At first nature had been welcoming. The open grassy plains, the blossom covered hills, the dew tipped grasses; all had conspired to instill in me a sense of otherness, of freedom.

"This is not a city life of human confines," I had thought as myrtle eyes surveyed the lighter green of nature.

Indeed, how could one feel imprisoned when so far away from looming walls of ancient brick and rules more archaic than the stones that cobbled the streets? Life away from the city was free. Open. The explosion of colour that the natural world provided had been such a contrast to the greys of my masonry-filled town that I could only barely restrain my excitement when leather sole first met vibrant plain.

And it was with a similar sense of wonderment that I had first approached the forest. So many trees and so much greenery--seemingly untouched by human hands. It begged to be explored and I had blithely assented; the trees seemed only too happy to direct me onwards.
Gracious hosts indeed.

However, as the days had worn on, the trees and their knitted branches had begun to choke my sense of liberation as much as the bastille that was my home town. What little food I had packed was already dwindling and the life of an idle city girl had not schooled me in the methods of hunting. Indeed each plotted, each advancing, each labored footfall had slowly chipped away at my resolve that now, now I was free.

Then the rain had started.

Oh, to others it may have been a refreshing pitter of raindrops, but, to me, in that moment it was an abrupt deluge into the clear skies of my mind. The sudden chill that it brought had halted my movement, bringing me an understanding of sorts. As my cloak hugged closer to my body, the encroaching droplets impinged upon me the realisation that despite my swift departure, I had not, in fact, managed to outrun my problems.

The falling water had become another layer of bars sealing me into the past: transient bars, perhaps, but through weary eyes the rain seemed all the more damning for it. The rain would leave. It would be forgotten, replaced by the warming sol, and discarded from thought. For a day, or a week, or a month... but then it would would return just as abruptly to remind me of troubles past, stirring memories that I had deemed better left untouched.

Damn it so! I was not in the mood for an epiphany, not when so far from home, from friends and from shelter. These sorts of stark realisations were best revealed huddle under comfortable delusions in warm beds, not in weathered forests shrouded in precipitation. My footsteps needed to be measured with a serene sense of unquestionable purpose; doubt was a weakness, a flaw, a sin and one in which I did not wish to bemire myself. Stopping now would be tantamount to giving up, to acknowledging defeat but I possessed a raw form of stubbornness; the sort that only a youth of fifteen years can possess. So, forced out from between blue-tinted lips were well reasoned words, if not wholly insincere ones:

"I am sure there will be some place to stay up ahead." A slight pause in voice, though not in movement, before:

"It's cold and I shall become ill if I stop," to punctuate the sentence and give credence to words devoid of true affirmation, I nodded.

The reverberating of thunder pulled me from my thoughts and, after raising my head, I realised that thick trees had given way to shrubbery and hill. Yet my first feeling was not one of relief at having escaped the forest nor fear at the sound of rolling thunder; it was mere confusion.

"Why is that man laying in the rain?"

A more simple part of me wanted to run forth and embrace this man; this anchor to civilisation. Another wisely noted that I was a lone, scrawny teen, shaking from hunger and dancing droplets doing their best impression of icicles, as well as not being very well equipped to fight off a mad man. For surely this man was mad, I reasoned. After all, what sort of person would lie in the midst of a thunderstorm, apparently unperturbed by the piercing cold and the arrows of incandescent light that carved their way through the firmament?

"One that was either in the midst of dying, already dead or insane," I replied to my unspoken thought; I wasn't entirely sure which I would prefer to deal with.

It took a few moments for me to realise I was moving towards the recumbent figure. This comprehension trickled up to the mind that was only now acquiescing to my bodies demands. Trapped inside my head, time had simply continued it's incessant march without me and I was certainly suprised to discover my legs had strode forwards to greet the stranger, seemingly of their own volition. Oh well, when in roam-I was about to offer a greeting when it occurred to me that the man had propped himself up on his elbow. Well at least he's not dead.

“A pleasant evening, is it not?”

