You can't run forever

Chapter 17 - Hating your surroundings

Just a couple of minutes before Abe decided to go to bed, Toby set me on fire. Not intentionally of course, that would be so unlike Toby. I was too busy worrying about the way Abe was acting recently to notice a lone spark catch onto my ruint coronation dress. The little hot red ember blended in with the material on my dress. "Cassandra, can you please pass me some sticks, I need them to keep the fire going, the one right by your leg looks long enough, Cassandra? Cassandra! wakey wakey!" Toby picked up the stick himself and poked me with it from faraway. I was still thinking and not paying attention so he poked my dress. Unfortunately, the wood connected with the ember and BOOM! fire was made. The fire was large and quickly spreading to my sleeves. I ran around trying to douse it in water from my canteen. Everyone sleepily stood up not registering what was happening until Toby realised he was holding a flaming torch and almost dropped it. "Gah! I can't hold it for much longer!" he ran around trying to balance the piece of wood. "But it in the fwere" said The general leaping up his mouth still full of food. He started choking in alarm and Clarissa had to pat him furiously on the back. Toby was still wobbling around with the torch when he accidently dropped it on the guy's tent. The whole thing burst into flames with Abe still inside it. "ABE!" I yelled in horror. "Cassandra!" he called back running out the tent with his hair in disarray. "Why the hell are you on fire!" he said looking at me, shocked, he rushed behind the burning tent and past the still standing one. "Where's he going?" I asked alarmed. "I don't know but we're going to need a lot more water to put you and the tent out" said Liam trying to gather everyone's water supplies. I remembered then that I was still on fire. My whole body felt hot, I thought I was going to melt then and there. I began to lose all my energy and sunk to the floor. Luckily there were no flammable materials underneath me. My vision began to go foggy and I saw Toby rushing towards me. "Cassandra! it's going to be alright" he soothed me. Just as I began to black out, cold soothing water began to flood over me.

I revived a couple of minutes later with concerned faces staring back at me. "Dude, I told you to 'put it in the fire' before, don't you listen?" said Brayden looking at Toby. "Sorry you had your mouth full, so I couldn't hear much except for *munch* munch *burp *choke" said Toby sarcastically. "You're the one who set Cassandra on fire and attempted to kill me and the rest of us by burning down the forest!" said Abe accusingly. "Don't blame Toby, it's not his fault" said Clarissa batting her eyelashes at everyone. "Why are you defending him!" said Brayden giving Clarissa a blank stare. She returned it then flicked her hair over her shoulder. I wondered what was going on between the happy couple. "What happened to the tent?" I asked weakly trying to stand up. No one answered my question or even looked at me. They were all too busy arguing with each other. "You tend to faint a lot, is there a reason?" signed Katy, still not answering my question but looking concerned enough. "Not that I know of" I lied looking for a chance to change the topic. Liam appeared out of the forest and everyone went silent. It was obvious he was the group leader. I asked my question again while I had the chance. "The tent's fine, we can't use it again though, so from now on the guys will sleep outside, under the stars like real campers" he said thoughtfully looking upwards. There were moans and sighs. "We ran out of all our drinkable water so we need to find a water source soon or we'll all die of dehydration" he added. "I think Abe found one, since he heroically went running out of the campsite and returned with a bucket load" said Toby with a level of spite in his voice. "Yeah, I'll take us back there tomorrow morning but we should all get some sleep now" said Abe sneaking one meaningful glance at Toby, who shot one back. Soon me, Katy and Clarissa went back to our tent and went to sleep. It wasn't too hard, for me at least.

We all woke up a little later than usual because we thought we had less forest to cover today. Turns out, Liam's calculations were wrong and we had to gain an extra two hours of fast paced walking to get to the Gwela village. Annoyed, at around 11am everyone gathered around to have some sort of a brunch. "I miscalculated how much food we had to have for the journey, so we may have to miss out on breakfast and lunch until we get to Gwela" said Brayden fidgeting. He looked the most unsure I had seen him 5 years. "I guess everyone's mucking up today, huh? well... and last night" said Abe whistling absentmindedly. "And I guess that our superhero has some sort of a way of magically  finding us food" said Toby. "Well yeah I guess I do" said Abe walking off for the second time in 24 hours. "I think his temper's getting worse" remarked Clarissa.