Amity and Enmity

Chapter 2

Day: 969

Days Left: 4511

Lives Saved: 5

Corinna Warren sat on a rock overlooking the forest at the bottom of the mountainside. A gentle breeze brushed through her long golden hair, tickling the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of nature. It was moments like these that made her forget where she was, that she wasn't in the Eternal Abyss.

Her trance was broken by approaching footsteps.

"Hey," said a voice. "So, you think that this is the place?"

Corinna allowed herself one lingering moment of peace before turning around to face Rin.

The young woman had her arms wrapped around herself in a desperate attempt to keep warm and stop her oversized coat from flapping around in the wind. Her long black hair covered one side of her face where it hid the parts of Rin's skin that had peeled and turned into paper. Even though Corinna could not see it, she could still hear the pages bristling and rattling in the breeze.

"It's so bloody cold up here," Rin chattered, holding the peeling pages of skin down so that they would stop making such a racket.

Corinna smiled, perhaps even laughed, but no sound escaped her lips.

"It'll be warmer down there, won't it?" Rin asked.

Corinna nodded.

Rin sighed. "Our scouting party found out that there is a group controlling the food drop-off area, built their camp around it." She paused. "Are you still sure that this is the place you want? We could keep going and find another that isn't already inhabited."

Biting her lip, Corinna shook her head. She glanced at the forest below the mountainside, then took off the whiteboard that hung around her neck. Then, with the stubs of her bi-amputee arms, she awkwardly picked up one of the magnetic pens attached to the board to her mouth so that she could write her response.

Corinna explained the abundance of resources within the forest and the fertile, solid soil that would be easy to build foundations on. Though there were other forests in the Eternal Abyss, scarce as they were, none they had found were so conveniently placed near a large water source; the area near the forest was a marshland that was almost perpetually raining. There was also the flatness of the land, ideal for building on until Corinna was more confident in her own abilities to make constructs on hills and mountains, where they would be more protected. Corinna then brought up that Ms Ivette, Sumit, and Oscar would likely not endure much more travel in their conditions.

Usually, if Corinna had been able to speak this, Rin would have sighed and interrupted in defeat and annoyance from Corinna's ramblings; however, Rin instead waited patiently for Corinna to clumsily write on the board with the pen in her mouth.

But Rin still sighed. "You really think they'll be willing to share their food?"

Corinna nodded, then winced and shrugged.

"Not one-hundred per cent sure?" Rin paused, glancing at the ground, then said quietly, "I just hope that we don't get a repeat of Bryce."

There was a moment of tension in Corinna's shoulders and a rising sickness in her gut, but she fought through it. She wrote on the whiteboard, 'don't want to make the same mistakes again'.

Rin nodded. "Yeah, let's hope that they're more friendly."

'Have we found a new campsite?" Corinna wrote.

"Lili is going to secure an area with a few of the others," replied Rin. "Some monsters have been spotted nearby, not that many, but they may be hostile. Apparently, they appear to be untransformable, though."