Chapter28

The trees all looked the same now, the ground under her feet meant nothing to her, and when she finally slowed down she could not even tell which direction she had come from.

'Where am I even going?' she thought, stopping at last with tears running freely down her face now, 'what am I supposed to do?'

No answer came, only the sound of her own breathing and that awful steady awareness that the human still existed somewhere behind her.

She lowered herself against a tree, tired from all the running, and once both hands came over her face the crying got worse instead of better.

She stayed there shaking and trying to breathe through it, not even sure why she was crying anymore, there was just too much going on.

It kept going until her face hurt and her breathing started coming out weak. Somewhere in the middle of all that she curled up against the tree and pressed her knees to her chest.

'Why am I back?' she thought, tears still slipping out no matter how many times she wiped at them. 'Why did I come back just to suffer in this world again?'

She did not know how long she stayed like that, only that the crying slowly turned into tired shaking and the shaking turned into nothing because her body finally gave out on her, sleep taking her without permission.

When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she noticed was the smell of food.

The second thing she noticed was the human sitting across from her near a small fire, turning meat over with a stick while the light from the flames moved over his face.

She stiffened instantly and pushed herself up fast, only to stop when something slid off her shoulders and into her lap.

She looked down, seeing a blanket, 'did he cover me up? How did he even find me?' She thought, looking at him with even more suspicion than before.

'Just why is he here, what does he want from me,' she thought, her pulse climbing again while that same strange pull in her chest quietly reminded her she was right, 'and why do I feel so connected to him?'