In modern life it is rarely noticed, but humanity’s unyielding strength isn’t built on cities and quick lunches. Rather, humanity’s success is the result of a slow and hard struggle against the element, fuelled by close-knit communities who bonded and grew strong together, huddled around fires, sharing meals and telling stories, standing vigilant together against the dangers of the night. There is a magic to it, the comfort that is found in the warmth of a fire, a full belly and the sound of your comrade’s voice. It stirs something deep within you, telling you that everything is going to be alright. If you have ever experienced it, you know that this is true.

The boy and the girl talked for a long while. At the girl’s insistence, the boy had shared some of the dried meat that was his dinner, and as they spoke the awkward feeling between them slowly melted away. As the night progressed, the girl tried her best to understand what had happened to her. The boy’s outfit made her think that he was one of those LARPERS, but the boy’s confused look and insistent answer that he was a hunter made her drop that explanation. When she then had asked to see his rifle, the boy’s confusion had only grown. Once he understood that she wanted to see his weapon he had proudly shown her a bow, while bragging of its quality and his prowess with it. Any prodding from her regarding where they were and what date it was got her nowhere, the boy almost took offence from how inadequate she deemed his answers. Apparently, the best answer to the question of “where” was “the Valley” with a capital v, and apparently “the Valley” was a day or so from “the Village”, also with a capital v.

All answers regarding time was even worse, the best she got was that it was the beginning of autumn. Exotic as it might seem, the boy seemed utterly baffled at the concept of counting years or days. He knew what a year was alright, he just didn’t count them. Try as she might, the girl couldn’t possibly make any sense of his answers. Either he was pulling her leg with a straighter face than she thought him capable off, or she had somehow ended up in some impossibly isolated corner of the world, where progress seemed to have ground to a halt somewhere around the invention of the wheel, and where the inhabitants just happened to speak the same language as her, albeit with a weird accent.

It didn’t add up, and when the boy finally had gotten around to asking questions of his own, it only made the difference between them more apparent. Every answer she gave was followed by a question. What is the army? What is a rifle? What is a bullet? What is gunpowder?

Eventually she had given up on that part of the conversation, and instead tried to find out more about why he was in the woods. To her dismay she had found that he might be less of a help than she had hoped. For despite his proud declarations of being a hunter for the village, he eventually admitted that he was lost. “Just a tiny bit”, he insisted, but the girl wasn’t buying it. Lost is lost, no matter if it’s a lot or a little. The boy had ventured out from the village along with a man named Björn, who as far as the girl could tell was the boy’s teacher or mentor. This trip was supposed to be the boy’s big debut, the first time that he would separate from his teacher and try hunting on his own. The plan was that he would strike out on his own for a day or two, and then meet up with Björn at their usual campsite.

Obviously, the plan hadn’t been a great success, since the boy hadn’t found any game, nor found his way back to campsite. The girl resolved to not judge the boy to harshly, all things considered he seemed to be holding up a lot better than he could have done. At least she thought he did, he seemed ok on the surface, but he looked like one of those guys who did his best to hid is feelings under false bravado, praying at the shrine of masculinity like so many other teenage boys before him.

After a while their conversation had begun to ebb out, and they had mutually decided to turn in for the night. The boy had handed her a spare blanket, and she had made herself as comfortable as possible with her back to the fire, the boy doing the same on the other side of the campsite. As is often the case when two people talk animatedly before sleep and then suddenly stop, neither feel asleep quickly.

The girl felt the heat from the dying fire warm her back, and the pleasant, almost cold air of the night against her face. She thought about the boy’s weird lack of modern knowledge, and of the strange creature whose pelt she was currently wearing. She tried her best, but it was impossible to make all that fit in any reasonable explanation. The girl considered herself a grounded sceptic, an atheist through and through that based her understanding of the world on the tried and true facts of per-reviewed science. But for all that she tried, she couldn’t make sense of her situation. She had woken up in a completely unexpected place with no clothing. She had killed a creature unlike any she had ever seen or heard of, and she had met a boy who swore that he didn’t know what electricity was, and who didn’t understand the concept of a calendar. Add those facts together, and the only logical explanations she could conjure where bordering on science fiction. The girl continued to wrestle with her thoughts, but they grew less and less coherent, and she eventually fell asleep. Just minutes later, the boy apparently did the same, his snores warding them from the creatures that inhabited the forest.

Hours later the girl awoke to the cool morning air and the moist that had gathered during the night. The boy was already up, blowing life into the remains of the fire. Next to him was a small cauldron, containing whatever was meant to be their breakfast.

“The porridge will be done shortly”, the boy said as he saw that she had woken. “I just need to get the fire going again”, he added.

The girl yawned and stretched, before she slowly stood up on stiff legs. Her mouth tasted like shit, but she knew it would be fruitless to ask the boy for toothpaste. Instead she excused herself and clumsily walked away from the camp until she judged that she had some manner of privacy. Morning duties done, she felt a lot better, but she desperately wanted to find a substitute for toilet paper. That and toothpaste was right at the top of things she needed to figure out, next to the trivial topics of Survive and Figure out what the fuck happened. One thing at a time. She would get there eventually.

