Willow sighed and kicked a small woven basket. "Stupid, dumb rabbits. Why can't you just be nice and get in the trap?" she grumbled, stooping down to scoop up the fallen trap. Something disturbed the grass behind her.
She turned quickly and locked eyes with a startled rabbit. It stared up at her, trembling slightly but otherwise completely stiff. She saw it's eyes dart to the hole behind her feet. Willow grinned maliciously.
"You aren't going anywhere," she chuckled. Her belly growled and she took a step towards the rabbit.
Willow raised her axe.
Her dinner screamed.
The rabbit was fast, but Willow was hungry and determined and just a little bit less than sane at the moment. She chased it around the field, being careful to keep her body angled between the creature and it's home at all times.
"Quit fighting," Willow gasped. Her knees wobbled from a deadly combination of overexertion, dehydration and hunger. Still, she pressed on.
The rabbit stopped, ears down, body trembling. It had nearly run into a rock. It turned to bolt to the side.
Willow brought down her axe and severed it's spine.
"You're mine!" she shouted, hoisting up her kill. She rubbed her weapon on the grass and began to trot away from the spilled blood. She didn't know what kinds of creatures would be attracted to it, but in her weakened state, she definitely didn't want to stick around to find out.
The meat roasted over a glorious flame. Willow kneeled impatiently beside it, gnawing on her knuckles while she waited for the juices to run clear. Despite her desperation, becoming ill would spell certain doom for her in a world as harsh as this, and undercooked wild game was far too risky.
Her gaze slipped to the fire as she waited. The flames danced beneath and around the sizzling meat, slipping up into the sky to escape as embers. She thought of waves.
Willow hated the ocean. It was salty, briny, wet and cold; in her honest opinion, these were all the absolute worst charactertics a thing could have. However, she couldn't help but compare the fluidity of her fire to that of waves crashing against a cliff face. She imagined an ocean of red and warmth instead of freezing blue, imagined walking along an ash-sand beach and letting the scorching waves lap over her toes. She wondered if the ember sprays would taste salty against her tongue.
A distant snarl interupted her thoughts. She jumped, her makeshift kebab falling into the coals. "Damn it!" she cursed, brushing off the meat and pushing it into her mouth. She chewed quickly, unable to savor it.
The something snarled again, and Willow could have sworn that it was a little closer.
"Show yourself!" she shouted. She picked up her axe and gripped it close to her body. She scanned the field slowly, ready to charge at even the hint of movement.
The responding bark came from her right.
Without thinking, Willow swung her axe towards her visitor. Flesh and bones crunched beneath the blunted weapon. The something yelped in pain and struggled at the end of her blade.
It was a hound, roughly the size and shape of a stocky bulldog. It's mangy fur was black as pitch and it's blood ran purple from it's injury. It squealed in pain again, and Willow caught sight of pointed teeth.
She raised her axe and slammed it back into the beast.
"Ha! You aren't so scary now, you dumb jerk." A few of it's teeth had been knocked loose during her assault. Willow stooped over and plucked them from the earth. "Sharp," she murmured, gently running a finger along the edge. She wiped the blood onto the grass and stuffed them into her pocket.
Something snarled again.
"Oh, come on!" she groaned, hoisting her axe high once again. The hound bounded towards her from her left. She waited until he was within petting distance, then swung her weapon.
The blade slipped clean from the handle, landing at her feet with a thump. She watched as it caved in on itself and collapsed into a heap of dust.
"Shit."
The hound, taking advantage of her moment of distraction, leaped for her neck. Willow snapped out of her trance with not a second to spare; instead of latching onto her jugular, the creature sailed over her shoulder. Unfortunately, Willow was too slow to flee entirely. Once the dog hit the ground, it spun, pounced, and latched onto her arm.
Willow howled in pain. She used her good hand to beat the beast over the head until it released it's death grip. She saw her blood on it's lips.
The bleeding woman turned tail and fled.
All of her limbs burned. Willow regretted her earlier tussle with the rabbit; it's nourishment had been negligible, and perhaps her axe wouldn't have broken if she hadn't slammed it around so much during the chase. She cursed her own stupidity. Hindsight was 20/20.
She felt the thing nip at her heels. It's disgusting, snuffly grunts prompted her to move faster, push herself a little farther with each footfall.
She wondered how long she'd be able to run.
She wondered when she'd have to call it quits.
Eventually Willow felt her side begin to cramp. Her lungs burned as she tried to gulp in air. Her vision blurred. The endless expanse of savanna began to wobble, and dark figures began to crawl into her peripherals. Her body was failing. She was failing.
"Willow!" someone shouted, and he sounded remarkably like the man she saved the other day.
She blinked, refusing to slow her step. The man and his voice were indeed one and the same; she could have recognized his springy hair anywhere. He, too, was running as if a pack of wild animals were at his feet. As he grew closer, Willow realized that it was indeed the case.
Two hounds were trailing behind Wilson; one was flanking him slightly to the right while the other snuffled along a little further behind. He whipped his head around like a madman.
"Willow, turn left!"
