The Wings Of A Caged Bird | First Draft

chapter 11: it's not real

"If only we had something we could use as a rope. We could have made a small house for ourselves. It would be so romantic!"

I shake my head disapprovingly. The rain stopped about two hours ago. Or at least, it feels like it's been about two hours. The sun showed it's face for about half an hour more after the rainfall stopped. During this time, we started walking again in search of a good spot to camp for the night. On the way, a lot of insects fell in love with my shirt and attached themselves to it, and July had to brush them off quickly using The Handmaid's Tale before I fainted.

Finally we found a really great place to stay. It's only a great place as the ground is comparatively dry here, maybe because of the dense canopy covering most of the sky overhead. Besides, all the trees here are maintaining a kind of social distancing, leaving a small open space in the middle, where we made a fire after trying for what felt like another 30 minutes.

From the scanty knowledge we had about building fires, we managed to do it, but it was harder and scarier especially because darkness had fallen all around already. The lighter helped greatly, and I don't know what we would've done without it. We built the initial flames using the timber and kindling we collected. To make it stronger, we had to keep on searching for more. The fact that it's summer and thus woods dry up faster was a good plus point.

Right now, July and I are sitting on a dry piece of log that was lying around the place, lonely and abandoned. The fire is burning fiercly in front of us, and we're trying to make it stronger and long lasting by adding more kindling and dry leaves. Now that that's out of the way, only two major problems remain - wild animals that would gladly kill me, and how to sleep for the night.

"Even if we did have some ropes," I say while chewing on a piece of cracker from the snacks Edgar gave, "we would never be able to make a house. Do you even know how to build a house?"

"How hard can it be?" He throws another piece of wood into the fire. His face is glowing orange from the flames as he stares at them with childlike curiosity. "I bet our brains would figure it out. Believe it or not, I have a huge amount of trust in human brain."

I was about to reply when I get an abrupt thought. I ask, "Hey July, is your brain, uh, alive?"

Slowly, he turns his head back and looks at me, a confused expression on his face. We stare at each other in silence for a while, until he finally says, "Okay."

Frowning, I question, "What do you mean okay?"

He shakes his head. "I was actually about to say 'Okay, that's a really good question.' but got interrupted by my thoughts."

"Well, if you have thoughts-"

"You know what, forget it. This is gonna give me a headache."

"Yeah, you're right. Forget it."

I was drifting away to some other thoughts when July says, "So about our little house-"

"We're not making our little house, July."

He gives me a pouty look. Then he looks around and asks, "How did people back in the day make houses? What did they use as ropes?"

"July, if I knew the answer to that, we would already have started making our little house."

He throws a leaf at me but it doesn't fully reach. "You're not helping at all!"

I sigh as I put the can of crackers into the polythene bag. "Forget about the house. I can sleep in the open. I won't be the first one to do that."

"What exactly do you mean by open? Like, here? On the ground? I'm pretty sure it's very cold. Your blood circulation will stop."

"Hmm . . ." I look at the ground. I touch the surface. "No, it's not cold. It's pretty warm. Probably because of the fire?"