Everything had brightened up all of a sudden after a few blinks, and then I saw the frog. It sat on some yellow sand. It was only the size of my thumb, but very close to my face.

The dark started to come back again, and it was becoming frustrating to try to keep my eyes open and longer. My eyelids were sagging shut. Closing, closing, closing, closer to the darkness.

My body went limp, and I shut my eyes again.

More darkness. More boring darkness. This fall wasn't quick and fast. It was long and annoying. Just darkness what seemed like hours and days and months. My brain wouldn't budge and my thoughts wouldn't move. I couldn't find anything to occupy the deep - pitch - black.

And now I was going back. I didn't mind much that time because being awake was so exhausting the first time. I just thought "I'll try again next time."

So again with the dark.

And like normal I couldn't move or think or hear. I purely existed in this dark picture, clouding my vision for as long as it felt like.

Until light. Around me. Circling me. I could feel the heat radiating from the fire, and prickling at my skin in a way that made me feel strong, fierce. A warrior to someone else's control.

But then I saw my hands in front of me again with the little slivers of light dancing on it, and the humanity came back to me. The allure of free will. The control didn't feel that good anymore.

I felt something touch my back, and then heavy breathing. Not my heavy breathing. I was silent during battle, but I knew who wasn't.

Jordan the damn spazz.

"Take this." He shoved a bow in my hand, and his sword in his other.

I could only sense the danger around me. No other thought or feeling would allow its self to turn on.

The ring around me grew tighter. It felt tighter. In my stomach and my chest, and it grew further and further up my body until I could feel it in my spin. I was being wrung out like a wet towel.

The air around me got cold. I could feel goosebumps on my arms and legs. It become more overwhelming than every other exhausted emotion. I exhaled a long breath, and I could see it on the air. Dragons breath formed in front of me, and the room was so cold that my breath had become so hot.

The gasped out into a wisp of ashes and smoke, and again I was in the dark. But I could feel my limbs around me. I could move and touch. I wasn't stuck to stay still. It wasn't boring or annoying in the slightest.

I heard a presence around me. It slunk around in the darkness as it circled me and circled me. Only me and this creature that found me in a weak spot and was ready to attack.

I tried to stay silent, listening and feeling for this creature surrounding me. It was the most difficult monster to track, because it left no tracks.

It was nothing, it was the darkness, it's was the shadows.

I could feel it whispering that to me.

Suddenly I was grasped by my shoulders. Heat surged through me. Burning strong heat. My shoulders were gripped, and in the marks of those grips I could feel my skin be cooked alive.

And I tried to scream out but no sound escaped. And the blood under my shoulders started to boil. I could feel the skin blister and cool from the frozen darkness of the rest of the room.

I felt ripping and ringing. Like I had been thrown into a shredder and turned the wrong way.

And again the darkness lasted for hours, days, weeks. The pain made me pray for the boredom again. The boredom was better than burning.

Coughing.

Coughing again.

Just mind numbing coughing.

Every time I coughed my heavy head had tinge of pain to it.

My body tried to bring back up whatever was left in my stomach. Thankfully I found something.

I spat up sea water onto the sand.

"Are you okay?"

As if I looked okay.

"Here drink this," I had a cantina shoved onto my chest that felt like an elephant was sitting on it. "Quickly."

I forced my hand up, which was achy from the horrible sunburn. My skin has gone from pale to pink, and already some skin was starting to shed off from my wrist.

The water was luke warm, but I didn't care. My throat was still burning from being a dumbass and throwing up seawater. I would have eaten the frog I had seen earlier to get rid of that feeling.

Andor was sitting in front of me, and somehow he had found a way to look decent. His hair had that auburn shine from the sun, and he tanned instead of getting burnt.

Lucky bastard.

He smiled, probably relieved that this isn't what would make me die. "Hey" he breathed out. "Sorry about your skin-"

"That's not how you make a goddamn fire!"

"You rub the two bloody sticks together. Like they did on Survivor!"

"You don't even remember Survivor!-"

"I remember the first episode of season three!"

Tom and Tucker were fighting over the fire. They had somehow collaborated long enough to make a pit, but when it came to making the flame - the part we needed to survive - that was a different story.

"Why don't you just get your shit god to make a fire since you can't seem too!" Tucker yelled. He threw a palm sized rock into the sand, scarily close to Tom's foot.

Tom glared up at Tucker. "You have the shit god that just tried to kill us!"

"Your god tried to kill us first!"

I collapsed onto the sand again. "Just let me die."

Andor laughed, shaking the cantina in his hand. "I don't have enough water to bring you back to life again. Sorry."

My head was still pounding and my skin was still burning. I wasn't in the same spot I was when I first woke up. I was now under the tree's bordering the beach. They had made a poorly built shelter with the blanket that Jordan carried around everywhere as an emergency.

The sun beat down on the sand, and I could see the clear heat waves beat up from the ground ahead of me. The air was also humid, and from the state of the twigs and branches scattered around the beach, I could tell that it had stormed before we got hear.

