8
Aftermath
She didn’t know if it had been eight days or six, or maybe ten? She’d walked into Steelmint and hadn’t stopped walking until her stomach growled loud enough to wake a hibernating bear. Then she’d stop, eat something from her pack, and keep going.
She thought she was heading southeast. She hoped she was heading southeast. Every fifty feet or so she’d make some sort of marker: a branch leaning against something in an odd way; scraped bark; some of her hair tied around a tree trunk. She didn’t remember seeing any of her old markers, so either she wasn’t going in circles or she was delirious and was going in circles.
Either way, she was running out of food.
The flight panic had died down after the first two miles. Then all she noticed was how tired she was, and in how much pai
