One chapter left after this. Awwww

Days 9, 10 and 11: Do or Die

The next three days was almost totally spent swapping between being in and out of consciousness. My lack of blood kept me in darkness for hours on end until my body would recover to an extent and I would be able to crawl for a few metres before falling out of consciousness again. It was rather frustrating. I was fearing for my life. Those wolves had done more damage than I had originally thought and with the extra injuries I had that still hadn't recovered and my side, the pain I felt was astonishing. I felt like I was being sliced open by the sharpest of knives every time I attempted to even breathe. This helped make my actions during the time when I was conscious and able to crawl, extremely slow.

That was the most frustrating part.

Though I knew I probably shouldn't have been too concerned with it in the state I was in, my biggest concern was to set up a smoke signal. I had concluded that the only way I would have any chance of surviving my injuries was to set up a signal for the rescue team to find and then for them to take me to the hospital. It may have been my only chance. I had no idea how much blood I was losing and every time I awoke from unconsciousness the time intervals where I was conscious were lessening. I knew that if I wasn't rescued soon, it may come to the point where I wouldn't awaken.

So, I trudged on. Easier said than done, may I add.

Since the wolves had hurt both my shoulder and leg, movement was very difficult even without the extra pain from my other injuries. My shoulder injury prevented me from using my right arm to drag me across the floor and my leg injury stopped me from walking. So, I had to put up with that as well.

So in summary, I had to put up with a million or so different injuries; being frustrated, being in heck of a load of pain, going in and out of consciousness all the time and having to struggle to move.

There was something else I had to put up with too and this is probably what affected me the most... I was frightened. Frightened of dying. I had long ago feared death as I had no idea what happens afterward and the thought scared me. I didn't like not knowing things. That is why I was the nerd of my friends and the one who knew the answer to every clue every time we were all thrust into another mystery like the Cup of Ankh mystery and the Mask of Anubis.

The point is, a lot of things were affecting my performance.

On day ten of being stranded, I managed to reach a forest which was near the cliff edge (the place where I had chosen to place my fire) and started to harvest sticks. I felt tired the whole time and I ended up falling unconscious twice but I managed to harvest around fifty average sized sticks in one go. The choice to crawl to the forest nearest the cliff edge came to my advantage at this point and I managed to get to the point where I planned to set up the signal without falling unconscious at all. Though, once I did get there, I fell unconscious immediately.

By the time I awoke again, it was dark. That was what signalled me that the intervals where I was unconscious were getting larger. It was about mid afternoon when I had fallen unconscious and for it to be dark was a scary thought. My injuries also seemed a lot more painful. There was no doubt in my mind that at least one of them were infected.

Seeing very little point of going to the forest in the dark, I decided to try to make a signal out of the sticks I had achieved so far. It took me awhile. I fainted once until morning halfway through but I managed to make a pretty big structure out of the sticks. I felt glad that I had gotten big sticks and not small ones. Yet, I still felt the fire was too small. Smoke signals need to be big to generate enough smoke to alert planes. Even though the structure I had created was large, I felt it wasn't large enough.

However, I was very, very tired. I was unsure if I could crawl back to the woods and back again. Especially since I was now in need of water. So, I made with the sticks that were surrounding me. They weren't very thick. In fact most of them were fragile and small but they were better than nothing. They did a good enough job though.

So now I had built a pretty sizeable fire.

Final part was lighting the fire and that was by far the hardest thing to do. My tiredness made everything heavy and so the rocks I planned to use to light my fire felt like they weighed tonns. Also, I couldn't seem to get the right speed to get them to light. I was going too slowly.

I rested my head against the ground as my own tiredness overwhelmed me. I felt like I was going to die then. Everything was going dark...

With one final effort, I attempted to spark the rocks one last time. I didn't get to see if the fire had been lit as I was unconscious before I could glance upwards...