Beth leapt from leaf to leaf, remaining slightly behind Pauline and struggling to keep up. The other girl was lighter and despite apparently not leaving the village much was well versed in travelling by leaf. She adjusted her skill usage trying to increase the ground she was covering while not losing control or awareness of her target. It was much harder to land her feet correctly when the strides she was taking were unnaturally long and she was pushing them even further. Given that this still wasn’t quite enough to reach the girl, she couldn’t push the skill much further without risking a plunge, she had to split her attention one step further to shout after the retreating Pauline.

“Pauline slow down,” she shouted to no reaction. “Pauline please!”

The girl slowed a tad, not enough to allow Beth to catch up but enough that she was no longer pulling away. Beth continued to shout her name fruitlessly for another several hundred yards until mid shout Beth placed her foot wrong and found herself once again barrelling through the leaves. By this point however, Beth had experienced this a number of times and reacted quickly to the sudden lack of support below her feet. She grabbed the leaf she had failed to step properly onto. Her fingers ripped into the leaf as they sought purchase on it’s glossy surface. As she scrambled she flailed out her hand to grab a second leaf and between the two of the managed to stop her descent completely. She lay there, her head resting on the leaf she had torn up as she took deep lung filling breaths. As had become a bit of a pattern for her a head shortly popped out from above her. Pauline had clearly backtracked after hearing her fall and was there reaching down for Beth’s arm.

Beth was far from having her life at risk and now her situation had stabilised she was focusing on getting her breath back more than being actually worried about the situation. Pauline however was in a less stable situation and was waving her hand frantically for Beth to grab in an attempt to rescue her from the fate Pauline assumed would become her if she fell. Beth released one of the leaves and used her free hand to grab onto Pauline. Pauline had clearly not fully thought this through and was beginning to lean forward clearly unable to take Beth’s weight. In a reversal of situations it now seemed liked Beth was going to pull Pauline down. An act that might actually present some danger for the pair if they were still in the range of the Volisear pack that Beth had encountered setting off this whole mess.

Fortunately another face popped itself out next to Pauline. One much more familiar to Beth, Nate. He grabbed her other arm and pulling on Beth and Pauline’s back he yanked the pair fully onto the trees and out of risk of falling out of the trees. The three fell into a small pile as the momentum of the pulls of the two younger children brought Beth up and onto the other, pinning them under her. The three lay there for a while Beth being more glad that Pauline hadn’t instantly taken off again than anything else. She had faced the Volisear once and while a little scary she had survived and was sure next time she would know what she was expecting and would be more prepared. She shifted her weight off the pair and began to shoot daggers at Nate while gesturing her head extremely unsubtly towards Pauline she was staring at the leave below her seemingly completely out of it and paying zero attention to the other two beside her.

Nate rolled his eyes at Beth but none-the-less turned to face Pauline.

“Hey Pauline,”

She turned sharply to face him her eyes still puffy from the crying she had done while running away.

“If you are going to say something else horrible just don’t. I’ll go home okay, I won’t put you two at risk anymore.”

She rubbed her nose and gave a long sniff.

Nate turned towards Beth with a face that screamed problem solved. However Beth’s face screamed, if you don’t fix this I will end you, all the louder.

“No Pauline, I wasn’t going to have a go at you. I was going to-” he paused once more before continuing as though he could feel Beth’s continued glares without turning towards her.

“I was going to say I’m sorry. I was worried about Beth and I took it out on you. You can’t go back, what kind of people would we be if we let you fail the ritual and to never be seen as more than a child by the world.”

He said seemingly convincing himself that this wasn’t something he wanted.

“No, we will get through this together. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, you’ve clearly just seen one of mine so lets just work with our strengths and together we can overcome this challenge.”

Pauline let out another sniff but smiled at the other two.

“Okay let’s do this together. Group hug!”

At this it was Beth’s turn to want to push back. Nate clearly wasn’t excited either. In fact Pauline herself didn’t seem all that excited by the concept but she went for it anyway. As did Beth. She leaned in and tried not to audibly groan when Pauline squeezed her tightly. Something made harder by Pauline continuing to hold on beyond the initial squeeze.

The three remained there in the embrace. All unsure of what to do next. Finally after what felt like an eternity and mere moments before Beth felt she would be compelled to do something drastic to get herself released from the show of affection. Pauline released the pair suddenly.

“Oh the rest of the stuff. Where is it?”

