I had done some stupid stuff in my life. Alot. I used to count but I forgot the large number when he was eight years old. Now I was somehow an adult. Nineteen years old and somehow not miraculously dead.

Yes, I did have a whole country to take account of, but I had to have some fun. But that fun usually ended with Mott screaming at me, Tobias going mentally insane, and Imogen scolding me for the millionth time. In other words: I got injured a lot.

I had some free time so I decided to go on a hike somewhere near the castle. Mott came, because he was Mott, Tobias came, because he thought I would SOMEHOW injure myself, Fink came because he wanted to explore, Roden came because he was the captain of my guard, Amarinda came because she was bored, and Imogen came because she needed a break from the castle.

Nothing ever went wrong with this group of friends. Never ever. That's what I had told Harlowe before leaving the castle, and I told him Mott would pretty much be our chaperone. So we went behind the castle, into a vast forest.

I surprisingly hadn't gone into the forest before, mainly because I was too busy with work and stuff.

Fink sprinted ahead of us, chasing a squirrel. Fink didn't come out, and no one had noticed because everyone else was scanning the area. When we finally walked into the forest, Roden was the first one to notice. "Fink's gone."

Mott cursed under his breath.

I leaned over to him. "Didn't you say you had excellent tracking skills?"

He scratched his nape, "Yes, but this is the driest part of the year, there are no footprints."

Oh great, this wasn't gonna be fun.

From behind me Tobias said, "We shouldn't split up, because we're all unfamiliar with this forest."

I wish I had come and explored the forest earlier. The squirrel had gone north, so it would make sense to go that direction. "Come on guys, he couldn't have gone that far."

I was so terribly wrong, we weren't gonna see Fink until after the sun went down.

I led our single file line, confident that we'd find him in a couple minutes.

Once again. I was wrong. So, so very wrong.

At one point I realized I didn't pack water, so Roden started to get cranky. "I am going to DIE of THIRST"

"At least we're in the shade." Amarinda said, readjusting her ponytail for the twentieth time.

"Actually, Roden," Tobias cut in, "It takes about roughly 3 days for the human body to die of thirst, so once we find Fink in the ten minutes Jaron has promised us, you'll be fine."

I didn't tell anyone, but I started to doubt we would find FInk in 10 minutes

Imogen came next to me and laced her fingers with mine and smiled at me, which gave me a confidence boost. I didn't actually realize that Fink could be in actual danger.

Besides the fight about hydration behind us, the forest was pretty peaceful. In other circumstances, this wouldn't be a bad place for a picnic, excluding all the snakes, bugs, and other unpleasant wildlife around them.

I heard laughter from a certain rat loving brother. Everyone stopped in their tracks and went silent, but there were no more noises after that.

But it came from the West, so we had been going the wrong way this whole time.

Roden seemed awfully mad that we had apparently wasted time going north. We could have gotten to the end of the forest and hadn't found Fink if we hadn;t heard him laughing.

I told everyone to pick up their paces, which earned some grunts and moans, but we were able to get to our location faster. I suddenly realized our altitude, because before us, there was not laughing, but a crying and screaming Fink dangling from the edge of the cliff with a squirrel on his head.

"Fink!" We all shouted in unison.

I ran over and tried to pull his hands, which were sweating, his knuckles were white. I tried to pull his hands up, they were slipping and my weight was causing this side of the cliff to fall off.

The rock I was standing on fell.

Me and Fink started screaming as we fell. I heard our names from the top of the cliff. I thought we were done until I saw a half dead tree on a small piece of land that popped out from the cliff.

I grabbed Fink's arms and gilded us to the tree. The impact was hard. I could hardly hear due to the noise of the wind while we were falling, and I was pretty sure our ears were bleeding.

This had happened to me once when I was a child. I had the bright idea of climbing and jumping off the castle walls, thankfully a servant somehow caught me, but I had experienced the same pain and I was fine.

We were bleeding from the branches we had hit from the tree. I looked up and waved my arms weakly to show that we were alive, we'd need some help getting out of the trees and there was still a goof fifty feet between the tree and the earth. And down at the bottom, lay the dead body of the squirrel that had gotten us into this mess.

With our ear injury, me and FInk couldn't hear what we hoped to be the yelling of our friends saying they had gotten some kind of help.

I signalled for FInk to carefully climb down the tree and stay on the small patch of grass and wait for help. I wasnt to stupid to continue to go down or up the rest of the canyon.

It was dark out when me and fink got out, so long we could hear again. It only took a few of my bravest men to get us out, they were rewarded heavily.

Imogen's face was stained with tears when we got up. she ran over to us and embraced us, Tobias and Amarinda joined too. But not Mott, he was probably scripting a lecture in his head.. I knew I'd get scolded later, but we were safe and I don't think anyone had it in them to ruin the moment.

The End

Total words: 1060