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| 23 Apr 2013 08:13 PM |
Because of all the complaints of the old post being a wordwall, i'm re-posting with spaces so it wouldn't be.
Chapters 1-8.
--- Chapter 1: The simple Escape
Sarai looked up at the ceiling, waiting, waiting, and waiting for it to become midnight for her escape. She looked over at her clock that had said: "10:00". She started to go through the list in her head what she would need when she was in the woods.
Sarai started by getting her old backpack from elementary school, and put; 5 cans of soup, a kitchen knife, a flashlight and batteries, 3 bottles of water, a small bow for hunting, and some clothes. By the time she had thought everything out, she grabbed her pack and went to the old stairs. She ever so slightly walked downstairs, right past her drunken mom and crazy dad which of who was holding a knife in his hand.
She opened the creaking door and made a mad-dash for the shed, which had a tent inside. Sarai opened the doors of the shed only to find a massive tons of junk all over. After digging for awhile, and sometimes barely not getting caught, she found the tent. She grabbed it up and held it in her hands, as it was too big for her backpack. Sarai ran into the snowy moon-lit woods.
She could she her breath, and when she thought she was far enough away she stopped, gasped for air. Sarai put her stuff down and plopped against a tree, enjoying the peace of mind and the earthly sounds. The leaves quivered on the snows weight, giving in and falling slightly to the ground with ease. Not a cloud in sight, but beautiful moon and sparkling stars surrounding it.
There was a sudden crackle noise. Sarai looked that way in curiosity, then dismissed it as nothing, and got more comfortable against the cold tree. She heard it again, only this time above her. A strange hissing noise came from above. Sarai then got a little frightened, then looked up, only to see blazing red eyes staring her right in the face. Sarai screamed.
Chapter 2: Blades of steel
Sarai screamed, and the boy came out of the shadows with a bloodied knife, obviously malicious. Sarai began to run, forgetting about her stuff.
She ran through the trees, it was clear the boy knew these woods, as sometimes he would disappear and come back after a minute, taking shortcuts and running as fast as he could. But she kept running in hope he wouldn't catch her. Sarai was running out of breath and had to think of a way to get away.
But how? Before she could think, the boy jumped off a tree and pushed her to the ground, holding her down. The knife was in his teeth, he grasped it and put it to her lips. He smirked, and then cut the vein on her wrist. Sarai knew this was the end, or at least close.
After he made the cut, he was suddenly barreled over by yet another boy, and in a tussle, the boy who attempted to kill her was pinned to the ground himself. "Get out of these woods, you don't belong here!" Someone shouted in the mix. Sarai laid there, but tried to scramble away with no success and was forced to watch the fight. The boy with the knife stabbed the other attacker in his shoulder, making a deep cut.
The other attacker ran into the shadows, but the fight wasn't over. The boy that ran shot an arrow through the darkness and into the knifers heart. The boy with the knife became limp, and fell to the ground. Sarai looked in horror, and blacked out from the loss of blood.
Chapter 3: Weird "Goo?"
Sarai awoke agaisnt a suprisingly comfortable tree. She started rubbing her temples then looked down, only to notice some odd substance on her wrist. "Gross." she mumbled and started messing with the odd goo with her fingers, trying to rub it off.
Sarai heard a sudden snoring noise from above and looked up only to notice a very stocky, blonde, boy sleeping on such a skinny branch. Sarai started to panic in afraid of what he was doing her and why, so she tried to rise to her feet. But since in a panic, she felt light-headed and dizzy and feel into onto the snow.
"Well someone's up early," the boy said. "Judging by the sun it's probably around 7-8:45 in the morning." He said. Sarai's heart started beating faster and faster of what he might do. He dropped down from branch to branch, meeting her eye-to-eye, then looked at her wrist.
"We should get the the river, it isn't far from here. Only about a mile and a half down." He says.He started walking in some random direction and he realized she wasn't following. "Coming?" He asks, then motions for her to follow. Sarai followed in mainly curiousity, but was very cautious.
