The walk was dreadful. I wanted to talk to Daren but he still seemed like he was in the zone where he didn’t want to be disturbed. The trees were constant and they weren’t getting anymore interesting. I scowled and kept walking trying to entertain myself. My hands kept fidgeting while we walked but Daren was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice. I saw a small stone in the dirt. I had an idea to entertain myself with it but I laughed to myself because I thought it was too immature. As I passed the rock I let out a groan and took a step back. I glared at the stone for a second then started to kick it forward. I didn’t loose the rock for a while and then I got more confident and started kicking it further but soon it went to far and I couldn’t find it anymore. I sighed and found another pebble, doing the whole thing again. It was weird how when Daren used to talk about his dad like he hated him but now it looked like he cared about him a whole lot. I guess things are easier said than done. I always knew he loved his dad like he loved Twilya. I puffed out a breath. He still seemed pretty put out so I decided that he had enough time to sulk. I needed to think of a way to perk up his mood. Nothing was coming to mind. What could someone do while walking? I searched my head for an idea then I remembered what I had been doing a little earlier. I had abandoned the task a while ago because I was too busy thinking so I lost the rock too many times. It was pointless if I was going to loose the rock every kick so I gave up. I kicked one rock in front of him hoping that he would kick it too so he would get distracted. He just stepped on it and moved on. I did it again but to no avail. I thought that maybe he didn’t know what to do so I went over and gave him a smile. He smiled back at me weakly. I could see how upset he truly was. I then noticed that his eyes were red. He had been crying. I knew Daren as a strong person and I never thought I would ever see him cry. My heart melted at that moment and I forgot about the rocks. I stood in front of him making him stop and gave him a huge hug. I could feel him trembling in my embrace. At first he didn’t respond and left his hands slack beside him but after a while he put his arms around me too. We stood like that for a very long time. At one point I could feel hot tears on the sleeve of my shirt but I ignored it. Daren needed to be comforted and I was going to do it.
After a while he let go of me. I knew he was fine now so I did the same. The wind was blowing from behind me so my hair started coming in my face. In between the strands I saw Daren’s face. His smile was stronger now. I pushed my hair back and smiled up at him. My hair broke away from behind my ears just a second later. Instead of being frustrated like I would usually be I kept my smile plastered on my face. When Daren spoke his voice cracked a little “Thank you”. After hearing his voice my smile widened even more. It had felt like forever since he talked. “Anytime. I’ll always be here for you,” I said to him. His smile became even more unstrained. My heart melted as I saw it. I was the reason he was smiling like that. I wanted to do it everyday now. Then I realized what I was thinking. I mentally slapped myself but I knew I was blushing because I could feel the heat in my cheeks. Daren looked down at me with a confused expression. Instead of asking he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He pulled me into another hug and whispered in my ear “Thinking of me?” I looked at him confused. He winked at me then I realized that he meant when I was blushing. I turned an even brighter shade of red. He smirked. I was glad he was back to his normal self. We walked in silence for a while but this time I didn’t mind because there wasn’t the intensity that had been there before. After a while Daren tried to start a conversation again. I was happy to talk to him. I could still see in his eyes that he was sad but not like before. He put his arm around my shoulders while we talked. My skin tingled where he touched me but I didn’t show it at all. I didn’t want him to know that I liked him. Who was I kidding? I liked him before now I liked him a lot. I couldn’t admit to myself so how could I tell him? I wasn’t really stressed about the sword anymore. We would get there when we did. The woman hadn’t discovered where it was hidden. I could keep going these next few days without worrying about who would reach it first. Niray had no idea where we were and the stone was in our hands. We took turns holding it and I knew that there was no way she would get the stone without finding us.
