Octavia glanced over her shoulder at the tall sloping hill and large evergreens bordering the orchard. Each ripe apple she found took her farther from the others and closer to freedom. Her body hummed with the anticipation of open spaces without any walls or limits. With enough trees now blocking her from sight, she made a mad dash for the woods.
Her feet slipped on small rocks and debris as the ground sloped sharply upwards, but her pace didn't slow until she reached the top of the hill and could look out across the wide forest.
It was beautiful. Octavia wondered if anyone else from the Ark longed to explore the Earth as much as she did. If only fear didn't hold them back. Octavia saw a large outcropping of rocks further up to her right and decided they were close enough that she could venture out and climb them and still have enough time to get back before she was missed. The rocks started off small and flat but steadily gained in size and volume as the ground swelled upward.
She was careful to watch her footing while making her way across the smaller stones. An odd movement in the shadows gave her pause. She took a small step forward to investigate but stopped dead when she heard an odd buzzing sound.
A rope like body of brown and black darted deeper into the cracks before coiling itself once it had nowhere else to go. The odd sound she was hearing was the rattle on its tail.
This was the second snake she had encountered here on earth and knew instinctively that though it was smaller, it was still dangerous. Carefully she moved herself away from the creature with slow sliding steps. Then another buzzing sound reached her ears. The rock crevices were filled with slithering bodies and tight coils. She didn't know it, but snakes tend to gather there to keep each other warm in the colder weather.
Octavia's heart was pounding in her ears and instead of retreating the way she had came, her panic stricken body refused to leave the relative safety of the long narrow rock she was standing on.
Her eyes darted from side to side as she shuffled backwards into a rough warm surface. The boulder flush against her back prevented any further movement and her mind began to race even more erratically; How fast are snakes? Would they chase her? Are the venomous?
It took a moment to register the hand stretching down from the rock behind her. She noted the darkened skin, the rough fur and thin leather straps twisted around the forearms, but mostly she saw the telltale sign that this hand was not from one of her own. Geometric designs stretched down the inside of the wrist like spear points. She recognized that hand.
Perched above her was the grounder who had tended to her the other night. Apparently he has decided to make a habit out of rescuing young girls who have fallen from the sky.
Without a second thought she latched onto his arm and was pulled to safety. The man was still dressed in dark green and brown clothing but this time the odd face mask was missing. There were no dark smudges under his eyes, and the look he gave her was slightly less guarded than before. He looked very human and very handsome.
Octavia realized with a start that as she had been studying the man before her, he was also taking the opportunity to consider her. Almost in unison they looked down at their still joined hands before dropping them and taking a step back.
"Thank you" Octavia ventured.
The man neither blinked nor spoke. She tried again. "You saved my life and now I am saying 'thank you.' Most people take this as an opportunity to say you're welcome."
The man stared at her for a long moment as if weighing some deep seated ramifications against the urge to speak to her. Or maybe he just didn't speak English?
Octavia smiled up at him, deliberately catching his eye. "That's twice now. In some older earth cultures this would make you responsible for me." She used a tone she had found that most boys had trouble ignoring.
His eyes narrowed slightly. "The Massasauga rarely bite people, and then only if provoked. And your life was not threatened before" His voice was soft and low.
"So you do talk!" Octavia clapped her hands in excitement. She opened her mouth to ask him one of the thousand questions burning on her lips but he cut her off.
"Won't your people be looking for you?" He pointed in the direction from where she had come.
Octavia wondered if he had been watching her group this whole time. He probably had an excellent vantage point from where they stood. She took a moment to scan the man's face but it was as unchanging as the rocks around him. Somehow that only seemed to add to his attractiveness. She let her eyes travel down his neck and across his muscled shoulders before finally following his arm out to the tip of his finger. Only then did she turn to see where he had been pointing.
The orchard Octavia had left behind was nestled in the valley of two hills. Her eyes moved east to west as the apple trees thinned out and vegetation took over. There was a mix of colors all tangled together and clamoring over dilapidated buildings. Octavia looked back at the man in surprise. She hadn't seen any signs of the earth's former occupants before now.
He motioned with his head further right and back towards the valley.
