The entry of the forest III

Katerina

I don't know how long I really slept, to some extent I wish I had slept forever. My whole body aches and I still feel a constant whistle in my ears. The pain is so intense that even breathing becomes an agonizing process. Even so, the pain is not what woke me up, the hunger I feel is getting worse, there are times when I lose consciousness and I don't know if it is because of the severity of my injuries or if it is because time is running out.

I must get up…

I told my whole body to get up and after a lot of effort I managed to stand up, I knew it was not safe to stay in that place for long. I have been lucky, I was not attacked all the time I was asleep, but my luck could change at any moment. So, I must find a safe place and more importantly… I need to find food quickly.

I do not know how long I walked; I could not move easily and could not move forward because of the pain I felt. When I was beginning to feel desperate, I smelled a subtle smell in the air. It was the smell of water, I followed the smell until inside the lush forest; I managed to find a large lagoon, that place seemed magical. It was not possible to see it from the heights, and because of the sunset, it was dazzling in front of the water with different shades of oranges that gave the whole place a magical aura. I thought I was delirious or that I had found the place destined to die.

Every day that passes I forget more about how my first death was, in my reality everything happened too fast to think about it carefully, I just made a stupid decision to get on a plane and then ended up dying. If I learned anything from that incident, it's that I have to make sure my next death isn't that stupid.

While I was distracted in my thoughts, I was able to dazzle in the skies, a bird waiting for the right moment to hunt something from the lake. I saw her descend from the skies at an amazing speed and manage to pull a fish out of the water. However, his hunt did not go as well as expected, the fish was too heavy to be able to fly away with it. Therefore, feeling in danger, the bird decided to release the fish on the riverbank and flee the area.

The fish was on the opposite shore to which I was. But I understood that this was my last chance, if I couldn't catch that fish, I wasn't going to eat anything today. So, even with how sore I was, I ended up jumping into the lagoon and swimming as fast as possible to the opposite shore. The water was so cold that my bones started to ache and the closer I got to my destination, the less my limbs felt. Although, I must admit that that made my pain subside considerably.

Upon reaching the shore without thinking much about it, I began to devour the still-alive fish. It may be considered a cruel act, but that was the least of my problems. That fish ... had a quite original flavor ...

You could say it tasted like hope and life.