I calculated the amount of days it would take us to get to the stone. If we kept going at this slow pace we would reach there is four days but if started walking at our normal pace we would be there in three and a half. It wasn’t bad and I needed time to think as well. I didn’t want to take the sword to an unsecure place. Niray had a talent at finding us when we were close to her. We had to stay far away from her lair. I remembered it was close to the shack. That crossed it out. I frowned. I was actually considering that a very good place to stay. “What’s with the long face?” he asked me jokingly. “Just thinking” I said. I was trying not to break my train of thought but he talked to me I couldn’t help but look at his face. His happy face just made me stop thinking. I sighed and gave up after I could recall where my thoughts had been. “You always think” he said. “I know but its hard not to when we are in such a tense situation” I groaned. He nodded at me his expression going serious. “Well when you think you go in a day-dream like state. Its actually one of the things I really like about you” he said smiling at me thoughtfully. “Thanks” I said happily. I would tell him that we needed to decide tonight. I didn’t really want to ruin his happy mood. He seemed to have forgotten about all the problems we were facing. I didn’t want to remind him anyway. He seemed happy enough after how grumpy he was earlier. I just smiled at him. We talked a little while we walked for the remainder of the day but most of the time the conversation would drift off. The day sped up after that. Before I knew it the sun was setting and Daren was asking me to help him set up camp. When we were done making the fire he seemed back in his grim mood. He was frowning and kept staring into the fire. I knew he was thinking about his dad. “Are you okay?” I asked him quietly. “No” he said. His voice cracked as he said this. Tears started to stream out of his eyes. I went and sat next to him and let him cry on my shoulder. “I can’t believe he is gone. All these years I spent hating him for leaving and now I miss him. I’m so confused,” he said crying. I knew how he felt. I had felt the same way when I had first had my visions. I hugged him as he cried. After a while his sobs subsided. I gave him one last squeeze then started to walk away but then I heard his voice saying, “Erica please stay”. I nodded at him. He pulled me back into a hug.
I never remembered how I fell asleep. I felt someone’s arms around me when I woke up. I felt protected. I smiled with my eyes still closed. I curled up into a ball comfortable. I opened my eyes and looked at who was holding me. I gasped in surprise when I saw Daren lying next to me. He was still asleep but his arms were gripping me firmly around my waist. I tried to squirm out of him grip but all he did was groan softly and tighten his grip. I gave up and closed my eyes again. It actually felt good to be in his arms. I felt safe like nothing could hurt me anymore. I curled up and waited for Daren to wake up. After I while I felt his arms move. His breath got shallower and I felt his body move away from mine. I shivered a little. I felt so exposed now. After I was sure he was preoccupied doing something I slowly got up. I saw that he was burying the remains of the fire. Without even looking at me he said “Good morning sunshine”. He was in a cheery mood and I took that as a good sign. “Good Morning” I yawned at him while stretching. After he was done he came over to me and gave me hug. He took me by surprise so I didn’t hug him back for a second. “Thanks for staying with me last night” he whispered in my ear. His breath tickled my neck. He was dangerously close. I nodded breathlessly. He stepped back and I started to breath again. I had been breathless in a good way. He smirked at me. I turned my head embarrassed. After a while the hug was forgotten and we talked like we normally would. Just two more days before I would finally reach the sword. This time I wasn’t going to let anyone or anything stop me. I had waited for too long to stop now. I could wait two days then we would have to something g about Niray. I had been thinking about trying to bargain with her. I didn’t want to resort to violence to solve this problem. Too many people had sacrificed what they had to have more bloodshed.
This day was like the normal ones. I seemed like nothing of importance had happened. It was actually better than facing the reality that Daren’s dad had died and Marcus was in the custody of his mother otherwise known as Niray. I still couldn’t believe that they were related. Marcus had done everything in his power to help us escape while he mother was the capture. His father was probably the nicest person but then again he could have gotten his good traits because he was just a good person. I missed him. It hadn’t been long since I last saw him but I missed his jokes. I hoped he was okay since his leg was still healing. He could walk with it but if they were hurting him it might twist his ankle again. I didn’t want him to get hurt because of us like Daren’s dad. It was as much our fault as it was Niray’s. If we hadn’t used his help to run away he would still be alive. Once I would have thought I was being too hard on myself but now I knew I had to take responsibility. I wasn’t a kid anymore. After going through so much my age didn’t matter. I had experienced enough to consider myself grown up. I sighed unhappily. I hated thinking about Daren’s dad. He had probably been close to her parents. She had met someone who knew her parents but now he was dead. There was still someone else out there who probably knew about my parents but I doubted I would ever find them. If they really wanted the stone I didn’t see why they didn’t come out and get it. I didn’t think that there was anything more that could lure them out now. The other person could stay where they were but I was happy knowing the fact that someone from our race was still alive. I had enough of thinking about depressing things so I started asking Daren about the plants again. This time there weren’t as many plants around the place apart from grass but the ones that were there were more interesting than any I had seen before. One of them changed color and Daren explained it was based on the amount of sun and water it got. He even showed me what would happen if it got more water than it needed. He took some water from a stream nearby and poured it on the plant. After it turned dark blue it started spewing out water from the flower. Some of it sprayed on me but I still smiled.