Octavia shifted away from the grounder and saw progressively smaller stones leading back down the hill. And away from the snakes. It looked as if they may have even have been stairs at some point in the past. Further out she saw Bellamy and Clarke pushing their way through the undergrowth to a fully intact looking building.
She turned back to ask if that was safe but the man was already gone.
Octavia decided that must be her signal to go back.
Bellamy had not yet noticed his sister was missing; he was too busy trying to find a way into the small metal building. The vegetation grew thickest near the building and it was hard to find even footing.
Clarke bent low to the ground to study one plant more carefully. "I think this was a farm, before the war." She fingered the plant in front of her turning the leaves over and tugging at the roots. "Look" she said. "It's a potato."
Bellamy stepped closer to a strange plant with large yellowish orange fruit attached to its crawling vines. He picked one up to weigh between his hands. He traced his fingers along deep ridges hedged with green. The color was mostly right, the shape was pretty close… "This one here must be a pumpkin" he concluded.
Clarke's face lit up in wonder and she made her way over to look for herself. "They are different from the pictures." She glanced up into Bellamy's face "less perfect."
She seemed oddly pleased by that and Bellamy couldn't hold back an answering smile.
"It's food. I'll send people back with Monty to gather it in the morning." He placed the pumpkin back on the ground. "Maybe we can plant some in the camp."
Clarke nodded in agreement and continued to carefully make her way through the overgrown garden.
Bellamy's longer legs were managing the underbrush more easily than Clarke's and he found himself reaching back to offer a needed hand more than once.
They rounded the building looking for the door and found the entire north wall covered by some sort of flowering plant. Clarke breathed in deeply unconsciously savoring the new scent greeting her nose. It wasn't forest, meat, latrine, moonshine, unwashed bodies, or sage. And except for that last one she had yet to categorize any of those smells as pleasant. The air, the day even, felt lighter from the soft sweet fragrance filling her nose.
Delicate, soft pink flowers spilled out wherever they could from the climbing plant.
Clarke tilted her head trying to put the right name to it. "It must be a rose bush."
The way Bellamy's eyebrows went up in surprise showed he also recognized the name but had never seen it before either. He bent low towards a grouping of flowers, his nostrils dangerously close to making contact, but was stopped by the rather incredulous tone from Clarke when she asked what in the seven skies he was doing.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you to stop and smell the roses before?" he asked.
Clarke was unsure why it was important to smell a flower or what that had to do with finding the entrance to the building. Her brows furrowed and she allowed a very inarticulate 'uh?' to push past her lips.
"Old earth saying" he explained with a shrug and bent towards the flower again. "I'll do the honors"
His eyes half closed as he took in a deep breath through his nose. His eyes watered, his nose scrunched, and a bone rattling sneeze shook the entire valley.
It was not a pleasant sensation. And it was most definitely not worth stopping for.
A small laugh tittered at his side before steadily growing into full blown hysterics. He turned his head to see a crown of blonde hair. She was actually doubled over from laughing so hard! Annoyance urged him to just walk away, but he had never heard Clarke laugh so freely or fully before and felt inexplicably rooted to the spot.
"I think you are allergic" she said between giggles. "No more stop and smell for you I'm afraid."
Her eyes had gone from soft amusement to an outright teasing glint. He felt oddly defensive. How could such a pleasant sound be so annoying?
His mind drew an instant parallel to the flowers before him. He pressed his lips together to try and hold in the smile but Clarke had already sensed he was laughing back at her.
"What?" She was standing a little straighter, challenging him. His smile only grew.
She swiped the back of her hand across her chin and mouth. "Is there something on my face again?"
He pressed his tongue into the side of his cheek to keep back his laughter. She raised her eyebrows and smiled encouragingly. He rolled his eyes at this but her tactic worked. He carefully pulled free a rose and held it out to her
"Meet your match Princess" he said. "It is irritating, full of thorns, and far more tenacious than its good looks lead you to believe."
His eyes darted back to her face and he held his breath. He hadn't meant to say "good" looks. She just smiled and shook her head in mock irritation and accepted the flower still held in mid air.
"Couldn't you have just said I'm annoying sometimes, but also pretty and smell nice?"
