Into the Forest
"It's not. And you already know my name."
Is this guy fucking serious? How would I know his name? How full of yourself do you have to be to think that everyone just knows your name? Sure he's like super well known, but not his name! Just his nickname, and even then I've heard people call him other things. I heard one guy call him the grim reaper because if you see him your dead.
Now that I think about it why am I alive? Shouldn't he have killed me? Maybe he just knows I'm not a threat, maybe I'm just not that important.
Trying to keep up with his pace is a little annoying but after a while it becomes a little bit more comfortable. Walking through the branches and over the roots does not however get better, it doesn't really help that whenever I trip he keeps going not stopping to wait for me to catch up.
After a couple hours it starts getting dark. It feels like I'm dying, my legs feel like there about to fall off, I'm hungry, and I feel like I could pass out. And then he stops. He turns to look at me.
"Go get branches and rocks." Is all he says before he starts clearing everything in the area.
I don't have the energy to argue so I look around for some sticks and rocks. I don't go far trying to stay within seeing distance as to not get lost. This also doubles if I see a big animal I can just yell and he would know what's happening. I don't know what the chances hell help me are but anything is better than nothing.
After a couple minutes I come back with as many as I could carry. Somehow he manged to make a makeshift tent out of some big leaves that I don't know we're he found and a dead tree.
He pulls me to where he was clearing before and I drop the stuff there. "If you're going to follow me around then you're going to learn to make a fire."
Step by step he goes through it showing me how to tell if I could light a fire with a rock and how to tell if a branch will catch on fire. He shows me how to set the rocks up to make sure nothing else catches on fire and then shows me how to start the fire.
He pulls something from a bag I didn't notice he had and hands it to me. "Here, this is good to eat"
"Thank you" we sit in silence for a little bit before I notice the bag he pulled the weird fruit from isn't big enough to hold anything but a few small things, not big enough to hold whatever weird fruit this is. It must be a magically expanded bag, but he didn't know why my wand was so why would he have a magical bag? Maybe he took it from someone he killed? That makes the most sense, but then did he steal the wand as well? He had to have, what other reason would he have it and not know what it is?
"When your done you can come into the tent" he glances at me before heading into the makeshift tent.
I stay by the fire for a little bit, letting myself breath for the first time since I saw my parents bodies on the floor. Now that I'm giving myself the chance to think about the day I can't really stop myself from crying. I just lost my life, in the course of a day and I'm now living with a murder. Why didn't I go to someone in the village for help? Wouldn't that have made more sense than running for the hills? But of course when someone chases you trying to kill you, you don't really think you just run.
After a while, once the tears stopped coming I head into the tent and lay on one of the piles of leaves. It's not very comfortable but I guess it's better than nothing. I close my eyes and immediately start to drift.