Wilderness Part 1

I advanced up the mountain under the blazing, scorching sun. The streams of water came from different sides of the mountain. Their torrential sound seemed to calm me. My eyes closed. There was a pounding before they opened. The confusion in my head cleared.

Moisture drenched my chest and shoulders. My back felt grimy just trying to shake off the burn of the itch. Such was the annoyance of heat bumps. I sighed, for this was becoming monotonous. In a way, I guess that was the same for Joel every day had to go out and kill the same animals. Day in, day out, it seemed like a boring way to live.

I guess that's why I had such a hatred for it. It took me a while to realize that such tasks boring as they may be more important. I looked up at the pike broken into the rock. The secured rope bounded through the holes. Even when I was doing this simple task of breaking the pike inside into the rock, the setting of the ropes and the pulling of them to carry my body upward, all was an important part of keeping me from falling off this rock face.

Everything had its place in the end.

I kept going until I reached a ledge. Taking myself up and over it, I reached onto solid ground. Eyes floated around and noted the sparse grassland. There was a stream of water pouring down the mountain. The trees were very tall here. I looked through the web of leaves shuddering in the wind's grace.

The slower I got, the more anxious I became. It seemed as though I started to wobble now, dizzied by the speed and now suddenly slowed, and then that's when I saw it.

The creature seemed as large as a hill. It was large, black, and seemed like melded with the shadows of the tree's shade. It sat on a large branch; its piercing eyes set on me. Its nails were sharp and with the enormous paws that filled a good chunk of space on the branch cracked and creaked under the weight.

Those sharp instruments crafting bristled like breaks in the stem alongside its white exterior. It's fur horripilate and shivered in the dim glow of the morning.

Now, this seemed like a hallucination and my body and my brain couldn't tell the difference, as it tried to make sense of what the heck was going on. It was like a state of madness. Like I was frozen in time and I watched as everything stood still around me. The falling leaves slowed, so had my heart and my once clattering teeth.

The sound of the wind became less high-pitched, driving into a dull hum, a drawn-out moan. It was unsettling. The legs of the beast stretched out all around it. I stared at it, yet my sight struggled to behold it. It moved like a blur, like every movement done in five minutes apart from each other. It moved very hitched-like in my direction, but I could not run since my anxiety had spiked, slowing me down even more. My feet felt glued to the ground and my mouth felt like it couldn't form words.

Then those fangs bared. This thing, this beast, was a predator.

It was coming toward me and there was nothing I could do about it. I contemplated standing there and letting it do what it wanted to do with me. Perhaps this was it. I wasn't sure how I could escape. There was no way out now.

I was going to die.

But I remembered the flower. I had to return it to its home. It was old granny's dying wish. I could not let her down. What's more, was she said it was my destiny and that meant if I wasn't destined to return it, then I wasn't destined to die here. Right?

I looked around me, trembling in fear since the face of the beast made my skin feel gross, like tiny feet were running all over my face and I would throw up.

The brutal face of this predator made me nauseous, like I was going to eject my racing heart through my mouth. I could not let it touch me or get anywhere near me, so I ran.

It jumped down from the tree and came at me. I turned the corner in a desperate effort to keep the distance. They are silence. My back held the rock's face. I shivered, and my legs wobbled under the anxious strain waiting for me.

There had to be something that I could use. My eyes shifted around, looking for something to help me get out of here as soon as possible.

Breathing out, I took a chance to look around the corner. The beast was pacing the arid floor. On seeing me, it came closer. I stepped back, shaking in terror. Where had this beast even come from?

In searching for something, I realized something. My neck craned around the corner. The beast was walking in circles again. It knew where I was, but it wasn't coming to me. My eyes stared behind the beast stood the end of my mission, the top of the purple mountain. This predator-like beast with a horrifying face and monstrous teeth guarded that special place. Was he reason people feared coming up here, this beast? I shook my head in annoyance. Why had no one told me this part of the story? In the story I heard about the purple mountain, no one had ever mentioned this creature. But perhaps if they did, I wouldn't want to come here, so they left out that part of the story. Maybe they were like, well, he's going to die, anyway. What does it matter how he goes?