When she got back, the boy had a small fire going. As the porridge simmered, they talked a little about the plans for the day. That conversation didn’t get far thought, as the boy suddenly realized that he only had one spoon and usually ate from the cauldron. The girl couldn’t help but feel charmed by his glowing cheeks as he offered her to share his spoon with a stutter. Once they were done with the logistics of breakfast, they quickly broke camp and set off in a direction of the boy’s choosing. It wasn’t as if the girl could add anything to the decision, so she just went with it.

The boy was carrying literary everything from the camp, which left the girl feeling rather silly, since her burden consisted simply of the shovel blade that she had stuck into the hem of her pants, and the spear that she had flung over her shoulder. She had tried to lighten his load, but he had been strangely insistent that he didn’t need her help. By the third time he refused her help she had simply shrugged and left him to his devices, taking comfort in the fact that he had managed fine until she came along.

Now it was nearing lunchtime, and she had spent the last several hours in a boring slog, just watching the boy’s backpacks’ movements as he made his way through the woods. The only brake in the monotony had been the few times that the boy had decided for a change of direction, not that it had had any effect on the scenery. Wherever they went it was the same thing: Pine and fir, followed by pine and fir. Every now and then a sprinkle of fern, soaking their trousers with their still dew-laden leaves as they made their way ever onward. The scene kept repeating itself for another hour until finally the break arrived, marked by the boy’s jubilant scream.

The girl caught up with the boy and was a bit disappointed to find that the tiniest stream of water was what the boy was kicking up such a fuzz about. When he caught her less-than-ecstatic frown, he pointed out that the camp was located next to the brook, which in turn meant that they were practically there already.

At first the girl felt like explaining the holes in his logic, starting with the fact that this was hardly more than a very long puddle, and ending with the fact that even if he was right, they still only had a fifty-fifty chance at picking the right direction. But then she noticed the look in his eyes, which more than excitement showed a feeling of relief. He obviously needed some good news, something to pin his hopes to. So she let him have it, and gave him a pat on the back. At least that’s what she meant to do.

The boy froze, and so did the girl. The forest felt dead silent, only the slowly moving water made any sound as the girl backtracked the last seconds. She had decided to give him a reassuring pat on the back. Nothing wrong with that. But he had a backpack, so she had to pat somewhere else. Makes sense, the only choice really. And then her hand moved on further south, finding a suitably backpack-free part of his back while she was caught in other thoughts.

Fuck.

For the first time in the brief time that they had known each other, the boy wasn’t the only one to blush, which only made things worse for the girl. Her panicked eyes shot towards the boy’s to try to gauge his reaction. To no-one’s surprise his were equally panicked, but they also seemed to carry a muddled mix of fear and excitement. They stood there like morons for what felt like an eternity, while the girl’s mind raced for a way out of the awkwardness. She couldn’t think of anything, but for once the boy took the initiative and squeezed out a nervous laugh. The girl grasped the offered straw and joined in on the laughter. It didn’t last long, and the silence soon made its return. None of the two said anything, until the boy simply turned around and begun following the brook down-stream. The girl did the same, keeping her eyes on her feet. The laughter hadn’t really helped the situation.

Half an hour or so of awkward silence later, the girl spotted what must be the famed campsite in the distance. She couldn’t tell if the boy had already noticed it or not, he had at least not given out any jubilant shouts like he did the last time. As they got closer to the camp, she saw an older man leaning against a nearby tree. He had his arms crossed and was looking towards them. They were still too far away to hear what he was saying, but just from the look of his face she could imagine the tsk-tsk sounds he was making. It was the face that every parent made when they knew that they had every right to dole out some harsh judgement. Poor Olof.

The man whom she assumed to be Björn was dressed in pretty much the exact same outfit as Olof, which made the girl curious if it was a serious case of hero-worshiping, or if that was the only clothes on offer in the area. The man looked about as rugged as one could get, as if Aragon hade gotten a practical haircut and then been forced to actually spend a couple of years in the wilderness. His face was covered in a stubble that seemed only a day or two away from a full beard, and the hints of silver in his hair only added to the general look. His eyes were clearly fixated on her with a calculation look, and she could practically hear the cogs in his brain as they worked to catalogue her as friend or foe. At least he wasn’t reaching for the bow that was on the ground by his feet.

She heard the inhale of air that Olof took as he prepared to excuse his tardiness, but his attempt was cut short by the gruff voice of his mentor.

“Where the fuck have you been?” He said, with a sharp emphasis on the fuck.

“Ehr…”, Olof said in his defence.

“We were supposed to meet up here days ago”, Björn continued.

“Yeah I know, but I uh…” Olof tried, futilely. The girl pitied him, there was no way he was getting out of this know. She knew this dance far too well, she had been stuck in that same rhythm one time to many herself. Attack, attempted explanation, interruption, new attack. There was nothing you could do really.

But much to her surprise the dance took a sudden stop, and she shot a glance at Olof to try and study whatever brilliant argument the boy had used to get away from his unpleasant situation. She wanted to face-palm when she realized that the boy hadn’t said anything. He simply stood there in silence, his arm pointing straight at her. Shifting the blame. That sly mother fucker!