After walking a little bit, a big pond came into view. I spotted four deer drinking water from the pond. I stopped in my tracks and closed in on them quietly. If I had time, I would have set traps and tried to capture all of them; but now didn’t have that leisure. I took out the knife from my pocket and threw it with full strength at one of the deer. That alerted the deer and they ran in different direction. I chose to follow a deer which I didn’t attack earlier, I ram after the deer but after a few moments I had to quit following it as it was too fast. I rushed back to the pond and saw drops of blood. I quickly followed the direction of the blood drops and found the wounded deed limping as it was trying to get away. Initially I planned to follow this one after I get another deer, thereby capturing two deer; but the unwounded one was too fast and the plan didn’t work as anticipated. I took the sword and was upon the wounded deer in a few seconds.

I came back to the pond dragging the dead deer behind me. I went straight to the pond as I guessed Elena wouldn’t like to see the deer being skinned. I skinned the deer and then started chopping the meet into little pieces. I cleaned the skin and the meet in the pond then I cut holes in the skin making it like a crude dress. Grabbed a bunch of few leaves, carried both the meat and skin with me.

I went back to Elena and gave her the skin. She wasn’t excited to see the dress and was a bit reluctant to wear it, but having had no choice she took it. Atleast it would make things a little less awkward between us. I started gathering dried sticks to make fire. I cooked five pieces of meat to eat and the rest was dried in smoke to preserve them. Over the period of days together I knew how much we both ate, I ate three pieces while Elena ate two. I told Elena that we should leave this area and she agreed without hesitance. I supported her shoulder to balance her weight and we started walking.

We were lost in the forest with no map. I decided to follow the sun’s direction as Elena’s village was located in the west relative to the forest. We stopped twice to rest, half way through Elena was feeling much better and she decided to walk without my assistance. In the mean time, I found a big thick stick to bind the knife, making it like a spear. I forbade Elena to use the bow and hence this made a good weapon for her. We picked up our pace as she got better and had put quite a distance between our initial resting place and the current location. By evening Elena’s shoulder wound was almost completely healed, although she was feeling week due loss of blood. Unlike her I didn’t felt any kind of weakness; maybe my blood also regenerates quickly.

Night came and this time I didn’t light any fire which lowers the chance of catching the attention of the predators. I prepared a lot of traps and set them near our resting place. It was full moon and hence there was better visibility, not that it mattered to me as I could see very well in the darkness. It did help Elena’s visibility and she was not uncomfortable because of lack of fire.

A few hours passed by peacefully and then it happened again. I heard noises in the bushes around us.

-------- Elena’s POV--------

I have been plagued with misfortunes from the day my father died. Things have become even more awful lately. If Cleon was not there with me, it’s dreadful to even imagine what would have happened. He is strong and faces all difficulties bravely; if not for me I am sure he would have been well-off by now. I am just a hindrance, yet he doesn’t want to leave me. Even when we face with dire situations, he doesn’t think of abandoning me and protects me with all his might. I don’t know how I can ever repay his kindness.

He says that he is doing all this because he promised me that he would take me back to my village. I am sure only part of it is true. The more I stay with him, the more I realized that deep down he is lonely. Sometimes he looks into the sky with a sad and lonely face. He does not remember anything about his past, nothing about him, his family or his friends. It must be painful for him to see others being happy with their friends and family. Although he might not agree but he longs for a companion and it may be one of the reasons why he is accompanying me to my village. I am afraid of what comes after we reach our village. Would he be alright if I stayed with my family? Although I would like for him to stay in our village, I know he would leave to find his identity.

His body felt very warm when he carried me yesterday. I cried myself to sleep, it was so embarrassing and in the morning I thought he was doing something perverted when he was just tending to my wounds, I feel like burying myself under a rock in shame. He was even nice enough to bring me the deer skin to cover myself. This is the first time that a man other than my father has treated me like this. Is it alright? Am I worthy of his care? I wondered whether he would be alright without me, while I should really wonder would I be alright without him.

I can’t stop myself thinking about these things even though we were still in the forest surrounded by danger. I don’t want us to reach our village soon but I also want to leave this forest as to not get hurt, my feelings are complicated. Cleon told me to sleep but the more I think about these things the more I feel restless inside and unable to sleep.

After a while Cleon came to my side and woke me up. He handed me the spear to protect myself. Last time I unintentionally harmed him with the bow, so I am not to touch the bow. There were lot of noises coming from the bushes and Cleon told me that we were surrounded by the wolves like creatures again. We gave everything we had to the wolves yesterday, what more could they want from us. Will the wolves not stop till they kill us? Yesterday because of me, Cleon had to suffer a lot; I didn’t want that to happen again.

Loud snapping sounds came ahead of us at a distance and the wolves were howling in pain. It seems Cleon had set up traps earlier. After few moments multiple wolves emerged from the shadows. Cleon was standing in an offensive pose wielding his sword. This time there were no big wolves, looks like it really died yesterday. I tightened my grip on the spear in my hand. I may not be able to kill any of them, but I will defend myself so as to not hold back Cleon. Last time he got hurt because he had to constantly look out for me. This time I will put all my strength and fight for myself.

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Today's chapter was a bit smaller and there isn't much going on because I came back late from work. I would try to make tomorrows chapter a little bigger if I came back home at regular time. Anyways Good Night.