Finches

Chapter 20 - The Birds And The Trees

"Ah," Colt said, "just what I was craving."

He placed down the fish barrel and they sat down, leaning against a tree as they ate. Their midday meal usually didn't take more than a couple minutes. They filled their stomachs, gave their legs a quick rest, and then were back on the path to continue their trek.

As they ate, Shelly peered down into the satchel and frowned a little. "We don't have much left."

"We don't need much left," Colt replied between bites. "We'll be there soon enough."

"Yeah, but..." she hesitated before continuing, "what about your return journey."

Colt looked down at the ground a moment as he chewed, considering his answer. He knew she was asking this out of genuine concern rather than trying to pry into his plans, but there was still only so much he could tell her.

Finally he said, "I don't expect to have a return journey."

His eyes didn't waver up from the ground but he still knew she was staring at him. Eventually she looked away. Colt knew she wanted nothing more than to ask further questions, but she simply nodded.

"Yeah. I'm planning to stay awhile too."

Colt wanted to tell her that he wasn't planning to stay awhile at all, but that would invite more questions. So he nodded too, and that ended the discussion. He tossed his crumbs into the forest for the benefit of the fastest creature and stood up. He gave the flask back to Shelly and braced himself before picking up the extraordinarily heavy fish barrel for the hundredth time. He knew he was getting better at it, but that didn't mean he liked it. He really just wanted to leave the darn thing behind for the animals, but he'd made a promise. He'd come this far, so what was a couple more days of carrying the thing?

Torture. That's what it was.

"Alright, here we go," Colt grunted, and off they went.

The day went on and Colt and Shelly kept walking. Their streak continued as they managed not to run into any trouble, but now Colt was beginning to become bored. It had been so long since something had happened, and as nice as it was, all the endless walking was starting to really get to his head. He'd almost tripped over some roots several times because the walking had become so automatic for him that he'd stopped even looking where he was going.

Now he wondered if the lack of something trying to kill him would bore him enough to actually kill him. Thinking about it, it sounded pretty outlandish. But after days straight of just walking through a forest, who knew what could happen. Maybe he'd literally die of boredom. Or walking. Either way, both those sounded like they'd be incredibly lame to put on a tombstone. So he hoped some bad guy with a cool-sounding name would do him a solid and murder him out before that happened.

Or better yet, he hoped that they would eventually actually reach the authoritarian base. Which option he chose would depend on how much more walking the latter included.

Colt brushed aside some branches as he made his way along the path. They were definitely going much more uphill now than they had been at the start. The path was getting more steeper by the day. This made it harder to walk along but also meant that they were getting closer to their destination.

Eventually they came upon a pond in the middle of the path. This was pretty interesting, as there weren't usually too many obstacles directly on the path like this.

"Is it on the map," Colt asked, staring down into the pond.

Shelly checked the map. She had to bring her head close in and squint, but finally she raised her head back up and nodded. "It's very small, but there is a tiny dot in the middle of the path around where we are."