Insane. The man was definitely insane then. Soggy, auburn hair clings unyieldingly to my neck and rain trickles down from my brow. It stops but for a moment, as if preparing for it's journey down my gaunt cheeks, before it continues onward to join it's comrades in my top. Or possibly my boots. Lightning crashes in the distance, illuminating the sky for a moment, before darkness rushes back into the hole created by it's absence. An empty stomach is a stark contrast to my overcrowded head and it's all I can do to keep my trembling body in check and my tears at bay. To say nothing for the biting cold that now pierced my scrawny frame. How could anyone call this pleasant?

A thought drifted up from the base of my mind to the ethereal string of consciousness: Reply, it's only polite. Which, if I had been in a more stable frame of mind, would have surely begged the question; why, of all things, is politeness more important than my own safety? I was getting lost among my thoughts again. If I kept this up no doubt the man would infer that I was mute. So strained upwards through my throat, out along the conveyor that was my tongue and onward through chattering teeth, was a sentence that had barely survived the gauntlet of my mouth:

"Uh... um... no?"

Oh, typical; my lips had failed me yet again. Mentally I cursed, and tried vainly to regain what little composure my currently disheveled state afforded me. As I inched closer towards him, I hastily offered the man another half-thought sentence;

"Well, I mean it's rather..." I stumbled around my own tongue, searching for the word that would succinctly explain my predicament.

"...wet." Well, that went well, I snidely thought, before wondering why on earth the opinion of a man I had just met would mean more to me, right now, than shelter and a hot bath.

“You are right,”

I was? Well yes, I suppose I was. Still, I had expected his words to be more heavily laced with bewilderment at my intellectual faux pas. Maybe he had not heard? Ahh... one could hope, though maybe he was simply used to people saying odd things. I suppose, if he is mad, then he would hear a myriad of strange things quite often and be rather accustomed to them by now.

The man drew himself rather wearily to his feet. The slight strain with which he did so was not that odd considering current circumstances and yet I felt as if his limbs moved with more fatigue than tiredness or rain alone ought to induce.

Perhaps he carries some ponderous burden with him- No sooner than that thought had finished meandering across my frontal cortex, lightning bore through the stratosphere once again.

The way in which it lit up the man was rather jarring, yet it was this that galvanised my mind; it reminded me of the crudeness of such mawkish thoughts. To think that I could infer such things from subtle body language when all was so lowery? That such a nascent bond would ripen so, when the mans name was not even known to me?

In truth this was simply just what I wished for; to pretend he was someone with whom I could share my pains and my worries, regardless of my problems actual worth. To pretend that he was a brother or a friend, instead of the unknown quantity that he was. It was comforting to see him in this fashion. Yet any such thoughts were soon suppressed when the man spoke thusly;

“Come, let us take shelter.”

An idea I could certainly get behind. Yet I stayed still, unsure what to do; both this mans motives and actions were terribly abstruse to me. He, however, seemed to have no such qualms about walking through the rain with a stranger--he had begun his ascent up the hill. A few dozen thoughts clouded my mind once again, the foremost of them harping on about the importance of not following strangers at night, but the lethargy that attacked my limbs and the barrage of raindrops that pelted my clothes forced one thought forward:

Honestly, what is the likelihood of meeting anyone more desirable out here?

My reasoning was sound enough and so the line of consciousness continued: I should follow him. This thought earned plaudits from my limbs as they began their oddly alacritous ascent upward with a steady march. It seemed company and respite from the rain were more important to me than I had realised. Certainly more than my own safety at least.

After several steps I realised that the distance between us had receded partially. It was certainly not due to any haste on my part: my movement, although steady, was slow and lethargic. In fact, it was because the man had stopped. Maybe in thought?

My actions were once again cast into doubt, though I daren't stop moving lest I become unable to start again; I merely slowed down as the distance receded more and more. After a quick internal monologue I decided that simply passing him would be foolish when I had no idea where this shelter was, so instead I would stride beside him--at a safe distance of course--and suggest we not stop.

