Quest: 1.3

--- Jon ---

--- Afternoon ---

“And done.” He nodded to himself before stretching his arms above his head, having finally put away the last of the soccer equipment.

“Just got to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.” He told himself, a habit he’d had for longer than he cared to remember.

As he turned to leave the equipment shed his eyes caught sight of one of the camps practice archery sets. (Huh… that’s not a bad idea.)

Any camper over thirteen who had at least two years of using the archery range was allowed to check the equipment out, a process that was usually fairly relaxed since virtually every camper was (scared shitless) of quartermaster Rogers for one reason or another.

He shivered, remembering how during his first-year quartermaster Rogers explained how the checkout process worked for different pieces of equipment… at night, in front of a fire, while hacking a tree apart with an axe.

It wasn’t until the next year that he got one of the counselors to explain the whole process in a way that wasn’t quite so terrifying.

Shaking his head, and once more suppressing childhood trauma, he grabbed the archery kit before making his way to the archery range.

Archery was one of the few camp activities that he could actively admit to being good at.

Sure, he knew the basics of all the other camp activities, but very few of those skills were at a level anyone couldn’t just pick up with a few weeks of solid practice backing them up.

Jill had even told him that if he kept putting in time like he was, he might be able to get an archery scholarship like she did. (Though most of those colleges are a bit away from home…)

Lost in thought, he didn’t realize he’d made it to the archery field until the steady sound of arrows hitting a target reached him.

(Huh, guess I’m not the only one who felt like getting some practice.)

Standing at the firing range was Ying Zhang. An Asian girl of about sixteen with short black hair wearing the camp shirt and a pair of shorts as she stoically fired arrow after arrow into the target fifty meters away.

Ying was… an odd one by most standards. (Not that I’m one to talk…)

Despite her outward distaste with the majority of the camp she was one of the few ‘lifer’ campers at Camp Bet, the ones who came back year after year for one reason or another. Even going so far as to become one of its counselors in training like him.

While the two of them got along well enough, they weren’t exactly ‘friends’ by any stretch of the imagination, he liked to think they got along well enough. Even if the CIT courses they’d taken together were the most interaction they’d had in their six years of knowing each other.

(In fact, we’re probably going to be seeing a lot of each other this summer because of our CIT stuff…)

Choices

Choose One:

[] -Approach Ying. It never hurts to make a new friend, and maybe she’d like to practice together?

[] -Don’t bother her. He’s not the best with people, and the practice range is big enough to try and give her some space.

--- Night ---

He wasn’t sleeping tonight either.

Even after the archery range, his head was still… too full of thoughts.

Reaching under the edge of his bed he grabbed his watch and checked the time.

(Damn… almost midnight…)

He laid there for another five or ten minutes before finally giving up on sleeping as he was.

(Maybe a walk will help…)

Sitting up he glanced around the cabin, making sure both of the boys he shared a cabin with were asleep, before putting his shoes on and leaving.

He had to be careful with the door, the old thing had a tendency to squeak on its hinges if opened too fast, and he technically wasn’t supposed to be out after dark, even if he was a CIT.

The air outside was warm, and the skies -while a little cloudy- were still clear enough to make out the crescent moon floating above.

(Alright, now where too…)

He glanced around a bit, before deciding to head for the forest. After all, his last late-night walk through camp, did very little for his mental health.

As he made his way away from the fields and cabins, he began to notice little blue lights drifting through the air before flickering out of sight.

“Oh, right, it’s just about firefly season.” He smiled at that, the thought of teaching the younger kids how to catch the little bugs sending a warm feeling through his chest.

The fireflies around Camp Bet, were weird. From what little he could recall, they’d originally been a normal offshoot of the summer insect, but at some point, the local breed had been infected with… (magic?) or something to change their color and increase their size.

Miss Edna had explained it to him and the other campers at one point, but he’d been twelve and she’d used several words that sounded very scientific and used a lot more syllables than he could manage. And that was before she started explaining how magic and biology interacted, on a level beyond that.

Honestly, he was getting a headache just thinking about it.

He followed the forest trail a little deeper, to where the fireflies became more prominent as this variant began to nest in the trees. As he did so he finally felt the weight of the camps fate fall from his shoulders.

(We have time, and who know maybe Miss Edna and the counselors will figure something out, and even then I can still do my part to help. I’ve just got to stay positive and keep moving forward.)

Looking at the beautiful nighttime forest around him he couldn’t help but smile as everything in his head began to click into place.

(Yeah, this, this was exactly what I nee-)

A branch snapped behind him, and all of the fireflies flicked off, plunging the world around him into darkness.

Choices

Choose One:

[] -Run.

[] -Hide.

[] -Freeze.