She glanced over her shoulder. Her hound was gaining on her, falling behind a few steps only when it attempted to close it's massive jaws around her ankles. She really had nothing left to lose.
Wilson was running perpendicular to Willow now, and she followed his change in direction. Wilson, though he looked exhausted, was keeping slightly ahead of her. Willow distantly wondered if he had always been this fast, or if her energy reserves were finally hitting rock bottom.
"What's your plan now?" she wheezed. The man didn't respond; instead, he extended his arm and pointed toward the horizon.
A rocky field lay just beyond the savanna's edge. She really wasn't following his train of thought, but having no alternatives to offer, she continued to race for the field.
The yielding grass underfoot gradually became more solid. Her boots clacked loudly against the stone, echoing across the quarry. She looked for a mountain, or cave, or even a cluster of boulders to climb to safety.
She only saw dozens of tall, black birds. Each bird had a single eye that covered a majority of it's face. They were scattered across the field, some hunkered protectively beside large blue eggs, others scratching at cracks in the ground. A few halted their activities as the humans and their canine companions neared their nests.
"Duck!" Wilson shouted. Willow was confused, but ducked regardless; she did not dare to stop in case the hound took that chance to leap onto her back and end her struggle. A loud squawking beak whizzed over her head, and a shrill yelp rang in her ears. She didn't look back.
He had lead her across the entirety of the field when Willow realized that she could no longer hear pounding footsteps behind her. She turned her head, expecting massive jaws to close around her face. She only saw the gray ground, dotted with disturbed pebbles.
"We lost them," she breathed. Willow promptly collapsed.
She lay on her back, chest heaving, legs burning, and arm throbbing painfully. Her wound was still bleeding freely. She wondered how she hadn't bled to death during their escape.
She felt hands inspecting her wound, heard a sympathetic "Ow" as his fingers grazed the area unmarked by teeth. Willow stared at the sky, happy to breathe.
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
"Hey."
Willow reluctantly turned her head, her cheek skimming the dusty ground. Wilson was crouching beside her, a small bowl of something cradled in his hands.
"Looks like the tables have turned," he chuckled grimly. He gestured to her arm. "May I?"
Willow tried to shrug, but quickly found that the action had rather painful results. "Sure," she squeaked, trying desperately to keep from blacking out. She wondered how much blood she'd lost.
"Ok, this is going to hurt. But it'll help disinfect the wound." He put the bowl down and dug around in his pocket, muttering to himself. He eventually pulled out a stick.
"You can bite down on this if you-"
"Just do the thing already," she groaned. She turned her head back towards the sky. Though she was no longer able to see the man's face, she assumed he nodded.
"Three, two, one." Something sharp and wet and burning made it's way into her wound; Willow tried desperately to bite back a scream. Tears streamed down her face as she bit her tongue. She really wished she had taken him up on the stick offer.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," he was muttering. He was patting her shoulder awkwardly, and she would have laughed at him had her limb not been searing itself to a crisp. The pain lifted within a few seconds, though, and a blissful numbness fell over her limb.
"Oh my god," she breathed. She pulled herself up and scrubbed the tear tracks from her dirty cheeks.
"That burned. So bad." She rotated her arm, inspected the bite wound. While her arm still bore the indents of a ring of teeth, the wound was no longer open; a pinkish, irritated looking scar had replaced it. "What the hell was that stuff?"
Wilson, who looked a little disturbed by her crass language, looked down at the empty bowl. "It was a healing salve I threw together a few days ago."
Though Willow wanted to ask what it was made of, how he put it together, what his secrets were, she was exhausted. The sun began to dip lower in the sky, signaling the gradual end of the day.
"I guess we're going to have to camp here," she said. Wilson nodded. Willow eyed the birds in the distance, who had abandoned their hound massacre in favor or returning to their nests.
"Don't worry; they're only dangerous if you get too close to their eggs. We're far enough away that they won't bother us."
Again, Willow felt questions bubble up into her mind. How did he know this? When had he first seen these things? How did he know so much about this world already when, a few days ago, he had nearly been disemboweled by a tree?
Instead of asking, though, she smiled. "Alright. I'm trusting you."
He smiled back.
"I'll set up for our survivor party."
With a cozy fire lit and piles of grass beneath their backs, the two survivors tried to relax. Willow drifted in and out of sleep. The cold ground was unforgiving, and though her arm was mostly healed, it still ached from the damage it had sustained. Not to mention her stomach, which had grown emptier and emptier as the seconds ticked by, was keeping her from sleeping deeply. She woke to painful cramps more than once, though thankfully her outbursts didn't wake Wilson. He was still curled away from the fire, hair askew and breaths even.
She considered taking her lighter and raiding the tall bird camps, but knew that venture would mean certain death; they were feisty, quick, and protective, and in her weakened state she knew she would not be able to outrun an angry parent. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and dragged herself over to the dwindling fire.
Feeding the flames brightened her spirits a bit; their curling hands felt like gentle reassurances against her cheek. She couldn't live off of fire, though; although she would love to taste, she knew that she'd just end up disfiguring her mouth if she even dared to breathe too close to it. Instead she settled for the comfort it provided, shielding her and Wilson from the dark and the monsters and everything that wanted to see them dead.