As they walked, Sarai examined him, trying to make sense of what had happened. The snow crackled beneath their feet. "Well look at that! Blackberries, just wonderful!" He says, then picks some off the bush. "Since when do berries grow in the winter?" She asks. "We actually have no idea, but they are a great food source. Plus they're rare, so we have to savor them." He says.
After he picked what he wanted, they carried on. It was beautiful evening, the snow let up a bit to just ankle-deep, and the trees seemed to sway with ease. When they had finally gotten to the river, it was all iced-over except for some small parts. "When you go stick your hand in the water, be careful of my fish traps. Here, i'll just show you so there are no accidents." He says, then points to where his traps are.
"There's one there, there, and there. And one over there." He says, pointing in the general area. Sarai nodded and stuck her hand wrist-deep in the river. The water seemed to flow so gracefully over her palm, it was almost relaxing even though so cold. She let the gently-flowing water run through her fingers. So peaceful. She looked over at the boy who was apparently taking his shirt off.
"Umm.. what are you doing?" She asks, then looks away. "Going to wash the Rever off." He says, then puts his whole body in the stream, and lets the Rever wash off like water over stones. "What's Rever?" Sarai asked curiously. "Rever is like medicine, that is what was on your wrist." He replies. After drying himself with his coat, he put his clothes back on and checked his fish traps.
"Looks like were eatin' good tonight!" He says, holding 2 salmon in the air, then reaching into his pack revealing another bag, and throws the fish inside. "Alright, we better get going, I was supposed to be back yesterday with salmon and my clan is probably wondering where I am, maybe even sending search parties." He says, then motions for her into his direction. She followed willingly this time, trusting a little. As they walked, it started snowing very heavily.
They trudged for hours it seemed through this endless white wonderland. The snow was now knee-deep, and both of them were cold to the bone. "Hey, why don't we camp out here for the night? We're still about an hour away from camp, but I can tell your just dieing back there." he says, then points to the tree. He scaled it as easily as ice melts, then put down a hand for Sarai.
Sarai looked at the tree, wondering how he even got up there. She put her foot on a low branch then her hand on a higher branch. She had gone up 2 high branches then reached for his hand, but slipped and fell into the unforgiving snow. "Are you ok?" he yelled down with little panic in his voice. "Fine, i'm fine." She muttered, then brushed the snow off herself. He jumped down from the tree and this time told her where to put her feet, and gave her a hand up at every branch. When they had gotten up to the very thick branch that could support both their weights, she clung to the branch like a sloth. "I'm scared, help."
She weeped, remembering she was afraid of heights. "Your ok, i'm here. Just one minute." He said then climbed up the rest of the tree to her branch. He sat his back agaisnt the tree then took his fur coat off. "Here, come sit." He opened his arms in almost a hug-like way. She wento to him, verly slowly and crwaled into his arms. She sat with her head on his shoulder, then he draped his fur coat over them for warmth.
For a moment, Sarai actually felt comforted by this strange person, for he was warm, and oddly kind to her. Sarai fell asleep with her head agaisnt his warm arm.
Chapter 4: Clans of the woodlands.
Sarai opened her eyes, only to notice he wasn't there, and that her head was resting on the trunk of the tree. She looks down and noticed that he hadn't left, that he was only unpacking some food and had a small fire going. She climbed down very slowly then jumped down the last branches, making a crackle when her feet hit the snow.
"Well, i've cooked up some salmon while you were sleeping." He says, then throws a fish her way. "Err... No thanks." She says, completely concious of her empty stomache. "How about blackberries, then?" He asks. "Sure." She says, then he reaches into his pack. He cups her hands and pours some of the berries in. Sarai then walks over to the nearest tree and sits her back agaisnt it and eats the berries one by one.
They were very sweet, and obviously ripe. Almost like candy from heaven. "Sorry, that I had never properly introduced myself, my name is James." He says, looking her way. "Sarai" She says in response, while gobbling down the last few berries. "We better get going, there's no time to lose." He says then shuffles dirt over the fire, putting it out. James packs up his stuff and puts it on his shoulders. Sarai followed James through this seemingly endless forest as the days before, but this time examining all around herself.
