Red haired girl

Chapter 9

Will yawned.

“I think we should find a place to sleep,” he said. Bryan nodded. After another day of walking, only eating things they found (after checking those were safe, of course), they were quite tired. They had walked around a bit and had seen a few cave-like holes in the cliff. Now Will had mentioned sleep, those holes seemed to be perfect campsites. They crawled into one and tried to make themselves comfortable, which was very hard since they were lying on rocks. Will wiped away some pebbles from under his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the light was already streaming over the land again. Very surprised, he looked around. Bryan was standing a couple of meters away from the cave, stretching. Will stood to his feet and walked over to him.

“Good morning,” Bryan said. Will started to stretch as well.

“You think?” he replied miserably, feeling every muscle in his body ache. Bryan chuckled. “Yeah, actually I do,” he said. “We’ve survived the first day out here. The rest will be a piece of cake!” Will remained silent. He didn’t agree with Bryan, but he didn’t want to crush his positivity either.

            They finished stretching and looked at each other.

“So, what do we do now?” Bryan asked sheepishly.

“How am I supposed to know?” Will snapped grumpily. Bryan looked confused at him.

“Whoa, what’s wrong with you?” he asked hesitantly. Will sent him an angry look.

“What do you mean, what’s wrong with you?! Nothing is wrong with me! What makes you think something is wrong with me?!” he yelled. Really, what was Bryan thinking?! Will stamped of in the direction of the hill. Stunned, Bryan followed him. After a few minutes, Will realised he was acting weird, stopped and turned around.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I… I guess I’m a little moody this morning.” Bryan chuckled.

“That’s all right,” he said and Will felt relieved. “But I still have the same question: what do we do now?” Will racked his brains.

“Well, I don’t think there would be two notes around here, so I guess we’ll have to keep on doing the previous assignment: walking to the west,” he said, trying not to be irritated with Bryan expecting him to know what to do. Bryan nodded.

“Okay, then we’ll go up that hill,” he said cheerfully.

            And that’s exactly what they did. When they reached the top, they faced another dazzling view: a lake stretched out to the horizon, shimmering in the morning sun. There were grasslands all around, on the hill as well. The grass reached to their waists.

“Wow,” Bryan breathed. Despite his mood, Will couldn’t agree with him more. It really looked beautiful. The indigo coloured lake contrasted with the pale blue of the sky. The grass, mixed with all kinds of flowers, looked like a rainbow, waving in the wind.

“Uhm, shall we continue?” Will asked, unwilling to look away from the view.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Bryan answered dazed. For a moment, they both just stood there, then they began to walk slowly downwards.

“Hey, what’s that?” Will asked. Something was shimmering beside the lake. He increased his speed and Bryan followed behind him, shrugging.

              From the hill, the lake had seemed very close, but it took them almost an hour to reach the shore. Will’s mouth fell open: the shimmering he had seen, was caused by two swords, the scabbards slung over a stick, which was pinched into the ground. A note was attached to the stick as well. Slowly, Will reached out and grabbed the note. He unfolded it, while Bryan was hopping from foot to foot, trying to get a look at the weird tangled signs called letters.