Strawberry Panic {TomTord}

A goodbye

Squelching through miles upon miles of wet, hilly farmlands, Tom was very quickly finding himself to be at the end of his proverbial rope.

Bare feet trudged wetly through the vast expense of fields, joints aching and flesh sore. Thick splatters of mud clung tightly to his skin, wrapping themselves around his ankles in dirty, brown clumps- small flicks of sludge littered his thighs and splashed grossly across the wrinkled folds of his dress.

Hours had painstakingly crawled by, in a manner that could only be described as a snail's pace. Having no other choice but to watch as the world around him slowly morphed into a familiar inky, pitch-blackness, shivering as the atmosphere became cold; more ominous in nature. Before long, night had fully descended upon the earth, blanketing the once soft blue sky, into a murky abyss, devoid of any sort of natural light.

It left him, quite literally, stumbling blindly in the dark.

Sharp stones and cruelly hidden bits of broken glass lay scattered around, lingering silently in long patches of untamed grass, waiting to finally catch him off guard, sinking their sides into his unprotected flesh. For this reason, he had been limping the last quarter of a mile, hopping ridiculously on his left foot, a steady stream of blood oozing out of his wounded appendage, the cut mixing uneasily with the large amount of filth he had no option but to gingerly step in.

Tom wouldn't have this particular problem if he had the choice to walk back along the winding, twisting road that he had followed whilst sitting in the plush luxury of Tord's van. As the concrete was blessedly smooth to the touch and decidedly free of any unpleasant surprises, it would be considered a personal heaven at this point.

If only he knew where the darned thing was.

His monster form had dumped his useless corpse on a non-distinctive riverside- which was, to his knowledgeable guess, a couple of hours away from the Red Base. What he didn't know, was the position of the river, or where it leads to; so he had begrudgingly settled on following it downstream, despite the amount of pain and effort it took to do so. 

Although, despite picking the hardest route to travel, he knew that, deep down, he couldn't use the road- even if he did, somehow, miraculously find it. Without the covering of trees and long, blades of grass, he would be an easy target wandering around in the open, a clear prize for any rogue red soldiers, or hunting gang members.

At least, whilst he was trekking through glorified swamplands, he didn't have the conscious fear of sticking out like a big, gay, cross-dressing thumb.  

Well.

To other humans, that was. 

Despite not detecting any of the aforementioned threats, Tom got the greatest distinction that he wasn't exactly alone anymore. Awkwardly hobbling along the otherwise muted landscape, he got to experience noises other than the gentle chirping of crickets. Odd shuffling movements had caught his attention quite a while ago, something shifting in the nearby bushes to his right- grunting snuffles whispering from their place behind him, unmistakably being emitted from the rather dense tree line. 

Suspicion crept down his spine, his shoulders tensing as he glanced around warily. Goosebumps spread across his flesh like a disease, equal parts to do with the cold, as it did with the fact he knew he was being watched.

If he squinted hard enough, he could see vague glimpses of glowing eyes stalking around the underbrush, glaring at him intently, almost as if they were amused by his plight.