Some snowbirds chirped and sung in harmony, while the trees swayed to the wind. The snow crunched beneath their feet, but the sun felt good on her exposed skin. Though later on, it was starting to get cloudy, and it smelled like it was going to snow even more. James must of heard a sound because he stopped in his tracks. "Hold on." He says, then puts a hand infront of her. James takes out his bow and looks around, ready to shoot when neccessary.
The bush wiggled and he shot an arrow through the bush. "Relax James, it's just me." Someone said, then revealed himself from the bush. Another very tall boy, brown hair, and had a scar on the side of his face from what looked to be a cat scratch. James lifted his sease and put it away. "Alex, seriously why do you try to scare me like that, I could have killed you!" James mutters. Alex looks at Sarai then to James. "Who is this, and why is she here?" He asks, murmering.
"I found her in the woods not far from Iren stream." James replies, raising an eyebrow. Alex literally examines Sarai, as if he had never seen a girl before. "Uhm..do I know you..?" Sarai asks curiously and oddly. "Heh, no. But lets get you some better clothes, get you out of those rags." Alex says, then takes her hand. James follows behind them, raising another eyebrow. This felt weird, why was she being treated so..so.. nice? She was led into a camp-like place, there were square treehouses in trees with animal pelts draped across the top for roof.
The stranger thing was, everyone there was a male. She looked around oddly, everyone was staring at her. She began to feel small, like she wanted to go and hide in a dark corner. But soon enough Alex led her to a tree with a treehouse on it. James follows in beside them and gives Sarai help up, while Alex scales the tree himself. When Sarai got to the top, Alex was holding the door open and she stood outside. "It's ok, it's not like we're going to hurt you." James says. Sarai hesitated, then followed Alex inside. The inside of the house was warmed by a small fire and there was an animal pelt bed.
Along with a table in the corner. "You will live here, with me until we build you a treehouse." James says. At this point, Sarai was sweating, even though cold. She wanted to run away, like from her parents' house and hide. She began to cry, she wanted to just be left alone to be alone, and all alone. "Are you ok?" James and Alex asked at almost the same time. Sarai bunched herself up on the bed, holding her knees. "Maybe she's just hungry." Alex says. "She's not an animal!" James replies in almost a yell.
Chapter 5: Nightly outings.
"Alright, well Alex. Get out, now." James murmers. Alex punches him unfriendly in the arm and busts the door open, flinging it agaisnt the wall in a loud boom, then closing behind himself.
"I guess that could have been expected." James says. Sarai mumbles something under her breath and closes her eyes. It wasn't long before sleep took her over. She started to dream about home, how her brother and her used to fight, and how her parents used to be before he moved out. Sarai hears a crackle. She opens her eyes to see James putting some wood on the fire that was almost bernt out.
"Sorry, did I wake you?" He asks. "No-no, i'm fine." She says.
She closed her eyes again, but hearing anoher noise made her open them again, this time seeing James trying to open the door without her noticing. And when he notices that she sees, he casually asks her, "Going to get a midnight snack, want anything?".
"Em, no i'm ok." Sarai replies. He looks different standing there in the moonlight. His stocky build muscled, his hair combed almost as if he was going somewhere. His clothes were clean and didn't even have any dirt on them. Or a spec of forest-looking stuff on it. They stare at eachother for a moment, studying themselves, then James jumps off the tree out of view.
Sarai dismisses it as nothing and covers herself back up, watching with a slitted eye him jumping down the tree.
Her mind started to wander for awhile, keeping her awake. After about 20 minutes of mind-boggling thoughts, she sat on the edge the bed and just stared into the fire. Graceful flames, stones around and under it to keep it from spreading.
She stood up and thought about James, who now had been gone for about an hour. Sarai started for the door and then down the tree, carefully placing her foot where James told her to the previous days. She hits the grass with a thump and looks around at the other treehouses. Deserted. Nobody here. Gone, everybody is gone. Except her.
And with a bit of panic, she picks a direction at random and starts walking that way hollering James's name.
