I didn't stay with Kelsey for long.
The impending night shortened the amount of time I could spend talking to her, and so I left her with a cheerful goodbye only a few hours after we met.
However although I had said a definitive goodbye I didn't leave without taking a picture of her. She was just one of the many people I had met in my life and I felt the need to document each person with an image. Just as Aslo had kept a pictorial diary of acquainces, sights and feelings. I wanted to have a collection of images that I could look back on when I'm old and grey. Something to remind me of all the small and (to others) insignificant moments in my life. Meeting Kelsey would be one of those moments, because although I had only talked with her for a few short hours, I had developed a high opinion of her. She was loyal, and caring but there was an humorous edge to her words that suited the happy glint in her brown eyes.
She was exactly how I expected a young girl to be.
In truth she was exactly how I was when I was less experienced in this world.
However, just as I had faced the harsher facts of this life, Kelsey would also have to endure the cruelties that often came hand in hand with reality. No life was spared of sadness and no matter how much happiness shines through it, there will always be a small dark cloud to blemish the unending stretch of sunshine. For Kelsey her black cloud would be the loss of her brother.
I wanted to think that he would come back and her life would be spared the heartache, but there was something in me that sensed that he wouldn't and that meant that over the next few weeks Kelsey would have to deal with the realisation that would inevitably set in. This being the realisation that her brother, Emmett, was no longer a part of their family, and never would be again.
As I continued my tired march through the forest I kept my mind off Emmett disappearance. I didn't want my imagination to go into that dark and sinister place of monsters and ghouls.
I was fighting a losing battle against the sun as it steadily made its way across the hidden sky. I had to get to civilisation before the forest became nothing but darkness, however a gentle fizzing in my veins told me that the tingle was still active below my surface.
I was torn between finding safety in a strange new society and taking the risk of disappearing in front of someone's eyes, or wandering through the forest in darkness in the hope that the tingle sparks on my skin and takes me away unseen.
Then again here I was contemplating my options when really I feared that I wouldn't be given the choice.
Kelsey had pointed me in the direction of the main road but my exhaustion had caused my mind to be blurred, and so I soon found myself walking aimlessly through the constant green surroundings.
I had no way of knowing where I was going, or what I was looking for.
I was lost and panic was setting in at the prospects of having to sleep out here alone, while I waited for the tingle to take me away.
Sunset caused the forest to glow with a mix of greeen and orange light.
My daylight time was running out fast and the only reassurance I had was the now definite tingle that surrounded me in the air.
I had tried several times to trigger the jump. I'd stood still and just focussed my mind on the sensation that took over my body when I jumped, trying to imagine it into fruition. I had even tried taking deep electrified breaths of the woodsy air, hoping that I might absorb the tingle through my lungs.
Nothing worked and now I had run out of energy. My body was weak and I couldn't find it in me to move forward through the forest, or use my mind to find a way out of this maze.
I wanted food and water. I even dared to dream of a nice hot bath to bathe my aching muscles.
I felt my body slacken into a resigned posture of limp arms and sprawled out legs, as I rested against my sack.
I would just wait here in my vulnerable and feeble state, until something else made the decision for me to either jump, move, or die.
The tiredness that made my limbs heavy was causing my whole mind to become directionless and nothing more than a haze of the past few hours. Apathy ruled my being, and I felt my senses dull to my surroundings as I stared off into space.
I knew the weakness I felt wasn't really due to my lack of nutrition because I had survived on far less than I had eaten recently. Instead, I found that, for once in my life, I had no objective. There was nothing for me to feasible work towards. There may have been the hunt for civilisation to occupy my time but right now my own indecision of what to do meant that I couldn't find the energy, or drive, to really find a way out of this forest.
Perhaps a worn out part of me didn't want to.
After all if I did find civilisation, what would be waiting for me?
I had no family to welcome me home, no friends to stay and live with, no place to call my own. I didn't even have knowledge or understanding of where I was.
I had spent so much of my travelling life having to work at living whilst others did it with ease. For once I wanted to relax and know the jump wasn't coming. I wanted the chance to live my life as everyone else did. I wanted to be able to build a home around me and know that it wouldn't crumble before my eyes , as if it were merely build of sand and nothing more.
Why had I been made to live this life? What was it about me that meant I should be chosen to have a half lived existence?
I felt anger boil in me and with it came the energy to fight.
I had come to this point of frustration and apathy so many times, and every time I had picked myself back up and started my life again as usual. This time would be no different.
I forced my aching legs to stand myself up and took a deep breath of revitalising air.
A look to the sky told me I would only have an hour of sunlight left before darkness descended upon me.
I doubted I would find a way out of this place in that short hour but I could at least find a clearing or cave to sleep in. It wasn't like I wasn't used to sleeping in the night's sky, or without comfort. I had done it before and I could do it now. I didn't even fear the dark anymore because, for some reason, I always felt like Aslo was with me. Like those many times he had watched over me as I slept in my pitch black cell in the asylum.
I marched with determination through the forest once again, but this time I had not thoughts of giving up and giving in. I had a goal in mind and a course to follow.
I may not have known where I was going but I decided that if I continued to head north then at least I wouldn't be going in circles, as I feared I had been doing.
