Searching

We'd been in the heat for hours. Wandering, searching. For once, my body ached so much, my legs didn't want to carry me over the forest floor.

Ferren was next to me, also searching. We were looking for others, but came up empty handed, with only the birds and insects to laugh at us. We were lost and confused.

After giving up hope, I collapsed onto the ground.

"I don't think they're here," I said, through tired breaths.

"They must be. Maybe they're in a different forest?" He answered, the slightest bit of hope still reaching his eyes.

I knew it was a long shot, but at least he still had hope. I couldn't take that away.

"Maybe," I changed the subject, "I'm starving, what are we going to do?"

"We can scavenge some berries from the forest. I saw some a little further back."

Right. I'd forgotten he grew up around berries, and plants. He would know which to eat.

I pulled myself up from the ground, and brushed off my clothes.

"Let's go."

After circling around the forest looking for anything edible, we finally found some wild berries. Ferren called them 'huckleberries' but I was so hungry the second he said they were edible I stopped listening.

They weren't much, but it was enough to hold me over. I was starting to become tired, and wondering what the hell we were going to do.

The sun deepened behind the skyline, and let the darkness draft over. It got cool, but still good enough to fall asleep without worry. My eyes drifted into easy sleep, with a small meal and all the searching we had done.

We would begin again tomorrow, and maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't feel as hopeless as we did right then, laying on the cool grass with no one but each other.