Although first I decided that offering my name would be the polite thing to do. So, rapidly approaching his side, I did just that:

"Charlotte..." hesitation caused partially by doubt and partially by the realisation that such a sentence would only force more clarity to be sought, I added:

"...my name." I quickly decided that the completed sentence I had cobbled together was rather confusing, so I rushed out another:

"I mean: that is... my name."

"Charlotte," I affirmed again due to the fear that originally my voice not been heard. Although, oddly enough, I neglected to speak louder the second time.

Upon finally reaching the outcropping that would serve as our shelter, I had balked only momentarily as I realised that our dwelling lacked a bed (or, indeed, actual walls) before the weariness of the day had began it's final onslaught upon my decaying resolve to Just. Stay. Awake. Dammit.

While the benignity of the stranger had absolved my fears somewhat, sleep had still seemed rather ill-considered,
yet Hunter (as he revealed his name to be) had conjured up a small fire; the flames of which had winsomely danced to some whispery, veiled melody. The spellbinding movements, in cooperation with the fires warmth, had simply enticed my eyelids to move further down; guiding me in closer to the harbour of sleep.

Hunters next few words had barely registered but his insistence that 'we'll figure it out in the morning' (Figure... what... out? I had vaguely managed to mumble softly), had been the final lullaby that had whisked my consciousness away. In such a state I found the rugged, stony floor to be almost comforting.

I have often read about people waking up in strange, unfamiliar places and having to take a moment to remember where they had been prior. I was offered no such respite from reality; upon waking up I was all too aware of the knowledge that I had slept on the ground in the middle of nowhere. I was also quick to note that my mysterious benefactor was missing.

My eyes scanned the encompassing region for any evidence of his resting form but found none. If I'd had the strength I'd've probably shot up with in confusion but, as it was, I was only able to drowsily haul myself up into a sitting position.

"Hu-Hunter?" I called out meekly towards the sun.

After a few moments of waiting the sun had still not replied to my timid question, so I called out again;

"Hunter? Are you there?"

Despite the extra confidence that permeated through my second question, I once again received no reply. A sudden feeling of isolation tried to impinged upon my sullen self but I was quick to bat it away like some bothersome insect. Reassuring myself that he was just outside, I determined, in quiet reply to the grumbling of my stomach, that he was 'probably out getting food no doubt'.

He could probably use some help. Standing up and shaking the drowsiness from lethargic limbs that begged to rest more, I checked that I had all my (meager) belongings, imprisoned my recalcitrant locks in a ribbon and set off to go find my altruistic stranger.

Sounds emanated from behind me and formed themselves into words.

"We've run out of milk."

It was simple, it was blunt; the way she usually spoke when she wanted something. The red-painted lips the sounds escaped from continued;

"We're on our last roll of toilet paper and there's, like, no vegetables left. All we've got is those mushrooms."

"And you want me to do what about it exactly? I don't drink milk and I like the mushrooms," I replied with a bit too much venom at the sudden distraction my roommates words caused me.

Leaning against the pale door frame she stared disapprovingly at me.

"I thought you were going to get off that thing and go shopping with me."

My audible groan was enough to make my roommate to roll her eyes and leave the room again, tossing the words "Fine then... but I'm not getting you anything," casually over her shoulder.

The horrifying thought of having to watch my friend pig-out on snacks without having any of my own to munch on caused me to recant my inferred replied. 'Finefinefineeeeeeee! I'll be there in a sec, just let me-'

My mother used to chastise me for spending too much time with my head among the clouds; I used to think I didn't spend enough. Lately though I have begun to wish that I could spend less time immersed in the whirlpool of my thoughts. This was never more true than in this moment; the one with the abrupt realisation that my feet were no longer parallel to my shoulders. The outcropping was steeper than it had seemed the previous night.

The floor seemed to have decided to rush towards my head and I barely recognised the earsplitting shriek as my own voice as I began my hurtling descent towards the bottom of the hill. DAMMI- Despite only being conscious for a few minutes it seemed my limbs had schemed to find the fastest way to return me to that peaceful state (and in such an un-peaceful way too I would've lamented).

The shriek seemed to fade as all went dim.