Alone

She huddled beneath her thin, raggedy blanket, glancing at the opening of the cave. It was still pouring outside and she shivered in her soaked clothes, the blanket not helping much. She scooted a little closer to the fire. She normally didn't like making a fire, afraid of being spotted, but she supposed no-one would be out in the forest at night with this weather.

She was frozen to the bone. Her stomach rumbled and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think of food. She couldn't even remember the last time she ate something proper. She'd picked some berries that morning, but that was all she'd had to eat all day.

But that, she mused, was nothing new these days. It was simply what life as a fugitive was like.

And so as she lay there, cold and hungry and even more alone than she had been before, she did what she always did in situations like this one. She pictured the Animals she was helping. She thought of the grateful look on the face of the Deer whose children she had returned after they'd been captured by the Gale Force. She reminded herself of the reason why she was doing this in the first place.

Then she pictured Shiz, with its vine-draped walls and the courtyard with the statue. She imagined a silly rich boy swinging around the statue and a beautiful girl in a wheelchair reading next to it. She thought of a Munchkin studying underneath a tree and a bubbly blonde bouncing on a pink, fluffy bed. Those were the things she had left behind, but it was enough to know that they existed; that the world wasn't all bad.

Despite herself, despite her situation, she fell asleep with a smile on her face.