A new dawn of a new day, not a new life but Mark was feeling good. As the last night watch he had had nothing to disturb him, and he got to witness a splendid red sky as the sun rose. The dawn chorus had loudly welcomed the daybreak and he could hear the others starting to stir behind him.

“Morning Boss.”

“Morning Mike.”

Mark wasn’t sure when the larger man had started calling him boss, but it marked a difference in the way the others looked at him. As he watched Mike disappear into the toilet cave, he reflected that the genial, big man would make a great leader if he were more assertive.

Jo appeared beside Mark and joined him looking over the valley.

“All packed Jo?”

“Yes. And looking forward to moving on. It will be nice to see some more of the world.”

“There is that. Well, I guess I should get some water boiling for breakfast.”

Jo said nothing as she was watching Mike reappear. She walked toward the cave and exchanged a greeting and smile. Mark could easily see the interest, but Mike appeared to be oblivious.

Mark filled a pot with water and set it above the fire to heat. He took the empty water containers down to the stream and refilled them. Placing the containers back where they had been stored, he went to get changed.

>>>

Breakfast had been eaten. Everything had been cleaned up and packed. The fire was still burning but no more wood had been added and it would be dying out sometime later in the morning.

“So, my thought was that almost every village and town lie on a stream or river and so if we just follow the stream we should eventually get to some form of civilisation. Anyone got any alternative ideas?” Mark asked.

“It’s as good a plan as any.” Charlie replied. Nobody else raised any objection.

“Okay gang. Let’s make like the shepherd then and get the flock out of here!” Mark said.

The group fell into what felt like a natural grouping. Jo led, with a bit of a gap between herself and the following trio of Emily, Julius, and Mike. Kajal followed, with Mark just in front of Charlie. The woodland that they walked through now felt much more familiar and less dangerous which Mark realised could be a problem. Fortunately, they saw nothing bigger than some deer-like creatures, which ran away when spying the group.

Mark made sure that the group took a short break every forty minutes or so. He didn’t want anyone getting too tired and he knew that Kajal in particular, was not able to walk as fast as some of the others. He made a point to insist that the three at the back got a proper rest as he had been part of groups where the front of the group rested whilst the back caught up and then were ready to go before the ones who needed the rest had really got any.

Whenever they rested, he asked Jo and Emily what they had noticed. Neither mentioned seeing anything out of the ordinary. There was no sign of any large animals or humans which in Mark’s opinion was definitely a bonus at the moment.

As the day started to turn from afternoon to evening, Mark suggested that they made a camp. The most exciting thing that had happened during the day was that another stream had joined theirs. Mark made sure that he marked which stream led to their initial camp by carving an unobtrusive mark on the closest tree. They found a small glade in which to make shelters and set up for the night.

It wasn’t surprising that they took a long time to make camp. They lacked practice but that would improve as they did it more. Mark wasn’t particularly happy that the place they were camping wasn’t particularly defensible but, in the woodlands, they had traversed they hadn’t really seen anywhere suitable.

If he was to guess, Mark would say that they had walked ten to fifteen miles that first day. Following animal paths whilst trying to keep near the stream was not a fast way to travel and they were constantly walking through undergrowth or taking loops that doubled the journey.

He could tell that everyone was tired, and Mark decided that rather than eating with the rest of the group he would instead sleep so that he could take the first watch and make it a little easier on the others. His lean-to shelter called to him, and he drifted off to the sound of the others talking quietly.

Mark was woken a few hours later feeling stiff and sore and decided that he would try and walk the stiffness off. The others had basically headed to bed with the exception of Kajal who was on last watch. As he placed himself in his shelter Mark waved him a goodnight. The fire was still burning merrily, and it was still light enough that Mark didn’t have to worry about having night vision.

Wandering around the glade wasn’t any great length so Mark did some warmup stretches and some very short sprints. He followed these with some push ups and jumping jacks. By the time he had finished he was feeling much less sore and slightly sweaty. Unfortunately, the stream wasn’t in the glade, so he had to use some of the drinking water to wash up. Their hand made soap wasn’t brilliant, but it did the job.

Having got rid of the aches, Mark then helped himself to the stew that had been left for him. It would be great with some bread rolls, but bread wasn’t something they were able to cook. It reminded Mark yet again how much society was built upon lots of people doing different things and even with modern knowledge and survival training there was no way that they could quickly replicate everything.

Once fed, Mark decided that it was worth working on his energy skills. Making fire had been relatively easy but what else could he do? The most obvious was to try and remove heat from a specific area. He chose a space across the glade from where everyone was sleeping. Selecting a rock sticking out of the grass, he focussed on taking all the heat from the rock and nearby area and moving it just to the air nearby.

As he did this, he could feel the heat trying to move back to the rock and so he tried to create a barrier which would only allow the heat to move in one direction. As he did this, he could start to see water condense from the air around the rock and cover it. He continued, the process and the water on the rock started to freeze. Eventually the rock was covered in ice but the air around the rock was also extremely cold but not visually different. The stress of doing this started to tell on Mark so he let the barrier drop. Immediately the surrounding air moved into the cold area. Water immediately precipitated in the form of small hail stones. There was also a whoosh as the air rushed in but fortunately it wasn’t loud enough to wake the others.

Mark took some time to get his energy back. So far, he hadn’t found anything useful he could do but his experiment was successful in the sense that he had made ice. However, he would need a lot more time and energy to cover a large surface with ice and he would need to find a way to stop it melting immediately he released the barrier.

After a few minutes break and using his senses to check the area for any large animals but finding nothing, he decided that he would try to do something with the energies he sensed in the plants and animals. So, grabbing energy from the trees around the glade he directed it towards a small bush near the edge of the glade.

Visibly the bush started to grow. However, he could see that the grass around the bush wasn’t growing and when he stopped, he noticed that the soil around the bush had changed colour. Testing it with his hand he could feel that it was significantly drier and firmer. He wondered what would happen if he kept pushing energy into the bush. Would it die from lack of nutrients? Or were the roots growing fast, spreading through the soil in a way that would keep up with the growth? There was no easy way to know without trying and he wasn’t planning on killing anything this night.

Doing this had been energy draining and Mark decided to stop before he tired himself out more and became a useless watchman. So, he spent the rest of his watch trying to determine what he should try next and how he could grow his skills. He decided that finding a trainer would be very useful.