Enoch Crosslin (crossedwire) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-04-09 23:29:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | okay |
Entry tags: | cross, helena, z - 1st tribe - day 14 |
Quiet In The Dark
Who: Helena and Cross
When: Just about sunset
Where: The stand of spindly trees, half a day from the grazer island.
What: Making camp for the night and spotting something incredible.
Rating: PG
Helena sighed with relief when she shrugged her pack off of her shoulders. Sure, it was only bedding and a few bits and bobs but over the day it had grown rather sodden, weighed down by water. She rubbed away the dig lines from the straps, grateful to be free of it for now. Her feet ached, her legs and back. She was not looking forward to a night sitting awake in a tiny tree.
"So there's a creek just over there?" She jacked a thumb around the edge of this little mini-forest. None of the spindle trees were taller than twenty feet. It was dark and shadowy beneath them though because their branches interwove to form a nearly impenetrable roof. She was fairly sure that, despite the on-again-off-again rain they had all day, it would be fairly dry in their perches tonight. She unzipped the orange hoodie and hung it over a low branch in the hope that it would dry out a bit. "I'm just going to go over there and freshen up a bit." She knew she'd be within sight if he wanted to spot her so she wouldn't get too fresh. More than anything she just wanted to gulp down some water.
"Yeah," Cross told Helena when she asked if there was a creek just beyond their sight. He was in the process of taking off his own makeshift pack and trying to decide if it was worth the bother to unroll it and air it out a bit. If he did, he'd have to put it up higher in the tree where the Laughers could not reach it when they made their inevitable approach. He didn't know if the animals would be at all interested in a cloth comforter but he couldn't afford to lose it, so he wasn't planning to take any chances. "Alright," he added, nodding to her, figuring he'd go over there once she was done. He set his bedroll down and took the opportunity to stretch, his arms held up above his head, then turn his neck from one side to the other, wincing a little when it popped.
With a nod, Helena made dusty tracks straight for the stream. There was very little sweetgrind growing here. The animal paths were thick and they had pounded the ground dry. She wondered what it was about the spindly trees that drew in animals. She thought it must be the shelter but she couldn't discount there was some quality to the trees that they didn't know. Maybe their bark was nutritious? She'd certainly noticed a lot of scratching and gnawing on them. She jogged down a slight embankment and crouched at the edge of the burbling little brook. She ladled hand after hand of water to her lips, gulping down the cold water. It was when she stood up that she caught sight of them. They were across the brook, dug into the mud like someone might set them when they intended to keep them upright. Her eyes widened and she stumbled over her feet, not minding that they were soaked afresh as she crossed the brook. She reached out and picked up two one litre plastic water bottles. Exactly the kind that you could buy in an grocery store or convenience store in America. Their labels had been peeled off and they were dusty and empty, the glue along the seam of where the label was fixed was brown. But the caps were still on them! "Oh my god!" Her head whipped up as she grasped them, feeling that they were in fact real. She looked this way and that. Who could have left them there? Still, they had learned not to look these kinds of gift horses in the mouth. She quickly unscrewed the caps, making sure to set them high up away from the water and washed them out before carefully refilling them. Once that was done, she capped them both tightly and headed back toward the camp.
Cross had been idly munching on some citruscress he'd had tucked into a pocket, gazing up into the nearest trees at different angles to see if there were any that seemed preferable to the others for sleeping. He was not looking forward to an entire night spent sitting up and clinging to spindly branches, but he figured they could sleep whenever they felt like it once they reached the island. Hopefully, it would be safe with no predators to watch out for. He thought he heard Helena's voice, and he was actually starting toward the stream just in case she'd been calling him for some reason when she met him halfway. "What?" he asked, then his eyes fell on the water bottles. "You found those here?"
