CHAPTER ONE
About 50 miles north of Jump City proper, the bustle of urban life will give way to a yawning mass of evergreen forest, the tendrils of which stretch out from even further north, as if to beg the would-be adventurer to come explore. Protected by a generous donation from the Martha Wayne Foundation, this not-so-far-flung expanse of pristine wilderness hadn't been touched by any industry, spare photography, for decades.
People spoke of certain meadows singing with the rising of the sun, but two years in and Patrick was ready to call that a load of rubbish. He laid silently on his back while taking in the cherub sounds of birds flitting about, overlaid with a gentle flapping of his nylon home in the breeze. It had been some time since Patrick could say he was at ease, but mornings like this were the closest he had come yet.
He sat up and stretched with a groan, a human mirror to the sounds of the redwoods and firs outside, as they strained against the persistent, gentle wind. The zipper on the front of his tent clinked lightly against itself as he reached to grab it. With an exaggerated sound, the metal mesh parted into a doorway and Patrick stepped through.
From the muted cobalt-blue of his tent, the world transformed at the threshold to a myriad of greens and browns. Patrick was surrounded in an ocean of subtle movement. On the massive trees around him, each pine needle on the branches bristled independently and flowed with the air currents. The trunks creaked as they too leaned to accommodate Mother Nature's consistent pressure. In the waning hours of dawn, the light from in the eastern sky was sliced and diced by the maze of shapes that the trees all cast, leaving the ground a mat of tiny geodesic shards that undulated with the weather. In the distance, barely audible among the immediate sounds of birds and breezes, there was the constant pounding sound of the ocean.
Patrick let his bare feet explore the damp floor of old pine needles and mosses. As it disturbed the surface, he was rewarded with the sweet smell of composting earth. Morning like this made his isolation bearable. He filled his lungs to bursting with the fresh air of the new day and sighed with extreme contentment. With a leisurely stride, he set of west towards the coast through the overgrown brush.
It hadn't always been this easy, Patrick thought as he was walking among the trees. True, he had thought once that his years of living on the streets of Jump City had prepared him to live anywhere. He chuckled, reflecting back on the headstrong young man that had first wandered out to these forest two years ago. That Patrick was so sure of himself; certain that living homeless in the wild was the same as living homeless anywhere. It took about a week without food and little water to melt that delusion away expertly. Gone were the days when he could nick food from busy restaurants. His new reality required dutiful planning and wise consumption. It was nothing like his times winging it on the streets.
But what Patrick always found himself marveling at, in all this time alone, was how malleable time itself seemed to be. On sunny days like today, when his reserves were full of food and his fresh water plentiful, an entire day could evaporate in what felt like an hour. But those first nights, when Patrick was alone and starving in the tent, the time ticked away at a seemingly geologic pace. But for now, at least, it seemed that the hardest times were over, and Patrick was better for having endured them and survived.
As he walked, the thick brush and trees began to yield to more and more rock. The pulsating sounds of the tides grew louder as Patrick soldiered on. The cool stone was a welcome change of texture for Patrick's feet. From here, the walking would get easier.
At long last, after a twenty-minute hike, Patrick found himself staring off an abrupt cliff into the ocean pounding the rocks below. This was his favorite place these days. Something about the landscape of grass and rock falling away to the ocean's eternal grind stuck Patrick. He felt like he identified with the land, constantly at odds with the relentless waves, slowly eroding with each encounter until nothing is left but powder and frothing violence. So too, Patrick thought, was his life like this. He walked casually to the crumbling edge, sat down among the sparse grasses, and closed his eyes.
There she was, right on cue. Two piercing violet eyes staring back at him from the inky darkness.