Don't give up on me ✓

[69] Someday

'It's hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember' - anon.

Chapter 69: Someday 

I started my walk back towards a little cave I had discovered near a stream. It was a couple hours away from this stone village, but it was a place I felt safe staying in.

I was slowly recovering, healing, and gathering my strength to figure out how I can get home.  

I walked over rocky and bare terrain as I put in the time to arrive back at my cave. This was how I spent my days lately - focusing on the bare essentials in life. 

I really missed TV.

"Have you seen her?"

I froze. A shudder went through my body and I felt something I hadn't felt in a while.

"I'm looking for a girl."

I heard the voice speak again. Was I dreaming? Was it really him?

I knew that voice. I knew that voice like I knew my own name.

I ran towards the sound of him. 

His voice was coming down from the top of a rocky mound. This world was so hilly, so sharp with rocks and random holes in the earth. One wrong turn and people fall into crevices, never to be seen again.

I looked up, but the orange sun blocked my view. I could see outlines of three people, speaking on that elevated rocky mound. They were talking, but they couldn't see me.

He was amongst them.

The rocks were unevenly stacked. It wouldn't take me too long to climb. I began climbing as fast as I could, my heart thumping in my chest.

I didn't think to call his name because I didn't believe it could be true, because I was scared that if I said something he would disappear and because, in all this trauma, I barely used my voice anymore.

Nathaniel.

It was him. Had he really come for me?

I wiped the tears from my eyes with one hand before concentrating on the climb. One slip and I would fall. I had to reach him before he started walking away. I could hear the 'no's' from the strangers he was talking to.

"No, we've never seen her before."

Don't go. I had almost reached the top when I heard a scream. A human scream. The humans began to run across the rocky terrain.

I climbed onto a small platform just under them and peered upwards. There I saw him, Nate, standing, handsome as always in a black cloak. He was the only one who hadn't run away. 

He was there, only inches away from me. How often I had fantasized of this moment. We were so close. 

But he was staring off at something I couldn't see. People were running in the opposite direction, fleeing.

"Nate," I said, my voice rough from lack of use.

He hadn't heard me.

I heard animalistic cries next. Those demonic creatures were back. Some were in lion form and others were like creatures I'd never seen before.

I cleared my throat to call his name again. Why wasn't he running from them?

Maybe he didn't know how dangerous this universe was. Maybe I needed to save him, like the hundreds of times he's saved me.

I stood up to make the final climb up towards him, when a kid emerged from the level I was standing on and waved at me to come towards him. 

He was wearing loose gray clothes and his face had some kind of paint on it. He looked no more than fourteen.