2 Keep

Everything is going to be fine, relax its fine, don't panic, breathe, breathe, and breathe again.

I'm fine but where am I and how did I get here, this looks like a stone building, was something like this anywhere close to where I lived?

I doubt so, I would've known of it, probably. Why does this sh*it have to happen to me, I only wanted to meet my friends inside a hut they found in the middle of a forest at night...

After agonizing for a good five minutes I got out of the corner I was huddled in and look around. While walking carefully and trying to not touch anything I reach the door leading to outside, it is wide enough to fit at least five people side by side and tall enough to fit someone standing on top of a horse, an accurate measurement if I can say so myself.

Funny is good, scared is bad, don't panic stop trembling, make more jokes.

Outside the sky is darkening and it looks like it is around dusk, I look at my watch only to see its broken, the glass cracked from something. Did I get hit in the hand? I don't feel any pain and the watch should resist quite a lot of pressure so how did it break...

As I keep wondering over what broke the awfully expensive watch I take of my backpack and try to make an inventory of all I have, it truly is not much, I seem to have lost my lantern when the thing crashed into me, so I'm only left with a spare change of clothes in case things got spicy, a small knife a must-have while in the forest, a small flint and some kindling no cord or anything like that not to mention that the backpack is small and most of my big things like my ax where on the horse.

I guess I have my shoelaces but I don't want to ruin my boots. I turn around and head back inside the hall, I did not even step outside only looked through the exit but this is not a castle, it only has one room, this hall that I can see so it is more accurate to call it a keep, even so, it is in disrepair and falling apart, whoever owned it is not around anymore.

I start scavenging through the rubble, mainly rotten wooden chairs in order to make a fire, it is quite easy considering I have a flint, the cold sensation from being submerged in the liquid has not passed yet, and while I am not wet it still feels like I'm naked outside in winter.

As I sit by the newly made fire, surrounded by cozy heat and light I think about what I need most right now, I need to make a plan, I need to figure out where I am and how I got here, I got no food the phone is broken it seems to have suffered the same treatment as my watch, I have only at most half a bottle of water, it won't last me long.

I should go take a look outside while there is still light. While walking out I once again see the sky, a bit darker this time and something that brings my hopes up, smoke in the distance. Across the forest in front of the keep, there is a big cloud of smoke that wasn't there before, it isn't something you could make with a small campfire, but a big bonfire should probably do it.

The dilemma comes now, do I sprint for it in the unknown soon to be dark forest, or do I cower in the corner waiting for the morning to come?

'I've had enough of dark forests for a day, no, for a lifetime, so I'm not going anywhere.'

I sit back by the fire that I built in the back corner of the hall with a clear view of the seemingly only entrance, this is where I felt the safest.

Still, I couldn't sleep till late in the night, I was kept awake by the shuffling sounds of insects on the outside and probably some animals, quite big by the sounds probably deer or something like that. I only fell asleep well in the night, well rather than falling asleep it was more of falling unconscious due to stress but it counts.

And so morning came.