Rewinding Time (Narry)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

This chapter came out a lot more cliché than I intended. I don't even know what to say here anymore. The amount of support I receive every single chapter is so overwhelming. I seriously love you guys to bits! You are all really lovely and I have this really sad sentimental attachment to everybody and it makes me sad to think what will happen when this story is over :-(

*whispers* Thank you for your love and support!

⌛ ⌛ ⌛

❝NIALL❞

By now, all of the anger that I had towards Harry was but a distant thought; I didn't know what possessed me to run into the thick forest beside the Malik mansion, but like the idiot I was, that is exactly what I did. Even as snow began to fall, I had not minded it one bit through all of my tears and frustration; only when I tripped and fell did I finally come to my senses.

The sky was pitch black now and the only sound I could hear was my own erratic breathing. I glanced back at my tracks only to realize that the fallen snow had covered what was left of the indents that would have led me back to civilization. That was when the realization dawned down upon me; I was lost in the woods and the night wasn't getting any younger.

"Niall, you are so fucking stupid," I muttered, pressing my forehead against the snow and shivered. On top of being ridiculously lost, I had run out of Zayn's place in such a rush that I had not even grabbed my coat. As I sat there, strategizing how I could make it out of the forest, the warmth and adrenaline that I had from running around earlier was rapidly decreasing and it felt like the chilly night air was touching my skin for the very first time.

There was no point in moping around and grumbling about the situation, so I did the only thing that I could do and attempted to retrace my steps. After walking for a good half hour or so, the tracks became less and less visible; the fear inside of me began to bubble over and I began to panic. If I couldn't make it out of here by morning, I will surely die of hypothermia; there was no way in hell I could survive through this weather with nothing but a thin button up shirt.

The first thing that I feared was my fingers getting frostbite; I didn't fancy the idea of having to cut them off if they were to get to that stage. I tried to blow on my hands to warm them up, but that simply wasn't doing the trick, so I ended up stuffing them underneath my armpits.

Come on Niall, think. You've watched so many god damn survival shows. You can do this.

Now that I was lost beyond lost, it was best that I stopped trying to search for a way out and simply accept my fate and made the most of it. The number one priority to surviving any night in the wilderness was to build a fire before nightfall; well, I totally fucked up the 'before nightfall' part. I'm no boy scout, but I've certainly tried rubbing two sticks together, and that just never worked out.

Giving up on the first priority, I moved onto building the shelter. Right off the bat, I was already extremely unfortunate, seeing how most of the trees in the forest didn't have any god damn leaves on them thanks to Mother Nature. How the hell was I supposed to build a shelter when there weren't even any leaves?

I'm so fucking screwed.

Without much to work with, I ended up just picking up any dry vegetation that I could find and piled them beside one of the larger trees; after collecting literally every single piece of vegetation in the area, I separated the pile into two, using one pile to form the cushion—my bed, if you will—and the other to drape over myself.

I tried to weave the second pile together to condense the vegetation to the best of my abilities so that it would leave no room for the cold to get in, but it was a lot tougher than I expected. In the end, I was still able to get the vegetation to sort of stay together in one piece.