The roiling grey clouds threatened rain, possibly even snow. Clarke looked up at them, throwing her head back and letting the crisp wind sting her cheeks and nose. She'd only ever read about snow: precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice. Scientific words didn't give her much towards imagining what snow would actually feel like and look like. On one hand, her insatiable curiosity begged the clouds to break open and send down their frozen load. On the other hand, she was alone in the woods, she had no food, no extra clothing and no place to sleep, and snow would surely bring about her death much sooner.
She dropped her head from the threatening sky. There it was again, that itch between her shoulder blades. She looked around the trees but only the leaves moved, rustling gently as if to show her there was nothing there. She'd had the feeling that she was being watched since she left Camp Jaha. It could have been Bellamy, following her to make sure she was alright or trying to convince her to go back, but she didn't think so. She knew what his eyes felt like on her back and this felt far too unpleasant for that.
She shook it off and began her trudging hike again. She'd come quite a distance in the two days or so since she'd left the camp. She'd been steadily climbing. It hadn't been a conscious thought but once, when she paused, and looked back down the slope which she'd been climbing, she realized that she'd turned towards the hardest path without even thinking. Raven would say she was trying to punish herself.
But Clarke didn't feel as though she needed to. She didn't feel much of anything really, and she was hoping to keep it that way for as long as possible. That was why she hadn't stopped hiking even when the sun finally slipped behind the horizon and the woods were plunged into near darkness. She'd kept putting one foot in front of the other, pushing herself back up without hesitation whenever she tripped or stumbled over a root or rock. She was filthy again. Mud coated her legs up to her knees where she'd slipped in a bog, her left cheek stung where a branch had scratched the entire length of her cheekbone, and blood had long since dried on her hands and elbows, the result of dozens of hard landings.
Her legs were shaking with each step but she couldn't stop. Once she did, she'd die where she fell, she knew it as surely as she knew the sun would set.
The back of her neck tingled. Her head whipped around, certain that if she were only quick enough she'd catch a flash of clothing or skin as it disappeared from sight. All she caught though was her foot on a root and she was sent thudding to her knees, thankfully onto leaves instead of rock this time, but it still jarred her whole body painfully. Clarke let her head fall forwards.
"Get up," she said to herself. In her head her voice was strong, stern, unsympathetic, but it came out as barely a breath. "Up!" she repeated, but her body wasn't obeying.
She stayed kneeling on the forest floor for what felt like hours, trying to find the strength to push herself up again. Several times she heard rustling in the undergrowth that wasn't natural. Even that could not motivate her to get up again. It was only with dusk that she moved, and not in the way that she wanted to. As the light faded from the sky, so did the last of her courage that was keeping her upright.
Perhaps if she knew where she was going she'd be able to get up, but tomorrow stretched ahead of her like a yawning black pit that bled into the next day and then the next. As the shadows clawed their way towards her, tree branches reaching out like flailing limbs, she felt them latch onto her mind and the thoughts that had been kept at bay by her footsteps for the last few days stirred.
It began in her throat, catching every time she swallowed, making her feel as though she was going to vomit. She had to squeeze her eyes shut tight to hold out against the images of Mt Weather – people slumped over in their seats, children stretched out on the floor where they had fallen, an old man reaching for his wife's hand but no quite closing the distance before he died. Her whole body began to shake and as another day ended with the sun sliding behind the mountains, Clarke collapsed onto the forest floor. She landed awkwardly, her shoulder twisted so the muscles ached and pulled, but she couldn't move an inch. She laid her head against the damp, decomposing leaves and gave herself up to the darkness.
Through the fragmented torrent of her own mind, she heard the rustling again, and then more certain noises: a breaking twig, light footsteps, a whisper. Her eyes had drifted shut but some, irrepressible instinct inside her forced them open one last time.
Dark shapes – figures- closed in on her. Her heart gave a pathetic flutter of fear but that was her body's only reaction. Someone knelt in front of her, too small and skinny-limbed to be an adult, but her eyes were closing again.
Timid, experimental fingers touch her cheek.
"Look what I found…"