March 17, 2013

The trees towered over them, silent, looming, blocking sunlight and rain in equal parts, protection and threat in equal parts. They waited between the roots of one of the giants, dried leaves piled for insulation, blankets tucked around them, watching the filtered light dim. Night soon, and colder, but they'd taken precautions, hopefully enough if there wasn't snow, or the rain didn't defeat the protective abilities of the canopy of branches and leaves.

If it did, they'd be wet, though not much colder, the blankets were wool, warming even when the weather hindered. She sighed, thinking of the last of the nuts. They'd been eaten at dawn, and just some water and half ripe berries in the hours since. Her stomach had stopped growling about noon.

"We'll find food tomorrow," she said. Hope could make a fool of her, but that would be tomorrow.

"Liar," he said, tugging the blankets they shared closer around them both.

"Pessimist," she threw back, and they bumped foreheads in the fading light.

"Yeah." His turn to sigh. He wiggled his fingers under her clothes, against her skin, cold against her warmth. She retaliated by a similar move, finding his stomach warm, and she let her fingers spread, warming them. He jumped. "You been dipping them in icewater?"

"No more'n you have." She tucked her toes into a warmer spot of their nest, making sure the blanket surrounded them. Still cold, still getting colder. They'd be stiff come morning, but alive.

#

Come the morning, there was dew, or rainfall that'd penetrated to the ground, but they were stiff, cold, sore, and packed up their possessions in silence strained by the weather and the wet. They'd been together long enough to make words mostly unnecessary in the morning rituals of folding, pissing, re-finding the stream they'd found the previous night, to drink and wash the worst of the night away. It was too cold for full stripdown and swim, and the stream was too small. The pair washing hands and faces and drinking took it down almost to a trickle.

Their shoes were stiff with the night unworn, but they stomped their feet until the worst of the stiffness eased.

"Which direction?" he asked, when they'd their packs shouldered, blankets rolled and strapped away, jackets around them and buttoned closed.

She looked around, finally spotting sunlight slanting through a small gap. "That way." She pointed. "South. It'll be warmer at least."

"Sounds good enough." He said, huffing out breath he could see. "I could use warm."

"We both could." She huffed out her own visible breath. "We should be able to make ten miles today, maybe find some place better than here.”

"Optimist." He breathed too deeply and bent over, wracked with a cough that left him wheezing and gasping for air. She put a hand on his shoulder to support him until it passed. They should have found some place better than the woods, open and unprotected.