Beyond the Forest
When I finally return to the land of the living, I find myself lying on the forest floor. I taste blood and notice my face is covered in the stuff. The sun is directly overhead, so it looks to be about noon. I survey my surroundings as I try to remember what happened. The ground is stained crimson, leading to the body of the manticore about ten meters away. Oh god, that's right, the manticore. I slowly stand up, and I notice my armor is lying next to me, with a huge break in the back that looks like it's been hastily glued back together.
I check myself for injuries and see that my leg and torso are wrapped in bandages. Not torn clothing like we use back at camp, but actual cloth bandages. I put it to the back of my mind and retrieve the knife from the creature’s eye socket. After wiping the blood from the steel blade, I use it as a mirror. My lower lip is swollen and I have a black eye, but my face is completely clean. I try not to think about it as I go about skinning and de-meating the beast. I walk back towards the camp with an immense lion's pelt, a bag of steak, a large spiky scorpion's tail, and several sharp claws that will make great arrowheads.
When I get back to the hut, I see Cat making a necklace of wildflowers she found nearby. Her smile turns to concern when she sees my bandages and she engages ‘child-asking-million-questions-mode.’
"Oh my god, did you get hurt? Are you okay? Where were you? Did you get anything?"
"Whoawhoawhoawhoa, slow down! I'm fine. I was attacked by a monster, but I killed it. I got knocked out, and when I came to, I was all doctored up."
She grabs my arm. "You need to be more careful! I don't know what I would do without you! Hey, where'd you get that pretty feather?"
"What feather?" She reaches and pulls a large, butter yellow pinion from my chest pocket. "I have no idea where that came from; I don't even know of a creature with yellow feathers that big! Then again, this crazy forest has all kinds of monsters."
"Maybe it was your guardian angel!" Cat suggests with a gasp. "When you woke up, your wounds were treated, right? Maybe she saw you fight the monster and healed you when you got hurt!"
"Yes, I'm sure that's it.” I stick the feather behind her ear as she smiles with childish naivete. “If it really is a guardian angel's feather, I want you to have it. Maybe it'll protect you when I'm not around." That night we feast on manticore stew and blackberries, and its pelt proves to be an excellent blanket.
"Umm... Where'd the ocean go?" Cat asks worryingly. As I turn to respond, everything stops. The plane's engine, the static on the radio, the front propeller, and our hearts just stop. We sit in stunned silence for what feels like hours before we drop like a stone towards the forest below.
Before I realize what I'm doing, I grab a parachute and thrust it towards Cat. "CAITLYN!" I scream, wind rushing past our ears, "Put this on and JUMP, I’ll be right behind you!" She nods in understanding and does as I told her. I turn back to Troy as a parachute lands in my arms. Troy is buckling his seatbelt and curling into a ball. "What are you doing? We have to get out of here!" Troy looks up at me with a grim expression on his face and mumbles something, but it's lost to the rush of air.
"WHAT?"
"THERE WERE ONLY TWO PARACHUTES!" Troy screams, tears welling in his eyes. "I didn’t expect Caitlyn to come with us, I’m sorry! Just GO!"
But I don't go. I put on the parachute, grab my brother's arm, and reach for his seatbelt. "What the hell are you doing? GO!"
"I’m not going without you!" I scream back, my eyes now watering. “We can both go, just hold on tight!”
"One parachute can’t support both of us, dammit! You have Cat to think of, so just GO!" and at that, he shoves me out of the plane and out of his arms. I pull the cord, and a great white rectangle opens above me.
My parachute gets caught in the branches of a lofty tree, and I can see Cat a few trees away in a similar situation.
"Cat! Are you alright?" She nods in reply, just as the falling husk of aluminium crashes through the forest half a kilometer away.
I’m awakened the next morning by another one of those damned birds. I start to get up and notice a bowl of leftover stew and a handful of flowers sitting next to the sleeping mat. Cat had brought me breakfast in bed, just like I always did when she was sick. After scarfing down the kind gesture I head outside. The manticore had enough meat on its bones to ensure I wouldn't have to hunt for about a week. Good thing, too, because Cat insisted I get plenty of rest.
Cat is sitting outside, tending the fire. I thank her for the breakfast and start chopping wood for the pile. Looking at the logs, I remember my armor, with its sub-par repair job. I ask her to go out and find something to glue it with, like sap or nectar. Once she's gone, I return to my woodcutting.
After the pile has at least doubled in height, I decided to tackle a very annoying hole in the roof of our shack. I grab a bucket of mud and some scrap metal and climb to the top. I smear it over the hole and stick the scrap to it. I climb back down to collect some stones and return to the roof. After weighing down the metal to ensure it seals, I sit back and enjoy the view.
To the left, about fifty meters away, I see Cat trying to harvest some sap from a fallen pine tree. To the right, I see a small stone at the top of a nearby hill, but I try not to think about that. In front of me sits a huge mountain, several dozen kilometers away. Just as I start to climb back down, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. I turn back towards the mountain, and I can barely make out a small, yellow shape hovering through the treetops. I shrug it off as some kind of bird and go help Cat, who is now covered with sap and pine needles.
It takes about half an hour for us to get out of the trees. After we cut ourselves loose from our parachutes, Cat and I run over to the crash site. I tell her to stay back, as parts of the surrounding area are still on fire. Both of the plane's wings have been snapped off, and the hull is halfway embedded in the soft earth. Pulling my collar up over my mouth and nose, I run over to the door, wrench it open, and search for my brother.
"Troy? Are you alright?" I yell, trying to breath through the smoke. The only response is a shallow moan from the pilot's seat. I rush over to him and fight the urge to vomit. The control panel in front of him has collapsed onto his legs, crushing them. Two of his ribs have broken through the skin, and there is a deep gash in the side of his head. "Oh dear god, Troy! I've got to get you out of here!" I pull the dashboard off of his legs and unbuckle his seat belt. Grabbing him under the arms, I pull his limp form from the burning hull and stretch him out on the forest floor.
He's struggling to breath, but he grabs my collar. I hold my ear to his mouth as he coughs twice before whispering, "Talk... Cat..." I yell for Cat to come over. She looks at Troy with unease as she holds his bloody hand and puts her ear close to his lips. He tells her something too faint for me to hear and goes limp. I stop trying to hold back the tears as I desperately pound his chest, but it doesn’t do any good.
"He's... gone." I close his eyes and straighten his jacket. I can tell Cat is struggling not to cry. She’s stronger than I am sometimes. "He died trying to save us. If he hadn't steered the plane away at the last minute, we would have been crushed." Cat gently kisses the cheek that is not covered in blood. "What... what did he say?"
Cat is on the verge of tears. "He said... take care of my little brother for me."
Cat spent the evening putting out the fires and cleaning up as I dug his grave at the top of a hill and marked it with a pillar-shaped stone I found nearby. Cat put some wildflowers on the fresh soil and we wrap ourselves in a parachute. That was our first night in this horrible place.
God knows it wouldn't be our last.
I swear there will be ponies in the next chapter, just be patient.
Bless your face, if you sneezed while reading this bless you.
Peace off!