Chapter 2: The Clearing

An unexplored foresty area in which a great river was flowing through. To be more accurate. This grand forest was halved by that forest. The first consisted of a few massively large trees and, more frequently, shorter trees. The leaves were all very dark black, and each was about the size of a human head. The ground level was full of bushes and large knee-high grass.

In this massive, beautiful forest, there was one tiny area where the forest seemed to have been slightly cut down. It was the size of about a football field. Although it seemed strange to have such an area, it was not artificial. This strange area was located on the river bank. In that tiny clearing, a man lay unconscious on the river bank.

His legs were still in the river, but most of his body was on the dry land. This man was Foin, who, although in a dire state, managed to survive. As soon as he regained his senses, he coughed out a large quantity of water and then took a deep breath of this strangely fresh air of the first.

The air was not polluted at all; there was no smog. No cars either to taint the air. It was such fresh air that, for a brief moment, Foin felt revitalized. But that moment didn't last long, as, soon, the pain of his injuries had quickly reappeared. He growled on the ground and then slowly crawled out of the river onto the tall grass.

"Where am I? Also, how am I alive? I should have died in that river..."

Foin mumbled as he looked around the area. Fortunately for him, his bag was still on his back, in which he still had his pullover and the fruits and vegetables he had bought, although they were most certainly squashed.

As he was crawling, he was stunned by the fact that although she felt great pain, his bones were relatively in one piece, and his shot leg was the only one which he couldn't use at all; everything else seemed to be relatively fine.

Once he was fully out of the water, he sat up, put his bag down, and just stared at his shot leg. He was still in such a shock that he felt a strange puls of pain cumming from his wound. Still, he was unable to comprehend how he managed to survive such an event.

"I don't know where I am... but if I want to survive, I must prepare something... I am sure my phone has died from the water, so I can't call for help... The best I can do is survive and wait for someone to come here... But I have never seen this area..."

He took a deep breath, and with a determined movement, he pulled his bag closer to him. Inside, he found his pullover, which he quickly pulled out so that it could dry faster, and then looked at the squashed items he had. A few peppers, many smaller potato pieces, a bottle of water, a bottle of some fizzy sweet drink, the flower seeds he planned to plant at home, a kilo of bread, and a used lighter.

"Well... If I can't find something, I will most certainly die of starvation."

With a loud sigh, Foli grabbed a handful of grass and pulled them out. He proceeded to clear a larger circle around him. He placed the collected high grass into one large pile. He could move slowly due to him being forced to crawl, and it took a few minutes to perform. Once he was finished, he grabbed a piece of grass, closed his eyes, and, after taking a deep breath, he took a tiny bite.

Since he knew that he had barely any food available, he needed to find something which would allow him to survive, even if it meant barely. Knowing that he would not be able to move around easily, he needed to test the closest, onhand item he had, and as a result, he started by tasting grass.

Much to his disbelief, the grass was quite sweet. Unlike he had expected, although its taste was not perfect, in a dire situation, he would be able to consume grass.

"Alright... This was better than I anticipated..."

Knowing that the grass he had torn down was not that bad, he started expanding his little circle. His pile of grass grew little by little, and soon, he was finally finished. In his current situation, even tearing grass was quite challenging, so he took a longer break.

He slowly crawled back a few meters to the river and carefully took a sip of the water; it was edible, and just like the grass, it was sweet.

"This is one hell of a clear river; I haven't seen anything like that... how the hell did I end up here? If there were some sort of filtering system to make the water this clear, then I would have been most definitely noticed or died there."

After taking a sip of refreshing cold water, he crawled back to his bag and took out a smaller bag containing the squashed peppers. He looked at them with a saddened expression. He remembered that, in the current world, how expensive even these few were. So he sat up and started collecting the seeds from the pepper. It was quite long as it had a lot of seeds, but soon, he ended up having a handful of seeds.

He pondered what to do with them and then decided that since it was the middle of Spring, he planted them. Using his hand, he dug six larger holes and divided his seeds among them.

"Knowing my damn luck, I will die long before these grow, but it felt great to plant them... I guess I will plant everything else as well... Maybe people will notice that someone was here."

When his new idea came, he quickly took out some of the flower seeds, from which he counted thirty-three; he grabbed three, put them into a hole, and kept the rest. Also, he grabbed a few larger broken potato parts and planted them in two holes.

Once he had planted six peppers, two potatoes, and a single flower, a wide smile appeared on his face. Despite being in such a difficult and unknown situation, he still managed to smile. Planting those seeds made her forget all the problems he was already facing and even those that he would face later.

As he looked up at the sky, he noticed that it was already late; the sun was going down, so he pulled a large amount of grass onto himself to use as a blanket, put his pullover under his head and closed his eyes. This was his first day in this new environment, yet it went by faster than any other day he had experienced before.