C.J.'s POV

Gingerbread

She's pretty sure that it was better for her before.

Not before it all, just before.

She laughed more, anyway.

Now she feels like Hansel or Gretel – which one was the girl again? She was never good at German – and the trail of victories she left behind her were just breadcrumbs, eaten by the birds.

They've travelled through these woods before, but then they had pebbles that shone in the moonlight to follow home, and they've never quite been this far in. It's darker this far into the woods.

She'll just have to remember not to eat the gingerbread house.