"James!"
"James!"
She reapeats and shouts. No answer.
"James!" She tried now with a hollowed voice.
Sarai suddenly smelled something odd, almost like...
"Smoke!" She said aloud.
And she instantly knew what that meant, fire.
She started in that direction, knowing that if there's fire, there's people.
"James!" She tries once more.
No answer.
She stumbles on a tree branch and her ankle twists in pain. "Ouch!" She crys a bit, but limps on. Leaves covered her, as well as dirt and mud. Sarai does an amry-crawl like movement to get around, trying to ease the pressure on her ankle. The more she moved, the better she could see the smoke rising from the trees. When she gets just close enough, she hides behind a bush, but peeks through the foliage, noticing people, sitting with swords, around a fire. Doing an odd "Ommm" noise, looking like they are meditating almost.
She looks around the big circle of people, and notices Alex. Alex? Why would he be here? She ponders. Sarai looks around the circle again and notices James. "Jam-"
She was suddenly sprawled on the ground before anything could escape her lips. Barrled over, she screams, and is spotted by the people sitting acrossed the fire.
Chapter 6: Malicious Return
--- Almost instantly the world exploded around her; she heard James's battle cry and sounds of swords inflicting horrid scars. Sarai struggled for freedom under his tight grasp with no success. He put his hand on her chest and got a clothe from his back pocket. With advantage of her arms being free, she punched his nose, making blood pool out.
Too scared to scream or shout; she fought harder than ever, looking for any sort of weapon. Before she could start to make sense, the boy on top of her pulled the cloth over her nose and mouth and sprayed something on the cloth, forcing her to inhale.
Sarai held her breath as long as she could. The boy started pressing on the cloth, forcing it down on her face.
Whatever this spray was, it was making her woozy. Sarai's eyes started blur and she was confused. After she stopped fighting out of confusion, the boy blindfolded her.
And she was out into the abyss of darkness.
--
When she awoke, she was on a boat. Not blindfolded, but in handcuffs. The boat was long and slender, like a canoe.
She arched her back to see that someone else was on the boat, not making a sound.
"He-hrll-h" She tried speaking, but it came out as nothing intelligent.
He glanced at her in knowing she was trying to say something, but ignored her.
"He-hey-herl" she tried her tongue once again.
"Look, I was supposed to kill you today." He murmered without making eye contact.
Sarai was still disoriented; so the way she understood him was something of dying.
"Th-the wha..?" She tried once more but knew it was pointless.
"Stupid girl, I'm saving your a**, I'm taking you to Northern territory."
Sarai just sat in patience as he talked to her about nonsense she couldn't make out what he was even saying.
Soon enough, he got to the shore of someplace. A tall male blonde boy stood in waiting as he docked the boat. The blonde boy took her hand and led her out and she collapsed onto the ground. And with that, the boy in the boat let her free of the shackles.
"I'll just carry her, don't worry about it." Someone muttered.
The boy in the boat left after she got out and sped away.
The blonde boy started caressing Sarai's hair as she fought for some intelligible thoughts to come to mind.
The shore of the lake lashed quietly against the blonde boy's feet as he sit on a rock with sarai in his arms.
He gently stood and laid her on her back on the ground. He went to the shore and cupped his hands for some water to flow into his palms. After he got the water, he went back to sarai and started to let it flow on her face.
Sarai laid unfighting and out of energy.
And suddenly the blonde boy had a name.
Chapter 7: Rehab
-- "James..?" She said softly.
"Yes... It's me, your ok now," he started. "That gas really played with your brain, didn't it?"
She nodded, and tried to rise to her feet. Sarai felt paralyzed, nothing would move.
"Don't move around too much, it'll make your muscles tense." He says shyly.
He picked her up and she wrapped her arm around his neck with his hand supporting her legs.
James carried her to the stream and gently started to put her body in the water.
She started to struggle, she thought he was going to drown her. Sarai started to draw and splash and kick at random.
James put his hands under her legs and her neck, supporting her at knee-deep freezing water.