Nate turned and gestured back towards where the goods had first been spilt.

“Don’t worry about it I made sure everything was secure when you.” Nate paused not knowing how to tactfully say, ‘ran away in tears’. “I made sure everything was secure. It should still all be over there.”

The trio headed back travelling at a normal walking pace, rather than the high speed walking Beth did or the running of the other two, sure enough once they got back all there stuff was still there. Neatly tidied away except for the large map that Pauline had unfolded previously.

Back in her element and clearly putting the past behind them Pauline gestured to the map.

“We are here. Well ish. Certainly in this range. Between us we have enough food for a week, well a little less as we lost some.” Pauline stating, no guilt in her voice over the reason for the loss of those supplies.

“If we supplement that with occasional berries and some edible roots I’m aware of we can extend that to a week and a half.” Nate chimed in helpfully.

“Okay so let’s me draw a quick couple of lines here.” Pauline added two circles a little distance apart to the map. “This is how far we can go in that time if we stick at our current pace and if we increase our speed by a further twenty percent. In reality I expect it would be somewhere between the two.”

Beth looked at the radius of these circles. The smaller of the two reached just beyond the far side of the first mountain, Platilda.

“Travel time will be slower over the mountain, I’d assume it would take a week to climb it as well as to come back down. That means if we remain dedicated we would finish the first mountain in two and a half weeks leaving us with four and a half to get up the other two. Ideally we would have time to return to town too but that is not a necessity at the end of the day.”

Pauline paused before adding a number of little stars to the map. “These are the other settlements. The next one if a further week away the other side of the mountain. From there we are in a good position to plan the next two and hopefully time permitting to take a small break to refocus and recentre.”

Beth nodded. It all seemed reasonable so far, she waited for Pauline to offer a solution to their obvious issue. Pauline however, didn’t offer anything further than a “So what do you think?”

Half expecting Nate to jump in with something sarcastic Beth quickly responded. “It’s good but what are we going to do about food? We obviously can’t just make a week and a half of food appear.”

She turned to Nate. “You mentioned getting up to more food by supplementing with berries and roots. Is there any reason we couldn’t stretch that further.

Nate shook his head. “Unfortunately not, while the berries are common enough around here, the closer we get to the mountain the rarely they are. The roots I’m thinking of are still around but the time they require to property find and prepare makes them a time sink.”

“Oh I know!” Pauline declared happily reaching behind her for a large book and flicking through before slamming it down onto the map triumphantly. Nate and Beth peered at the page that was sprayed open. On it was a sketch of what looked like a collection of rocks in a chain. In almost unison they turned back to Pauline.

“These guys live on the mountain, and are apparently rather common though well camouflaged. If their tough calcified shell is cracked they animal has a layer of thick goo before a rich and filling meat that is described by others as ‘slimy yet satisfying’. If we eat these while on the mountain, we should be able to solve our food problems.”

Beth’s mood raised at the solution. She was very aware she had been all but useless in finding a solution but was just glad they wouldn’t have to starve themselves to make it through.

Nate however was less convinced “And how will will cook the meat, we can’t exactly eat it raw.”

“Oh I have a solution to that” Pauline responded dismissively.

The others looked at her expectantly but she had picked up the book and was flicking through the pages. Noticing their looks she finished the thought nonchalantly “Oh it’s just that Dad gave me one of his cooking slabs.”

From the look on Nate’s face this was a much bigger deal than Beth was aware of.

“How did he end up with a spare one of them and where is it?”

“Uncle Willie gave it to him when he passed. He didn’t have any family of his own and it should have been in my bag.” She looked around. “Oh maybe it fell!”

Nate looked ready to blow up again at how casually she was talking about this item and it being potentially lost.

“Why don’t you go find it Nate, you will be much less in danger than me.”

“Well that’s for sure” Nate said as he dropped through the leaves. Minutes later he returned cradling a large flat rock, that looked like a skimming stone that had been scaled up. He passed it to Pauline who barely reacted to being passed the valuable item and instead tossed it into her bag alongside everything else she had packed away in the meantime. Getting all of their bags onto their backs they set off again. It had still been less than a couple of hours since they left the village but if nothing else they had reached a silent truce and had a plan for the next three weeks. As she looked at the grimace on Nate’s face and the concentrated look on Pauline’s as she flicked through her book Beth couldn’t help but be concerned it would be a very long three weeks.