The Hunted

6. The First shift

I looked around startled but saw no one.

"Magi you have to stop doing that," I said looking in the direction the voice came from.

I jumped out of my skin as she whispered in my ear, "why?"

She laughed, while she appeared bend for over gasping for air, exclaiming, "you should see your face!"

She tried to reenact the expression and continued laughing, her head was getting red and I could see some tears rolling over her cheeks. Her laugh was contagious, so I couldn't help it and started laughing. When we finished laughing, I quickly hid all the items from the innkeeper.

"Are you gonna tell me what you got there?" she asked.

"Not yet."

"Well then, if we aren't gonna talk, we better get some sleep because we have a lengthy walk in front of us tomorrow."

"Where are we going?"

She responded with a smile on her lips, "If you can keep your secrets, then I can keep mine. You take the first shift."

After that, she laid down and turned her back to me without saying another word. It was quiet again in the forest, there was a slight wind which made the leaves rustle, besides that there was no sound. Magi slept quiet, probably from years of training, but I know she was breathing by her chest which was moving up and down slowly. The only light came from the moon as we didn't make a fire. The fire would draw too much attention to us, so I had to manage with the moonlight, which made a beautiful spectacle as it shone through the crowns of the trees. One of the light beams reflected from Magi's blonde hair, making it shine and capture my attention. I laid down on the ground and kept staring at the moonlight making her hair look like the prettiest thing in the world as my eyelids were getting heavier and everything became dark.

"WEREN'T YOU GONNA TAKE THE FIRST SHIFT?" Magi's screaming woke me up the next morning, as I opened my eyes I saw that the sun was already high in the sky. Magi was standing in front of me, her head has gone red and she was still screaming about how dangerous it was to fall asleep. I let her rage, while I took a piece of the bread and started eating.

When she stopped yelling I said, "I'm sorry, I must have fallen asleep, now we can stand here yelling at each other whilst nothing happened, or we can start moving because you said we have a long walk ahead of us."

She nodded, we packed up our stuff and started walking in silence.

That's how the next couple of days went by, we woke up, ate some bread she had stolen somewhere, and then walked the rest of the day in silence. As we were walking further and further away from Gabedam, the landscape kept changing. It kept getting grayer until even the conifers stopped growing in the hard-frozen ground and I could see we were at the foot of a huge mountain chain. It reached as far as the eye could see and probably further. One with snow-covered peak after the other, with at their feet the forest we had just left behind.

"You better put on an extra jacket because it's gonna get cold," Magi said, it was the first thing she had said since the fight a week ago. I nodded and put on the winter coat out of my backpack.

"Which mountain chain is this? I have never been this far north in Ellietia." I asked her while putting on my jacket and taking in the view.

"This is the largest mountain chain in the country, maybe even the world. And as it happens, our destination."

"We are going in there?"

She laughed and answered, "yes, our destination is in the middle of the mountain chain, in the heart of the Candychain."

"The Candychain?"