"What happened?" I asked. It was hard to get the words out of my mouth since my tongue was so swollen and my throats was so dry.

"Well uh-" Andor shrugged. "You had landed in the part closest to high tide, so we weren't sure if you had drowned or not-" Andor was smiling, but sometimes I wondered if I was more of a pain to him then a girlfriend.

"Sorry. I'm accident prone."

"Accident prone is knocking into a table and dropping a vase." He raised his eyes at me. "You have a death wish."

I squinted at him in suspicion. Sure Tucker calling me crazy was one thing, but him -

"No I'm not."

"Really?" He spoke. "Because when Jordan finally got you to wake up he gave you some water. Instead of drinking it, you threw one half of it on him because 'you weren't a baby anymore'"

"But I drank the other half-"

"Well you did drink it." He paused. "And then you puked it up a few minutes later."

"Oh," I muttered.

I thought he was mad at me for awhile, but then a playful smile formed on his face. Even though he smiles at pretty much everything, I was going to take that as a sign that he wasn't that pissed at me for my lack of a will to live.

"Your.....different," he said slowly.

Different. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? It's not like I have a lizards tail?

I think I started to do my eye brow raise thing I do when I get pissed off, but Andor somehow made that seem nice before I could get to angry.

"Your not afraid to be yourself, ever. Which is horrifying to me." He leaned his head on his hand and just stared up at me - like a freak. "That's why I tolerate your antics - if your worried about that, don't be - because that's just you."

I sat their like an idiot. That's what I did. I don't know why he goes out and says stuff like that, but I can never top it. I'm practically illiterate.

Of course I knew all the reasons I loved him so much. He was caring - genuinely caring. He was smart and courages in a way that no person could imagine to be if they weren't a hundred percent selfless. He was the comfy sweater of people. Warm and comforting, and you bet your ass that the world was going to keep him in the metaphorical top drawer so he would always be their.

But I never said those things, even though I thought them every time I saw his face.

"Umm," I let out with an awkward laugh. I sounded like a giddy teenager and I needed to punch some trees and bathe in some blood like a warrior quickly. "Where did Jordan go? After I puked up all over him."

"Oh, right." Andor started to explain. "Well Aunt Martha and Wag were going to go fish, and then Jordan decided to walk with them. They just went down the right of the beach a little."

I started to laugh a little. The whole situation with Wag and Martha was priceless. I started to realize why Tom and Sonja made a bet out of me and Andor.

"What?" Andor was very confused. Which made this whole situation even more funny to me.

"They can't "fish" now I guess, since Jordan's going with them."

They heavy quotation marks I gave fish was making Andor worried. "What do you mean "fish"."

I nodded my head. "You know-"

"Is there something people know that I don't?" He asked, with a genuinely concerned look on his face. His blue eyes were getting all gushy and worried, which just made the lie even more enjoyable.

I nodded my head again, starting to stand up. My legs were wobbly but they weren't as stiff as last time. "You know-"

"No, Hope, I obviously don't know." His vision followed me as I got up off of the sand, and peered over for a second where Tom and Tucker were still fighting over the fire.

They still hadn't got much luck getting anything lit, but it looked like they were trying knew ideas and collaborating - even if Tom called Tucker a coward and Tucker called Tom a thief.

I just needed to walk, and let my feet touch the cool jungle floor. Andor might have no idea where we were, but I knew. I could smell it in the crisp air. The scent of beer and grass and leather, but also trees and fruits and dirt.

It was Mianite. I was in Mianite. I was home.

Andor immediately knew that I was going for a short walk, and he didn't need to worry about me. So he only stared at me for a moment before I said see you in a bit.

He sighed and then said. "I love you." Calmly naturally, like a normal individual.

Except it was just out their, in a normal conversation. No extreme battle or life and death situation that made us blurt it out to each other it just happened.

And I froze in my footsteps because for some reason those words had a more difficult time coming at of my mouth then others.

So I panicked, and I answered with fingers guns.

The disappointment on his face was obvious.

With some nervous laughter I turned around as fast as possible, and I didn't look back. I couldn't. Not even my pride could take that.

The forest was cold, but my whole body were radiating from the heat of sunburns and blushing embarrassment.

Why the fuck did I learn finger guns?

Most of us had gotten tired of the smell of sea salt and perspiration. I thought that walking would help cool me down. I could settle under some trees or something. Martha and Wag were the perfect excuse to get some alone time.

Everything felt familiar there. The nip the cold wind gave off, and the weight of the humidity wrapping around you like a blanket. I decided that it was closer to home then the last spot, even if we were only one dimension closer or a few miles away.

I was battling flies to get away and stop biting the spots at my neck that were sticky from sweat, when Martha and Wag started to walk further and further away from me.

I had blisters under my feet, and the idea of walking any farther without a brake was absurd. I decided to sit down under a thick layer of tree branches and wait a while.

The sea waves crashing on low tide had been calming at first. It was nice a melodic rhythm, and a brake from the crumbling world we had just left. Then the rhythm became a background noise to the chaos of trying to survive on this beach, and less of a distraction.

