Enoch Crosslin (crossedwire) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-01-25 22:36:00 |
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Current mood: | suspicious |
Entry tags: | cross, helena, z - 1st tribe - day 04 |
Unexpected
Who: Cross and Helena
Where: the forest, not far from the trees where the others have been sleeping
When: Week 1, Day 4, mid-morning
What: Cross frowns on these shenanigans
Rated: PG
The second Cross had opened his eyes, he'd gone from a fairly sound sleep to a dead run. The reason for that was because he had not awakened in his chair in the living area of his flat, as he'd anticipated. He'd awakened on the ground, damp and chilly, and the air was heavy with a thick mist. That alone was enough to jolt him to his feet, his heart slamming in his chest. At first he'd entertained the idea that maybe he was having a nightmare, but once he'd gotten several yards into the concealing trees and stopped to assess the situation, he didn't think so.
Cross was not the imaginative sort. He was practical and clay-footed, and there was no way his brain could have conjured the odd-looking trees beneath which he was standing. He'd stood for quite a long time beneath one, listening for any sound that could be heard and trying to deal with the logical portion of his brain, which was telling him firmly that this could not be happening. He'd gone to sleep in the United Kingdom-- London, to be exact-- in a flat that was just this side of shabby, and he'd awakened... where? Somewhere with peculiar looking trees and no sounds to indicate that there was anything man-made anywhere around.
He was wearing what he'd had on when he'd fallen asleep, which was work pants, a t-shirt, and his shoes and socks; he'd noticed that his reading glasses were hanging from the neck of his shirt where he'd clipped them, and they were wet with dew. It was that tiny detail that had driven home to him that he wasn't dreaming this or making this up. He only wished he was. Cross did not deal well with sudden change. He liked to go from point A to point B, to dot the i's and cross the t's, to know what to expect... and he most decidedly did not like... bats?
When the creature flew at his face, that was as close as he could get to identifying it, and his hand had flown out and slapped it away. His expression had not changed, and he hadn't made a sound. He'd calmly wiped his glasses on the tail of his shirt and stuck them on his face, then started to explore the shaded and seemingly empty forest where he'd ended up. A carefully stifled panic had begun to build in him when he didn't recognize a single tree-- not that he'd ever been a Boy Scout, but how could every single bit of foliage be unrecognizable?
Finally, once he'd worked his way around to the far end of the clearing, staying hidden in the trees because that seemed safer to him, Cross thought he heard voices. He stood very still, one icy blue eye peering around the trunk of one of the unidentifiable trees, hoping to see something that made any sort of sense. Someone walked past a couple of yards away, too quickly for him to get a good look at them. He had his pocket knife out, blade extended and clutched in his good hand, the hand with the missing fingers braced against the tree trunk as he peered out in the other direction.