it. Her gaze dropped to the soil beneath her feet, and her eyes soon began to scan the mud. It had just started drizzling lightly, which exposed the smooth, shiny pebbles and rocks underneath the abundance of twigs, leafs, mushrooms, and insects.
Big, beautiful, shiny, rocks. Rocks with spots, rocks with patterns, rocks with striations--all sorts of rocks glittered up at her, and k licked her lips. She immediately plunged her fingers into a particularly filthy patch of soil and dug out a rock. She held it up to her face and smiled at its perfect red and black striations.
K had always liked rocks for as long as she could remember. She would always go out to collect rocks from time to time in the parking lot outside her apartment, or a park, and she was always the first to spot something cool, even if it was half-embedded in the ground. Most of those who knew of her habit, or who had seen her digging up the ground for rocks, thought that it was a weird thing for a 19-year-old to do.
But K didn't care. She just found something about digging carefully through soft mud, looking for shiny pieces of rocks, satisfying. And that was all that mattered to her--her own satisfaction. She had a HUGE rock collection back at home, and it was her pride and joy. She considered it to be her only, greatest achievement. She had rocks collected over a period of several years, the oldest from the lawn of her old house when she was in the fifth grade. She had rocks from various parking lots, parks, gardens, beaches (organised beach-wise), school trips, etc... all put neatly in big glass boxes, so she could look at them everyday, whenever she felt like it.
And to anyone who told her that her habit was 'weird', she would respond with her signature sharp eyebrow raise, and then hit them with the "I don't remember asking you for your opinion?" line, which always shut them up.
Anyway. She had nothing much to do anyway. There weren't sharks, or anything much interesting around; and she had to stay there for a week whether she liked it or not, so she might as well do something she liked to pass the time.
K continued pulling out rocks and stuffing them into her plastic bag, while at the same time she threw away the rocks she didn't want, or like. After about an hour of rockhounding on the banks, she moved to the water. The sun was close to setting (about 15-30 minutes K gave it), so she pulled out her flashlight and shone it front of her with one hand, while she used the other to sift through the mud.
After some minutes of picking up and putting back stones, her fingers stumbled upon an interesting piece. She thought 'piece' because she didn't quite know what it was that she'd found. It was triangular and brownish; and it was small-ish, and was about as big as her thumb. She turned it over, studying the dirt on it, when she realised with a start that it was a shark tooth. A shark tooth!
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Did it belong to the overly-feared (and not to mention fake, K thought with a scoff), world famous terrestrial sharks? No. And K knew this because: 👉🏿 terrestrial sharks didn't exist, and, 👉🏿 this was a fossilized shark tooth. So it could have belonged to a shark which had lived there before the oceans disappeared.
Examining her find thoroughly once more, she put it into her little plastic bag, along with all the other rocks she'd collected. Soon enough, the sun set, and K cursed. She was out too late! She had to get back because, hey, it's a forest, and staying out at night in a forest couldn't be too good (K shivered and quickened her pace, remembering a documentary she'd seen a few months back).
She shifted her bag from one shoulder to the other to relieve it, and made her way towards her tent, jumping over and avoiding forest stuff. It was much more difficult this time, because of the extra weight; but it made her feel happy, more than burdened. She'd found so many pretty rocks, shiny-as-hell pebbles, and her very first fossil--a shark tooth at that!
She walked cheerfully, and reached her tent soon enough--but she stopped abruptly as soon as she reached her tent, all the happiness disappearing her face (look at picture below 👇🏿 ).
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- - - Well, this was quite a long chapter compared to the previous ones👽. What did y'all think of the picture I drew of K? Lol, I'll draw out the pictures for the book if I can't find anything I like👉🏿