Behind me was a long, long span of jungle. I knew that. I could tell from the never ending windings of trees and vegetation, and the way the shadows landed on top of each other in the dark. I would take ages and ages to try to go through it by foot, and not even knowing what is in their it would be dangerous.

When I first woke up I saw something in their with the corner of my eye. It was pale, everything about it. It skin and hair and eyes. It was shining in the sunlight beaming through the banana leaves. It inched only a few feet towards where the jungle meets the beach, but it walked with quiet feet.

Until it snapped onto a branch, and I started to slowly sit up and it ran away.

I thought about it when I got bored. The one thing everyone forgets about surviving is that it's boring. The most entertainment I had got was when Hope had puked on my pants, and I had to wash them.

But in Mianite I was never bored, but I always saw that as surviving. Compared to cars and subways, Mianite was a hell that I had been trapped in for stealing money out the offering bin.

We did the same thing we did in Mianite, here. We built fires their, and we waited for so many hours you could have gone insane. We struggled to hunt for food, and we rationed water.

Why was that more interesting than this?

Because we always had an adventure. Not a mission that felt like a job, or a legacy that was dragging right behind us. We had simple monsters to fight and creatures to find.

That was the allure of Mianite. Adventure. That's why I never tried to leave. That's why we all wanted back so bad.

So I grabbed my glass sword that I was relieved to had at my side, and I walked into the jungle. I had an addiction to adventure.

I forced myself to slip my boots back on, which were coated in sand. They were uncomfortably stiff and the sand and salt sifting in the heel made my foot sting.

I ignored all that to find tracks. To take in the air and smell of grass and vines and lush leaves. To maybe invent something. I needed to find Mianite in any way I could.

As I walked further and further through the jungle it got darker. The sun wasn't going down, but the thick leaves of the trees became a canopy on top of me. The sun wasn't going to bother me anymore.

As the ground got softer track were easier to see. The freshest ones I could see were paw prints. Maybe a wolfs. The silt had just been pressed down, and you could see the groundwater forming up through it.

I followed the tracks, noting how I only heard the noises of crickets chirping and insects of that like. No birds and extra creatures inhabited the jungle, at least not at the time I was walking through it.

The empty noise allowed complete and udder concentration. It was a perfect battle zone, with downed trees ready to be hid behind and a cool shade to give away at the tropical heat.

The humidity started to feel like a sauna. I was already tired of the mugginess. I wondered how long we would be stuck on that stupid camp on the beach. How long it would take for us to regroup and explore the forest. Was their other civilizations here like Ruxomar, or would we have to start from scratch like Mianite.

My head started to hurt from all the solving I was trying to do, and the lack of puzzle pieces I had to put together.

The tracks started to get deeper and deeper. I was getting closer to whatever was making them. I was getting so close that I decided to lighten my strides and roll my feet so I was soundless.

Then I started to hear twigs snapping, and something was sniffing around a lump of something. I assumed it was a corpse, because what else would a scavenger be digging around at.

I lifted my sword from it holster, and held it firmly in my hand. It felt light - like dust, and as I held it over my chest I could carry it without my hands shaking. The adrenaline started to pulse through me, and every bit of me went into war mode at the first sight of any battle.

The bushes that covered my view from the animal were gaining closer and closer to me. As I reached out my hand to push the shrubs away, I heard the animal lurch around. Another big twig cracked and then silence.

The animal starting to growl. The growling was started to get closer. I could hear the clang of metal falling and rolling around. It made my heart beat harder at the thought that another person was with this animal. I had gone way over my head.

I raised my sword, ready to strike. The growling continued and continued. I took a few big breaths as I started to regret my idea of adventure. I got scared.

I lunged through the bushes and the animal yelped in fear.

That yelp was added with various hair barks afterwards.

The familiar dog wagged it's tail. An open, half empty can of beans rolled beside him. The German Shepard jumped and barked. The barking was so loud it made me glad that other animals weren't here.

Andor's dog was going crazy and I had to find a way to calm him down. I may not of known of any extra animals but I did know of monsters. The whole reason.

So I grabbed the can of beans so he would eat instead of bark.

"Here.....dog." I handed him the bean can, only to remember that dogs didn't have hands, so I put it on the ground.

Andor's dog ate happily, and was finally quiet except for the gruff sniffing he was making as he ate.

But when I looked back up, I noticed there was more than just a can of beans.

There was a sign, and a bag of supplies under it.

I started to dig through the supplies, desperate for anything that would start a fire easily. I too felt like the fellow dog - it ate savagely at the beans, while I picked through the supplies, not caring if they were meant for me.

They're were sleeping bags, and blankets, and tarps. I could see cans of food: lots more were in glass mason jars instead of metal cans. They had canteens for us to store water and some sort of first aid kit.

I opened the first aid kit to notice they're were vials of liquid instead of piles. Wag would know what to do with those. Thankfully there was also bandage and gauze.

I even saw, from under all the sleeping bags and food and blankets, a flint and steel.