artemis ; pjo

Lost

   Eclipse and I were playing around with each other. It must have been like 2 hours when my stomach growled. When that happened, I realized that I needed to get back to camp. And the Hunters. I had lost them. They were probably super worried about me.

"Eclipse, we're lost" I said, my voice wobbly.

Uh oh Eclipse said.

We wandered a bit, but had no luck. It was probably around 1:30 ish.

"Hello?" I called out.

Nothing. No person to help us.

"It's okay, let's just..... Climb a tree! We can see camp from over the tree tops."
I looked for the biggest tree, and a few feet away I saw a ginormous oak tree.
"JACKPOT!"

   I ran over to the tree and swung my leg on the lowest branch. I had a lot of practice climbing trees because I grew up in the woods. I put my hand on the next sturdy looking branch. I pulled myself up and continued doing that for the next few branches.

   I was about half way up when I felt a sharp pain in my upper right thigh. I looked down to see a razor sharp twig lodged into my thigh. That definitely wasn't there before.

   Wincing with pain, I hoisted myself up another branch I waited before pulling myself up again. Again, my right thigh was stabbed with a super sharp branch. I was starting to lose feeling in my leg. I had about half way to go. I couldn't stop, I had to see the top. I had to find camp.
  
   None of the other trees were big enough, so I kept going.
  
   I knew I wasn't suppose to, but I did anyway. I looked down. I was pretty far up.

   A cold sweat swept over me. Still looking down, I lifted another leg. I watched in horror as the tree, probably magically, grew another super sharp branch almost instantly.
Omg! The tree just grew a branch to kill me.

   I scrambled up a few more branches before my leg lost all feeling. Now I was pulling myself up with 3 limbs and every once in a while my right thigh would go through extreme pain before going completely numb again. I had very low pain tolerance, but this was enough to make a collage student stop and grimace.

   I made it to the top and rested in the leaves, but I sprang up when I thought about what the leaves could do to me. I looked over the tops of the trees and saw smoke coming from camp about 3 miles away. That was probably the brazier from lunch. Boy I was hungry.

"Eclipse, it's a long way back. What are we going to do?" I called down from the tree.

I don't know! He said back.

   I started climbing down the tree, blinking back tears. I'm not sure if it was the pain, or if I was frustrated, or both. I climbed down about half way when another branch magically grew out and hit my leg, again.

   It surprised me, though. Like, a lot. I screamed as I lost my grip and fell down a few branches. Cutting the palm of my hand, I grabbed a branch and regained my balance.
  
   My breathing was heavy. I felt like my heart was in the pit of my stomach. Eclipse whimpered.
"I-I'm okay" I said in a weary voice.
  
   I continued to the bottom of the tree and I collapsed on the ground. I was never climbing another tree again.