I knew it was a risk to just walk without any real direction, but what else could I do? I had no real knowledge of this area, no map to follow. My intuition was all I had and it was telling me to go north. I could sense that north would lead me to somewhere or something.
The light was fading, creating new shadows and dark patches around me. Eyes glimmered from tree hollows. The wind whispered between distorted trunks, carrying the sickly stink of wood rot. I continued to move at my steady pace, ignoring the briars that caught at my jeans, and the damp leaves that grimed my skin.
The tingle was raging around me, and so I wasn't just walking to find shelter but I was walking towards that moment when my body would succumb to the tension that surrounded me and I would be released from the stress this forest had given me.
I still had the feeling that I was coming towards something of importance. It may have been just my hope that at any moment I would find the thing I had been looking for, whatever that was, but there was something niggling at the back of my mind that told me that the feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn't just hope. It was something real, and that meant I had to keep going. I had to get to that place that was calling to me, because that place was exactly what I needed. Even if right now I wasn't entirely certain what that was.
When I thought of the feeling that was leading me I wondered what exactly it was. Hope was certainly one explanation but another popped into my mind, and that was that this feeling was just a by-product of my solitude. Like a raw primal instinct that had been buried with my years of instinct numbing societies.
Right now as my feet thundered on the wet ground, I felt that my mind had given itself over to the more basic means of direction. Somehow my subconscious was leading to me safety, to something I knew of.
It was because of these instinctive senses that my body flooded with adrenaline at the clear animalistic sound coming from the shrubbery to my left.
That sound brought with it a sudden rush of fear and visions of something that could have killed Kelsey's missing brother.
I stood immobile as my blood chilled with terror.
Another grizzly snarl pierced the air around me only this time it wasn't to my left but in front of me slightly to the right. Whatever it was that was stalking me, was fast and ravenous.
A small part of me had already given into the idea that this would be my end, and it was that part that felt relief that my death would be quick, although I couldn't find any guarantee that it would be painless.
I spun helplessly trying to track the predator, but my eyes were met with nothing but forest and my ears could only hear silence.
Not even the steady sounds of woodland wildlife filled my ears. This alone caused more apprehension to saturate me.
The wind ruffled my hair and I caught the terrifying sound of a bloodcurdling growl come from the darkened patch of trees ahead of me.
I stared straight ahead.
I wanted to face the creature that would end my days.
A breeze blew and with it I saw a flash of white crossing the area in front of me.
This was it.
I clutched my locket to my chest and clenched my eyes shut, soaking my mind with the memories I had gathered so far.
Those blissful days with my parents.
The happy but hard times with Carlisle and Andrew.
My friendship with the Masen's.
The unusual time I spent with Aslo and Mary.
Renee and Bella and the bright vibrance of Florida.
The hot sticky days in Texas.
Each person I met had their face imprinted on my mind and I flickered through them like a picture book.
I was jolted out of my memory lane by a loud clash sounding through the air close to me. It was like the sound that echoes through the atmosphere during a thunder storm only this sound was very much grounded.
My eyes snapped open and I gasped when I saw a white blurred mass with intermittent colours flashing through it. I couldn't make out the details but my mind reeled when I identified that the struggling masses were human, or something like it.
My gasp caught the attention of one of them and I saw a blond man stand whilst 2 women held down a dark haired broadly muscled man. They seemed to be having difficulty with keeping him in place.
I could see agony and hunger twisting the man's features as he battled against the 2 women.
His eyes glowed a vivid ruby red but were flashing with pitch black whenever his fiery gaze settled on me.
I knew what he was but couldn't look at him for long because my eyes were drawn to the blond man standing over the struggling man.
That man meant something to me. He was the reason I had the instinctive feeling in my stomach. He was what I had been walking towards and I hadn't even known it.
There was something about the way he held himself and the manner in which he rested a gentle but firm hand on the agonised man before him.
I knew that gesture.
I knew this man.
"Carlisle?" I whispered and the man turned to look at me in shock and confusion.
Even though his expression wasn't one I was used to on his gentle face, I recognised him instantly.
His eyes were different, not the soft blue they had been but instead a honey gold. The colour didn't matter to me because they still held the kind and compassionate emotion he had shown me in our time together.
His eyes roamed over me and I waited for recognition to flash on his features, but it didn't.
"Carl.."My voice cut out and I felt my whole body fizz as the tingle surged in me.
I looked down at my fingertip and saw them disappearing before my eyes.
Panic filled me as I glanced back up at Carlisle and saw his eyes widen at the sight of me fading away in front of him. Even the two ethereal women were looking at me in wonder.
This moment was what had been leading me to this specific spot. The place I would see Carlisle again.
This was what fate had decided for me.
It was giving me the chance to say a goodbye to the man I had left for dead.
I had to take this bizarre opportunity. It may not have been how I had hoped to see Carlisle again, but it was the chance I was given and that was enough for me.
"I missed you, but at least this time I got to say goodbye," I said but with each syllable the tingle was ripping me from reality. By the end of the sentence my voice was just a whisper on the wind.
Just a whispered comment.
That was all I could give him after all these years. I just hoped it would be enough to ease my conscience after all those guilty memories I had relating to how I had abandoned him.
As my body washed away on the timeline, I felt the guilt, which I had regarding Carlisle, get left behind.
For once I left a place with my emotional baggage feeling lighter than it was before