She nodded and hefted both bottles up for him to see. They were large enough that she couldn't even get her small hand around one. "Isn't it fantastic?" Her eyes danced with excitement at the find. "These are just as good as finding blankets." She might have been physically exhausted but this find seemed to reguvinate Helena's spirits. She beamed at Cross as she handed him a bottle, cool condensation running down the sides of the plastic. "One for you, one for me." They had discussed having a fire on the edge of the trees tonight but now that she could see them, she wasn't so sure if it was safe. For one, everything was fairly damp. For another, it would surely draw the attention of the laughers and the way they liked to bowl rocks through camp fires could cause a fire in their tightly woven trees. It would force she and Cross to the ground which would surely mean death.
He smiled as she handed him a bottle, an expression that for once didn't seem grudging or overly thought out. "Right now I'd say it's better than findin' blankets," he remarked. This was going to be invaluable to them both tomorrow as they finished the walk to the island and on the way back. "They were just sitting by the stream?" As they walked back toward the trees, he uncapped his bottle and drank off a third of it; he could refill it before they left in the morning. His mind was busy pondering what it might mean that there'd been two undamaged bottles sitting out in the open. He was sure Helena had rinsed them, but even with that they must have been quite clean before she'd gotten to them. What had happened to the people who'd first used these bottles?
Helena nodded, still looking incredulous and pleased. "Yeah, sort of dug in bottom first." A thoughtful look came across her face. "I figured that it was something anyone would do with am empty bottle they didn't want to lose, you know? Screw it into the mud, upright, so you didn't get gunk on the top where you put your mouth. But they'd been there a while. They were dirty and caked on the outside." She stepped into the shade of the stand of spindle trees and sighed. The rain had stopped and it hadn't been incredibly bright all day but still, she found herself looking forward to cool darkness, despite the laughers and their sleeping conditions for the night. Maybe it was just a touch of dehydration. She unscrewed the cap on her own bottle and took a few more sips. The sun was sinking fast in the west. They were so far from home that despite the relative flatness of the land here there was no sign of the climber forest. She heaved a sigh when something in the distance caught her eye. There was movement on the western horizon. "Hey..." Helena reached for Cross's arm. "Are those grazers out there?" The group of animals was throwing a hefty cloud of dust as they ran which made her believe they were moving quickly in their direction.
"You cleaned 'em off good then," Cross remarked with a nod. He never would have thought they would've been that dirty. Not that it mattered for anything except that now they knew the bottles had probably been sitting there for a little while, at least. "Great find." He figured he'd stuff the bottle into his bedroll for the night since they wouldn't be able to use them up in the tree anyway. When Helena reached for his arm, at first he thought that something might be wrong, and one of his big hands covered hers as he looked in the direction she was indicating. "Yeah," he said slowly, wondering if something was chasing the animals. Laughers, maybe? But he didn't hear the familiar and hated sounds that the creatures made. "Grazers."
The herd was definitely headed in their direction and running hard. Helena could almost feel the ground shudder a little bit under all of their heavy hooves. "What are they running from?" She'd had the same thought, laughers. Especially since they were running from the west. Then again, the sun was still up. It was a red ball of flame on the western horizon. "I...I can't tell if something is chasing them, can you?" Did all grazers retreat from the sun like that? Maybe they were trying to make it to the island before the sun went down. That could be it.
Cross' head turned very slightly as he watched them go, and he was almost tempted to haul his glasses out of his pocket and put them on, though his distance vision was fine. There was a puzzled frown furrowing his brow. "Thought it was Laughers, but it's too early." The animals were surprisingly fleet for creatures that had seemed so placid, but he supposed any animal could hustle when pursued by a predator or if they were simply frightened by a turn in the wind. "Not another storm comin', I hope." He didn't think that was what it was. The atmosphere seemed to be stable now, and there were no ominous rumbles and practically no wind. He squinted, thinking that he saw something approaching just behind the fleeing herd. He took Helena by the shoulders and turned her slightly in that direction. "See that?"
