The River in the Forest

"Where's the river in the forest?" Lee asked the teenager that had curled up on the bed in exhaustion, panting and sweating, her eyes closed as she was on the verge of drifting off into the land of dreams and unconsciousness.

"Go straight in and you'll see it. You can't miss the water. You'll hear it first before you hear it," she mumbled out, panting through her directions and sounding as if she was winded.

"Day time soon. Day time is safe," she finally whispered, her head falling into the clean sheets that she was lead upon, and falling asleep then and there, promptly.

Lee looked back at her for a few moments, before closing the door behind him and leaving.

He looked out towards the path outside the village, watching all the children stand together huddling and just watching Lee, as he emerged from the house.

A few of them piped up and began waving their arms about as Lee came into view, but not approaching.

The sun was beginning to rise over the horizon, the first few beams of golden light beginning to make their way through the blackness of the night, the wisps of blue managing to takeover more and more of the darkness, forcing the white, pinprick stars to vanish back into the recesses of the night.

Lee looked away from the sun, turning his head towards the edge of the forest, already trying to find the river hidden within the trees.

Stepping outside, he relished as the cold wind blew through his tangled and messy hair, lifting up the strands and patting him on the head as a congratulations for his efforts.

His sweat soaked skin also felt refreshed, with the cold breeze carrying away the dust and dirt plastered onto it, finally freeing it up from the hot, sticky clutches of the grains where they had coagulated and congealed to make more of an uncomfortable paste, rather than settling as pure power.

Shivering after a while, Lee kept on walking up the path towards the rows upon rows of trees that began to climb up out of the earth and loom taller and taller, as he got closer.

The girl had been right.

He really couldn't miss the river, especially as he heard it bubble loudly, before he had even set foot into the forest, the sound being all that he really needed as a guide through the thick bushes and the gnarled tree roots that immediately overtook the flat path that he had trekked down.

The place looked to be almost entirely untouched by humanity, with birds tweeting up in their nests as they made their way back home to sleep, crickets rubbing their limbs together in a song, and the quiet scurrying of small mice and other burrowing animals through the underbrush.

An owl swooped down in front of Lee, catching a small, burrowing fur ball within the sharp grasp of its talons, uncaring of whether it had been seen by the human or not, and completely unafraid of the notion that he may have been carrying arrows - the owl never having a previous encounter with the hunters who had once lived in the village.