Chapter 8
Ella Pov
Ella darted through the gates, not stopping when she heard Miller calling after her, but ran as fast as she could. She didn't take one of the paths that they had made for hunting, but went right through the thick growth of trees, tears streaming down her face. She had no clue where she was going, nor did she care if she got lost. All she wanted was to get as far away from camp as possible.
She ran for so long that her muscles were on fire, but she ignored the pain and kept going – it was nothing compared to the pain of see Murphy kissing the girl who had made her life one full of misery and torment.
Her eyes were so blurry from the water pooling them that she didn't see the large root sticking out of the ground in front of her until she tripped over it and hit the ground with a hard thump.
She didn't make a move to get up, she just curled up in a ball and cried like her heart was breaking. Because, it was.
"Ella!" called a female voice behind her.
Ella just kept crying.
"Ella!" cried Raven as she broke through the trees to find her best friend laying on the forest floor. "What happened."
There was a motherly concern in her voice as she pulled Ella's head and torso up against her chest, cradling her like a little girl. And, she let her – it was comforting.
"Shh, it okay, everything's going to be okay," she soothed.
Ella tried her hardest to stop crying – she hated crying in front of other people and usually waited until she hit her pillow at night to do so when she was having a bad day. It took a lot of effort, but after a while her sobs were reduced to hiccups, with slight tears still streaming down her face, her eyes puffy and red.
"There, that's a girl. Now, tell me who did this to you so that I can beat the living crap out of them."
If she were capable of laughing, she would have at that totally Raven way of trying to comfort someone.
"Murphy – and Harper," she gasped out between hiccups.
"I thought that's what this was about, I saw you leaving his tent in tears. I'm going to kill him when we get back to camp," she paused and sighed. "Ella, do like Murphy?"
Tears started to form in Ella's eyes again and she buried her face in Raven's shirt.
Raven hugged her tighter. "I thought so. Ella, you are so beautiful and so kind, and when you feel things, you feel them with all your heart – happiness, sadness... love. I've known you've loved Murphy for a long time, and you have nothing to be embarrassed about. You see things in people that no one else does, and bring out the best in them. He would be good for you. You would be good for each other."
"It's to late now," whispered Ella into her shirt.
"It's never to late to tell someone how you really feel."
"But, what if he doesn't like me that way? If he did, he would have said something by now, not go off with someone else ...I don't want to lose him."
"Believe me, I know better than most about what you're going threw. I went through the same thing with Finn. We were best friends since we were kids, but the older we got, the more I realized that what I felt for him was much more than just friendships. Guys have a harder time with expressing how they really feel than girls do. Most of them find it a trait that doesn't need to be bothered with. If it wasn't for me, I don't think that Finn and I would be together now."
"Really?"
"Really."
"How did you do it? How did you tell him that you wanted to take your friendship further?"
Ella had stopped crying now, and her hiccups were starting to slow. She reached up to rub the rest of her salty tears from her eyes and face, making her eyes even redder.
At her question, Raven laughed and scratched her head.
"We didn't talk about it really. I just kissed him."
"Just like that?" Ella smiled.
"Just like that. God, I don't even remember what we were talking about at the time, I just remember him looking so cute and something just came over me. I just leaned in and kissed him."
"What did he do?" asked Ella, with wide eyes, like always, paying close attention to the story.
"He pushed me away and wiped his mouth with hand sanitizer."
Ella scoffed. "Come on Raven, I'm serious."
"... He kissed me back, and it was perfect," she said with a small smile, staring off in the distance, deep in the memory of their first kiss. "It was worth every minute I spent worry over what would happen if I let him know how I really felt. But, I could have been happier a whole lot sooner if I hadn't doubted myself for so long."
Ella sat up straight and rested her back up against the wide tree that Raven was up against, the one that was connected to the root she had tripped over earlier. She looked over at Raven, her head tilted back against the rough bark and Raven did the same.
"I'm glad I have you," said Ella.
"I got your back sister," said Raven sticking her fist out. Ella smiled and fist-bumped her.
