Disclaimer: Dragon Age characters, history, and general universe is not mine.

A/N: I know. I'm sorry.

It had all become just a little too much. The classes, the hours at work, the relationship that was slowly sailing into a rocky shore. There was only one way to deal with it; run away.

I had tried to fight; I had tried to manage my time, to work less – couldn't pay rent. I had tried to work more – my boyfriend refused to cooperate. I had tried to say "screw this, I'm going to live in a cardboard box". But, you know, sleeping on cement is about as comfortable as you imagine it would be.

Okay, maybe that last bit isn't true – the part about the box, not about cement. I imagine that's true. I did, however, decide I was going to take a long weekend to go camping. I had been doing it for years with my family, before everything fell apart. I knew my way around the woods far north of my hometown. I knew how to pitch my tent, how to douse my fire. I knew how to, not very cleanly, kill a rabbit with my bow. I usually mangled more meat than I ate, but gun season wasn't for a few months and I never liked the noise. My shots were rarely good, but they were usually effective in some way. Mostly.

It was pretty dark that first night, the moon wasn't very full. The river that snaked through the campground made the typical rushing sounds as I leaned against my bedroll, tucked halfway into my tent with my fire a few feet away; it was small, mostly embers now. I didn't want to put it out, not entirely. I was too awake to sleep but too tired to do much of anything.

I was, however, apparently tired enough to fall asleep without really trying. I neglected to put the embers out, as I did not intend on my eyes closing and the world falling away. The sleep was welcome once it came, overwhelming darkness and a silence that enveloped me as I lay half-out of my aged tent.

At some point during the night, the delightful respite of a dreamless sleep was torn asunder by a screech unlike anything I had ever heard. I started in my sleep and flailed as I awoke; above me, blotting out what parts of the moon showed, was something very impossible. It looked to be a bird, but couldn't it have been. It was too big, too long. And far too loud.

It didn't seem to notice me, whatever it was. It just kept on flying. And screeching occasionally. I sat in stunned silence after it passed, searching my surroundings. Perhaps I had eaten some bad meat. Or maybe I was still dreaming.

After a moment I stood and stretched to remove the kink from my neck. Shoving my bedroll inside my tent, I moved about outside to cover what might have remained of my fire in dirt. I had, of course, forgotten my shovel so used my hands instead. I had never been afraid of getting dirty and made no bones about being certain that the fire was out.

By the time I was tucked inside my sleeping bag, I had almost completely forgotten about the bird that wasn't.

The second time I awoke was not to the sound of screeching, but to the sound of feet. Quite a few pairs; they lumbered and jumped, skid and slid.

And then my tent was slashed, the long silver culprit barely inches from my head.

I screeched, of course. And did the only rational thing I could do – move as far away in the tent as I could from the bloody, grotesque face that was now gleaming at me from the growing hole in the side of my tent.

I wasn't particularly weak but I wasn't trained in hand to hand combat or even very good with a kick. And this thing, staring at me, looked as though it had fallen into a fire and then been dipped in acid. Or something. And it reeked. It was currently scrambling against the side of my tent, trying to force its way into my personal space.

I moved again and my hand settled on one of my arrows; my bow was nowhere in sight but it was good enough; probably better. I wouldn't have been able to use it seated anyhow. If I could just get my arm in there without getting swiped by the butcher-knife looking thing, I could at least distract it with pain.

I don't know that I was actually thinking clearly as I jammed my hand out, stabbing the tip of my arrow into the deformed man's eye. But it was effective enough to make the thing scream and reel back, getting it far enough away from me for me to bolt out of my tent. I didn't look back; my bow, my tent, my bedroll, my backpack. When I found a police officer, I'd figure it out. But for that moment, the only thing that mattered was getting the hell away from the footsteps behind me.