"The thought never crossed my mind" he breezed back.
Except she is pretty; and she still manages to smell nice unlike others in the camp who leave him burning sage in his tent for hours to cover the smell.
Her mind was focused almost instantly back to the business at hand.
"Thanks, but we should go explore the house now."
He let the air slowly drain from his lungs before turning to follow her around the side of the house. He decided to follow Clarke's lead and just ignore things like roses…. and talking with girls about flowers.
They finally came to an entrance at the back of the building. Clarke pushed through the double doors and walked back in time. A thick layer of dust permeated the air. She dared not impose on the scene. She felt Bellamy step in close behind her and stop as well.
Light filtered in through the dirty Plexiglas window to the left. The wall below it was lined with a work bench and scattered tools. Axes, saws and other cutting paraphernalia hung neatly on the far wall. The right wall was covered by floor to ceiling shelving. Clarke followed the shelves up to the roof where there were no signs of damage. The inside had managed to stay safe from the elements.
Bellamy's voice drifted over her shoulder "Something is wrong"
Clarke had been thinking the exact opposite. Her mind was whirling with all the things they could do with the supplies before her. She looked up at him in confusion.
His hand reached out to run a finger along the edge of a shelf. "No one has been here in years."
Clarke thought of the bunker Finn had found. "Why is that a problem?"
Bellamy wiped his dirt covered finger on the back of his pants and took one cautious step further into the building. "We find this place within a month, but other people have been here for years and never touched it?'
Clarke took in her surroundings again with a different light. The tools were not just scattered on the table, they were evenly spread around an empty area as if someone had been working on something there long ago. The last person here had been working not scavenging.
"Someone belonged here once but no one has been here for years" Bellamy voiced what they both were thinking. Someone, anyone, should have found this place long ago.
"The apples? the vegetables?" he continued, "all untouched. Why?"
A terrifying thought hit Clarke. "Radiation! They would leave it alone if it was only going to make them sick."
For one horrifying moment Bellamy pictured the entire camp dying of radiation poisoning. All from food he had told them was safe. He breathed in deeply through the nose and reminded himself everyone hadn't eaten the apples- yet.
Clarke moved towards the work table again. She felt certain there was something important about those tools. They looked no different from the hammers, wrenches and screwdrivers on the Ark. A mismatch of whatever could be found, some in better shape than others.
Except they were all hand tools. Clarke's head began to move in jagged hops as her eyes searched desperately for the things that were not there.
Bellamy had gone into full containment mode listing off his plans...some out loud and some in his head. "We will throw out the apples, Monitor everyone closely for sickness, eat only food that comes from close to the grounders territory, Clearly they're fine, everyone who was here today should wash thoroughly, does that even make a difference?, and"
Clarke stepped in front of Bellamy; the expression on her face gave him pause. She looked like the kid who had just gotten an A on a math test for the first time ever- sheer wonder at her own brilliance. "There are no electronics!"
No she was the kid who talked to herself at lunch. He rolled his eyes but reminded himself to be patient and gave her a curious look.
"The tools have been scavenged," Her eyes circled the room once more and she had to speak through her smile. "No electronics, no pictures. You can't tell me this building stayed in such good shape with no maintenance for 100 years?" She paused to look him deep in the eyes and make sure he was fully listening. "Whoever was here, it had to have been after the war."
Bellamy own eyes widened in understanding. He added to her observations all the things he had been noticing in the woods around the camp. "The grounders have stayed mainly southeast of us. It is possible that there are other survivors- other factions of people living here on the ground."
Clarke bit her lip. If this was true than earth wasn't just survivorable, it was inhabitable. "We should find them!" She reached out and squeezed Bellay's arms in excitement and he looked down at her small hand as if its presence there had some hidden meaning. Normally she would poke his chest or push his shoulder to make her point.
"No, we wait at the camp for reinforcement from the Ark."
Clarke slid her hand away at his response and crossed her arms.
"We don't know how long that is going to take!" Clarke realized her tone was probably too condescending when Bellamy mirrored her own motions to stand with both his arms crossed-eyes spitting fire. She had put him on the defensive without meaning to.
