Having sated her vicious thirst, the young woman sat down on the grimy floor of the abandoned cottage and leaned her head against the wall. The cold water had been bliss as it moistened her lips and tongue, but now it sat like a chilly brick in her gut.
“Too fast,” she murmured to herself. Her hands sank down to hang listlessly at her sides, while her eyes drifted closed. One knee remained pulled up towards her body, the other leg sticking out from under the blanket at a cockeyed angle. It was in this way that she nodded off to sleep for several minutes.
Subtle twitches of her fingers and toes belied the dreaming state that settled over her exhausted mind. Distorted images played behind her eyelids; a snow-covered forest, a rugged mountain, and faces that were familiar, but whose names she could not place. Then a sun-drenched farmhouse tucked into a small hollow, its yard bursting with unruly wildflowers that crawled over a split-rail fence. Two figures stood on the house’s front porch, their faces hidden in the shadow of its overhang as they called out and waved. A man’s face, framed by gently curled, ink-black locks, but a cold sneer on his lips. His mouth opened and a voice boomed forth, saying something she could not understand. But the sound of it was like a thunderclap, shaking her bones, and she startled herself awake with a yell.
She sat for a time, trembling, her chest bellowing as she strove to calm herself. Her eyes wandered about the dim room, and a gnawing sound in her gut reminded her that she could not recall the last time she ate. The frustrating weakness that hobbled her arms and legs was no longer that of burning fever, nor the lack of water to drink. She eyed the pile of discarded clothes near the bed. Where were her other belongings? She had a vague, fuzzy notion that she’d left them somewhere in the forest. If she could discover where she had stashed her pack, perhaps she might find a scrap of hard tack or dried meat still within.
With a deep-seated groan, she rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled the distance to the lumps of clothing that had thankfully been spared the sweat and vomit of her illness. Unsteady fingers worked each piece onto her body, slowly and carefully, and it took all of half an hour to finally consider herself properly dressed. She sat for another pause, waiting for her fluttering pulse to quiet, and then pulled herself to her feet, using the bedpost as an anchor. Her head swam drunkenly as she staggered to the broken door and ducked beneath it. The afternoon greeted her with a sharp, biting wind, but the sun was high overhead, and its light felt warm against her face.
Her gaze swept from side to side over the wall of trees before her. From which direction had she arrived? Additional questions sought to pile on top of each other in rapid succession. Where had she been before this cabin? What had she been doing? What series of misfortunes had seen her laid unconscious beside the river, nearly frozen to death? A foreboding panic swelled in her chest. She bit down on her bottom lip and heard herself whimpering like a cornered animal. Taking a sharp breath in, she shook her head violently. This was not the time for these thoughts. Food. Food was what she needed. Everything else could wait.
The frosty air was inhaled slowly through parted lips, filling her lungs so that her chest swelled outward. Her lips pursed into a tiny circle, and the breath departed again. Turquoise eyes opened, sharp and restive. The northward path through the trees felt right. Her fingers released the splintered doorframe, and she descended the steps.
