(Photo by Todd Trapani)

There was no sleep for Nis that night. All she could think about was getting as far away from that place as quickly as possible. She’d almost left the baskets and the fish she’d caught but had enough sense not to abandon such valuable things. With the moon fully risen into the sky, the forest took on a dull gray hue that seemed to meld everything together, making it difficult to judge how far away anything was. There were mountains in front of her and she knew that on the other side of them were the Unexplored Wastes. She had no idea how far away those mountains were, however, or how difficult a trek it would be to cross them, but her mind was set. She’d find one of Mel’s old refuges that she’d kept secret from everyone else and then…

Every time Nis reached that point in her thinking she had to push all of her thoughts away and just focus on moving through the forest. It terrified her, not knowing what she was going to do, almost as much as Skav had terrified her. Mel, from whose life Nis was drawing heavily to survive, would have been content to live out her life as a hermit, perhaps, but Nis was not Mel.

By the time the sun began to rise Nis was exhausted. The muscles in her legs burned from the amount of running and hiking she’d done through the night and her lungs begged for relief. She knew she couldn’t keep going much longer without a break and so she finally allowed herself to stop. Even still, she didn’t allow herself to rest. Instead, she set about gutting and preparing the fish she’d caught. If left alone for too long in the warmth and humidity of the day, the fish would certainly spoil.

Fortunately, this was something that she was quite familiar with doing and didn’t have to rely on memories from a past life. With the fish prepared, Nis gathered up some decaying tree bark and broke it into pieces. She added a few leaves and then lit it on fire with her flint. From there she added larger sticks, built up a decent fire, and then built up a bed of coals to began cooking the fish. While she waited she nibbled on the bit of cheese she still had left over from the day before.

Not too far from where she sat, Nis spied a patch of wild lettuce. Not far from there was the leafy top of a tuber she knew was edible as well. Before long, Nis had turned her stale scraps into a proper meal. The tuber was mashed and Nis melted the cheese into it for both added flavor and moisture. The wild lettuce was naturally sweet and paired well with the fish. She left the dried meat in her pouch for now, not knowing when her next meal might be.

A full stomach did wonders for moral and although Nis wouldn’t soon forget the awfulness of the night before, she at least felt safe and content for the moment. Her meal done, Nis stood up and looked around. The stream wasn’t far from where she was. Even in her panic last night she had known not to stray too far from her source of fresh water. She strode over to it, fish baskets in hand, and waded out into the shallow stream. She anchored the baskets into place and then set about washing her face. As the layers of sweat and dirt came away she felt as though a weight was lifted from off her back. The cool water ran down her neck and before she knew it, she was submerging herself face first into the stream, letting the water rush in around her. She splashed around for a while, giddy and unable to say why, before settling back down and floating on her back. She held onto reeds like little anchors to prevent her from floating down the stream and for a long while she stayed like that.

“That cloud looks like a cart,” Nis mused aloud to herself.

The sky was mostly clear but as she watched the cart-like cloud advance along the sky a number of other clouds began to gather in behind it.

“That one’s someone walking,” she said, “and that one’s a dog.”

Watching clouds was something that most of her past lives had enjoyed doing. She wasn’t sure how long she lay like that, floating in the stream and watching the clouds, but she suddenly became aware of how dark some of those clouds were becoming as they ran into the distant mountains and were forced upward. Flashes of lightning soon began to spread among the clouds and Nis knew she was about  to be caught out in a storm. There wasn’t any time for her to build a shelter so she gathered up her things, surprised to find a pair of fish in the baskets when she picked them up, and began searching upstream for anything that might provide her with any sort of cover.

Thunder boomed, albeit still some distance away, when she found a large, fallen tree. The tree, when it had fallen, hit against another tree and got caught in its boughs preventing it from falling all the way to the ground. The trunk of the tree was a couple feet wide and created a spot, down near where the tree had broken, where Nis figured she could crouch down and take shelter from the storm. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better than nothing.