She shaded her eyes with her hand from the weak fading beams of light. There was definitely something darker sliding over the land behind the herd. It was huge and silent, not kicking up any dust at all. "What...is that? It's like a....it moves like....like a..." Her chin jerked upward and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. It wasn't as close behind the herd as she thought. In fact, it looked quite far away. If not the for the size of the shadow on the ground she would have thought that it was a bird like any other bird of prey. It glided, its wings at full extension, drifting through banks of cloud high above the earth. Its shadow vanished and faded and brightened from time to time but always, it stayed right on the heels of the grazers. "Is it a plane?" she asked stupidly, her mind trying to justify what it was seeing even though she knew it was no aircraft.
Cross' reaction to the sight of the bird that was too immense to even be real was to yank Helena back against his large, solid body as if he could somehow protect her that way if it spotted them. His own head tilted back as far as he could get it as he tried to take in what his eyes were seeing. It felt almost like being in a bad made-for-television movie with a low special effects budget... except he knew there was no way the bird could be anything but what it appeared to be. "Wings," he said, his voice choppy and almost flat. Belying his tone, his heart beat faster and his frame was tense as he tried to decide if he and Helena should take cover. The creature seemed solely interested in the grazers from what he could tell.
Helena's breath was knocked even further out of her chest when Cross thumped her back against him. She'd experienced being pressed against his body before but they had been relaxed in sleep and he hadn't seemed so much like a brick wall. A very tense brick wall. A trumpet of fear from the stampeding grazers brought her eyes back down from the bird who was just getting larger as it descended toward the earth. "Oh, shit Cross. They're running right toward us. They're headed for the trees!" She pushed at him, urging him to move, back up, somehow get them both out of the way of being run down.
Instinct kicked in then, jarring him out of the incredulity that had seized him, and Cross turned her around and practically shoved her up into the nearest tree. "Up!" he bit out, the exhortation unnecessary; Helena had as good a sense of self-preservation as anyone, and she knew they absolutely had to get out of the way. The grazers might or might not run so close to them in their mad flight, but he didn't want to take the chance on being trampled or scooped up by that... bird. It almost defied logic to call that thing a bird, but he knew it was. He hauled himself into the tree right next to hers and clung to the trunk with both arms, one side of his face pressed to it as he watched the creatures' stampeding progress.
She dropped her bottle on the ground, the creek water glugging into the sandy dirt as she freed both hands to grasp a branch over her head when he hoisted her in that direction. Barking her knees and shins she made it up between a gap in the lower branches and pulled her legs up. Not stopping there, she scooted over kept climbing up, as far as the branches supported her weight. The entire mass of trees shook as the leaders of the herd crashed into them, forcing their large bodies between the close trunks. She reached down to offer Cross a hand up once she was securely wrapped around a trunk.
Above them, the great bird was diving and it let out a piercing shriek like a falcon that was so loud, Helena thought her ears must be bleeding. The grazers trumpeted in urgency at the sound and their thrashing in the woods grew that much more frantic. "Shit, shit, shit" she whispered under her breath, eyes shut tightly. When she opened them again, all light had been blocked out from above and she had a clear enough view of the land in front of the stand of trees to make out one trailing graze. Its eyes rolled in terror as a set of unimaginable huge talons closed around its midsection.
There was not much that scared Cross, but it would have been foolhardy not to be very wary of something that large and that dangerous. He was absolutely still, his face turned up to watch the plummeting dive of the bird, and his chin lowered just enough to keep his eyes on it as it began to sweep of the flagging grazer. He clung to the tree even more tightly as he pondered what it might be like to be pulled into the air, seized, captured. Flying when you had never had any expectation of such or even the ability to understand what was happening to you. Pragmatic though he was, he had to at least briefly pity the grazer, which was being rapidly borne away.
Much like Cross, Helena stilled completely, afraid to even breathe until the bird and its cargo were out of sight of their perch. Like a field mouse waiting out the presence of an owl. Once it was gone all of her breath whooshed out of her. The trees they sat in knocked and wobbled as the large animals milled as best as they could in the tight quarters. It was still almost sundown and they had a ways to run before they were safe. Helena figured they must be aware of that because the large beasts backed out the way they came in. She caught sight of brindled hides, smoky blue greys and patchy cream and brown that reminded her of pinto mustangs. They were odd looking animals, something both familiar and different. Now that the immediate danger was past, Helena could see the docile nature reemerge.
