A.N: OK, once again a big, big thank you to all those nice people who have reviewed this so far. This chapter is, I regret to say, rather short. I did intend it to be longer, but I thought that where I stopped was appropriate...and it also gives me leeway? to write reams and reams for the next chapter...which is very important, as it is quite possibly going to be the penultimate chapter.
This is the penultimate, penultimate chapter...I think.
Anyhoo, apologies for any grammatical/spelling mistakes in this (or indeed any) chapter. I don't currently have a beta reader. Anybody who wants the painful job of checking over my work is very welcome to it.
So...on with the fic!!!!!
Haven
Raine groaned quietly, swapping over onto her left side to stare out through the open doors that led onto her bedroom's balcony, wishing that it wasn't so damn hot. The daytime was bad enough, but the night….it was making the air close, sticky…generally oppressive (a bit like the silences that had been appearing between her and Kratos, she mused.).
The group had sparred well into the evening, out on the beach, until they were all tired, hot and getting slightly irritable. They had quickly decided to retreat to their rooms, hoping that the encroaching evening would bring some relief from the heat.
It hadn't worked.
The half-elf flipped over onto her back, staring up at the blank ceiling, too restless to fall asleep.
She rolled over onto her right side, facing the door, and eventually decided that swapping positions constantly wasn't going to achieve anything.
With a dejected sigh she rolled out of the bed, gladly leaving behind the suffocatingly heavy, sweaty sheets and walked over to the window, out onto the small balcony overlooking the meagre garden at the back of the house. She was glad of the balcony purely because it acted as a perch where she could reach fresh air, and the light breeze that was blowing her hair into her face.
Relaxing against the railings and revelling in the cool breeze that blew across her body, she closed her eyes, contemplating, listening to the sounds of this island at night.
In the distance she could make out the sounds of an animal rustling around in the undergrowth, the occasional tweet of a bird that hadn't quite fallen asleep, the serene slosh of water against sand…and a door being quietly closed somewhere down the hall.
Curious, Raine turned back to go inside, listening intently to the quiet footsteps as she crept over to her door, pressing her ear against it.
Soft footsteps padded lightly down the carpeted stairs, stopped for a moment then continued to the direction of the front door.
Risking a peek, the half-elf opened her door a fraction, peering out into the semi-darkness at the tall, male figure of…Kratos, who was opening the outer door.
'Where the hell?...I know Kratos has a history of disappearing in the middle of the night…but on a journey, not on a vacation'
Quickly considering the option of going back to bed, so she could twist and turn in a vain attempt to get to sleep, she dismissed it and grabbed the light summer dress thrown at the end of the bed, slipping it on over the underwear she had chosen to sleep in.
Opening the door to check that Kratos had fully left, Raine crept slowly out of her room, shutting the door quietly before making her way downstairs silently, wincing when a wooden floorboard creaked loudly.
No-one responded and she hurried on to the front door.
The air outside was still stiflingly warm as she stepped outside the cottage, but that same breeze that had cooled her as she stood on the balcony was still blowing gently, cooling her to a bearable degree.
Taking a deep breath of the air she glanced down at the sand in front of the wooden steps of the house, noting a dip in the sand where a foot had been.
Kratos.
Glancing around at her surroundings, Raine stepped off the porch of the house into the still-warm sand and started to follow the indentations in the sand, hoping that Kratos hadn't wandered too far away already.
'Then again,' she thought as she walked, only just realizing what she was doing 'what am I going to do if I do catch up to him? It's not like he's doing anything wrong.'
It's not like she could accuse him of anything, other than being unable to sleep, just like her. 'Perhaps we can just hang out until we're both tired enough to sleep….did I just use the term 'hang out'…oh, lord.'
She didn't have another option now anyway….well, not one that looked appealing at least. Sleep was out of the question, and work should always be done with a clear, fresh, objectionable state of mind.
Which she wasn't in, considering the fact that she was following her friend, deep into a tropical forest, without him noticing, in the middle of the night, dressed in only a thin summer dress…without any form of defence, should there be wild animals around.
And, it was deep into a tropical forest, or at least, into a forest, she noticed, as she strode past a number of sparse, green plants that were rapidly increasing in number, becoming a dense mass of green.
'Why on earth is he wandering into a forest in the dead of night?'
She suddenly breached the line of palm trees that marked the border of the forest, and noticed that the rumble of the sea's waves had become distinctly quieter.
Slowing her pace, the half-elf checked the sand in front of her for more footprints, looking for a sign that she was at least going the right direction. She was, but the indentations were become obscured by the leaves of low plants.
Despite her judgement, however, she forged ahead, determined to find out where the seraph was wandering off to so late at night.
She walked for what must have been at least half an hour, then stopped for a break, noticing how out of shape she was getting since she had stopped walking long distances with the team. Suddenly, she realised, as a pang of loneliness and nostalgia hit her, she had no idea where she was.
The trees and plants of the forest were creating thick walls around her, and there were no footprints any longer, save her own.
But at least that meant she could follow her trail back out….except that the wind had picked up and was blowing the sand, erasing her own footprints as well as that of the man she was following.
Beginning to panic Raine looked desperately back at the way she came and pushed her way through the foliage, looking for an odd shaped tree, an interesting plant….anything that she recognised that she could use to find her way back.
There was nothing.
No twisted or gnarled tree, no bright flowers, no markings on the bark of a tree where an animal had scratched against it. Everything looked the same. Every stone, every plant…even the sky couldn't help her by following the North Star, or something, obscured as it was by the towering, waxy leaved palms trees.
Breathing heavily now, the ex-professor guessed at the way she had come, and started walking, unconsciously picking up speed as she made her way through a maze of pliable walls that were all bottle green and coconut brown. She swiped her forearm across her forehead, wiping away the thin sheen of sweat that had broken out upon it in her exertion and panic.
The half-elf suddenly stopped, dropped to her knees in the soft sand, and sat quietly, hoping that, somehow, she could find her way back.
She panted heavily, wiped her hair out of her face, and sat back on her haunches and stared up at the canopy high above her, before closing her eyes and trying to relax.
A quiet, continuous roar echoed in the air around her, and her eyes snapped open. She clambered to her feet as quickly as possible, and ran for the noise. Never before in her life had she been so glad to hear the crashing noises of the ocean.
She was running at full speed now, and the noise was growing louder, but to her dismay the flora was not thinning, and there was still only the faint shaft of moonlight trickling down through the tall canopy of leaves.
Nevertheless, she kept on running, her heart pounding now, and, suddenly, wonderfully the roar was upon her.
Raine burst through the leaves in front of her, a thick oppressive wall, and broke out onto the beach.
Except it wasn't a beach. It was just a clearing.
A perfectly round clearing, with a cliff face dominating a quarter of the outer arc, a waterfall roiling down the surface into a large pool.
Moonlight beamed down onto the clearing, emphasising its serene, picturesque quality, like something that had come straight out of bad romance novel.
However, for all its serene beauty, its silver surfaced pool and golden sands, and all its haven like qualities, it wasn't.
It wasn't safe, it wasn't home, it wasn't where her friends were.
…Until she turned to look at a flicker of movement that she had caught in the corner of her eye.
There, sitting on a rock like she had earlier today, watching her with sharp eagle eyes, but a concerned expression, was Kratos.
A.N: OK...I realise there may be some slight OOCness here. Please tell me if there is.
Just the usual stuff here...hope you enjoyed this chapter.
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lol