Them. What were they, now that they were even? She thought back to him walking away with only the clothes on his back. She had been almost certain that he would die within a week. He had not exactly seemed like a survivalist; he seemed far too posh for that type of lifestyle. Though she had formerly written off the man as a walking disaster, she now found herself grateful for his existence. Without his quick thinking, she would have surely died; even if she had escaped the dogs, she would have eventually bled out, and if she had somehow avoided that, then nasty infections would have ended her.
She heard a shuffling from behind her. She turned, face to face with the short (though he wasn't truly short; he was actually pretty average, and she was admittedly tall for her gender) man. He looked concerned.
"Can't sleep?" She shook her head. "Why ever not? You were positively exhausted earlier."
Her growling stomach answered for her. She put her hands over her guts in embarrassment, shielding her weakness from the world. This was humiliating. She had been doing so well, had been so sure that she'd survive with ease. She had promised herself that she wouldn't starve to death, just as the strange man in the suit had warned.
Wilson tapped her shoulder. He offered handful of carrots, berries, and a sight that Willow could hardly comprehend; a hefty chunk of meat. It dwarfed the meager rabbit chunks that she had been eating for the past few days
"How...?" she asked. Wilson passed his rations into her shaking palms and rubbed his hand on his neck. "Well, you see, it kind of ties in to how I made that salve."
She cooked her food while he told his tale; apparently, he had been wandering in a forest when he came across a broken down little house. He tried to get inside, but it was locked, and he couldn't figure out a way to break it. He was considering throwing a rock through the window when he heard squealing from within the trees.
"I ran over to what I believed was it's source, but found no living creatures; there was only the hunk of healthy looking meat, some rancid purple meat, and a few pink tube things."
He had tried to cook the tubes but found that they did not take to flame well. In his endless pursuit of knowledge, he did what any scientist worth his beans would; he carried out an experiment.
"I ate it."
Willow stared.
"I found that it healed a few of my minor wounds, so I figured that combining it with some kind of filler could make it go a long way. After a little bit of trial and error, I finally ended up with a few bowls of crude antiseptic. "
He folded his hands into his lap, signaling the end of his tale. Willow continued to stare.
"What?" Wilson asked, frowning in confusion.
"You're a scientist?" she asked around a mouthful of steak.
"Uh, yes. Sorry, I didn't mention that before, huh?"
"No, I don't recall that being mentioned."
"Oh."
She smiled. "I guess that explains why your head is so big."
She expected him to have another outburst at the jibe. Instead he gave her a small smile.
"It's seems you're back in high spirits." Willow found that he was right.
While her full belly and healed arm were certainly huge factors in her mood change, Willow found that his company had caused her to feel anything close to happiness for the first time in days.
Willow had never been an introvert by choice; it just gradually became a part of her being. She remembered desperately trying to make friends in her childhood, and her attempts had succeeded for a short while. But eventually she would slip up, accidentally teach a few too many kids how to snag their parent's matchbooks and light up blades of grass in their backyards. She was constantly banned from every house in her town, and eventually gave up on any sort of friendship. People whispered about her as she walked by, "There goes the pyro," they'd gasp. "Don't upset her, or she'll burn down your house with you inside." The words had stung at first, but as the years went by she grew used to them.
Willow had learned to love quiet stillness and solitary evenings, away from gossip and angry parents. Even when her own parents forced her to move the day she turned eighteen, she still didn't feel lonely; no one interrupted her comforting rituals, which took her back to summer evenings with her Troop. She had her fire and her memories and that was enough for her. Fire was her friend, and it was the only comfort she had ever wanted. She had held down a job (just barely; her reputation didn't exactly allow her much leeway with her boss) and managed to scrape by for years.
Sure, once upon a time her lifestyle would have depressed her to no end, but that was when she was a girl; as a young woman, she was happy enough with the cards she'd been dealt.
However, she couldn't deny the smile that had wormed it's way onto her face as Wilson told his ridiculous story, couldn't suppress her gratitude for everything he had done for her. The man was small, a bit arrogant, and a bit too proper, but Willow found that she tolerated him more than any person she'd ever met, and he seemed to be tolerating her.
"Hey, I think I want to take you up on your offer."
"What offer?" he asked. He was messing with the bowls of salve, stacking them carefully to ensure that none of them could leak out into his pockets. She saw him smiling, and knew that he knew damn well what offer she was talking about.
She slugged his arm and he winced.
"Did you change your mind because of my intelligence?"
She grinned and turned away, gazing into the flames. They were comforting, sure, but they couldn't feed her. They couldn't heal her wounds. They couldn't tell her stories to distract her from the pains of life. They couldn't come up with grande ideas like luring a bunch of bloodthristy hounds into a feathery death trap on a whim. Wilson could provide what the flames could not, and she could do the same for him. If she gave it a shot, she was certain they could survive this stupid world together.
"Yeah," she said. "It's because you're smart."
A/N: Thus ends chapter two. I'm going to try to update this every Sunday, just to get a consistent schedule started. Thanks for the favs and reviews!