As though it had been waiting for Nis to find shelter, the sky opened up and rain began to pour down a torrential rain the moment Nis was situated beneath the fallen tree. It was such a heavy rain that wherever the droplets hit the ground they cast up a spray of mud. Smaller plants began to get uprooted as rivulets of runoff cut their way along the ground. As suspected, her shelter wasn’t perfect. The rain water that hit the fallen tree ran down along the trunk and although most of it carried on past Nis, a decent amount of the water ran down and dripped onto Nis. Still, it was better than being out in the storm completely unprotected.

Nis had a decent view of the stream and was alarmed by how quickly it began to swell and overflow its banks. There was a general slope away from the mountains but the only hills were at the base of the mountain. Even where Nis sat wasn’t more than a few feet higher than the level of the stream. If it kept rising it wouldn’t take long before she’d need to start swimming. Several memories from a dozen different past lives came to mind, all about floods and being caught in them.

“High ground,” she told herself.

As she reluctantly crept out from beneath the tree she was greeted by the pelting rain, momentarily blinding her. Every time she tried to open her eyes they would be struck by countless rain drops that stung her eyes. She event felt as though some of the drops were leaving welts on her skin. However, as she felt water beginning to well up around her feet and she realized she was now standing in the rising stream, Nis bowed her head and, shielding her eyes with her hands as best she could, began to rush up hill towards the foothills.

The ground was barely supporting her weight and she was fairly certain that had it not been for the fallen branches and other forest litter adding their support and spreading out her weight that her feet would be hopelessly sinking into the mud. It was all she could do to keep ahead of the flood. Every time she stopped to catch her breath the rising stream would begin to catch up to her. Everywhere she looked that wasn’t uphill was turning into a torrent of water. The higher she ran the fewer trees there were to block her view and she saw other streams running down from the mountains and flooding into the forest.

The lightning, which had taken a brief pause, came back now with renewed energy and it was no longer distant. Bolts of blinding white flashed all around, sometimes so close that she felt her head buzz and her toes tingle. So loud was everything around her that Nis couldn’t even hear herself scream when a particularly nearby tree was struck by lightning and exploded, throwing splinters everywhere. 

It didn’t seem to matter how fast she ran or how high she climbed, the flood was always right behind her. Nis had only just begun to recuperate from the night before when the storm hit and her body was not letting her ignore that fact. Muscles aching, she gasped for air but did not allow herself to stop running. She could see the foothills of the mountain more clearly now and knew they were within reach. If she could just keep this pace for another few minutes, she would be safe.

Those next few minutes were a blur of pain and desperation and seemed to last for an eternity but at last she was climbing up the steep slope of the foothills. She pressed on a bit farther to make sure she would stay above the flood but could move at a more relaxed pace now. Her throat felt raw from how hard she’d been breathing and her legs were unsteady beneath her.

She was so soaked and tired that when she reached the first plateau she didn’t bother looking for shelter and instead just collapsed onto the ground, thankful for the respite, such as it was. Looking down into the valley below she could just make out the edge of Duran. How many miles exactly were between her and the city was uncertain but the city appeared small from where she was.

“Hope you’re okay, dad,” she said while trying to see if she could pick out which spot of land was the one her parents tended. “And mom,” Nis added, feeling guilty for not thinking of her mom as readily as she had her dad.

She’d never had a particularly strong relationship with either of them, and she regretted that now. It was too late to change that, however, and so she sat there and watched the storm and subsequent flood wash over the valley. The storm lasted well into the night and when it finally finished raining the thunder and lightning kept on going until dawn finally pushed back the clouds.

Nis was so exhausted now, not having slept for two days, that she just lay there as the sun rose. The warmth made her aware of just how cold she had been. The flood in the valley below was still draining away but at least it didn’t seem to have reached Duran. With her concern for her parents resolved, Nis curled up on the muddy ground and fell asleep to the sounds of the mountain song birds calling to the dawn.