Experiment X

14 | Hope

PhAsE FoUR | fInDInG hOpE

14 | Hope

    Traveling for most the day. Without stop. Only for necessities. Drinks of water from their single water bottle. Restroom breaks, only when dire. A quick, splash of creek water for a bath. And when they absolutely needed it, rest. But those times do not languish long.

    Sleeping restlessly during the nights that are becoming colder, Teresa and Manu keep a constant, rotating watch for any signs of pursuit, any signs of the Shadows, their growling dogs, or worse, an ambush. Living off of fire-cooked lean rabbit meat, greens, and what plants and berries deemed edible by Manu. They manage. They seem healthier, than before. Teresa, and Teran, especially the boy. His cheeks have more color to them now, and Teresa must admit she feels even livelier; as lively as she could feel, she supposes. But the meeting of Manu and his niece, has been she realizes has been fate, has been an unequivocal blessing. They are now indispensible. She doesn’t like to think of where they would without them, if they hadn’t came across them when they so happened to—more than likely, dead. This gives her shudders, and she suppresses the haunting thoughts. And they move on.

    The scenery changes. The rocky, forested highlands sweep down into less wooded hilly terrain, which provides even less coverage from any follower. Great.

    Occasionally, there is rain. A downpour, drenching them soaking wet, in an awful chill until they can huddle around a small, crackling fire at night. More often than not. There’s thunder, even lightning. The lightning scares Sera more than it does Teran for some reason…She said she wasn’t scared, just made her nervous…It always had. Teran wasn’t so convinced.

    Manu once had to clamp his hand around her mouth to quell a shrill of shriek, as a volt crashes down obliterating a tree in the distance into a smoky petrified piece of charcoal. Then one night, there is something strange. Flaky, and crisp in the bitter air. It’s snowing. Teran’s eyes light up, and he sticks out his tongue to taste, watched by his mother who wears a weathered, but hopeful smile. As this reminds them of home. A flashback. To the Christmas before. When everything was in a sense, okay. Now all that has changed. That in culmination is their journey into the wild, headed north, to Hope. Somewhere.

    What is this Hope they search for? Some say it’s a legend. A fairytale. Something to keep dreams alive in now dreamless world. Some say it’s a reality; a place of rebellion, and well, hope. But to them, it is all they have left, the one strand of promise connecting them with the past that haunts them all, within fall asleep. The nightmares. Unbearable. But these are only whispers. Whispers of rumors. Rumors…But within a rumor is a tiny grain of truth. And this they cling to; it’s all they have. If they do not have this: they have nothing.

    “We have been travelling for days, Manu,” Teresa mutters as she leans herself against the turnk of a tree beside him, the dying embers glowing light warming and shadowing their faces. “And still no sign of…anything…Or anyone…Nothing of this Hope.”

    “I know,” he answers weakly, not looking at her, but into the thick of the darkness, his eyes unblinking and grave. “But…” His eyes drift to the peaceful images of Sera, and Teran asleep, lying near each other on their rolled out navy sleeping bag. “We must remain strong for the children; if we lose faith, or any hope at all…They will too…And we must keep hope within them, at all cost.”

    At this, Teresa nods. “You’re right, Manu…But it’s just where do we go from here?—Where are even at?” She lifts her eyes to the surrounding scenery: tall, twisted trees, their gnarled branches blotting out the faint starlight from above; Teresa enwraps her thin forest-green jacket closer to her body, because of the sudden chill. She had managed to salvage a few articles of their past clothing, and they all had immediately changed once they knew they had escaped their forces, fleeing far enough from their Unit’s border to where it would be nearly impossible to be followed in thicket of the woods; the piercing, petrifying siren could no longer be clearly heard, but Teresa still sometimes heard it in her nightmares. The Enforcers’ shouting. The snapping of the twigs and rustling of the bushes as they flew into the mouth of the forest.