She immediately felt comforted and stopped fighting. The fridged water made her muscles freeze up, then relax. Her brain was coming back to her and started to think again.
"Ready? I'm going to dip your head, 3," Sarai shook her head no. "2, 1" he dipped her head and she wriggled free of his arms and started swimming, laughing. She spit water from her mouth and started going under water.
"Funny, just 10 minutes ago you couldn't move, look at you now." He laughs and says.
She smiles and says "Thanks.". For some reason she blushed, but went under the water to hide it. James swam too, pretending to be a shark with a stick hanging out of the wster over his head.
She giggled hotly, that was when she noticed a large cut on his left arm.
"You have a cut on our left arm, we should probably look at that." She laughed, remembering his concern for her when they first met.
"Nah, it will heal with some Rever, but my priority was you when I heard you were kidnapped. " James said.
"Kidnapped? I don't remember that." She mumbled.
"The southern clan kidnapped you right when they knew we had you. After they had you, it took weeks for us to get you back and eventually had to negotiate 5gallons of blackberries. Good thing Feral is my old friend and brought you back here when he was supposed to kill you." James said.
Sarai was confused once again.
"The gas took over your mind, Sarai, it'd be impossible for you to know what was going on in those few weeks." He murmered.
"Odd." She commented.
Chapter 8: Raiding territory
---
"Funny how life works, one day i'm home alone and another i'm swimming in a giant lake in the middle of the forest." Sarai says.
James threw his head back in laughter. "I know, how did you originally plan to survive out here? Especially the cold winters?" He asked.
"I had a backpack full of stuff for survival before that hooligan of a boy either stole it, or just when I ran." She says.
He made a puff noise, as if letting out breath, like a Pffft.
Sarai punched his shoulder friendily, "I don't think I could have made it this far without you, to be honest."
James started wading to the shore, Sarai followed.
He took some moss off a nearby tree and wiped down his face with it, then handed it to Sarai.
"We'd best be going, Alex might send search parties since I told him i'd be back around 3." He said.
Sarai nodded and went in the direction James started going, and with dripping wet clothes, more or less, trudged.
Camp wasn't so far from the stream, so they didn't bother to change just yet.
Sarai stopped in her tracks and froze on the spot. James must've heard it too because he ceased his bow, prepared for attack.
"Go slow." He murmered.
When they got closer to camp they were at army-crawl peeking through the foliage to see that their camp had been raided.
James cursed under his breath as the raiders stand there in victory, rejoicing in their new amount of food that was in the storage.
"Shh." James almost whisled to Sarai.
Sarai laid her weight on her elboes and looked through also, seeing the unfamiliar and unfriendly faces.
The clear leader of the Southern Clan shouted something to another and with that, a boy comes out in handcuffs around his ankles and wrists.
The leader smacked his face, but the prisoner didn't look up.
"Talk!" He shouted, then kneed him.
The prisoner let out an "Ooof." And looked up.
"Alex." They both whispered.
"No talking, prisoner!" The leader shouted and punched his stomache area.
"Look!" The leader yelled randomly in the forest, "We have your precious second in command, idiotic Northerners!"
James watched with horror as they did horrible things to Alex.
Alex cried in pain and huffed from his stomache being punched out of breath.
His face oozed with blood.
Sarai could see Jame's muscles tensing to strike with all in his power, but does nothing, knowing capture could mean death.
The Southern Clan cheered as Alex was beaten to a pulp.
James was obviously thinking, Sarai didn't know what. But something bright would sure come in to his brain.
The guards shoved Alex onto the dirt, facefirst and ribkicked him numerous times.
The leader gestured for the guards to leave him and get someone else.
This time, they brought out someone she didn't know, a very skinny brown-black-haired boy was taken aback when he saw Alex's condition at his feet.
The guards forced the skinny boy into a Prisoner Of War position and he cried out, screaming even. "Help!" He cried, but nobody helped, the Southern Clan just cheered the Leader and the Guards on.
Sarai looked over at James who was tearing up, and for the first time, saw he had no plan whatsoever.
"James?" She whispered, no answer, but a tear fell from his eye.
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