"Hey, whatever happened to you helping me out with my bullets yesterday?"
Ella moaned, picking up her head and hit it against the tree non to lightly, closing her eyes.
"I completely forgot. I'm so sorry," she said looking back at Raven.
"Don't worry about it, I had Monty to cover for you."
"You really have got to stop leading him on, or he'll start to think that he actually has a chance with you."
"Ah, he knows he doesn't, but yeah, your right, like always."
"So, you'll stop?"
"Of course."
"No you won't," said Ella smirking.
Raven laughed.
"No, I won't. Its not like it's doing any harm"
"Uh, somehow I think that it is doing harm."
Raven smiled and shook her head, getting to her feet, then extended her arm out to Ella. She took it and Raven hoisted her to her feet and smacked her on the butt like only her best friend ever did.
Ella frowned when she looked back in the direction she had just come from.
"I don't want to go back yet."
Raven gave her a half-smile. "We don't have to. I'm pretty sure that no one knows which direction you went in, and will take over an hour to track us down, since I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who ran after you right away, so was able to keep up."
"Do you know where we are?"
"No, not exactly. I mean, you did a good job of running in one direction, so I'm pretty sure how to get back, but I could be wrong. There's really no way of knowing for sure," said Raven with a sly smile. "But, like I said, they'll be tracking us down, so for now, our time is our own."
Ella gave her a grateful smile, knowing exactly what the girl was doing and loved her for it. Of course Raven was navigating through the forest as she had ran after her, she was way to careful not to, but was prepared to give her all the time she needed to gather herself up again. And she would need all of her courage to step back into that camp.
"So, you know what they say, if your lost, you might as well explore," said Raven. "I know of this small pond about a mile from here, want to go?"
"I thought you said you didn't know where we are," said Ella bumping her in the shoulder.
"Hey, do you want to go or not, because if not we could stand here and shout and see if someone will find us," said Raven sarcastically.
"I don't know how to swim."
"Neither do I, but we can practice. You don't have to go in all the way if you don't want to, there's a small log that hangs a little ways over the river, you can just sit there, dip your feet in and relax. It'll be good for you," she added the last part more seriously.
"Alright."
Ella brushed the rest of the leaves and dirt off of her pants and followed Raven's sure steps threw the forest, though how she knew where she was going, Ella couldn't say. There didn't seem to be anything that Raven couldn't do and that went double for navigating.
It was starting to get kind of late, but there was still a good few hour left of daylight, so Ella wasn't worried about being stuck out in at night. Instead, she tried to relax and keep her mind on the beauty of Earth, something she never though she would ever see.
Her legs were still sore from running, but the walk to the pond didn't take very long at all.
Everything was so still here, fenced in all around by trees. There were small colorful flowers that grew near the water, and lily pads of all different sizes floated on top. Smooth rocks surrounded the pond, that tiny insects crawled on top of and then under, disappearing then reappearing in another place.
When they reached the log that Raven had described, they both kicked off there shoes and waited into the water, the level reaching up to Raven's shins and Ella's knees, the coolness of it bringing instant relief to her aching feet.
Ella turned her back to the log and used her arms to hoist herself up onto it, watching as Raven did the same. They both scooted down the log where it dipped down so that they could place there feet back into the water to their ankles.
Ella sighed and tipped her head up to the sun, resting back onto her hands. "How did you know this was here?"
"I found it when I was hiking to the wreck in search of some more fuel. I marked the trees back there so that I could find my way back, didn't you notice them?"
Ella gave her a look.
"Right, sorry," she said apologetically. "You should bring Murphy here sometime. It's quiet and romantic, I think he would really like it, and I would be more than happy to share it with you and him."
Ella roll her eyes, smiling. "You're so much more optimistic about this whole thing than I am."
"Because, you two are obviously perfect for each other, and if he says otherwise, than I'll just have to beat him up."
"Something tells me that you're going to beat him up either way the next time you see him."
"Don't expect anything less," Raven smiled sweetly.