That night we didn’t mention anything that had happened the night before but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It took a lot of effort on my part to stop myself from blushing when I thought about how he asked me to stay with him. I told him I was really tired so I could go to sleep a little earlier than usual but in reality I was just too embarrassed to keep sitting there with him in silence. After a while I actually got tired and fell asleep. The next day didn’t contain anything special. It was almost like the last day except I learned about even new and better plants. My gut stayed clenched the whole day. I felt like something bad was going to happen since every time we ever got close to the sword something would take us far away from it. I had already convinced my brain that it wouldn’t happen again but my stomach still didn’t understand that. Daren said I was being too paranoid but I couldn’t help it. I kept looking back to see if anyone was following us and when I heard a sound in the occasional clump of trees I would insist on checking it out. Daren bore with me. He would protest for a while then finally give in to my begging. I felt bad for making him stop countless times just to ease myself from thinking that someone was following us. After a while of this I started to ignore the paranoid feelings. When I heard a sound I would tell myself it was an animal in its habitat and I looked back as little as I could. We stopped in middle of the day by a stream. Daren found another one of the plants that we could use for a water skin. It took a while for it to wear out so I guessed we would have them from a long time. This time I found a stone to plug the whole at the top. We filled the flower buds up with water as much as we could but we didn’t really have to. The stream ran in the direction we were going. I cupped some of the liquid in my hands and realized it had that silvery sheen again. This was the only other time I had seen it since the first river I had been to here. It felt like a long time ago when it was actually just a few months. I had felt like years had passed already. I drank the water smiling. It was thick just like the last time I drank this type of water. The water had a sweeter taste this time or maybe it was just because the intensity of the taste on me had worn off because of time. Either way I savored the taste it had. I could see Daren staring at me thoughtfully. I raised my eyebrows at him curiously. He just chuckled saying something to himself and then averted his gaze.
There were more trees now. There was more of a forest landscape than anything else here I thought to myself. I had seen a wide expanse of desert but it was nothing compared to the amount of trees I had seen. I wanted to check how many more forests there were here but sadly Daren’s map had been taken. I was actually very sad when I remembered it had been in the bags that Niray had taken from us. I thought he had noticed that it was gone but I would mention it to him sooner or later just to make sure. It was kind of disappointing that he had put so much work into something that was now in possession of Niray. I hoped she wouldn’t take any notice of the detail we had on the abandoned lands. If she found out that we had gone there then whoever had made the law would also be after us and I didn’t think that with two powerful people after us we would be able to escape. The two powerful people wouldn’t even be counting the other person from our race that hadn’t chosen to show them self yet. I let myself forget all the things that were making me stressed at that moment and let myself be distracted by the greenery. No matter how many times I would do this there would always be something new to see. No place here was the same. There was always something that made one patch of trees different from the others and each plant different from the next. I smiled at the colorful flowers. They looked so lively and one look at them made me realize that I shouldn’t worry about Niray finding us. I didn’t understand why but they gave me hope. I would pick one to keep it with me for when I would almost give up hope but the colors would die out soon enough and it would just remind me of failure. I took one last look at them turning back. I took a picture of them mentally and stored it in my mind. At least I would look at the picture when I gave up so I would have hope again. The next day and a half went by with nothing interesting at all. I was nervous but I didn’t stop. I actually sped up my pace so we could get there faster. Daren and I had occasionally had a few small conversations over that span of time but we mostly kept to ourselves. At the end of the fourth day I looked at the stone confused. I thought that we would have definitely have been there. I gulped as I looked down at the stone I saw we were right on top of the x. I excitedly showed Daren. I hugged him happily. We would search the next morning because there wasn’t enough light to see. I fell asleep happily and satisfied knowing that by tomorrow we would have the sword.
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Yay its finally off hold :)!!!
As you can probably tell the story is coming to an end :(
For all of you teen fiction lovers I am writing a story called Unforgotten Love. Please check it out!
xx