The Second Night

The cold was worse in the morning. Nothing dramatic about it. Just present in a way that was not going to let me ignore it. My t-shirt was damp from the night sweat drying cold against my skin and my sweatpants were still wet at the hems from the grass. My socks had torn somewhere in the undergrowth the day before and my feet had scraped through the gaps. No shoes. No jacket. Nothing I had not woken up with.

I sat up from where I had slept against the log and assessed the situation, which is a generous word for sitting there and acknowledging that I was cold, hungry, and had no plan. The pond was nearby. I had found fruit. I had survived the night. That was the full inventory of things going for me.

The cold was the problem that needed solving first. Cold you can manage without a fire if you keep moving, but the wind had an edge to it that made standing still feel like a decision with consequences.

I started walking.

I was not looking for anything specific. More moving with the hope that the forest would offer something useful if I paid attention. This was not a skill I had coming in. It was more that I had no alternative.

It offered the bark about twenty minutes in. A tree with thick peeling bark that came off in long strips, fibrous and slightly flexible. I tested a piece between my hands. It bent without snapping, which was more than I had expected. I pressed it against my forearm. It held the warmth from my skin.

I started peeling. My hands were scraped raw by the second strip and I kept going. I gathered dry grass from a patch near the pond, some vines I found trailing between two trunks, a section of soft moss. I made three trips and laid everything out on the flat stone by the water like I knew what I was doing.

I did not know what I was doing. I started anyway.

Threading vine through bark in a way that holds together is harder than it sounds and I am not going to pretend I did it well. The first attempt fell apart when I lifted it. The second withstood but was too short. The third time I layered the bark pieces the way roof tiles overlap, each one covering the gap of the one before, and lashed the whole thing at intervals with vine. I lined the inside with moss because it was soft and because I did not have anything else.

It looked terrible. It smelled like wet leaves and the underside of a log.

When I pulled it over my shoulders the bark rustled loudly with every movement and the moss scratched at my neck and it hung past my knees at an uneven angle.

It was warm.

Not comfortable. Not warm in the way a coat is warm. Warm in the way that the wind stopped reaching my skin and the temperature stopped dropping and I stopped shaking. That kind of warm.

I stood there in my moss-lined bark cloak and felt genuinely ridiculous and also genuinely better than I had since waking up here, which was a strange combination.

Then I thought about the creature from the night before.

I had almost managed not to think about it all morning. The pale thing between the trees that had been there and then not been there. I did not know what it was or if there were more of them or what they wanted, but I had been in enough situations to know that waiting to find out was not a strategy.

I needed something to defend myself with.

I found a branch half-buried under some brush about ten minutes from the pond. Thick at one end, reasonably straight, the length of my arm plus a bit. I picked it up and it held my weight when I pressed down on it, which meant it was at least dense enough to be useful.

I used a sharp stone to work the tip. Scraping against wood is slow and it hurts your hands and you do not get much feedback on whether you are making progress until suddenly you are. I worked at it for a long time, stopping when my palms cramped, starting again. My nails tore twice. I kept going.

Eventually the end had a point. Not a fine point. A functional point. Something that would make the situation worse for whatever it was used against.

I stood up with the spear in one hand and the cloak hanging from my shoulders and looked at my own reflection in the pond.

I looked like someone's first attempt at drawing a feral person from memory. The cloak rustled. The spear was slightly too short for my height. My hair was a disaster.

I laughed. A real one, short and slightly helpless. I had not laughed since the field and this was not a happy laugh exactly but it was real and it came out before I could decide whether to let it.

I looked like an absolute idiot. But the cold had backed off and I had something in my hand that could stab.

I went back to the stone by the pond and sat down when the afternoon light started going orange. My side ached from a scratch I had gotten in the undergrowth, not deep but persistent. My hands were scored with small cuts. I drank from the pond and ate two more of the dark red fruits and a handful of berries and sat with my back straight and looked at the water.

The anger from yesterday was still there. I had not misplaced it. But it was sitting differently now, lower, less like something about to spill over and more like something settled in for the long term.

I thought about them. Not particularly. Just thought about them. Daiki's receipt in Haru's hand. Rui fumbling his notes. Aki's hand on the blanket close to mine and neither of us moving. The specific sound of the matcha latte hitting the table when it arrived. Small things. I went through them carefully like items in a list.

They were real. They had happened.

"I'll get back,"

I said to the water.

I did not know if that was true. I said it anyway, because the alternative was sitting with the possibility that I would not, and I was not ready to accept that yet.

The sun finished going down. I pulled the cloak tighter and stayed by the pond until the cold made it impractical and then found the log and sat with my back against it again.

Second night here and I was still standing. That was something. I guess.