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Smoke Signals, from a prompt on @NaNoWordSprints (started 7/5/15, completed 7/9/2015)
Her efforts were all in vain. It was stupid of her to believe she could remember those ridiculous long ago lessons in woodcraft and firemaking. Despair struck Darla hard in the chest for a moment. She might not freeze to death, if she were careful, but she needed fire for light and to scare off predators larger than the mosquitoes and black flies that had been biting and pinching her for what felt like hours and hours.
How did she get separated from the rest of the women on the rafting trip? She let her hand drift to the welt at the back of her head that the black flies had been tormenting. Quite a knot there. She recognized her own disorientation, dizziness, and difficulty with balance as likely symptoms of concussion. Thank god she still had her canteen and her “batman utility belt” as her lover teased her. She had a good small knife, water purification tablets, and a weekend-plus-one’s dose of her medicines in a tiny orange waterproof matchholder, all firmly attached at her waist. If only Darla weren’t so beholden to “better living through modern chemistry, she’d still have MATCHES in the matchholder instead.
“You’re going on a rafting trip with a professional guide and half a dozen other forty-something women,” she mumbled out loud to herself, “YOU won’t need matches, the guide will be prepared!”
She took a short drink from the canteen.
“No, much better to use the waterproof container for your meds, it would make you miserable and risk your life if you got THOSE wet or worse, you’d inconvenience everyone else needing to get a helicopter lift out from the campground!”
She groaned and leaned away from the tree she’d propped herself against to slump forward, elbows on her knees and hands supporting her head. Darla hissed as her uncautious fingers poked the large, sluggishly bleeding lump behind her right ear. It was very tender, as she already knew from allowing her giant head to thump back against the tree trunk earlier. She hoped it was just a bad bruise and a bit of a cut, actually cracking her skull seemed a bit much even for a klutz like herself.
( Read more... )
Her efforts were all in vain. It was stupid of her to believe she could remember those ridiculous long ago lessons in woodcraft and firemaking. Despair struck Darla hard in the chest for a moment. She might not freeze to death, if she were careful, but she needed fire for light and to scare off predators larger than the mosquitoes and black flies that had been biting and pinching her for what felt like hours and hours.
How did she get separated from the rest of the women on the rafting trip? She let her hand drift to the welt at the back of her head that the black flies had been tormenting. Quite a knot there. She recognized her own disorientation, dizziness, and difficulty with balance as likely symptoms of concussion. Thank god she still had her canteen and her “batman utility belt” as her lover teased her. She had a good small knife, water purification tablets, and a weekend-plus-one’s dose of her medicines in a tiny orange waterproof matchholder, all firmly attached at her waist. If only Darla weren’t so beholden to “better living through modern chemistry, she’d still have MATCHES in the matchholder instead.
“You’re going on a rafting trip with a professional guide and half a dozen other forty-something women,” she mumbled out loud to herself, “YOU won’t need matches, the guide will be prepared!”
She took a short drink from the canteen.
“No, much better to use the waterproof container for your meds, it would make you miserable and risk your life if you got THOSE wet or worse, you’d inconvenience everyone else needing to get a helicopter lift out from the campground!”
She groaned and leaned away from the tree she’d propped herself against to slump forward, elbows on her knees and hands supporting her head. Darla hissed as her uncautious fingers poked the large, sluggishly bleeding lump behind her right ear. It was very tender, as she already knew from allowing her giant head to thump back against the tree trunk earlier. She hoped it was just a bad bruise and a bit of a cut, actually cracking her skull seemed a bit much even for a klutz like herself.
( Read more... )
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