Cross' muscles didn't seem to want to unlock, as if they didn't realize that the current danger was over. He'd pressed one cheek against the bark of the tree so hard that he was sure there were pitted imprints in his face, and his heart insisted on thudding at an increased pace in his chest. He knew that Helena was safe next to him, so his eyes stayed fixed to the subsiding herd of grazers as they backed themselves out from under the trees. They were fascinating animals, unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Of course, most things here were like that. His light eyes turned to her finally, and he spoke one word in question form: "Alright?"
Pressing a trembling hand to her chest, Helena nodded, unable to find the words herself. Swallowing thickly and with more care than she ordinarily would have displayed, Helena squeezed back down into the ground. At first, her knees refused to solidify and she stumbled into one of the spindle tree trunks. The grazers were gone again, heading off at a good clip into the distance. She suspected they were going to make it to the island to rejoin the rest of the animals there. What on earth had they just witnessed? A massive monster, far more startling than the laughers, if that was possible. She crept to the edge of the stand of trees where the vast sky was streaked with red as the flaming sun sank the rest of the way below the horizon. Her foot nudged her now empty bottle of water which had somehow managed to survive the stampede. As she was straightened, her eye caught sight of something. Reaching out, she touched the strange hollow stalk and pulled back, amazed that it felt warm to the touch. It was just residual body heat, she told herself, and lifted the thing as though it weighed nothing. Light as a feather, she thought and then laughed. After all, it was a feather. "Cross, look," she turned to show him the three foot gray feather that was mottled with brown and gold. Concrete evidence of what they had seen.
Cross had rallied himself and unclenched his arms from around the treetrunk as soon as Helena began climbing down. He figured they were about to be stuck up in the trees all night, and it made sense to make one last trip to answer calls of nature and stretch his legs while he could. His feet in their heavy work shoes hit the ground and he immediately turned his attention to Helena, who'd called his name. Something like the immense feather could awaken the boy in even someone of his age, as cynical as he could be; it was like something out of a boy's adventure tale. "Wouldn't Rowan get a kick outta that?" he asked, amusement in his tone, for some reason thinking of the pregnant girl's possible reaction to the feather. Maybe Helena would want to bring it back to show her.
She stroked a finger along the edge, watching it ripple like any other feather might when you followed along the grain. "I think she might! I think I'll try to keep it and show it to everyone. At the very least, it'll convince everyone that we weren't making it up." Chuckling, she bent and picked up the white cap of her bottle with her free hand. Screwing that back in place, she turned her attention back to the feather. "Why do you think we haven't seen any of these birds before?" They'd been to the grasslands a few times now. The sky was also open over the clayflats.
Cross gave her a wry look when she said showing off the feather would convince everyone they hadn't made the immense bird up. He didn't think either of them was the sort who'd come up with tall tales about fantastical creatures, and he didn't imagine anyone would think they were. Particularly him with his mostly silent and gruff stoicism. "Maybe they hunt at night?" he suggested. Really, he had no idea, and he didn't suppose there was any way for them to know for sure. "Be right back," he said with a nod, heading off to the cover of the nearby trees to take care of personal needs before they begun their long, long night up in the spindly trees that would serve as their bedroom.
Helena ducked around a stand herself after setting all of her items together. Taking care of a necessary thing herself, she returned to their packs and hoisted her heavy bedroll up onto the branches over head. It took some maneuvering and a little bit of climbing around precariously on the flexible interlacing branches but eventually she had her pillow in place, her water bottle firmly wedged within reach and her pack stowed. Casting a curious eye in his direction, Helena set her bottom on her pillow for some comfort and quietly watched Cross wind down for the night. Capable was the word that always floated through her mind when she watched him do anything. He moved with the surety of someone who knew what they were doing. Helena really liked that about him.
