The Soulmate Curse

CEDAR (for protection) - Part 2

Finn tried to will away the sting on her side as she stretched her body out. She leaned against the log, laying her head on it, and taking a deep breath. She hadn't had a side stitch for years since she'd started running regularly, but she remembered the feeling. She looked towards the river. Despite their hours of hiking, they still weren't at the village and it would be dark soon. She put her shoe back on and then stood up and gathered her things.

"What are you doing?" Zhen asked.

"We need to keep going if we're going to get there before dark," said Finn. She stood up and gingerly stretched.

Zhen shook her head. "It's already pretty late and you have no idea what you're looking for."

"That's why we need to start moving again."

"Finn, if we're going to do this, let's be smart about it," said Zhen. "We just escaped a plane crash and hiked for hours. Let's take a break. You said the village was close and the police won't be able to start a pursuit until late morning at the very least, so why don't we just stay here tonight?"

Finn considered that for a moment and decided Zhen was right. They were close to the end now. It would be stupid if they botched everything just because they'd decided to do something incredibly unsafe when there were alternatives.

"Alright," she said, relieved that she would get some rest. "We can camp out here for the night, but we leave at the first sign of daylight."

"Deal," said Zhen. She stood up. "Want to go see if we can rustle up some dinner from the river?"

She wanted to say yes, but she needed rest to settle that stitch. "Nah. I'll stay here. Maybe start a fire?"

"That would be great. I bet there're mountain lions around here. The fire will keep them away," said Zhen. She went back to her backpack and tossed Finn her key chain with the apartment key fob. Next to it was a small ferro rod, the perfect fire starter.

"I'll help cook whatever you catch." Said Finn standing up to start gathering firewood.

"Without tools? It's going to be slim pickings," Zhen replied before she left. "Don't get your hopes up too high."

It took Finn a few minutes to get the fire roaring. She drank her water and did a few gentle stretches to relax her body. She wasn't feeling all that good. Likely because her adrenaline was petering away, giving way to extreme fatigue. Maybe Zhen had noticed. Forced her to rest. Finn smiled. This thing between them was going to get extremely complicated when they finally became sisters. She took off her shoes and socks and let her bare feet dig lightly into the ground.

Once again, the forest around felt foreign, yet familiar. It pleased her that it had always been that way with natural spaces for her. With her eyes closed, she lowered herself slowly to the ground and sat cross legged, a few paces from the fire. She touched her palms to the ground and breathed in slowly. The beat of her heart. The depth of her breath. The whisper of the wind through the trees. The swirling silhouette of firelight dancing behind her eyelids. They all synced up as she centred herself like her mother and grandmother had spent years teaching her how to. She wasn't one to voluntarily go out and commune with nature, but today she felt the need to.

She was a few minutes into the deep meditative state when she felt it. Something wasn't right. But what was it? What was wrong? Was it her? Or the forest? Or was it MechSoft? Were they coming for them? She was close to the answer. All she had to do was try not to focus too much on it. The information was like a skittish rabbit in the underbrush. She couldn't coax it out into the open by force. She had to let it come to her. She chose to focus on her breath instead. On the sound of her heart beating. On the wind blowing...

"Finn! You'll never believe what I got!"

Zhen crashed into the clearing. Finn took a deep breath and slowly opened her eyes. She turned to find a partially clothed Zhen hollering about her catch.

"I got crayfish! Not many and they won't fill us up," she said, gently placing the writhing little guys bundled up in her shirt next to the fire. "But they'll taste really good."

Finn sat up and pulled her legs up against her chest. Zhen was hustling around the fire, piling up embers and a few stones to cook the crayfish on. She piled up the little guys next to the fire and watched as they cooked for a bit before standing up to put up her shirt to dry on a log.

"Are you okay?" Zhen asked Finn.

"Yeah, why?"

"You're really quiet."

"I'm just... thinking."

Finn drew her knees even closer as she watched Zhen take her shoes off then sit next to the fire without her shirt. The orange flames lit her up in a halo as she flipped the crayfish over with two sticks that she used as chopsticks. Her eyes shone. Her skin drinking up the heat and flushing slightly red. She was the most beautiful person that Finn had ever seen, and she couldn't stop herself from taking in and acknowledging her beauty in the most possessive type of way. Zhen was hers. Her soulmate. And no matter what happened, no one could take that away from her. This thought suddenly filled Finn with so much emotion that it would have brought her to her knees had she not already been sitting down.

"Dinner's ready," said Zhen, proudly placing the three crayfish on a flat stone between them. Their shells were a fiery red and they smelt amazing. "Careful, they're hot."

"It's hard to believe you can cook anything that doesn't come out of a tube and fits into a printer," said Finn with a smirk.

"Just for that, you get only one crayfish," said Zhen with a laugh.

"I don't care," said Finn, half joking, half not. "I'm not even that hungry."

"Yeah right," Zhen replied, sucking on a crayfish claw, and slurping up the delicious meat inside. "We haven't eaten anything decent all day."

Finn knew that. It worried her, but she kept silent. She tried to fight the lack of appetite and swallow the delicious, buttery pieces of crawfish meat. There was only a little of it and that was okay by her. She didn't think she could eat much more, though she still accepted half of the third crayfish, which Zhen shared even after she said she wouldn't. She forced down the last few sips of water in her bottle. Despite wanting to just stretch out and sleep, she stood up with her bottle.

"Pass me your bottle," she said to Zhen. "I'll go fill them up."

Zhen stood up, concern on her face. "I'll come with. It'll give me a chance to clean up."

"No, stay," said Finn. "Look after the fire. I'll be back."

Finn walked to the river using a small penlight on her key ring as the source of light through the thick darkness of the moonless night. Once she'd cleaned up for the night and filled their containers with the crystal-clear waters of the creek, Finn headed back to their camp. She couldn't deny it anymore. That pain on the left side of her abdomen wasn't a side stitch. Something was wrong. The thought of telling Zhen tittered at the edge of her mind but fell off completely when she remembered that they were only a few hours away from the village. She could hold on till then. Besides, there wasn't anything Zhen could do about this other than worry. And that wouldn't be of any use to either of them.

When Finn came back and handed Zhen her filled up, wide mouthed stainless-steel canteen, Zhen used a little of the water to clean up before downing most of the remainder. She kept throwing questioning glances over at Finn who made sure she didn't betray any signs of pain or discomfort. Finn did, however, continue placing her bare feet and palms of her hands on the ground, trying to draw strength from the earth as she quietly chanted a prayer of healing and pain relief when Zhen wasn't looking. This was going to be a long night.

"I think we should sleep in shifts to make sure the fire stays within its bounds and to keep any curious animals at bay," said Zhen, getting comfortable sitting on a tree stump. "I'll take first watch."

"Okay," said Finn, grateful that she would finally get to sleep for a bit, but also suspicious of Zhen's real reason for this. However, she was too exhausted to dwell on the fact that Zhen might know that she wasn't okay. "Just don't let me sleep for too long."

"I won't. I'll wake you up in two hours." Said Zhen, a little too quick and a little too cheerily.