Deciding to soften her approach, she tried again. "You are right about needing backup, but if we can find people already down here who are willing to help us-"
Bellamy didn't even let her finish that thought "Help us? Princess why do you think the grounders have traps, trained fighters, and projectile weapons? They were at war here. It may be in our best interest to not find out with who!"
Clarke had been keeping her hands at her sides in a conscious effort to be diplomatic but his tone and posture had just been so damn...patronizing! She didn't even notice her hands fisting into balls and resting on her hips until they were already there. "You don't even want us talking to the Ark and now you are ready for the guard to come down and take over? How's that going to end for you?"
Her tone had been caustic, but her words didn't even make him flinch. "You're the one who cut off communication with your people. They might hate me, but at least they'll come down to a living, breathing population, not a camp full of massacred teens that were too dumb to stay put!"
He couldn't believe how naive she was being. Instead of shoot first, ask questions later, she wanted to be shot first and let other question what happened.
"They are our people," she said to make sure he knew he was part of the group. "There are two thousand of them. We aren't exactly going to fit in the tiny amount of land the grounders haven't -as yet decided belongs to them. We can't just do nothing! Without supplies, we won't make it through the winter anyway!"
Bellamy was shaking his head from side to side. His arms were still crossed over his chest and he looked utterly unyielding. There was however that small flicker of uncertainty in his eyes that he always got when they disagreed on something.
"Finn has been scouting these woods for months. He could have seen boundary markers or signs of life" She tried for a compromise; they could at least look for other people besides the deadly and evasive grounders they had already met.
Bellamy looked out the door into the distance considering what he already knew of the grounder's borders. There was a somewhat jagged line of traps running south to the river. They were thick enough and long enough to have been in place long before the drop ship landed. The grounders were clearly trying to keep something- or someone- out. He glanced back at Clarke. Her chin was still tilted in the impossibly stubborn way she had. She was right; Finn had been out and about enough to know the extent of the borders, and the traps. Let him tell her what he saw and maybe then she can draw her own, more reasonable, conclusions about the safety of her plan. Then, when she isn't being such a royal pain in the ass, they could talk about their neighbors again.
"Let's see what the tracker knows, maybe we can start mapping out the area." Bellamy turned and grabbed a tree saw from of the wall. "But right now, we need to start making shelter for winter. Remember anything about the early American pioneers?" He raised an eyebrow at her wondering if his diversion would work. "This time we make log cabins, not tents."
Clarke had deflated slightly at her easy victory. Then again, Bellamy hadn't actually agreed to her plan. He just stopped saying "No." And he was right about the shelters. With the tools here in the shed they could make viable housing from the plentiful trees in the forest. She knew better than to push her point but wasn't ready to fully concede either. "We have to have some faith that there can be peace."
Her tone was so unabashedly optimistic he didn't have the heart to contradict her "We will need every person available to build enough shelters before winter hits. We can't spare anyone for diplomatic missions right now."
Clarke sensed this was his way putting her off the subject again. She also knew he was right about building the shelters so she took a deep breath and let the matter drop.
"Fine, but on the way back we discuss how we are going to handle the Ark"
Bellamy stifled a grown. It was just one thing after another with her.
Over an hour later and Bellamy was still looking at Clarke with frustration. Her ideas for how he should talk to Jaha were surprisingly well thought out. The plan was logical and allowed them to operate from a position of power.
His frustration had come to focus entirely on the satchel slung over Clarke's arm. It has been slipping off her shoulder almost the entire walk now. It was a game at first, how long would it rest on her shoulder before quickly slipping into the crook of her elbow. Each time the strap would slide, Clarke would huff and re-adjust, it would then only stay for a few minutes before beginning to slide again. An hour in and the game had lost its fun- Why does she keep putting it back in the exact same spot when she knows it's going to fall?
Finally he couldn't take it anymore; he reached over and took it away from her. She gave him a rather incredulous looks but the scowl on his face was enough for her to just let him carry it.
She didn't mind the missing weight or the crumpled scowl on Bellamy's brow. They had a plan for the Ark, for winter, and for mapping their surroundings. Clarke's mission focused heart was well at ease.