Cross returned and began gathering up his own items, bundling everything beneath one arm and hoisting himself up into the tree. His heavy body shook the branches as he climbed, and he was unable to attain much height due to the thinness of the tree's limbs. "Makes me miss the hammock," he mumbled, as close to a complaint as he would allow himself to get. He tied the bedroll up next to him and slightly higher than he planned to sit, situating it so he could rest his head on it once he got himself settled. He'd be cramped in the morning, just as all of them had been the first time they'd gone east. As he worked his makeshift ties around the trunk, his fingers hit upon something flat and leathery. His first instinct was to think it was a strange insect of some sort, but it seemed to be tied to the branch in the same way he was tying his bedroll. Balancing carefully, he untied what looked to be a small pouch with something hard inside it. Cross sat down, balancing himself carefully, and took out the item. He breathed surprised laughter, a brief sound that didn't contain much actual mirth. "Look at this," he said, holding it by the handle between two fingers. "Straight razor. Tied up in a tree." His brow furrowed.
Helena's brows shot up as she turned to see what he held out to her. "A straight razor? Like the old fashioned kind that men used to shave with?" Her dark eyes went immediately to Cross's face. He was fair coloured and even in the deepening shadows she could make out his thick scruff. Unlike some of the younger men back at the camp he had no trouble producing a beard. It was growing in thickly along his jaw and down his throat a little ways. She'd started to miss the stocky squareness of his jaw, as he'd had when she had first stumbled on him in the woods. "Do you know how to shave with one of those?" Would he want to? She supposed there was no actual reason for him to.
"Yeah," Cross said slowly, nodding his head. "I know how t'use one." The mentor who'd seen that he got to college had been close friends with a barber, and Cross had observed men being shaved with straight razors numerous times. "Wonder if the soap pods'd make enough lather?" he mused. He disliked wearing facial hair, but there hadn't been a great deal of choice; the pocketknife he had was not nearly sharp enough to shave a person's face no matter how many times he honed it on the rocks. "Guess I'm not the only one who'd be glad to see this." Despite his bland demeanor, he was pleased with this find, although he couldn't even begin to venture a guess as to why it was tied up in the tree.
Helena shook her head. "A razor tied up in the tree, right where you set up. Water bottles sitting there like they were waiting for me. Strange, isn't it?" Sort of like someone had left them to be found. She couldn't imagine anyone in their situation leaving behind precious tools. That idea just seemed ludicrous. "Wherever it came from, nice find." She smiled at him, adjusting the way she sat on her branch and sighed. "It's not so bad up here." It was getting harder and harder to see him as the light faded away. She thought, but she wasn't sure, that she heard the first faint laughter far, far away.
Cross put the razor away in its pouch and leaned up to tuck it into the very center of his bedroll; he had no intentions of losing track of it. The hair that was growing out on his face itched, and even though it helped keep the sunburn from completely taking over, he wanted to be rid of it. Tomorrow, as soon as they got to the island, he was going to take a few minutes to test it out. He settled himself back into place amidst the branches, preparing for night. "Nah," he said noncommittally when she said it wasn't so bad up here. He had the feeling she might change her mind after a few hours, but it wasn't worth discussing. Nothing they could do about it.
Smothering yet another yawn, Helena leaned over and found his knee. She noticed he was still warm from the walk, warm enough that she could feel it through the fabric of his cargos. All signs pointed to the fact that she was still feeling the effects as well and now that she wasn't moving, fatigue was racing toward her faster than the stampede had. "Thanks for coming with me, Cross." She didn't know what the walk would have been like without his company. It's not like they sang trail ballads or exchanged deep and personal secrets. They hadn't stopped to look at plants or animals or held hands while they walked. Yet, she truly felt as though he kept her company more than anyone else could have. That feeling of not being alone could be sermonized, if she felt like it. He had no choice but to sit there and listen to her, after all. Plus, she knew that he would take it all in if she chose to share. Instead, it was best summed up by her friendly, affectionate pat and left quiet in the dark.