1. Edric
Edric was seven years old when his mother died of illness. Seven is far to young to see your mother dead and your father turned drunkard. It is also too young to be left to fend for yourself, huddled in the cold dankness of your basement rooms. But death cares not for the particulars of those left behind. But fate, or possibly something else did seem to keep a rather close eye on this child of destiny who found himself trapped and suffocating in loneliness and fear. But Edric was not one to sit and wait for death to claim him. Seven years old is too young to take to the streets, but the streets, like death, care not about age. And so… he ran.
2. Elysi
Alethea knew nothing about your world. She did not know about cars or airplanes, phones or computes. She had never seen a television or heard of the language that you speak. She had never seen a book (at least not the kind that you read) or seen a house like the one you live in. Never sent a text message, or posted a status update. She lived a place lost to time. And had it not been for the unforeseen tragedy of September 1st, she would have lived her whole life without hearing of these things. For she lived deep in a mountain forest where travelers did not come and planes were not seen flying above. She lived in Elysi.
She saw her world as she was supposed to see it; as large and wide and free and wonderful. She saw herself as she was supposed to; as wise and strong and compassionate. She had been trained well by the elders, and by forces she did not even know existed. Yet for all these apparent differences, she was far more like you then you may think.’
3. Waking Dream
Danny was the first to rediscover some measure of sanity and logical though processing. They had been walking through a damp forest. While they had taken no measures to mark their path it was highly unlikely that their heavy boots had not left some kind of marks in the soft floor of the forest.
‘Search the ground. We are loosing light fast so we need to find our footprints and follow them and we need to do it before the sun goes down completely. Otherwise… ‘
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. The three of them bent almost double scampered back and forth finding slight traces that looked like they might have come from their shoes.
It was a loosing battle. The sun was already so far down that there was no way they could cover enough ground quickly enough to get them back before all of the light was gone. Eventually they had to concede defeat .
‘Face it,’ Chris said ‘ we aren’t getting back tonight. We will have to wait till morning and search the treetops for the parachutes. Should be easy to spot when we actually have light. For now we need to figure out where we are going to sleep.’
‘She is going to think we ditched her.’
‘Or are dead.’
‘Or were stupid enough to get lost. Regardless, lets try to make sure we are alive to correct her assumptions tomorrow. We haven’t seen anything overly dangerous yet, but if we do I’d rather meet it by the light of day.’
‘Well we don’t really have any options. The branches are too high. We are stuck on the ground.’
‘What if we stand on each other’s shoulders?
‘Still won’t be tall enough. We will just have to sit with our backs to this tree, stay close and try to get some sleep.’
Laying on the canvas floor of their perch listening to the fire crackle below and feeling the wind buffet lift and lower the canvas shell she reviewed the events of the day. This was by far the strangest day of her life. In fact, the entire rest of her life felt far away and unreal. She wasn’t sure how she had known how to open the parachutes, or known about the survival packs stored inside. She wasn’t sure how she knew how to make a ladder out of spare rope, or make a bonfire, but the skills had come easily. What wasn’t coming easily was the ability to lead. She had sent the three bafoons off on their own more to get them out of her hair then anything and they had managed to go get themselves lost or injured. They had not been the most wonderful help to have around, but they had jumped off the side of a building to try to save her life and she had not done a very good job of being appreciative.
The cold kept waking Gabe up every couple hours, not to mention the damp. It was quite late and not even moonlight was visible this far down in the strange forest. There did still seem to be an odd glow to the air itself so that he could still see Chris and Danny slumbering fitfully a few feet away, but the forest was a mash of shadows of varying degree. It was impossible to tell anything about their surroundings except the one tree they sat next too.
Getting up to stretch his legs, Gabe strode in circles around the tree thinking about the day. Looking around he noticed something. When on the far side of the tree from where they were sleeping there seemed to be a stronger glow. It was a bit less green and misty. This glow seemed almost orange and somehow it seemed to warm him just glimpsing it. It seemed to be close one moment, and far away the next. It faded in and out of his vision. He had the inexplicable desire to walk towards it but knew that it would be incredibly foolish to leave the other two even for a moment. This forest was treacherous. He might never find them again. Instead he sat and pointed his feet towards the spot. When the other’s woke they would walk that way. Maybe there would be something there that would be useful. Maybe…
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